Bismillah — PragmaGeeks is live

I've been meaning to write this for a few weeks. We incorporated in March, put up a basic site, and started talking to engineers and companies. Now feels like the right moment to put down, in writing, what we're actually trying to do and why.

Bismillah. Let's go.

Why this exists

I've been hiring engineers in Europe for twenty years — as a developer, as a team lead, as a CTO. I've seen the full range of how it goes wrong: positions open for six months, great candidates lost to slow processes, teams shipped with consultants who didn't care.

What I kept noticing, especially in the last five years, is how much Moroccan engineering talent was flying under the radar. Not because of skill. The engineers I know from Casablanca, Rabat, Agadir — they're serious. They studied hard, they ship production code, they speak French and English without a second thought. They work GMT+1, which means a Luxembourg or Amsterdam team can have a daily standup with them without anyone getting up at 6AM or staying until 9PM.

The gap wasn't talent. The gap was introduction. Nobody was making the case properly.

So I decided to make it.

What we are — and what we're not

PragmaGeeks is small. Right now it's me, a handful of engineers I trust personally, and a growing network of companies who are open to trying something different.

We are not a staffing agency in the traditional sense. I'm not running a database of CVs and blasting them at clients. I talk to every engineer we place. I understand what they're good at, what they care about, what kind of team they'll thrive in. When I recommend someone, I'm putting my name on it.

That's the whole model. Low volume, high conviction.

The rate question

People always ask about rates first. Fair enough.

We work on day rates, starting at 200€/day for junior profiles and going up depending on experience and specialisation. That's meaningfully below what a comparable European engineer costs — not because the quality is lower, but because the cost of living context is different and we're not adding three layers of agency margin on top.

We quote on the first call. No vague "it depends" answers after a week of back and forth.

What I hope to build

Honestly? I want to build something small and good.

Not a unicorn. Not a marketplace. Not a "talent platform." Just a firm that companies trust to find them the right engineer, and that engineers trust to find them the right team.

If we manage to place twenty engineers in good roles over the next couple of years, and every one of those placements works out, that's a success. From there we grow slowly and carefully.

Morocco has the talent. Europe has the need. The timezone works. The cultures are compatible in ways that matter when you're actually working together. There's no reason this shouldn't work.

We're going to find out.

— Anouar