ИT индустрията през 2025: Какво се случи и какво да очакваме? | DEV.BG All in One 2025

This talk addresses the current state and future outlook of the IT market in Bulgaria, focusing on the trends projected for 2025. The speakers discuss the stability of the market following a post-pandemic boom and the ongoing demand for senior professionals, particularly in sectors like artificial intelligence and cybersecurity. They emphasize the importance of domain expertise and collaboration with business units for career advancement. Unequal salary growth and fewer junior positions are also highlighted. The impact of AI on job roles and productivity is debated, revealing both challenges and opportunities for Bulgarian professionals as the landscape evolves. The discussion concludes with reflections on Bulgaria's competitive advantages in the global IT scene and the need for continuous adaptation to market changes.

[music] After this brief introduction, I want to start with the first questions I have for my guests today. And the first question is regarding the IT market in Bulgaria in 2025, at least up to this point. How do you think the market is? First, maybe to Krum. Do you see any changes from what we had as expectations, any observations? Well, let's start with the expectations that were

there a few months ago. And we all saw that this boom in business and projects that rained down during and after the pandemic was, for me, unprecedented. And in that sense, it was a kind of miracle how to find people, how to retain people, how to strengthen salaries. After which there was a cooling off period that took about 6-9 months to reach Bulgaria and be felt in

our sector . And what we can all see now is that job postings have decreased and business is a little colder and everything else is a little more worrying. Ah, but if I can share my 25 years of experience in the sector, things are always up and down. There are cycles in the economy, there are things that are clear to happen, and in that sense, I am

happy and actually a little above expectations that the market is stable. It 's not a crisis, it's not a flood. There aren't that many people losing their jobs. On the contrary, a little above my expectations, as strange as it may sound, perhaps for some of you, this is a positive. Okay, Elijah, what are your observations? We're still talking about 2025 , at least for now. Let's compare

the expectations that were there, say, half a year ago, and the current ones. The year more or less met expectations. I would say it is conservative optimism. But certainly the growth in the industry will be smaller, slightly less than 2024, much less than 2023 and 2022. But it will be within the range of between 5 and 10% in my opinion. And, as we all see, there are

almost no entry positions on the market. Mhm. That is, companies are more likely to focus on older people. There is one such transformation that is currently underway. And accordingly, this is also valid for the large foreign investors who are in Bulgaria. And a large part of these companies, transforming their business and looking at various options for where to scale it, are actually looking for more and more

senior people. The practice of focusing on costs, hours, cost per hour, cost per person is also something that is slowly becoming a thing of the past and people are increasingly concentrating, investors, companies are focusing on the end result, where we as a location are generally much more competitive. So, so far, I think this is one of the factors that is positive when we talk about 2025. Great.

And since we're talking about growth, which contrasts a bit with what some people feel, can we just give a comparison, since you mentioned growth of 5-10%, for example in previous years, what was the growth in our sector, more or less, excluding what happened in 2021? Well, from the 21st to the 23rd we had between 16 and 20% growth. Okay. So compared to 2000 it's 1015, from 2020

to 2023 it's 25. Roughly. Now we're back to 12. Yes. Feeling is not feeling, it is reality. Ah, it's just that the height is much smaller. He will be in the bottom 5%. Wage growth, by the way, is similar. That is, in 2024-2025 we are talking about something around 6-8% on average. What is being observed is that there are fewer and fewer of such massive salary increases

and so on . Simply, wage increases will be distributed in a completely different way than before, and a small percentage of people will receive a large portion of the wage increases. Okay. This is very interesting. That is, some staff will take unfairly more than others, or on the contrary, honestly more. Honestly more. Honestly more. There will be a bigger difference between, for example, saying that everyone who

is a senior developer gets this much. I can get involved here because for the last three or four years I have been observing what is happening with salaries in the UK, in Western countries, for colleagues like us. Ah, so the annual indexation that I observed was about 3%. Oh, I understand why, we're all used to and feel comfortable with salaries increasing by 10-15% across the board every

