5 ms·

Many of the really good software engineers I know are Russian. As in they grew up and were educated in Russia but they all end up working for U.S. companies. Ru

Many of the really good software engineers I know are Russian. As in they grew up and were educated in Russia but they all end up working for U.S. companies. Russia is missing out on a lot of talent right in their back yard. If the government was a little more forward thinking and didn't try to stifle and control things so much who knows where they would be right now.

akiselev 10y ago
Not just the Russian trained software engineers but a lot of children and grandchildren of the 1990s Eastern Bloc immigrants are lost to Russia. These were the families most likely to have access to computers and educational institutions no matter which country they stayed in but widespread oppression pre- and post-USSR by antisemites, thugs, corrupt bureaucrats, etc and an economic collapse robbed the country of much of the talent pool.
- olegious 10y ago
  I'm one of those immigrant children that arrived in SF in the early 90s, now having grown up in SF and found success here, I'm actually looking at moving back to work in tech in Moscow. There is an energy there that I haven't felt anywhere else, hopefully the geopolitical situation will settle down over the next few years to make it a reality.
  - gtirloni 10y ago
    Where/How would you start looking for a job there? Do you know if Skolkovo is still a thing there?
    - Fremis 10y ago
      Skolkovo is a big bullshit, not even close to Silicon Valley. They did nothing useful and have spent a lot of budget money for nothing.
    - guard-of-terra 10y ago
      There are quite a few outsource shops who would benefit from having tech people with SV experience. For starters you might land a job for one of these. I would also recommend Sankt Petersburg over Moscow, having lived in both.
  - huhtenberg 10y ago
    "Don't confuse tourism with immigration" Though if you go as an American, you will be in a nicely padded expat bubble and the life can be quite comfortable. Just like in any other country.
    - drzaiusapelord 10y ago
      There's this problem where tourists visit tourist sites or big cities in autocratic states and see everything as so orderly and relatively clean, with no homeless, not too much petty crime, little to no graffiti, etc. They see a lot of police around and think 'Hey these guys know what they're doing.' Of course, the cleanliness is a side effect of absurd fines, though not usually official, but because the police grab you and demand a bribe unless you want a higher made-up charge. The littering or jaywalking is just an excuse to shake you down. Or the fines and jailing are real and if a Westerner was on the receiving end of a week in jail or even physical punishment like caning for spitting out gum, they'd be incensed. The realization that should come later is that because people in the West have basic human rights, life is messy as its harder to control a population that's guaranteed rights. But in autocratic/dictatorial states many people are beaten, jailed, or simply killed with impunity or have a mock trial for formalities. Tourists will never see any of this and their Western passport means they'll never be shaken down or beaten or harassed by the authorities. They'll get preferential treatment because its within everyone's economic and political interests to do so. They mistakenly think this is how the locals are treated as well. Sadly, many Westerners get the 'big city' autocratic treatment and bemoan the messy chaos of their own cities, without realizing that chaos is a feature, not a bug, especially if you want your 'features' to be the rule of law, personal freedom, property rights, an independent judiciary, and human rights.
      - SticksAndBreaks 10y ago
        We have other sad excuses to shake you down. Petty drugs (Ganja), Copyrightviolations and beeing a Idiot (literally Privat-Man in ancient greek). Thus far, your list of things not found in the west can bef ound in the west.
        10y ago
kushti 10y ago
Many programmers still here, and talented people also arriving from other countries (mostly ex-USSR and Eastern Europe, but not only).
- mlvljr 10y ago
  Here and reading :)
- Grue3 10y ago
  Just because we're stuck here doesn't mean we like it.
  - kushti 10y ago
    Who we? Me and my circle like the living here.
VladimirGolovin 10y ago
Our government has no incentive to retain them. Their main source of money is not small / medium / innovative business taxation - it's oil and other natural resources. And you don't need higher education and talent to extract oil. Actually, you don't need any population at all. As I see it, their real incentive would be to shut down the higher education system, because it a) costs money, b) sends a good part of produced talent to other countries, and c) produces educated citizens which are harder to manipulate. Sadly, I hear quite a few confirmations of this from friends who work in education. BTW, here's a great video, Rules for Rulers, which is basically a video TL;DR of "The Dictator's Handbook" that explains incentives of democratic and autocratic rulers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs
- sharpercoder 10y ago
  Many dictatorships eventually failed due to a lack of brains. The Third Reich is a prime example of this.
  - frozenport 10y ago
    What? The German war machine was extremely efficient compared to its counterparts, especially if you compare the asymmetric casual count. Many technologies such as radar or jet aircraft were first used by the Germans. I'm pretty sure Germany lost because several countries united, and took heavy casualities fighting rather than a failure of the education aystem.
    - sithadmin 10y ago
      The 'lack of brains' argument holds if you're looking at the Third Reich leadership rather than Germany as a nation. Aside from the poor choice of trying to take on both the USSR and the USA, near the end of the war, the Third Reich made a number of awful military tactics and logistics decisions that accelerated their loss.
      - frozenport 10y ago
nx11x 10y ago
Who says the government is missing out? Russian economy as a whole might be missing out, because qualified labor is leaving, but the state probably gets their pick of top graduates. Who do you think runs Kremlin's hacking, spying, and bot programmes? I imagine it's not the straight C students. Same goes for critical industries like defense and o&g.
- trhway 10y ago
  >Same goes for critical industries like defense and o&g. not much. In O&G all the complicated drilling is done by foreign companies who have the tech (while, yes, accounting IT in Russian O&G can employ the top grads :). In defense it is even worse - Russia still can't build a stealth plane, i.e. they were able to produce a body, the easiest part, can be calculated on computers with basic scientific knowledge, while the radar and engine require a well developed technological base and thus still not reachable for Russia.

