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Tech workers flee Belarus as IT haven takes authoritarian turn

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Re: Tech workers flee Belarus as IT haven takes authoritarian turn

#51

Post by rimliu »

sam_lowry_ wrote: post #33
akira2501 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, whoever wrote that never heard of a "language barrier." IT is not some universal language.

Language is not that much of a problem. They all speak Russian. Lithuania has a sizable minority of Russian speakers, and has historical ties to Belarus. Latvia is predominantly Russian-speaking. Ukraine as well. Knowing Belarusian, they can pick up Polish rather quickly. As a last resort, Russia is still freer than Belarus politically and better off economically. Smolensk is half an hour drive from the Belarusian bo…

Wait, what? Since when does Lithuania have a sizeable majority of Russian speakers?

Re: Tech workers flee Belarus as IT haven takes authoritarian turn

#52

Post by ashtonkem »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #32
juniper_strong wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Germans had that delusion too.

The Germans were well aware of Russia's population at the time. In the 1930s, the Germans produced a huge amount of areal-studies scholarship with regard to the USSR (demographics, ethnography, history, linguistics, etc.). Even today scholars occasionally rely on those papers and monographs, as distasteful as a publication produced under the Nazi regime might be. No, the Germans’ delusion was that these many tens of…

Also, in WW1 they were counting on the Russians being slow to mobilize. Massive armies are hard to get moving, after all.

They were not only wrong on how long it would take for the Russians to mobilize, they also overestimated their chances of knocking out France early.

Re: Tech workers flee Belarus as IT haven takes authoritarian turn

#53

Post by pawelmurias »

ozim wrote: post #21
arez wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not all of them, but many engineers are willing to move if they don't have kids and can make it work

If this BS going on will end up in couple of months they might be able to move back soon. If not, living somewhere abroad without close ones is going to hurt them in the long run. I moved out from my home country and in the place I live now people are nice, but I am never going to be one of them (so there are also not nice people, but it is easier to deal with not nice people from your own country). Some people have…

People in Belarous are white and their children can very easily blend in most places in the EU.

Re: Tech workers flee Belarus as IT haven takes authoritarian turn

#54

Post by dheera »

ozim wrote: post #6

“There’s no borders at all for IT engineers. They can find a job anywhere.” Uhm yeah, but they also have parents, siblings, girlfriends. Probably they might have some properties bought already. So as it may seem really advantageous to be in IT, one might not be able to move to another country just like that...

> but they also have parents, siblings, girlfriends

+ boyfriends, romantic partners

I agree with the motivation of your statement, just wanted to complete it to reduce the (likely unintentional on your part but implicit) hetero-male stereotype of software engineers.

Re: Tech workers flee Belarus as IT haven takes authoritarian turn

#55

Post by sam_lowry_ »

rimliu wrote: post #51
sam_lowry_ wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Language is not that much of a problem. They all speak Russian. Lithuania has a sizable minority of Russian speakers, and has historical ties to Belarus. Latvia is predominantly Russian-speaking. Ukraine as well. Knowing Belarusian, they can pick up Polish rather quickly. As a last resort, Russia is still freer than Belarus politically and better off economically. Smolensk is half an hour drive from the Belarusian bo…

Wait, what? Since when does Lithuania have a sizeable majority of Russian speakers?

Gosh... minority, of course.

Re: Tech workers flee Belarus as IT haven takes authoritarian turn

#56

Post by minipci1321 »

nopriorarrests wrote: post #35
ashtonkem wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. It also seems like Belarus is killing the goose that laid the golden egg here, not that that’s surprising behavior from an authoritarian regime fighting for its life.

>It also seems like Belarus is killing the goose that laid the golden egg here Meh. Belarus economy is heavy machinery and agriculture (mostly exported to russia). IT for Belarus is as important as expensive watches industry for US economy.

From official source:

"The IT sector in Belarus. The total production and sales revenue of the IT sector was $3.1 billion in 2018. In 2018 IT accounted for 5.7% of Belarus's GDP, which is comparable with agriculture and forestry (6.4%), construction (5.4%), and transport (5.8%). By 2022, IT's share of GDP will have increased to 10%."

URL: https://minskdialogue.by/en/research/memorable-notes/how-can...

Re: Tech workers flee Belarus as IT haven takes authoritarian turn

#57

Post by nullsense »

Chris2048 wrote: post #45
mhh__ wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but at least some journalists have been spot on about the way trump is going from Day 1 and that hasn't made any difference. He is still insulting war dead, threatening the validity of election, not even interested in solving COVID, and much more that I'm sure that you're already aware of. His approval ratings are at about 40%, that's not good but 40% is almost saint-like by (say) french standards. That's desp…

Trump isn't rated in a vacuum - There is too much hypocrisy in the opposition, starting with sticking with Biden after the allegation of sexual assault.

Well they stuck with Trump after he "grabbed her by the pussy".

Re: Tech workers flee Belarus as IT haven takes authoritarian turn

#58

Post by sam_lowry_ »

markvdb wrote: post #50
sam_lowry_ wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Language is not that much of a problem. They all speak Russian. Lithuania has a sizable minority of Russian speakers, and has historical ties to Belarus. Latvia is predominantly Russian-speaking. Ukraine as well. Knowing Belarusian, they can pick up Polish rather quickly. As a last resort, Russia is still freer than Belarus politically and better off economically. Smolensk is half an hour drive from the Belarusian bo…

> Latvia is predominantly Russian-speaking. This seems to imply the majority of residents of Latvia speak Russian natively. That might have been correct had the USSR existed a bit longer, but history took a different turn. "Most Latvian businesses, especially in the Riga area, will happily serve you in Russian." That would be a more neutral and correct statement appropriate for this context. Also relevant would be ho…

Having being in Latvia a few times and knowing the historical context... I distrust Latvian language statistics.

Still, even those statistics admit that Riga is mostly Russian-speaking [1]. This is where the IT crowd would land, anyway.

[1] https://www.csb.gov.lv/en/statistics/statistics-by-theme/pop...

Re: Tech workers flee Belarus as IT haven takes authoritarian turn

#59

Post by sam_lowry_ »

dheera wrote: post #54
ozim wrote: post #6

“There’s no borders at all for IT engineers. They can find a job anywhere.” Uhm yeah, but they also have parents, siblings, girlfriends. Probably they might have some properties bought already. So as it may seem really advantageous to be in IT, one might not be able to move to another country just like that...

> but they also have parents, siblings, girlfriends + boyfriends, romantic partners I agree with the motivation of your statement, just wanted to complete it to reduce the (likely unintentional on your part but implicit) hetero-male stereotype of software engineers.

Computer Programmers are almost all male in Belarus, but QA, Graphics Designers, Data Science, etc roles are very often female, which makes for a rather decent 70/30 gender distribution in headcount (2020 PVT numbers).

Re: Tech workers flee Belarus as IT haven takes authoritarian turn

#60

Post by jakozaur »

Emigrating from Belarus to Poland is easy. Even if one of your grandparents has Polish origins you can get easily equivalent of USA green card. Polish governament is working on new law to make it even easier and available more broadly. Given Poland borders before World War II were covering huge part of today Belarus a lot of people can take of the advantage.

Regular work permit for IT proffesional is also rubber stamp. Nothing compared to cruel H1B.

I guess same as after Ukraine revolution, a lot of Belarusians will end up in Poland.

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