

Polish Developers Are Joining U.S. Startups – But Staying In Poland - elvirs
http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/11/07/polish-programmers-are-joining-u-s-startups-but-staying-in-poland/

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plinkplonk
I suspect that building a company around finding the best devs wherever they
are (and keeping them there, vs going through the whole get everyone a US visa
hassle) might be more common in the future than it has been so far.

On the ground(here in Bangalore ) I see a distinct increase in individual
developers being targeted by startups/early stage companies in the USA (vs
trying to hire an outsourcing company etc). Given that the alternative in
Bangalore is working on some outsourced enterprise maintenance crap project,
this is a win for the good devs as well. The real problem is that if you want
really really good devs (and most startups do) there are only so many around.
So i suspect that in the end this will turn out to be a temporary fix and the
global shortage of good devs will continue.

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patio11
If the market functions well, wages should be approximately equal for the best
developers worldwide, at approximately the value they add to companies.

Given that top engineers in SV only make $200k or so, there are still
inefficiencies to be exploited. _smiles_

~~~
ajuc
Costs of living are different across the world, so people can live on the same
level with smaller wages in less wealthy countries.

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patio11
Costs of living matter to salary like costs of goods matter to software, which
is "not at all".

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ajuc
Could you explain why?

For me it seems I'd prefer to work for 1000$/month in Poland, than in USA.

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smanek
In a competitive labor market, a dev should be paid close to the marginal
value they generate. And I should generate close to the same value wherever
I'm working. (with, maybe, a 20-30% premium for working local do to increased
efficiencies).

~~~
corin_
That's not how the real world works, though. People (usually) get paid the
minimum they'll accept, as long as that value is less than or equal to what
they're worth.

If a Polish developer has a choice between working for a company in his own
country for $x, or for a foreign company for $2x, he'll take the second offer,
even if that same company is paying American developers $8x.

~~~
smanek
If you were right, then someone else will realize there's cheap/good labor
available, and poach him at $3x. Then, someone else will steal him at $4x. And
so on, until he's making close to what the American dev makes.

Tech hiring is _extremely_ competitive. If there were easy-access to a large,
skilled labor force for one quarter the money of the currently available labor
market, don't you think tech firms would jump on the opportunity for cheap
labor? I know when I was hiring I would have.

~~~
corin_
Sure, to some extent. However you have to remember the following points:

\- Not all employers want remotely based staff

\- If the wages are significantly better than local jobs, the developers may
compete with each other by offering lower wages

\- It may be harder to find remote staff than local staff

\- While it's easy to say "pay him more and he'll move to us", it's worth
remembering that workers in any industry don't always chose jobs based on
salary alone.

\- If companies continue raising salaries to poach staff, what happens when
the cost becomes equal to that of local workers? They chose local workers. So
while the salary may not be as low as it might be, it won't reach the same
levels as local staff.

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xyzzyz
The article is true in every aspect. The job opportunities here are so
unsatisfactory, that I do not even consider local companies when applying for
internship. Startup scene is nonexistent, as the number of VCs and angels is
next to void. At least there is a handful of good universities.

Fortunately, everything seems to be gradually getting better. It was only 20
years ago, when we were ruled by communists, which brought our economy to
ruin. This is amazing that it took so short to recover.

~~~
jwr
I am a co-founder of a startup based in Poland and I disagree with
"unsatisfactory job opportunities" you mention.

I think the job opportunities are there all right, and the startup culture is
growing very rapidly. Problem is, young people (especially programmers) have
unrealistic expectations, not in line with anything you might call a
"startup".

First, most young people start working for large companies during the final
years of their education. Then, right after they get their master's, they take
on a mortgage. Which means from then on their work career is dictated by the
requirement of a constant, predictable salary.

Second, when dealing with startups, programmers expect a) a high salary, b)
extras. Start telling them about shares and options and see how the
conversation doesn't go anywhere. Sure, it's sugar on top of their salary, but
(a) is required. Their families and friends only understand (a), so (a) it is.

Third, and this is a European problem, rather than a local one, things happen
slower over here. It is difficult to make people work hard and fast and if you
do it, people will complain about unsatisfactory work environment.

So, in my opinion, if you are looking for startup job opportunities, there are
plenty to be had, but don't expect corporate pay, benefits and work hours.

As to the original article, it is true and well-written (I know the people
mentioned, it's a great team). Not everything is rosy, and it is difficult to
run a startup across countries and timezones, but it can work out very, very
well indeed.

And in my opinion, the biggest problem with the Polish startup scene is not
the founders, but the relative immaturity of the angel and VC investors. If
some of the foreign, more experienced VCs and angels decided to do business
here, I'm sure they would find plenty of good opportunities.

