Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

apnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

471–480 of 944 posts

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#471

Post by inglor_cz »

lifestyleguru wrote: post #281
lo_zamoyski wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Polish education has a long tradition of excellence. Indeed, the last decade has seen reforms that have been heavily criticized for working against that.

You mean "MBA for a fee" Collegium Tumanum, or the best elite two universities which globally barely rank somewhere in the fifth hundred? Sorry it's not education. Poles are cheap and subservient, while cutthroat among each other.

IIRC Polish mathematicians were close to being the world's best prior to WWII, people like Banach and Tarski are remembered until today. Also, Enigma didn't get broken by Rejewski being cheap and subservient.

Given how strong Poland used to be in mathematical logic, I can see an alternate history line where WWII does not happen and first computers are developed in Krakow and Lwow.

But computer programming with Polish keywords would indeed be a bit of a hell ;)

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#472

Post by cuu508 »

dwedge wrote: post #376
Certhas wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any sources for the claim that a large part of growth is off-shoring? Because that seems extremely implausible, and actually very insulting to the incredible success of Eastern Europe, before and after joining the EU, in closing the gap to Western Europe over the last 3 decades. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?...

The reason for the growth over different time frames can differ. Anecdotal, but most of the IT people I know from Poland worked for, as they call it, "big corpo" and generally it's offshoring either directly with companies such as DXC/Luxoft or n-ix, or through local offices (Akamai for example). If you look at the average salary in Poland (in general), and the average tech salary + the number of tech workers there,…

What is the average salary, the average tech worker salary, and the number of tech and other workers in Poland?

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#473

Post by cromka »

raffael_de wrote: post #329

Poland is basically Germany without the historical baggage and with less cultural cruft (to avoid trigger words). Having said that there is one Olympic discipline that they perfected even beyond German standards (which are quite high in that department already) and that is: whining.

> without the historical baggage

Oh boy, are you wrong on that...

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#474

Post by anikan_vader »

jakozaur wrote: post #454

The story is longer: Poland was the first country to make a remarkable peaceful transition from a bankrupt, failed Soviet satellite state. The shock therapy, plus NATO and EU aspirations, paved the way. It is a story of a country that made a lot of the right decisions along the way. Managed to keep consistent high growth, not a pony trick or boom/bust mode. Poland should be a role model for many other countries. Reco…

>> Poland was the first country to make a remarkable peaceful transition from a bankrupt, failed Soviet satellite state.

In what sense? Czechia is richer per capita. Almost all of the former Soviet satellite states in eastern Europe have had largely peaceful (since 1991) sustained economic growth. The exceptions are exactly those countries which continue to have Russian troops occupying portions, namely Belarus, Ukraine, and Moldova.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#475

Post by brabel »

11mariom wrote: post #220
lukan wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I'm old enough to remember internal borders with passport checks in Europe" Did you recently crossed borders? On many the checks are there again, because of fear of immigration terrorism or something, so the people could see, politicians were doing something to make them feel safe (but what I could see when passing borders, especially between poland and germany, were looong lines of trucks, so much for free flowing…

Not the same extent like it was before… Now most of the times is just slowed down traffic (quick glance who's in car and move on), and more than that I was maybe stopped two times for quick chit-chat (where/why I'm heading). And I crossed, multiple times, borders of DK (they had checks since 2018?), DE, A, IT, CH, CZ… Quick ID check happened once - when I was traveling with bus across border. Back in a days it was a…

If you miss the old days, try the bus from Vilnius to Minsk. It’s a full on border control just like in the times of the Soviet Union. Only 35 km away from an European Union capital city.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#476

Post by jandrewrogers »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #201
jillesvangurp wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think of it as an investment. The rest of the EU also benefits from their hard work, and economic prosperity. Other countries in the EU have also enjoyed economic growth and support over the years. I'm old enough to remember internal borders with passport checks in Europe, before the wall fell and Poland was still on the other side of that. Nice to see them moving on from that. Thanks to the EU free movement of peopl…

> Think of it as an investment. The rest of the EU also benefits from their hard work, and economic prosperity. Other countries in the EU have also enjoyed economic growth and support over the years. This is something I tell people I am generally politically/socially align with (liberals/progressives) when they start talking about “handouts for red states.” California and other areas were not developed on their own,…

The argument that red states receive handouts is essentially a myth. Almost the entirety of the "handout" is social security/medicare based on where retirees live (notably the sunbelt), where military bases are located (rural areas of less populous states), and where most Federal land management offices and employees are located (the mountain west). Ironically, it counts Federal employment as "welfare" with more steps.

Two of the three are intrinsically tied to the locale. You can't move the National Forests to Manhattan. They closed the military bases in the most expensive areas like California decades ago to save money so they are mostly located in flyover country now.

Social Security actually is a welfare handout but retirees are choosing to move to red states. Unless one is arguing to forcibly prevent retirees from moving to the sunbelt, Social Security dollars will disproportionately flow into those states.

There is no red state "handout".

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#477

Post by mrspuratic »

SilverElfin wrote: post #399
jillesvangurp wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think of it as an investment. The rest of the EU also benefits from their hard work, and economic prosperity. Other countries in the EU have also enjoyed economic growth and support over the years. I'm old enough to remember internal borders with passport checks in Europe, before the wall fell and Poland was still on the other side of that. Nice to see them moving on from that. Thanks to the EU free movement of peopl…

I’m not very familiar with deep EU politics. But I’ve heard a lot of complaints from colleagues in countries like Germany and the Netherlands about feeling like their taxes mainly help countries like Poland. While what you’re saying may be true, and this prosperity may be good for all of Europe, I think there is a lot of resentment about who the beneficiaries of the EU structure are.

This is how it works. Ireland was a net beneficiary until 2018, and now it is a net contributor (one of only 10 net contributors). These are decades long investments, Poland joined in 2004. Per capita Poland is not the "greatest" beneficiary but I don't think that will help win any arguments for those already resistant to facts or reasoning. https://www.euronews.com/business/2024/12/09/eu-budget-who-p...

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#478

Post by atraac »

dakiol wrote: post #222
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.

I guess it's anecdata. Polish engineers I've worked with weren't that good at technical stuff nor communication (in English). They're overprotective with "their" code and in general we've had more luck with western/southern Europeans.

I'm Polish, working for globally remote companies. I second the communication issue. Most Polish devs are so ashamed of their english(even if it's perfectly communicative) that it makes it hard to discuss technical ideas with them. As for technical knowledge, I guess that's cognitive bias, most Polish devs I met were far better at tech stuff than most f.e. Germans I worked with.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#479

Post by silexia »

Poland made the brilliant decision to protect its heritage and not allow unchecked immigration and illegal immigration. It is a very high trust society with far lower crime rates, especially violent crimes than other places like the UK and France that went the other way.

Re: Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

#480

Post by inglor_cz »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #35
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

Poland has been booming for a long time even before Brexit. I think it was a latent force just waiting to be set free by Perestroika and free market forces. I'd travelled to Warsaw a few times maybe 20 or so years ago, and you could feel the vibrancy and energy in the air.

Poles do have a business sense, much stronger than Czechs, I would say, and even stronger than Germans.
Post reply on HN