Maksym Goroshkevych

Some of InventorSoft’s best developers were first spotted in a classroom. The company used to run free courses for mathematics and computer science graduates, teaching them software development best practices and putting them to work on simple applications in teams. For Maksym Goroshkevych, the company’s co-founder and Chief Technology Officer, the courses were less a recruitment drive than a chance to watch people work. “It was a great way for us to see people in action.”

Goroshkevych co-founded InventorSoft in Chernivtsi, Ukraine, in 2015 with Iuliia Shustova, after a career that began at SoftServe, one of the country’s leading software companies. InventorSoft provides pre-selected developers to SaaS and technology businesses in North America and Europe, in sectors from healthcare and eLearning to fintech and supply chain. He has been designing, architecting and developing web-based projects since 2010, and is co-author of Scaling SaaS: Unlocking Growth Through Strategic IT Outsourcing.

Ask him what drove the company’s growth and he points to the graduates. “Actually, I think a big part of our growth came from hiring talented junior developers,” he told Xraised. The courses let the team judge not only technical knowledge but motivation, teamwork, proactivity and how quickly people learned. The strongest students were invited to join, and over time many became some of the company’s top-performing developers. “They were also very loyal because we gave them their first opportunity and invested in their growth.”

His reasoning is that some qualities simply do not show up on paper. Responsibility and work ethic, he argues, are hard to judge when you hire purely from the market. “A CV and a technical interview can tell you a lot, but they don't always tell you how someone will actually behave in a team.” The lesson he draws is not really about seniority. “So for me, the key is not simply hiring juniors. It's having a good process for identifying talented people and then giving them the right environment to grow.”

That process rests on attitude as much as aptitude. “A developer doesn't have to know everything,” he says. Technology changes quickly, and there are many resources, AI tools among them, to help developers learn and solve problems. “What matters to me is what they do when they don't know something.” Do they take ownership, find the answer, ask the right questions and get the job done? Skills matter, in his view, but ownership, motivation and the ability to learn are what make a developer valuable over the long term.

The same practical eye shapes his advice to companies choosing an outsourcing partner. Start with time zone and location, so there is enough overlap with the internal team to communicate well. Look at experience with the technology you need and, ideally, with similar projects in the same industry. Speak to existing clients, because references reveal how a company actually works rather than how it presents itself in a sales process. And look hard at how developers are vetted, ideally interviewing the people who will join the project. “So I wouldn't choose an outsourcing company based only on price.”

The mistakes he sees most often come once the work begins. The first is managing the outsourced team separately from the internal one, with different processes, communication channels and sometimes even different goals, which adds management effort and reduces transparency. “I think it's much better to treat the outsourced developers as part of the same team — involve them in the same meetings, use the same tools and processes, and give everyone the same goals.” The second is failing to explain to the in-house team why the company is outsourcing at all. Developers may fear that contractors are coming to replace them, and that tension makes cooperation difficult. Outsourcing, he stresses, is usually about adding capacity, bringing in specific expertise or accelerating a project.

On artificial intelligence, Goroshkevych is measured rather than alarmist. For simple applications and automation, no-code and AI tools already let people without a technical background build what once required a developer, and that part of the market will change. Complex SaaS products and enterprise applications are different. “AI can generate a lot of code, but someone needs to provide the right context, make architectural decisions, review the output, and make sure the solution is actually correct.” InventorSoft has built agentic AI tools such as Cursor, Claude Code and GitHub Copilot into its own development work.

He sees the developer’s role shifting rather than disappearing. Engineers are becoming AI-augmented, using AI to generate and accelerate implementation while spending more of their time on problem-solving, architecture, review and technical decisions. Productivity per developer is rising, which may allow some companies to do the same work with smaller teams, at least in the short term. “But I don't think AI will eliminate the need for good developers.” Those who simply write code will face more pressure; those who understand complex problems, make good decisions and work well with AI will become more valuable still.

It is, in the end, the conviction that filled those graduate classrooms. Technology will keep changing, and the developers worth building a company around are the ones who take ownership at the edge of what they know. Goroshkevych’s stated ambition is a global software development company that transcends borders. On the evidence of this conversation, he means to build it the way he always has: by finding people who learn fast, and giving them room to grow.