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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

#71

Post by eternalban »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #67
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 digitali…

You forgot to mention that Russia happens to have a lot of brainiacs. It's rare event to meet a dumb Russian in IT. I've never met one.

I have worked with and managed outsourced engineers from Russia, India, and South America. The Russians were consistently the best: effective combo of smart + hard working. The only negatives were a reluctance to disclose bad news before SHTF, which was quite annoying, but I've always put that down to residual USSR culture.

In other words, I question the early appearance of the term "piracy" in the list of reasons of why Russians excel at software engineering.

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

#72

Post by fabatka »

dragonwriter wrote: post #18
vikramkr wrote: post #10

It was already authorization- its the "last dictatorship in europe" - what did they think it was before?

> its the "last dictatorship in europe" Well, I mean, if you ignore the country that takes up 39% (maybe a little more de facto after recent unilateral border alterations) of Europe, sure.

In the quote I think Europe is meant in the cultural sense, and I guess you are talking about Europe in the geographical sense.

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

#73

Post by walshemj »

akira2501 wrote: post #24
nomadrat wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it's naive to say that there's no borders. You have to be qualified for the visa requirements. You also have to renew this visa every year or so. You have to start all over. Of course everything is possible with some effort and money, but i'm tired of seeing this term "no borders for it engineers".

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

From experience working with coworkers from Belarus / Poland that's not a huge problem.

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

#74

Post by skissane »

throwaway5398 wrote: post #64
joelbluminator wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 countr…

> 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.

The US government officially considers Arab people to be "white". [1] Some Arab Americans disagree with this and believe they are not "white", other Arab Americans identify with the "white" label and want to keep it. The former group have been lobbying the US government to create a separate category, e.g. "Middle Eastern and North African", thus far non-successfully.

Unlike the US, I don't believe most EU countries have a formally adopted definition of "white" (the EU as a whole certainly doesn't.) But, just like in the US, it would be wrong to think there would be a single viewpoint. So the statement that Arab people are "not considered 'white' by Westerners" is a bit dubious – some Westerners no doubt think that, other Westerners actually do think Arab people are "white", yet other Westerners just don't think about the concept "white" or its definition that much at all, or think that "white" is an arbitrary category which should not be used

[1] https://www.census.gov/topics/population/race/about.html

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

#75

Post by [deleted] »

Karliss wrote: post #44
akira2501 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Most of those IT workers probably know Russian and English languages. Knowing both of them you can both get an IT work in Eastern European countries and deal with everyday life. I don't think language barrier is that big of a problem for them.

[deleted]

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

#76

Post by isbvhodnvemrwvn »

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.

That's an extremely american response. I guarantee you someone from Belarus would pretty much never be seen as a native Pole unless they spoke flawless Polish (no accent at all).

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

#77

Post by Chris2048 »

nullsense wrote: post #57
Chris2048 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

You put that in quotes, which usually implies a exact quote, rather than a third-party description of what someone said; But that is not an accurate quote. He said:

    ..when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. ... Grab ‘em by the pussy. You can do anything.

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

#78

Post by iagovar »

edoceo wrote: post #68
sam_lowry_ wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ok? Everyone is smart enough around here to figure it out without an explanation.

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

#79

Post by Chris2048 »

mhh__ wrote: post #47
Chris2048 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The allegations against Biden have almost no water at all. Unless they are waiting to use Reade as an October surprise they wasted it. She made an allegation, and more specifically said she filed a complaint. The Biden team tried to publicly confirm its existence (i.e. they don't think it does), but the senate cannot publish it without Reade's permission. She later said she actually didn't publish a complaint. I woul…

> The allegations against Biden have almost no water at all.

Holds no water? That doesn't seem to be accounted for in "I believe women" when Biden et al were warring with Republicans in general, not just Trump.

Compare and contrast Reade & Biden with Christine Bleakley Ford & Kavanaugh, which quite a few publications have already.

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

#80

Post by skissane »

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

Regarding the US, that's a bit of a misleading statement. US Census Bureau projections have "white" people as a majority in the US until 2060, which is as far out as their projections go [1].

The claim that "whites" are going to become a minority soon is arrived at by redefining "white" to exclude white-identified Hispanic people. Indeed, "non-Hispanic whites" are projected to become a minority in the US by 2045. But "whites" overall are not going to become a minority in the foreseeable future.

In 2060, the US Census Bureau projects the US will be 68% white-identified (white-identified Hispanic people included). By comparison, their actual estimates for 2016 are that the US was 76% white-identified (again, Hispanic people included). Although their projections don't go out that far, it seems likely the US will still have a white-identified majority at the start of the next century.

[1] https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/popproj/tables/2017...

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