I can speak from first hand experience that developer quality in East Europe is excellent. When I first went to East Europe over 10 years ago there was very lit

I can speak from first hand experience that developer quality in East Europe is excellent. When I first went to East Europe over 10 years ago there was very little offshore hiring so the local developers were resorting to local jobs, mostly around small businesss IT - things like accounting systems, POS, etc. Today most of the developers have a good command of English, keep up to date with the latest technology trends and have a solid classical education background in math, engineering, etc. The huge oversupply in talent meant that a lot of the best developers ended up working in black and grey hat hacking, online fraud, etc. There is a reason why East Europe is the epicenter for these activities. There is no reason why startups in the West should not be hiring more people out of these parts of the world. It is definitely less competitive than other traditional outsourcing centers and the quality of people and work is excellent. If anybody is interested in hiring in this region and would like some advice or someone to act as a bridge, be it to find full time people or contractors, feel free to contact me (details in profile).