year. But when you look at what we produce in terms of value and it's not growing by 15-20%, it 's not justified to expect wages to continue at this pace, because companies will simply go bankrupt. And I think everyone prefers to work for a stable company that somehow guarantees a long-term career, rather than some fleeting short-term salary spikes. Okay. What really caught my attention was that the

salary increase would not be distributed exactly equally What Iliya mentioned, and yes, whether it would be fair or unfair is another question, but in general my question is what would be these skills that, if I were looking for a job tomorrow, for example, would allow me to get this higher salary. Very simple economic logic, supply and demand. So, if currently most capital is going into artificial intelligence,

cyber security, cloud, and other high- value-added industries, recently the focus has been on Europe and defense, right, the military industry, where there is a great demand for specialists with unique skills that are good, and there is a big battle for talent. If you look at what's happening in Silicon Valley with these famous, experienced AI specialists, we're talking about salaries and retention packages of several million. And this

is an extreme case to show, right, what supply and demand and competition mean. And these skills, which are basic, common, right, that AI already does better than us, will obviously not be as sought after. Whether this will happen immediately or in two, three or four years is a question of course, but we are all interested to see how quickly it will happen. But supply and demand, that's

all I can say. Yes. Is it? Well, in my opinion, there are a few things that companies will look for, and it is visible right now and how the market is changing. One is people who are willing to be part of the business units, that is, senior developers who have the skill set to be part of the business units with a clearer understanding of what the company's

business is. And not just a technical skill set. And also when we talk about SAS companies, for example, specialization in domains, this will be increasingly important in the context of AI, if you will. And this has n't been something that the tech industry in particular or a lot of people in the environmental industry have focused on in recent years. They will have to concentrate. That is, the

people who will be more successful in the market will be the people who have some domain expertise, who are ready to work in business units and be embedded in them. People who have a commitment different from the one they had in recent years after Covid. And of course, a large part of companies, both global and Bulgarian, have quite a few imposed programs for remote work, work from

home, and so on. Keep in mind that this is currently not viewed very favorably in terms of long-term team development strategy. More and more companies, when it comes to high added value, will insist on some form of real contact with the people they are, especially with seniors. And so this is also some kind of trend, I think, towards this type of movement. Simply put, more people in

the office. This is also evident from trends occurring globally. Whether it will work in Bulgaria, whether it will work with the culture of the companies for which and who work in Bulgaria is another question, but this is also a global trend at the moment. Yes, if I could take it a little to a more macro level. What you said is actually part of the components that I

think are important for us as a sector and a country to keep in mind. And I'm starting with the demographic crisis, and I'm starting with the fact that we have an enormous amount of advantages as an IT sector, but there's one thing we don't have, and that's scale. The number of people who are in Bulgaria and in our sector is 60,000 people. If we look, right, within

a 500 km radius outside of Bulgaria, there are several countries that have 300,000, 200,000, and if you don't have that, the only way forward in which we can grow and add value is to really focus on how to become better. I'm not just talking about startups that make products, right, you make it once and sell it 200 million times. I'm also talking about service companies, a large

part of which are actually in Bulgaria. And we can also add value there. There, too, we can add more value for the one hour of work that each of us reports, right, eight hours a day. How does this happen? Elijah already remembered one thing. Specialization. And what I've seen work and bring a premium, and for all companies that develop services, is when their teams also know the

businesses of the clients they work for. Whether they're in gaming, whether they're in banking, whether they're in anything. They have an advantage, and that advantage carries a premium. This premium can remain here as a value. Accordingly, right, the only direction of development for Bulgaria is companies with high added value, which work daily, hourly, to raise it higher and higher. And I say again, service companies can also

increase added Okay, great. Okay, since we mentioned the changes happening in our sector, we can't help but touch on the topic of AI and what AI brings in terms of changes. And I personally find it very interesting if we can take a look into the future with a forecast, because there's no way we can see with a crystal ball what exactly will happen in the coming years.

