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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

#61

Post by throwaway5398 »

pawelmurias wrote: post #53
ozim wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As if one's ability to blend depended on one's skin color alone, and that wasn't trumped by culture and language.

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

#62

Post by brnt »

ashtonkem wrote: post #12
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It also seems like Belarus is killing the goose that laid the golden egg here If some kind of deeper integration with Russia is on the horizon, as many have expected for years, then this might hardly matter. The overall Russian economy is so based on the export of natural resources, that the ruling stratum is hardly worried about other industries like the IT sector. All those Russians except for the ~10 million nee…

The Russian economy is both super small (last time I looked it was smaller than Italy), and not terribly diversified. I’d be a bit worried about it I lived there.

The trick the various Russian governments pull is to make sure the general populous is too busy surviving to be able to worry about let alone mount an offensive against the regime.

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

#64

Post by throwaway5398 »

joelbluminator wrote: post #42
ozim wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You have quite a negative view of immigration. It works well for many people (while for others it doesn't). Children are quite adaptable. The West is long ago not 100% white and it's only gonna become more pronounced the coming decades. It's mixed. Whites will become the minority in U.S and the UK in the coming decades. It's not that different in West Europe, Canada, Australia, etc. Overall it's a good trend for immi…

>Whites will become the minority in U.S and the UK in the coming decades. It's not that different in West Europe, Canada, Australia, etc. Overall it's a good trend for immigrants.

1. The US may become a white-minority country. Europe, not really. Whites are still the majority, and are going to remain so in the distant future. The "Great Replacement" isn't real.

2. Most immigrants to EU countries are from other countries within the EU and white themselves.

3. Many people from outside the EU, even though they're not considered "white" by Westerners, look white from the outside (think of e.g. Arabs) and the differences are purely cultural. Within a few generations you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between them and "white" people.

4. One's ability to integrate and be welcomed depends far more on cultural differences than "looking" different. This is why people from former colonies immigrate to the country that colonized them - lasting vestigial ties and a common language help far more than sticking to people who share one's skin color.

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

#65

Post by sam_lowry_ »

evv555 wrote: post #46

>Despite the authoritarian rule of Alexander Lukashenko, Belarus’s tech companies have prospered. The common argument I hear is they prospered because of authoritarian rule. Belarus never had to deal with oligarchs created by a power vacuum like in Ukraine or other EE countries. As a result a large portion of outsourcing labor for other EE countries is technically done through Belarussian companies(EPAM).

If you go to Belarus, you would rather hear that IT prospered because Lukashenka could not figure out how to extract money from it easily.

There were a few attempts at hostile takeovers of IT companies by state actors, but the state could seize only used equipment. Staff moved on, clients fled.

So, at some point, the state just decided to let IT free at the effective tax rate of 9% (against 52% for the rest of the country).

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

#66

Post by dheera »

sam_lowry_ wrote: post #59
dheera wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

Sure, they may be almost all male now, but (a) there are still females and non-hetero people in the mix (b) I still think it is worth not propagating stereotypes in language.

The first step toward positive change is to change the way people think about these roles, and remove the automatic mental picture of a hetero male when people say "software engineer". That feeds back into the hiring loop and worsens the problem.

I have no intention to start a fuss, but I just think that it would be a nice gesture to make sure our language is as inclusive as possible, and so made a suggestion on a small change that would do that.

(Also, I'm surprised at all the downvotes, I thought HN was a better crowd of people than that. I mean if you don't want to upvote it that's fine, but I'm really surprised that many people actively downvoted my comment. How would it hurt you for the language to be more inclusive? By downvoting it, did you want to maintain that we only mention "girlfriends"? By downvoting, you are part of the problem in tech today.)

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

#67

Post by ivan_gammel »

evv555 wrote: post #46

>Despite the authoritarian rule of Alexander Lukashenko, Belarus’s tech companies have prospered. The common argument I hear is they prospered because of authoritarian rule. Belarus never had to deal with oligarchs created by a power vacuum like in Ukraine or other EE countries. As a result a large portion of outsourcing labor for other EE countries is technically done through Belarussian companies(EPAM).

Absence of oligarchs has nothing to do with this. Belarus and Russia have very different political situation but IT industry is strong in both countries, even stronger in Russia. There are several reasons for it: strong educational system and engineering culture, piracy and almost no law enforcement of copyright, favorable taxation, government policies. It’s hard to underestimate the effects of investment in digitalization of government services in Russia and influence of it on the Russian-speaking IT ecosystem, including neighboring countries - to the point where Russian speaking conferences or meetups are way more interesting than English speaking ones.

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

#68

Post by edoceo »

sam_lowry_ wrote: post #59
dheera wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

The point @dheera was making is that some boys have boyfriends and some girls have girlfriends.

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

#69

Post by newsbinator »

jakozaur wrote: post #60

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 stam…

There is the matter of family records having been lost in fires during/after WW2, and having to take a Polish language test.

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

#70

Post by fabatka »

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.

Not sure why the downvotes, I think this is almost a tautology. My perception is that Biden is just as "mainstream" as the previous opponent of Trump was - hence the slower decline of Trump's approval despite the president's performance.
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