Daniel Giurea, ARIES: "Digital nomads work not only for companies in Israel, but also for other IT companies in the world"

There is currently no IT workforce exodus from Romania to Israel, but we have digital nomads who work from our country for companies from other countries of the world, including those from the Holy Land, Daniel Giurea, the president, told us of the Timişoara branch of the Romanian Electronic and Software Industry Association, general manager of the Dapredi Soft Systems company.

Daniel Giurea stated: "So far, I have not heard of a notable exodus on the IT labor market from Romania to Israel. Through the export promotion program, we have relations with IT companies from Israel, with whom we often meet at international fairs, where we try to bring these companies to match-making with companies from our country. We have collaborations, but we haven't heard of a migration of labor from IT to Israeli firms. However, we cannot deny that, with the Covid-19 pandemic, the category of digital nomads appeared, who do not leave Romania but work from home for companies from other countries of the world - Germany, Great Britain, the USA, including those from Israel. Even in the companies I run personally we have hybrid work and full-remote work. But the category of digital nomads does not mean working only for foreign companies. For example, in Timişoara I know several IT professionals who have at least two jobs: one at a company abroad, from the USA, and another at a company in Romania. It all depends on how much each person allocates daily to complete certain tasks. That situation is found especially among young IT people who want to work more hours to build a successful career, both professionally and financially, so the horizons are open for everyone. It is true that Romanian IT specialists are still migrating to other countries, not to Israel, but especially to the USA, but we do not identify a large exodus of the labor force from this field".

The expert in this field told us that the problem of the exodus of Romanian IT-ists was present in the period of 1998-2001, when all the IT-ists left for Canada, but he mentioned that nowadays it is no longer possible to talk about such a thing. He added that even the reduction in tax incentives given to the IT sector has not led to a migration of the workforce.

Daniel Giurea pointed out: "They don't leave the system, even if the fiscal facilities for programmers have been reduced, because that facility was canceled only for incomes exceeding 10,000 lei. We are talking about a 10% tax for monthly incomes exceeding 10,000 lei and only for the part that exceeds this amount. The reduction of tax benefits was not a problem for the multinational companies either, because the respective companies did not lose anything, they only lost the employees from the gross amount they had initially. But the multinationals increased the income so that the employees did not feel the new tax threshold, and therefore the reduction of tax facilities in the field of IT did not create a shock wave in the labor market of our country. However, we do not know what will happen next year, if the progressive tax is introduced, which is still being discussed in the public and political space".

The President of ARIES Timişoara mentioned that at the moment Romanian companies in this sector of activity need larger teams for the projects requested by the international community, by the global industry, projects whose implementation would lead to the rapid development of domestic companies.

Regarding the workforce, Daniel Giurea told us: "We collaborate with polytechnic universities, which provide us with graduates in the field in which we work, but the annual tuition figures do not reflect the real need and really cannot be inflated indefinitely . I am convinced that if we had an additional 20,000 or even 30,000 IT specialists, all of them would immediately find work in the companies of our country. There is no unemployment among IT people. For example, in the press it was written about large companies that abandoned some projects and fired a few tens, hundreds or at most 1000 employees, but those people were immediately absorbed by the other companies in the Romanian IT market. I am not aware of any IT specialists who are unemployed; it is totally excluded".

His lordship showed us that the IT field in our country suffers in terms of innovation: "We have very good specialists, but we fail to increase the local, national IT, or rather the intellectual property of our country in this field of activity. To achieve this, we need the growth of the entrepreneurial spirit, the need to take risks and not to sit on a very good salary like those in IT. It is better to risk with friends on an idea, to make a program, an application, a product or a service, which you can later sell for good moneys".

The president of ARIES Timişoara concluded by saying that funding for innovation in the IT field exists, but unfortunately there is no willingness to take risks among young specialists.