When you think “hacker,” or “programmer”, or “developer,” you might think about the USA, Russia, or China.

All fair, but the actual results show something else.

Last year, HackerRank conducted a study to determine which countries are actually the best at addressing programming challenges.

With over 1.5 million developers ranked, HackerRank is one of the largest communities out there, a free coding practice website that allows developers to work on their coding skills by providing solutions to various challenges.

Coding skills

The list of the 10 best countries to hire developers from or outsource programming work to is topped by China (100/100 pts.), closely followed by Russia (99.9/100 pts.).

Poland (98/100 pts) is third.

Which means that Polish developers are some of the best in the world.

Professional skills are crucial and there’s no way around it. What’s worth noting is that language and communication skills, and reliability, are just as important.

Developers speak English, too

This subtitle should be accompanied by a little wink (  ).

If you look at lists of countries that speak the best English, you’ll find Poland in almost every “top 10” out there. For more details, you can head to MOSAlingua, check out the statistics from the World Economic Forum, look up the results of studies at Europe Language Jobs, or review the maps created by The Independent. There was also a debate on the subject at the UsingEnglish forum.

Long story short, we (the Polish people) kind of rock both the development and language worlds. While, usually, you’ll be initially contacted by our business development team in the States, you also will be in touch with our Tech Leads – all of whom are Polish.

That’s one of the reasons why many big players (Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, Google, and more) from the United States have located their R&D and software departments in Poland. They know they’ll receive high-quality product in exchange for considerably lower costs.

What’s also worth mentioning is that in 2014-2015, more than 46,000 international students chose Poland as their study destination.

Culture gap is almost non-existent

Poland was the third country (after Israel and the UK) in which a Google campus was built. “The whole country acts as if it was set up in 1989. That’s astounding, considering the country is more than a 1,000 years old,” said Eric Schmidt. “Polish people will fight to change the reality – in a good way.”

We’re continuing the long-term process of rebuilding our economy after the fall of communism, and we still do.

There’s a lot of room to grow.