But what is your opinion on how AI will impact our sector? Maybe Ilia, this is the first time I've heard of EI, so let's start with the negative, right? Ah, well, here I'll start from a broader context, actually, during Covid and after Covid, there was a lot of money in the market, right? There was free money, for all, and this practically led to a large amount of

M&A happening, that is, acquisitions and mergers globally, I'm talking about large companies, smaller companies, and so on. And this lasted for nearly two And a large part of these companies remained largely unconsolidated in terms of their backend and processes, and this coincided in some form with the large models and the emergence of chat GPT open AI and so on, Open AI with GPT and so on. And

now we are still in a phase that is more of an initial phase in terms of AI integration. And many of these projects fail, enterprise projects. But the statistics were that in the States, over 90% of large AI enterprise projects fail in implementation. Ah, but this is not unexpected, because the lack of consolidation in the backend, the lack of structured processes, team, and so on often actually

lead to this. That's one. And two, a large part of the companies that can implement such things are actually waiting for the moment when we are not in a phase where growth is exponential, but we have reached some kind of plateau in terms of hardware, in terms of infrastructure, in terms of how these models actually work. And then comes the moment when you see that the plateau

is approaching. We are waiting for three regulations. A huge part of the business is still waiting for it to get bigger, for these regulations to become clear, which are less in the States, more in Europe . How will Asia in general adapt to this? That is, there are a lot of unknowns and things that objectively actually slow down the scale implementation of AI Enterprise solutions. But it's

only a matter of time before this changes. The time is coming when I have to change. The price is falling, and the processes are starting to be structured. we reach a plateau in terms of, rather a plateau in terms of development and so on . And I think we're yet to see the real implementation of this. The problem with the actual implementation of this is that now

you have an example. We talked about this a while ago, and a large part of the large companies that are in AI are private campaigners. That is, there is no reliable data about these companies. You pay, you pay on the cursor. X sends Open A twice 5 2.5 poh. Open A pays AWS twice as much and AWS pays Nvidia. Of these four in the chain, the first

two, the difference between what the client pays and what the company pays another company, are currently covered by Venture Capital And how long can this last? Ah, that's an interesting question. And who is actually going to pay the price for this thing? Then this year there are 400 billion investments in infrastructure. The projections for the next three years are up to 3 trillion. These are data centers,

hardware, and so on. This hardware will be flavored in another three or four years and this investment will have to be made again . And in this sense, what is happening right now is the beginning of the phase in which many people will burn out. Many people people. You have money, companies, employees, venture capital companies, and so on. That is, the transformation that awaits us will be

enormous. I have no doubt about that. Yes, it will create many opportunities, but many people will also suffer. Many people will suffer. Many people will lose money. many people will lose their jobs and will have to transform and so on Especially for the example you gave for the cursor, then Open AI, then AVS, NVIDIA. The big question that the audience is probably asking, because when we say

many people will lose their jobs, are we saying that this will affect Bulgaria, Bulgarian jobs, Bulgarian programmers, QA Devs, Project Product managers. So there's nothing wrong with the technology industry being one of the most creative industries compared to all other industries. In this sense, everything that happens somewhere will have a scale and will certainly have a bearing on the Bulgarian market. So just to tell you, and

in terms of the risks that are, I say again, this will create a lot of opportunities for people who can adapt quickly and create efforts to create the skills that we talked about. a while ago, that is, to be embedded in business units, to have domain expertise, and so on. And what happened in the States in 2022, in the States in 2022, I'll say this quickly, in

2022 they changed a law that actually until 2022, when investments were made in R&D, they were immediately reported as expenses in the company's current report. 2022 aa this changed and actually aa this was supposed to be amortized between 5 and 10 These expenses that are made there, what was there, had an impact back then, which is accounted for by the labor of 500,000 jobs. The fact that

companies cannot immediately amortize RHD costs in the current year, but must amortize them over 5-10 years. For what for what That is, these types of things currently on a global scale, such changes can practically have a tectonic effect on the entire industry globally. That's why I say that the things that happen in the States, in Asia, in Europe will inevitably affect us. We can't actually predict what

