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>Despite the authoritarian rule of Alexander Lukashenko, Belarus’s tech companies have prospered. The common argument I hear is they prospered because of autho
by evv555 6y ago
>Despite the authoritarian rule of Alexander Lukashenko, Belarus’s tech companies have prospered.
The common argument I hear is they prospered because of authoritarian rule. Belarus never had to deal with oligarchs created by a power vacuum like in Ukraine or other EE countries. As a result a large portion of outsourcing labor for other EE countries is technically done through Belarussian companies(EPAM).
- sam_lowry_ 6y agoIf you go to Belarus, you would rather hear that IT prospered because Lukashenka could not figure out how to extract money from it easily. There were a few attempts at hostile takeovers of IT companies by state actors, but the state could seize only used equipment. Staff moved on, clients fled. So, at some point, the state just decided to let IT free at the effective tax rate of 9% (against 52% for the rest of the country).
- SomeoneFromCA 6y agoLiving in Central Asia, I'd say, although Lukashenko was/is a corrupt leader, amount of corruption in educational system was relatively low compared to those in -stans of the former USSR, or even Russia. This a necessary prerequisite for high tech companies to appear and grow.
- evv555 6y agoI think it's a qualitative difference. Belarus has corruption but it's consolidated to the top even if there's more of it. Compare with Ukraine where IT business will be killed off before it gets off the ground because every small time bureaucrat wants their pound of flesh. As a result a significant portion of Ukrainian talent goes through companies that are/were Belarussian even though Ukraine has the center of gravity in terms of talent concentration.
- ivan_gammel 6y agoAbsence of oligarchs has nothing to do with this. Belarus and Russia have very different political situation but IT industry is strong in both countries, even stronger in Russia. There are several reasons for it: strong educational system and engineering culture, piracy and almost no law enforcement of copyright, favorable taxation, government policies. It’s hard to underestimate the effects of investment in digitalization of government services in Russia and influence of it on the Russian-speaking IT ecosystem, including neighboring countries - to the point where Russian speaking conferences or meetups are way more interesting than English speaking ones.
- eternalban 6y agoYou forgot to mention that Russia happens to have a lot of brainiacs. It's rare event to meet a dumb Russian in IT. I've never met one. I have worked with and managed outsourced engineers from Russia, India, and South America. The Russians were consistently the best: effective combo of smart + hard working. The only negatives were a reluctance to disclose bad news before SHTF, which was quite annoying, but I've always put that down to residual USSR culture. In other words, I question the early appearance of the term "piracy" in the list of reasons of why Russians excel at software engineering.
- ivan_gammel 6y agoLook at the first item in my list.
- eternalban 6y agoYou can’t educate dummies.
- avmich 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowers_for_Algernon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowers_for_Algernon
- ivan_gammel 6y ago