Hiring a Developer Locally or Through Tunga: Which Is Actually Easier?
Hiring locally feels easier, mostly because working with someone nearby feels easier. The bigger difference is in what comes after finding someone: the contract, what happens when someone is ill or the fit isn't right, and the search when someone leaves. As an employer you arrange all of that yourself; a local freelancer takes part of it away, but not the search and not starting over. Through Tunga, a professional works remotely in your team under your direction, while Tunga arranges finding and vetting, the contract, absence and replacement, and you can end the engagement at one working day's notice in the first 4 weeks and with 4 weeks' notice after that. Local remains the better choice when the role needs someone on site, or someone who talks to your clients in a language other than English or French.
Why hiring locally feels like the simpler option
When companies say they prefer to hire locally, they are usually thinking about the collaboration: someone who speaks the same language, shares the context and can be reached across the desk.
What comes after the hire tends to stay out of view until it is needed: a fit that turns out not to be right, a long absence, a reorganisation, or a developer who moves on after 8 months. Each of these has to be arranged by the company that hired, and usually by the person who made the hire.
How much of the collaboration is already remote?
In the Netherlands, for example, 95% of companies in information and communication made remote work possible in 2025, and 91% of the people working in that sector could make use of it in practice (CBS, published February 2026). For most development teams, stand-ups, code review and day-to-day questions already run through video calls, chat and pull requests, including with colleagues who live nearby.
What remains different with a remote professional is that office days are not an option. How much that matters depends on how often your team is actually in the same room, and on whether the work needs it.
What each route involves, step by step
For one developer, hired as an employee or as a local freelancer. Employment rules differ per country, so the table describes the common pattern in broad lines; the details depend on your country, the contract and the situation.
Both routes raise the same practical questions. The difference is who arranges them.
| Finding and vetting: hiring locally | Yourself, through a recruiter (usually a fee based on the first-year salary) or, for a freelancer, often through a broker who adds a margin |
|---|---|
| Finding and vetting: through Tunga | Tunga turns your profile into a briefing, searches and vets, and presents a shortlist; you decide whom to interview and whom to work with |
| Contract: hiring locally | An employment contract with you as the employer, or a freelance contract with the developer |
| Contract: through Tunga | One contract with Tunga; the professional is an independent freelancer contracted by Tunga, under the standards of their own country |
| Cost: hiring locally | For an employee, salary plus employer contributions, holiday allowance and pension; for a freelancer, their hourly rate |
| Cost: through Tunga | An hourly rate of €26-37, invoiced monthly on the hours actually worked |
| The fit isn't right: hiring locally | For an employee, a trial period, after which ending the contract follows local dismissal rules; for a freelancer, as agreed in the contract |
| The fit isn't right: through Tunga | One working day's notice in the first 4 weeks, 4 weeks' notice after that, or a replacement |
| Someone is ill: hiring locally | For an employee, you continue paying salary and support the return to work, under local rules; for a freelancer, the work waits, or you find someone else |
| Someone is ill: through Tunga | You are invoiced for hours worked; Tunga handles absence with the professional and arranges cover when it lasts longer |
| Someone moves on: hiring locally | You start the search again |
| Someone moves on: through Tunga | Tunga replaces, without a time limit; in 2025 about 1 in 56 placements ended because the professional left for another job |
| You need fewer people (AI, a reorganisation): hiring locally | For an employee, local dismissal rules apply; for a freelancer, as agreed in the contract |
| You need fewer people (AI, a reorganisation): through Tunga | 4 weeks' notice |
| Directing the work: hiring locally | You |
| Directing the work: through Tunga | You |
What makes working with a remote professional go well
The conditions that make remote collaboration work are well documented: overlapping working hours, a personal onboarding, a stable team, and someone who notices early when something is off. Tunga arranges these as part of the engagement:
- Time zones. The professionals work from countries across Africa, within a few hours of Central European Time, and join your team's daily rhythm.
- Onboarding. A delivery manager with experience in onboarding works alongside you in the first weeks. Getting a new team member up to speed takes time and attention either way; you don't do it alone.
- A fixed contact. The same delivery manager checks in with you and with the professional at least once a month, and more often when you need it, so issues surface early.
- People who stay. Amos, a developer from Uganda, worked with Provolve IT for 6 continuous years. Its CEO: "We already had a remote-first culture. Amos was a perfect fit. I'd give him one sentence, and he'd build something from it."
The flexibility runs in both directions. Broekhuis scaled from 1 to 5 developers at its peak, and back down once its application was finished, without hiring or redundancies.
When hiring locally is the better choice
Some reasons to hire locally are not about how it feels but about the work itself:
- The role needs someone on site: at your office, at a client, or with hardware that cannot be shipped.
- The work means talking to your clients or users in a language other than English or French.
- Working locally is part of what you sell.
- Your team learns mainly by working side by side in the office, every day.
Where Tunga fits
Tunga takes the staffing side off the plate of companies that need digital professionals: software engineers, AI operators, product managers and other digital roles, from across Africa. The client directs the work. Tunga handles finding and vetting, contracts, payments and compliance, onboarding, keeping people, and replacing them when someone leaves or it isn't working. The professionals are independent freelancers contracted by Tunga and work remotely from their own country; the client has one contract, with Tunga, and a delivery manager who checks in with both sides. In 2025, about 1 in 56 placements ended because the professional left for another job. Founded in 2015; 3,500 professionals across 38 African countries and 300+ client companies, as of September 2026.
Tunga is not the right fit when the role has to be on site, when the work means talking to your clients in a language other than English or French, or when saving on cost is the main reason you're looking.
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