Trump will decide when he wakes up tomorrow regarding tariffs, regulations, and so on. And from this perspective, the only thing we can do is learn to adapt much faster. to for the changes. And in Yes, we have those changes, we see them with jobs in the States and the capitalization of RHD, the efforts, but even though we are not a cheap destination anymore, we still, and this

will be for a while, but we still have some price advantage over the States and Western Europe. And as long as we have this advantage, which I repeat, for me this is not the long-term vision for the development of the sector, but as long as we have it, this is not necessarily bad news, because this can mean a transfer of jobs from where it is expensive or

not capitalized to where it is not expensive. Now for artificial intelligence, obviously in the long term this will have a huge impact on productivity, added value, GDP of the entire world. This is inevitable and it does not conflict with the fact that right now it is a hype bubble and 95% of all the projects I read about at the MIT stadium, which most likely everyone has read,

have no real return, which means that the effect of not missing the train makes many people panic and start acting, spending money without necessarily knowing what they are doing, without having a clear strategy and vision. And that's normal. And I've seen the doco boom and the boom and the mobile phones when the iPhone came out, what was happening, right, like hype and how, after this hype passed,

things are pretty well regulated by the market, by the smarter ones, by the better ones, who manage to create working business models. This is currently happening with artificial intelligence, and it is happening and we are feeling it. And here, what I want to add a little positivity to is that even if your colleagues have the bad luck to end up in a startup or company that is

betting very seriously on artificial intelligence, some solution or whatever, and it doesn't succeed, during that time you can drink in knowledge by the handful, draw on knowledge, develop knowledge, adapt to the new normal. It 's clear that many of our professions will have changed very significantly and seriously in a few months, not to mention years, and we won't stop at prompt engineering, but certainly the big and

important things, right, that have to happen simultaneously, in order to surrender, right, to the power of artificial intelligence, they have to happen all at once. So one thing is, can artificial intelligence set tasks on its own, write the code, validate it and check its quality, and then guarantee its maintenance? We're not there yet. The second is, who is responsible for a certain code? If it's some coding,

a startup experiment that you do at home in your free time, there's no problem. But if we're talking about critical infrastructure of banks, telecoms, insurers, there's clearly a problem there, and these things have to happen and be there at the same time for any of us to feel threatened that our work will at some point become redundant and we have to focus on gluing tiles. No, it

won't happen that quickly. I've seen what lawyers do in corporations. They also have strengths and their point of view , no matter how irritating it is, is not necessarily without foundation. Okay, thank you. I want to take a step back, where we talked about how it is very important to be able to enter the business world. I'm talking about a former programmer, but I'm speaking on behalf

of someone who's currently a senior programmer somewhere. And what we advise the audience is to be able to enter the business world, to be able to get a domain name and so on. Can we illustrate it with an example? For example, I used to be a web developer. If you could currently advise a developer with a few years of experience, how to develop, where to go, what

skills to acquire, so that in five years, in seven years, in eight years, they could be one of those people who would receive a higher salary. So those who carry a point value receive a higher salary. Whether he's a programmer or any other specialist, there's not much difference, right? If you're lucky, being in a richer sector, it will be even greater. And the things, I suppose in

the context of artificial intelligence, that I at least see five to 10 years from now, haven't really happened, and you also have a technological background. That is, you have a driver's license so that by looking at a code generated by artificial intelligence, you can understand what is written there. I am not and I cannot understand it. This is an advantage that remains forever. What's missing is for

artificial intelligence to be told what the architecture is, what business problem it solves, how that translates into a system, what the interface should look like, then to track down whether there are any security holes, whether there are any bugs, read it anyway, optimize it, and then, right, somehow guarantee, right, that this is aa somehow does not violate regulations of any type. These things artificial intelligence can even

