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Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

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Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#41

Post by alephnerd »

nikanj wrote: post #33
alephnerd wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tbf, SWE salaries are constant across much of Europe, so anyone who is working in CEE feels less of a pull to work in London as a line-level engineer for roughly the same salary as they'd get in Warsaw. Funnily enough, even Bangalore salaries [0] are catching up to Italy [1] and Romania [2]. As a founder, it's a different story though - London is hard to beat from an entrepreneurship and capital access standpoint asi…

For the ~500 million people of the EU, moving to Frankfurt means taking a train there, moving to London is a whole headache of visas, permits and permissions. Founder visas are generally suffering from a chicken-and-egg problem, where only a successful company can sponsor anyone

Sure, but the entire VC and funding ecosystem that London has is nonexistent in much of the rest of Europe.

It's easier to raise rounds with better terms in London versus mainland Europe, aside from CEE where diaspora VCs in the US tend to step in to build the ecosystem.

But even then the entire ecosystem pales in comparison to the US.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#42

Post by comrade1234 »

I spent some time in Poland for work about 10 years ago. I remember the cities being very expensive and chic - on par with Paris, Berlin, etc but when you got out of the cities (my project was in Bydgoszcz) it's a completely different world - poor, rundown, etc. would be curious how it is now and also where most of the Ukrainian refugees settled.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#44

Post by ash162 »

6d6b73 wrote: post #2

It turns out it's not that hard to grow an economy once countries all around you stop trying to kill your culture, exterminate your population and steal your lands.

Hundreds of billions in subsidies and Polish workers displacing West European workers inside and outside of their country have nothing to do with the success of course.

The EU is based on greedy West European corporations maximizing shareholder value at the expense of their own populations.

The EU is too big and should be reduced to the Western core countries. I wonder how Poland would fare then.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#45

Post by tanepiper »

7 years ago we got a Polish Hunting Spaniel, and did our first trip to Poland. Since then we've been back several times, and each time you really see the different - new and upgraded road, city buildings being renovated into new housing and commercial areas - also noticed the costs going up too.

But also you start to notice that definitely a lot of people who left Poland are coming back, and with that skills and new economic opportunities.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#46

Post by LaGrange »

olalonde wrote: post #30
ptdorf wrote: post #21

Educated AND motivated workforce will do the trick. All the polish I know that work in IT enjoy handwork as well. They are hard workers.

Were they not educated and motivated before?

We were. And “hard workers” is code for “easily exploited.”

Anyway the trick to explosive growth as a country is who you trade with and how you count things. We now sell things to Germany instead of USSR, of course there’s “growth.” There’s also some very real growth, quite a bit of it - but I wouldn’t put one bit of care in a “top 20 biggest economies” ranking. NL is one of the biggest food exporters in the world because it sells mediocre tomatoes to Germany instead of selling rice to Brazil and food exports are counted in euros, not calories.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#48

Post by steve1977 »

alephnerd wrote: post #20
dzonga wrote: post #14

before Brexit - a decent number of polish people in the UK doing all types of work. after Brexit - noticed polish engineers didn't want to be in the UK

Tbf, SWE salaries are constant across much of Europe, so anyone who is working in CEE feels less of a pull to work in London as a line-level engineer for roughly the same salary as they'd get in Warsaw. Funnily enough, even Bangalore salaries [0] are catching up to Italy [1] and Romania [2]. As a founder, it's a different story though - London is hard to beat from an entrepreneurship and capital access standpoint asi…

> SWE salaries are constant across all of Europe

Sorry, but this is wrong. Cheaper labor is pretty much the only reason for nearshoring from more expensive European countries to places like Spain or Eastern Europe.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#49

Post by mlitwiniuk »

seidleroni wrote: post #11

Noah Smith had a good article about this in 2024 for those interested in reading more: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/six-ideas-for-poland

Mostly nodding along, with a few of these aged in interesting ways from where I'm sitting.

The drones bit hurts the most. There's a war an hour from our border eating FPVs by the millions, and Poland - sitting on batteries, motors, chips, a generation of engineers - has not stood up a real domestic drone industry. Money is there. Will is there. We just... haven't shipped. That should keep ministers awake.

EVs are worse. Izera is a punchline at this point. Noah literally called the play in 2024 - "don't bet on one champion, run a bunch and let them fight" - and the state did the exact opposite. We picked one horse and it never left the stable.

The Korea idea, on the other hand, Noah might have undersold. Framework agreement is for ~1,000 K2 tanks. By 2030 Poland will field more main battle tanks than Germany, France, the UK and Italy combined.

Rest holds up. "Try all the things" is right - we're just very uneven at the trying. Defense procurement: shipping. Civilian industrial policy: not so much. Software still works the way it always has: quietly, in apartments, mostly without the state in the loop. Which honestly might be a feature.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#50

Post by 6d6b73 »

retinaros wrote: post #18

french and german working class tax. and obviously great leadership to use EU and that money well to win. unlike france for instance that got outplayed by germany that itself got outplayed by their dear ally the USA and are now going into energy obsolescence.

German working class is actually benefiting from this as Poland it one of their biggest importers now. And they are still benefiting from slave labor, stolen precious metals, and art they got during the WW2. Not to mention the Marshall Plan. They really can't be complaining.
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