What IT professionals should know about IT work in developing countries

Every country is unique in terms of geography, climate, economy, infrastructure, language, politics, and culture. Those factors affect not only our everyday life, but also our work. However, technical experts are rarely educated or prepared for facing such non-technical challenges. That is not an issue in their home countries, but when they move abroad for work, it often takes them a long time to learn to operate effectively in the new environment. In this paper, we describe 24 broad categories of challenges that foreign technical experts potentially face when working in a new country. Our context of research is a developing country, but many of the issues apply to newcomers in the industrialized countries as well.