do. If I were a seasoned maker in a corporation that definitely has something to lose, if any of these things aren't set up like humans, I wouldn't trust it anytime soon. And in that sense, right, the understanding of the business problems that are being solved, the architectural conclusions and solutions and everything that, right, here's the question for our juniors. What can juniors do to become seniors when

there are no job postings for juniors? Well, most likely they will have to track what the artificial intelligence generates and be the first, right, to point out where there is a problem, where there are hallucinations, where there are bugs, where there is badly written code, under the watchful eye of course of someone more senior, but there is something that also needs to be monitored. And there are

thousands of other options in which a person entering the industry now could help, where critical business systems that are software are being built. But it's not that scary. For me, right now we have a bit of a moment like March 2020, when they shut everything down with Covid, there were three months in which we all looked at each other and wondered, right, will we be okay in

a few months. This passed very quickly and then there was a business boom. It may take a little longer now, but we'll soon figure out what's going on. It's not that scary. Thank you, Elijah. I see a big smile on your lips. No, because I see that he wants to spin things so positively. But that's what I think. Say the negative. I really think so. come on,

come on. Oh, what is it about which issue do you want me to provide context? If you want, by the way, and by all of them, but go ahead, if you want, from the last one, which is, I'm trying to put myself in the shoes of a large part of our and because we're talking about added value, but maybe in the minds of some of the people

who aren't listening to us, the question is how to have more added value, which we can answer to some extent. Okay. Ah, so first, first a reference to what Krum said. During Covid, the situation was completely different , because it actually immediately created a huge unity in practice, because we immediately adapted and could continue working compared to everyone else. And the situation is very different right now,

because this is an industrial revolution, right? And so the challenges for me are much more serious purely structurally, strategically, what's going on . Not only in terms of how the IT sector works, by the way, because we pretty much narrow the topic down that way. What's happening right now will have a huge impact on how it actually works, how societies work, how they function, what gets automated.

And here we are not just talking about AI in the software sense. We are talking about IoT here, about factory automation. You see, investments worth billions are already being made, employing 200-300 people. Mhm. Whether it's in the military industry or in other industries. So all of these things are going to create a whole different type of challenge in terms of how business and business and societies function.

In my opinion, the balance between capital and labor will also be disrupted. How so? Well, capital will become much more important. Capital will become much more important, yes. Aa categorically aa which is not positive or negative. It's a fact. Oh, because in years and this could actually disrupt the way that I'm saying this will most likely disrupt the way that societies operate, because there will be a

lot less labor. with less weight in all cases compared to capital. And you are seeing these things happening right now. So you have some, as I said, private companies and some public companies that are screwed over for, say, 10 people to whom they are ready to give 100-200 million. What is more important in this case? Who takes out the money? And it's about 10 people, it's not

about 10,000, 20,000, 100,000, 10 people, right? And from that perspective, that's why I said that the most important thing in my opinion in terms of how successful people are in this industry will be for them to get a little more into the business context of the industry, because there will be tools with which a few people will be able to do things that previously had to be

done with hundreds. And this, if it happens in a few years, you have a few years to get into some kind of business context sooner. A little more skills, a little more communication with teams, a little less work, a little more commitment. These will be the things that will be extremely important. Ah, here, when this started happening, when this started with artificial intelligence, there was a thesis

that this would actually democratize in practice, and to a much greater extent. There will almost certainly be a lot of one-man unicorns. Oh, I don't think so exactly. I think this is more likely to create some oligopolies, given that there are currently huge companies that hold the entire infrastructure through capital . Whether it's chips, whether it's energy, data centers, everything is brought together and it's too consolidated.

