51–60 of 944 posts
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
- it was kind of inevitable once Poland stopped being oppressed by its neighbors. The USSR, Nazi Germany, the German Empire / Prussia, Austria, Imperial Russia, etc. have basically been dividing the country since the 1780s. Without these restrictions, Poland is a natural leader in its region purely on population alone.
- A general lack of ideological “mind viruses” that seem to plague the western world. Most Poles are pretty straightforward, common sense people. They might have opinions you don’t agree with but it’s not a country of extremists in any direction.
- the general openness to American culture and (over)work ethics. I think Poland probably looks more to America than it does any EU country, although this of course isn’t simple, especially lately. But in general it’s a pretty hardworking, business-open culture. My impression is that it’s much easier to operate a business here than say, Germany, Italy, or France.
- Something I need to read more about, but IIRC Poland dealt with its oligarch problems in a different way than Russia or Ukraine did post-USSR and so doesn’t really have this issue.
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…
> 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.
A German SWE wants a 9-5. A Czech or Romanian SWE wants to build the next JetBrains or UIPath.
I don't want to hire the former - they're useless and a headache. I want to hire the latter.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That only explains some sort of “noob gainz”, not moving into the top 20.
When you lose 20% of your population and then spend 50 years under communist rule because your allies sold you out, there’s really only one direction left to go—up. A lot of people either forget, or never learned, that Poland was once one of the largest and most influential states in Europe.Yes it was long time ago, but the potential was always there. The real challenge was surviving the consequences of being caught…
- Educated population - Access to the EU market - Cheap labour - 250 billion in EU subsidies
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Were they not educated and motivated before?
Poland was sort of occupied until 1989
The Soviets really valued STEM. They also quite valued emancipating women.
Just for context, in the 60s, around 5% of chemistry PhDs in the US were women. In the Soviet Union, it was 40%! [0]
Of course, that doesn't excuse all the other things they did, but the amount of badass female engineers from Eastern Europe I had the honor of working with is a direct result of the pipeline the Soviets built.
[0] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/soviet-russia-had-...
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…
As an American that’s lived in Poland for the last decade: - it was kind of inevitable once Poland stopped being oppressed by its neighbors. The USSR, Nazi Germany, the German Empire / Prussia, Austria, Imperial Russia, etc. have basically been dividing the country since the 1780s. Without these restrictions, Poland is a natural leader in its region purely on population alone. - A general lack of ideological “mind vi…
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…
having had my run around with London VCs - poor terms, slow moving (btw this is at seed stage) - it's better to bootstrap unless you're in deep tech (which London VCs can help out)
bootstrap and either deal with US VCs once you have numbers to back you up - if you wanna redo & do the VC route.
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…
The taxation is not though. It may be better working from Warsaw or Prague due to tax rules. In Czechia it's a sort of fake, but tolerated consultancy and self employment and I have heard there is a similiar status in Poland.
Edit: can't reply
> Having 10-20% tax rate really helps though to have comparable or better pay rate to western europe with about 50% tax rate
At the employer end, if we offer enough FDI Western European governments do try to match support and subsidies that we could get in CEE.
Additionally, when investing in USD and used to American prices, it's a rounding error.
The drive to the CEE was partially government driven, but is now entirely due to the domestic ecosystem - you aren't going to find talent with the right attitude (business minded and independent) in Western Europe anymore.