akiselev 10y ago

Not just the Russian trained software engineers but a lot of children and grandchildren of the 1990s Eastern Bloc immigrants are lost to Russia. These were the families most likely to have access to computers and educational institutions no matter which country they stayed in but widespread oppression pre- and post-USSR by antisemites, thugs, corrupt bureaucrats, etc and an economic collapse robbed the country of much of the talent pool.

olegious 10y ago
I'm one of those immigrant children that arrived in SF in the early 90s, now having grown up in SF and found success here, I'm actually looking at moving back to work in tech in Moscow. There is an energy there that I haven't felt anywhere else, hopefully the geopolitical situation will settle down over the next few years to make it a reality.
- gtirloni 10y ago
  Where/How would you start looking for a job there? Do you know if Skolkovo is still a thing there?
  - Fremis 10y ago
    Skolkovo is a big bullshit, not even close to Silicon Valley. They did nothing useful and have spent a lot of budget money for nothing.
  - guard-of-terra 10y ago
    There are quite a few outsource shops who would benefit from having tech people with SV experience. For starters you might land a job for one of these. I would also recommend Sankt Petersburg over Moscow, having lived in both.
- huhtenberg 10y ago
  "Don't confuse tourism with immigration" Though if you go as an American, you will be in a nicely padded expat bubble and the life can be quite comfortable. Just like in any other country.
  - drzaiusapelord 10y ago
    There's this problem where tourists visit tourist sites or big cities in autocratic states and see everything as so orderly and relatively clean, with no homeless, not too much petty crime, little to no graffiti, etc. They see a lot of police around and think 'Hey these guys know what they're doing.' Of course, the cleanliness is a side effect of absurd fines, though not usually official, but because the police grab you and demand a bribe unless you want a higher made-up charge. The littering or jaywalking is just an excuse to shake you down. Or the fines and jailing are real and if a Westerner was on the receiving end of a week in jail or even physical punishment like caning for spitting out gum, they'd be incensed. The realization that should come later is that because people in the West have basic human rights, life is messy as its harder to control a population that's guaranteed rights. But in autocratic/dictatorial states many people are beaten, jailed, or simply killed with impunity or have a mock trial for formalities. Tourists will never see any of this and their Western passport means they'll never be shaken down or beaten or harassed by the authorities. They'll get preferential treatment because its within everyone's economic and political interests to do so. They mistakenly think this is how the locals are treated as well. Sadly, many Westerners get the 'big city' autocratic treatment and bemoan the messy chaos of their own cities, without realizing that chaos is a feature, not a bug, especially if you want your 'features' to be the rule of law, personal freedom, property rights, an independent judiciary, and human rights.
    - SticksAndBreaks 10y ago
      We have other sad excuses to shake you down. Petty drugs (Ganja), Copyrightviolations and beeing a Idiot (literally Privat-Man in ancient greek). Thus far, your list of things not found in the west can bef ound in the west.
      - 10y ago

kushti 10y ago

Many programmers still here, and talented people also arriving from other countries (mostly ex-USSR and Eastern Europe, but not only).

mlvljr 10y ago
Here and reading :)
Grue3 10y ago
Just because we're stuck here doesn't mean we like it.
- kushti 10y ago
  Who we? Me and my circle like the living here.

VladimirGolovin 10y ago

Our government has no incentive to retain them. Their main source of money is not small / medium / innovative business taxation - it's oil and other natural resources. And you don't need higher education and talent to extract oil. Actually, you don't need any population at all. As I see it, their real incentive would be to shut down the higher education system, because it a) costs money, b) sends a good part of produced talent to other countries, and c) produces educated citizens which are harder to manipulate. Sadly, I hear quite a few confirmations of this from friends who work in education. BTW, here's a great video, Rules for Rulers, which is basically a video TL;DR of "The Dictator's Handbook" that explains incentives of democratic and autocratic rulers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs

sharpercoder 10y ago
Many dictatorships eventually failed due to a lack of brains. The Third Reich is a prime example of this.
- frozenport 10y ago
  What? The German war machine was extremely efficient compared to its counterparts, especially if you compare the asymmetric casual count. Many technologies such as radar or jet aircraft were first used by the Germans. I'm pretty sure Germany lost because several countries united, and took heavy casualities fighting rather than a failure of the education aystem.
  - sithadmin 10y ago
    The 'lack of brains' argument holds if you're looking at the Third Reich leadership rather than Germany as a nation. Aside from the poor choice of trying to take on both the USSR and the USA, near the end of the war, the Third Reich made a number of awful military tactics and logistics decisions that accelerated their loss.
    - frozenport 10y ago

nx11x 10y ago

Who says the government is missing out? Russian economy as a whole might be missing out, because qualified labor is leaving, but the state probably gets their pick of top graduates. Who do you think runs Kremlin's hacking, spying, and bot programmes? I imagine it's not the straight C students. Same goes for critical industries like defense and o&g.

trhway 10y ago
>Same goes for critical industries like defense and o&g. not much. In O&G all the complicated drilling is done by foreign companies who have the tech (while, yes, accounting IT in Russian O&G can employ the top grads :). In defense it is even worse - Russia still can't build a stealth plane, i.e. they were able to produce a body, the easiest part, can be calculated on computers with basic scientific knowledge, while the radar and engine require a well developed technological base and thus still not reachable for Russia.