There are companies that have greater binding power than entire countries. And what's happening between the States and Europe is also quite critical and that's interesting in terms of opportunities. Actually, now I remembered that this was a point that I wanted to make while he was speaking. And there will probably be a trend in the next few years in which Europe will try to create obviously more companies,

technology companies, to compete with American ones, in order to have independence in terms of, well, someone is setting tariffs, and right now, in fact, Europe's move in terms of how it can balance the tariffs of the States is to impose tariffs on services, because all the companies that are big technology companies, consulting companies, bank cards and so on. These are all American companies. That is, America does

not export a large portion of its hardware production to Europe, but all services are American. The problem is that if Europe imposes tariffs on these services, it means that it will become significantly more expensive for all companies in Europe to use them, without having an alternative with European companies. So there will be a movement towards investing a lot in this type of infrastructure, technological infrastructure. And the

bad thing is that Europe is rather slow and regulatory-wise is not particularly flexible regarding these things, but there will be such a push and this is an opportunity for people and companies in Bulgaria to actually get into this trend. Europe will want to create its own cloud. own cloud, to have a large European cloud company, where there would still be independence where the state infrastructure is. But

this is not just a question of hardware. This is about how this cloud will be managed , and who will be the people, as well as the companies, that will be involved in these processes. And these are trends that will again be super strong in terms of what the impact will be on the Bulgarian market. Another thing is, in general, I think the States are much more

successful in terms of innovation. No, I think this is, after all, a fact of life because of venture capital. Venture capital in the States, right? We can't talk about how many venture capital funds we have in Bulgaria and so on, how we are. But we don't show up on the map, do we? In the sense that if we make the big map and make some balloons, we

are not on the map. Well, for a couple of years, Europe was actually encouraging its companies to go and work in the States. Accordingly, this not only moved venture capital more and more to the States, but also moved people more and more to the States. And then at some point we sit down and say: "But how come we're not innovative?" Well, how can we be innovative when

we, right, consistently encourage companies, venture capital, people to go and work in the States and then wonder that they are more innovative than us. And we are trying to compensate for this through European funds to finance innovations, right? This whole thing is kind of [ __ ]. And so this will also change in some form, and if this changes, how Bulgaria actively participates in this process can

have its influence on the entire market and how the people who are in this market actually have many opportunities for realization, simply because completely different doors will open that were currently closed. You wanted something positive for Europe on your special day. I agree. I agree. I might give a little back in the context of the audience, and the concern is largely justified, but for me personally, not

quite. And I'll draw a parallel with purely human nature and each of us, right? When you start a job and they give you an initial salary of 1,000-2,000 BGN, you stretch your budget, your family budget, and everything else. depending on how much you earn, right, some better, some worse. Then your salary increases by 15-20%, you get a promotion, you reach 10,000 BGN, let's just say it's simple.

And you adapt very quickly, right, to what you can and cannot afford. Now, as we get past this bubble and this disruption at the moment, which is this, this chaos around the world, I think we are all almost aware that this thing will bring a net positive to the economy, to the world, to ourselves. Maybe we'll work three days, maybe we'll work two. It's not clear where

it will end, but overall this thing is huge, and it will settle in and start to be felt, right, by everyone in their quality of life. Now look at this whole thing as people who have careers in the IT sector and how companies think, right? If you produce these projects, this value, right, CRM for days and all these stories that we have seen and heard, sooner or

later this will start to happen and your client or you yourself have competition, in most cases quite good competition and you say: "Okay, now my salary is no longer 2000 and my salary suddenly becomes 10,000, right? My and my production capacity with the same people suddenly becomes 10 times larger, five times larger, it doesn't matter how much. You immediately calibrate your investment program, your CSR program, your

HR program, right, so that people can be better according to their new opportunity. And for me and even at some point there can be this effect of Black Friday, right? Okay, right now everything is on sale. An hour of programmer can now do 10 times more work. I want to overtake my competition or not lag behind competition. Accordingly, the investment plans, the strategy of all those who

spend on software, in my opinion, will be calibrated very quickly, so that the demand for these people's time and this resource, which is production, will be condensed. In this sense, I am optimistic, right? Yes, there will be bankrupt companies, yes, there will be people on the labor market, yes, God willing, many of them will decide to create their own startups, right. This is actually great. But in

