
Check out JetBrains' new R&D office in St. Petersburg - rdemmer
http://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2013/12/16/jetbrains-st-petersburg-rd-lab-grows-moves-to-new-office/
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lemming
Looks amazing. I'm really glad to see Jetbrains do well, they're one of my
favourite companies. They deserve their success, their products are fantastic.

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nraynaud
it's so refreshing to see a company rising from somewhere else than the
western world. Somehow it's almost too bad they chose the google style for
their office it's not exotic enough for my westerner's eyes.

I'm a fanboy: since 2005, I have made all my employer buy some of their
products, and when I have no employer, I buy some myself. (on a side note, I
didn't know they where in Russia, I always assumed they were based in Central
Europe)

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r080
> I always assumed they were based in Central Europe

they have headquarters in Prague

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rdemmer
hhariri writes, "The Sales office is located in Prague, with a small Dev
department. Most R&D is in St. Petersburg and in Munich."

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dodyg
Prague, what a beautiful city to work in.

------
eps

      - Vasili, come quickly. There are sunny photos from St.Petersburg!
      - Pfft, Nikolai, you should know better. That's just another photoshop.
    

Great office, fellas. Really jealous :)

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skrebbel
Does anyone know why JetBrains, which seems to very much be a Russian company,
has their head office in Prague?

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seivan
Talent.

By being in certain countries you exclude certain talent because of
discriminatory laws.

Russia for instance can forget about any talent that might be part of or
supportive of LGBT. Not sure if Prague is better though, but at this moment
most countries are better than 'state sponsored' national socialist attacks.

~~~
ivan_gammel
It is the funniest reason I've ever heard. There's crazy shortage of talents
in Moscow and SPb, so any employee will hire a gay, a centipede from Tau Ceti
or a satan and shower him with money and lots of perks if he is good in
programming. However, lack of gay developers is definitely not the cause of
this shortage (after all, their rights are protected by Constitution and being
in top 10% of citizens by income, IT people in two russian capitals have more
options to defend them - living in Russia is not comfortable, but it's not
dangerous as well).

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berntb
He he, I remember 15 years ago when I told a friend studying economics and
East Europe, that I had racist tendencies when it came to Russians -- everyone
I had ever talked to for more than five minutes were an engineer or had a
cultural job (musician, etc).

He coughed up some coffee and told stories about St P, the cost of life (well,
the cost of death) and so on.

So, it is not dangerous now? It is good that things get better, good luck with
getting rid of the present thieving criminals. If I still remembered some
math, it would be fun to get a job there and see the place a bit more.

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ivan_gammel
Life in Russia significantly improved during last 15 years, but crime rates
are still high everywhere. However, it depends on your life style whether you
face this danger on the streets or not. IT jobs are among the best paid here,
so you can afford secure neighborhood. Modern Russia has large police force
and a half-million army of CHOPs ("private security enterprise"), guarding
malls, banks, offices, train stations and local trains etc. As for the gays,
I've been living near a gay club in Moscow several years ago and never seen
any criminal activities related to it (never visited it since I'm not a gay
and there were too many drunken freaks).

~~~
berntb
Well, as long as you don't own a company worth stealing you don't get problems
with the police (and other organized crime)? :-)

I've only been to gay parties a few times in my life. Very depressing, since
they have much more fun than we hetero people. You feel a bit ashamed even,
for your "preferences". :-( It doesn't matter, since (at least for Sweden)
they have horrible music taste, Eurovision is the least bad component.

~~~
ivan_gammel
Exactly. Nowadays the only organized crime threatening a business is the
government and "siloviki" (FSB, police, investigators and prosecutors). Noone
of them is interested in high-tech companies unless they are government or SOE
contractors.

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csmuk
So that's where our license fees are going...

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kayoone
yeah and thats excellent. I want the devs to feel comfortable when working so
their products can get even better :) Besides i think their pricing is very
competitive and that office probably cost a fraction of what hip spaces in SF
cost.

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csmuk
Depends if you just fished out for TC, 3 build agents and 50 copies of R#
(again).

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CmonDev
R# is sooooo expensive for a company that can afford 50 developers.

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csmuk
It's not much better than VS2013 is my point...

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CmonDev
Do you actually use R# then? There is no point if you are using it at VS
level.

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csmuk
I did. No longer.

Some of our team are still struggling by with it and we're still paying for it
for some reason.

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fidotron
That music room is an inspired idea I've not seen in an office before. Just
being able to play piano for twenty minutes can do wonders for the mind.

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whoisthemachine
personally, i'm not a fan of the "open" work environments, but you had a cat
in there so that changes everything.

~~~
e12e
I wonder how that works out if they want to recruit someone who is allergic to
cats?

I like cats, but being (mildly) allergic, I don't think I could work every day
in the same room as one (sadly).

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guard-of-terra
Васильевский остров прекрасен как жаба в манжетах!

If I happened to live in SPb, I would be working for JetBrains for sure. (I am
not)

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sesm
The first sentence looks weird, is it google translate? (russian here)

~~~
guard-of-terra
It's Сплин.

~~~
sesm
Shame on me :)

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mtrimpe
Too bad you can't put a rainbow on it.

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raphaelcaixeta
Jetbrains is one of my favorite companies. Success well deserved. Congrats
guys!

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systems
why do they need such a big office, i also didnt know they make this kind of
money

but seriously , this must have cost several millions, why spend so much on
office space!!

~~~
chiph
JetBrains is an example of what happens when you build a product that lots of
people like, and then charge a reasonable price for it. It's easy to convince
a boss to buy a tool when it's not a bazillion dollars.

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Roritharr
I can't shake the feeling that this was paid for by Google basing their
Android Studio on IDEA... ;)

~~~
3825
But the community edition is available on a permissive Apache 2 license[1]. If
I were Google, I'd only pay for IDEA community edition for the support
contract (and to make sure JetBrains doesn't go out of business).

[1] [https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-
community](https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community)

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dschiptsov
Looks like Google office in Ireland, so what? Only lazy does not copying
Google in Russia,)

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camus2
Nice, going to St Petersburg in January ,can i drop by?

~~~
rdemmer
Drop me a line with your dates, let me know if there's any particular team you
would like to meet and what you would be interesting in seeing.
robert(dot)demmer[at]jetbrains(dot)com

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camus2
thanks! i'll be near Ligovsky Prospekt ,should not be to far,i'll send you a
mail as soon as i have my visa.

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GoldfishCRM
Where are all the people?

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rdemmer
Here are JetBrains office locations:
[http://www.jetbrains.com/company/contacts/](http://www.jetbrains.com/company/contacts/)

St. Petersburg & Munich are the main dev centers.

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guard-of-terra
I think he meant "on the photos".

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rdemmer
The video was shot on a Sunday.

