Estonia is clean from russians not like Latvia, that's why they are centuries far from other Baltic countries.
HN is not the place for this, check your xenophobia at the door please.
How Estonia became a leader in technology
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Re: How Estonia became a leader in technology
#12Estonians are everywhere - that's why they're successful. Everywhere I was in an accelerator, reporters and people from Estonia came in order to learn how things are done - this is a long and deliberate process.
Once an Estonian journalist even wrote about our company - was fun! http://majandus24.postimees.ee/2080692/iisraeli-poisid-leiut...
Other countries in the area (namely Finland) also do this and fly around - we've had teams from Italy come visit us in Tel Aviv and other countries.
I can only imagine how it feels in the valley and how much visits you get.
Re: How Estonia became a leader in technology
#13It's just like the lean startup process. In Finland and especially in Sweden, things are talked being talked about for years or decades. We need to plan, think, prepare, study, blah blah, whatever. You know what? Meanwhile Estonians did it, actually several years ago. Skipping (or doing really leanly) most of these major time and resource wasters.
I've never lived/worked in either but it seems both Finland and Sweden have really successful and huge tech industries though?
Finland was really hurt when Nokia fell - startups at scale and as a national priority are relatively new there. They're spending a lot of money and they have an excellent education system compared to a lot of other places but this sort of mental shift takes time.
Finland has a cultural problem: working for a big company is considered good, working for a small one is considered being unsuccessful and failure at founding a startup is considered a shame. Contrary to that - in Israel failure at founding a startup is considered great because you tried and forfeited a comfy life for a while which people will respect you for.
Finland is spending a lot of money to change that perception - there are whole institutions that are working on it and they're doing a really good job but it takes time.
Re: How Estonia became a leader in technology
#14This link from the article comments is also worth reading to get a full picture, which seems to be not all that great: http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/17/meet-doteebubble-the-myster...
Re: How Estonia became a leader in technology
#15Estonia’s success is not so much about ditching legacy technology as it is about shedding “legacy thinking”
This is the key. I think many people does not understand this or does not approve of this. By going digital (like e-governance), use of paper is avoided but the procedure remains same. Does it save time? Sure, it does. But the process remains tedious as ever.
Re: How Estonia became a leader in technology
#16Didn't read because of huge popup window.
Re: How Estonia became a leader in technology
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is stupid, and wrong. I worked several years in Estonia (at Skype) and I would say that more than 50% of programmers are from foreign countries. Mainly russia, but also Ukraine, latvia, Czech republic... In Tallin, half the population is Russian, or native russian speaker.
Also the percentage of foreign programmers is high in international companies. Local or small IT companies mostly hire Estonians - for no specific reason imho, maybe just to keep the atmosphere native.
That is racism.
Re: How Estonia became a leader in technology
#18Re: How Estonia became a leader in technology
#19Re: How Estonia became a leader in technology
#20Estonia’s success is not so much about ditching legacy technology as it is about shedding “legacy thinking” This is the key. I think many people does not understand this or does not approve of this. By going digital (like e-governance), use of paper is avoided but the procedure remains same. Does it save time? Sure, it does. But the process remains tedious as ever.
> By going digital (like e-governance), use of paper is avoided but the procedure remains same. Does it save time? Sure, it does. But the process remains tedious as ever.
what's your point ? Ditching the process of having a government ?