DOU discussed with Hiroshi Shibata, TechUkraine Country Representative in Japan and Japan Representative of IТ Ukraine Association, the cooperation between Japan in Ukraine and his thoughts on advantages and disadvantages of Ukrainian IT.
Highlights:
- “And I always present Ukraine as the Eastern European technology hub, because this is what I truly believe. It is a very big country with a very solid Soviet tradition of engineering. That is how I present Ukraine in Japan.”
- “Mainly our projects have to do with Japanese companies hiring Ukrainian engineers or project outsourcing. We worked with one of the biggest Japanese tech companies in voice recognition software that they were developing at the time.”
- “And I can truly say Ukrainian developers are very dedicated, they are committed to delivering. There is a task, and they find the solution. They are very autonomous. They can look into academic papers, they ask around – that kind of attitude is very hard to find, for example, among South East Asia engineers… I feel that some developers still have room to improve communication skills”
- “The salary level has been skyrocketing and it’s becoming very difficult for foreign companies. What can be done? We can focus on education, not only for the new people in the industry but also people can switch from other engineering fields.”
- “Japan lacks 200,000 engineers! So the government tries to attract people and make it easier for people to come to Japan.”
- “Ukraine has to study Estonia’s experience closely, learn how they went to paperless e-government and created an IT hub.”
- “When Japanese companies collaborate with Ukrainian IT companies, there is room for success not only in offshore development and outsourcing, but also in branding Ukrainian products in Japan and selling them to the world.”