~~~
xyzzyz
Bear in mind that 'unsatisfactory' is purely subjective term. :)

I have seen your startup's presentation two weeks ago at MIMUW and I was
genuinely amazed that people do such things here -- so were my friends. Most
of them work for corporations.

I agree that startup scene is not mature. For many people, it is easier to
move abroad and start there, than struggle here. This is understandable,
although it holds back the development, which results in vicious circle.

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rodp
I work for a US-based startup with management in Boston and a dev team in
Slovenia (EU) and I can only confirm the benefits (and the problems) that were
pointed out in this article. Developers in Europe have a culture and work
ethic similar to that in the US and working together with colleagues from
across the ocean has never been a problem. A thing that helps a lot is having
someone from Europe on the management team in the US and also sharing equity
with some European members of the team. This creates a great atmosphere in the
company because the EU team is not just "hired" by the US company, but we're
actually all in it together, as a mixed team of Americans and Europeans
pushing our business from both sides of the ocean.

~~~
plinkplonk
"Developers in Europe have a culture and work ethic similar to that in the US
and working together with colleagues from across the ocean has never been a
problem."

The "colleagues" is key.

India has such a (deserved) reputation for low quality code, thanks to the
entrenched bodyshops that hire tens of thousands of barely capable devs with
piss poor work ethics, and ISO/CMM "experts" and lots of mangers to herd them
all, that really good devs (who want to stay devs) are lost in the noise,
emigrate to the USA or become managers.

"because the EU team is not just "hired" by the US company, but we're actually
all in it together, as a mixed team of Americans and Europeans pushing our
business from both sides of the ocean."

This is the right (the only?) way to do it no matter where you hire from.

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owyn
My company has a large development and sysop team in Poznan, Poland. In our
case, one of the founding engineers was based there, and it grew organically
from that. We now have almost 20 people there, including project managers. For
the first few years, the product management and sales team was in SF and the
engineering was in Poland, but there is a much larger SF Engineering team now
(I am one of them). Most communication is via skype, RT, wikis, basecamp. Not
so much via email, which seems different to me. We have the same problems
mentioned in the article with the time zones and the requirement to do a lot
more planning (which is not necessarily a bad thing). I feel that we are very
agile for all that and are getting more agile as we add more SF based
engineers who are comfortable with it. We try to get everyone sent to the
opposite city once a year or so and this year we had an "all hands" meeting in
Poznan. I have personally found it very beneficial to get to know the people
face to face. I prefer to have everyone in the same room, but I think this
arrangement has worked much better than a typical "outsourcing" situation
because we are all part of the same team working towards the same goal.

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cagenut
My employer, which is probably more 'young company' than startup by now, has
had about 2/3rds of its developers in Ukraine since pretty early on. There are
a lot of really great things about it, the price obviously one but Kharkov in
particular has a really large university system with a lot of well educated
talent. The keys so far have been to work directly with the developers, cut
out any project manager/glorified-translator role, and take a general 'try
before you buy' approach of rolling a trial-month into a semi-probation-
quarter into a long term expectations but still month-to-month structure. It
takes half a dozen or so positions for this to really work, and you just roll
through people looking for genuine talent that shows initiative and
communicates well.

One drawback I have noticed is that this works extremely well for
creative/features/front-end development, but when you get into
architecture/backend things like a sharding design or complex cluster
configurations then less so. Most devs never really grok that stuff to begin
with, so combined with the language/communication/timezone barriers its hard
to do your platform engineering stuff this way.

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k7d
I think the situation is very similar in other new EU countries as well. There
is enough talent but the lack of startup friendly business environment (VCs,
market) is really discouraging.

So at this point teaming up with peers in NA is one of best options if you
don't want to move abroad. I'm from Latvia and was a tech lead of startup
which was founded this way and it worked fairly well for everybody.

A piece of advice - working for some international bigco can help you with
contacts abroad, which may turn out useful once you feel ready to go startup.

