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Polish Developers Are Joining U.S. Startups – But Staying In Poland

48 points by elvirs 16y ago

xyzzyz 16y ago
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.
- viraptor 16y ago
  This is true unfortunately. Out of my high school class, probably half of technology-oriented people ended up either working directly for someone abroad, or moved abroad themselves. It's a bit sad that all this effort / work doesn't stay in local companies, but there are simply not enough local opportunities. Outside of the big cities mentioned in the article, the offers are typically for 20yo with 5 years of experience and student-level wage... One can only hope that some of the actually successful people who left will at some point come back to sponsor local projects.
- jwr 16y ago
  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 16y ago
    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.
plinkplonk 16y ago
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.
- patio11 16y ago
  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 $200k or so, there are still inefficiencies to be exploited. smiles
  - ajuc 16y ago
    Costs of living are different across the world, so people can live on the same level with smaller wages in less wealthy countries.
    - patio11 16y ago
      Costs of living matter to salary like costs of goods matter to software, which is "not at all".
      - ajuc 16y ago
        Could you explain why? For me it seems I'd prefer to work for 1000$/month in Poland, than in USA.
        16y ago
rodp 16y ago
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 16y ago
  "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.
- julencja 16y ago
  @rodp, I'm the author of the article, can you tell me more about your startup, what you're working on, what technology do you use? Pls email me at julia.krysztofiak (at) gmail.com Thanks!
cagenut 16y ago
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.
k7d 16y ago
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.
owyn 16y ago
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.

48 points by elvirs 16y ago

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.

viraptor 16y ago
This is true unfortunately. Out of my high school class, probably half of technology-oriented people ended up either working directly for someone abroad, or moved abroad themselves. It's a bit sad that all this effort / work doesn't stay in local companies, but there are simply not enough local opportunities. Outside of the big cities mentioned in the article, the offers are typically for 20yo with 5 years of experience and student-level wage... One can only hope that some of the actually successful people who left will at some point come back to sponsor local projects.
jwr 16y ago
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 16y ago
  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.

plinkplonk 16y ago

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.

patio11 16y ago
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 $200k or so, there are still inefficiencies to be exploited. smiles
- ajuc 16y ago
  Costs of living are different across the world, so people can live on the same level with smaller wages in less wealthy countries.
  - patio11 16y ago
    Costs of living matter to salary like costs of goods matter to software, which is "not at all".
    - ajuc 16y ago
      Could you explain why? For me it seems I'd prefer to work for 1000$/month in Poland, than in USA.
      - 16y ago

rodp 16y ago

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 16y ago
"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.
julencja 16y ago
@rodp, I'm the author of the article, can you tell me more about your startup, what you're working on, what technology do you use? Pls email me at julia.krysztofiak (at) gmail.com Thanks!

cagenut 16y ago

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.

k7d 16y ago

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.

owyn 16y ago

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.