general, five years from now, 10 years from now, I don't see even smart people being redundant. Those who learn and act at the speed of development of the new should not be worried. Great. Okay. We have very few minutes left and I just want to have one last question for you, which is related to where Bulgaria is on the world IT map. Rather, I want to draw

attention to this issue. As a destination, Bulgaria was a cheap destination for IT work about 15, maybe 20 years ago. Now, we are definitely not from cheap, but where are we? Why do foreign companies choose us as a country ? And where is our competitive advantage? And for us as a sector in general, where are the disadvantages in, for example, saying a company chooses to produce software

products, whether in Malta, whether in North Africa, or in Vietnam. Ah well, first of all, we have not been quite, how should I say, we have not been a cheap destination for at least a few years. Ah one and two, Bulgaria's advantages are the following. For a long time, there have been a lot of case studies of large companies operating in Bulgaria. Bulgaria with a given capacity,

which is at a very high level in terms of both technical skills and management skills, which 10-15 years ago did not have one. Ah but here a lot is invested by large foreign investors, who in the last ten years have actually done a lot in terms of creating and consolidating such a sector. Then Bulgaria is quite vibrant in terms of the startup sector and how this startup

sector works with larger companies. We have very good communication in Bulgaria between these ecosystems and this has its positives and results. Ah, the tax system continues to be a factor that should not be ignored. These are some of the things that currently still position us as a destination that is interesting enough, active. We are super adaptable as a nation and as a location. Ah, but we will

have new challenges. You also see the former Soviet republics, in fact Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, there is a lot of money being poured into IT infrastructure. So this is what we are talking about, about entire cities that are being from Scratch, which are technology parks, tens of thousands of people who graduate from technology majors every year and so on. And this is also And Greece has become a pretty

serious country when it comes to attracting such investors. So the challenges that we have to fight with are actually increasing and we have to be much more focused, consistent and consolidated in terms of how we continue to be active enough. and this is because time is up. We are over getting involved. I can add, if you want to add something, just what I saw, ah, so Bulgaria

from the perspective of an American company that wants to invest or come here or from the perspective of some large Western European or Far Eastern company, the first thing that is said is Southeast Europe. That is, right, we are very small, we have to be conscious of this fact, right. However, when you say Southeast Europe and then we start to compete with our colleagues Romania, Macedonia, Kosovo,

Turkey, Greece and so on, we can beat them on many parameters or list a large part of them. I can add a few. And the traditions in IT, our industry, our sector is quite mature, quite relaxed, we know what we are doing. And comparing it to neighboring countries, I can say that we are doing well, right, we have some competitive advantage. The tax system frankly, right, helps,

and the fact that we are in NATO and the European Union definitely, right, several countries from Southeast Europe are not yet. This gives us an advantage. And from point of view, right, in a developed market and a developed industry many times, here, even as we talk, right, right now I'm talking to people who are looking at two countries and trying to choose. One is Poland, where it's

much more expensive, the other is Bulgaria, where it's not so expensive, but we're few in number, right? There's a passenger for every train. I think we're at a very, very good level from the point of view of Southeast Europe. And again, let me remind you, when talking about Bulgaria, you first go through Southeast Europe. Southeast Europe has a very good reputation for software engineers, just like Latin

America, right, for the States. So we're in a good place. We have to keep up the pace, to improve non-stop. Can I end one last thing on a positive note from my side? Great. Ah, when we were talking about the States and Europe and the fact that the States are much more, right, everyone is looking to the States to go and operate in the US markets and

so on, in my opinion, the huge opportunity that it creates is actually created by the big language models and What's been happening lately is that they're actually consolidating the European market because Europe is no longer a language specific market. And that in terms of scale ability, of all kinds of products, and the size of the market that's being looked at now is completely different and can be

really game-changing when it comes to what the new opportunities are for making products and services in Europe when you don't actually have the language barrier. So that's another aspect that's, we have challenges, but here's something that's an opportunity and it's a huge opportunity given how big the entire European market is. Great. Thank you very much for this conversation.