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In Belarus, there are quite a lot of high-tech companies, many of them very successful. At the same time, there aren't a lot of big private enterprises (non-gov
by maratc 6y ago
In Belarus, there are quite a lot of high-tech companies, many of them very successful. At the same time, there aren't a lot of big private enterprises (non-government-owned nor -affiliated) in other areas.
The reason is simple: the regime cannot appropriate intellectual property. If the thugs come and put a hi-tech company under arrest, all they can "collect" is .. desktops and monitors. The real value — be that in code or in employees' heads — cannot be arrested, and the company can continue what they did under a different cover (or from a neighboring country).
The regime understands that too, so they took a somewhat laissez-faire attitude to hi-tech.
- anovikov 6y agoSuccessful Belarusian high-tech companies are not in Belarus (mostly in Cyprus, some in Lithuania or Poland - founders and their families and some key people simply emigrated from Belarus once they become successful). And Belarusian legal entities just outsource for them. This is why they are usually not raided: owners don't come over to Belarus much or at all anymore, IP is owned offshore, and what is the benefit of harassing workers?
- maratc 6y agoSee EPAM with 2,500 employees in Belarus. Do you know of any other non-government entity with that amount of workers?
- anovikov 6y agoEPAM is an American company. It's clients are in the US, it's legal entity is in the U.S., and it makes profits in the U.S. And founder is an American citizen. Belarusian (as well as Ukrainian etc.) EPAM are just outsourcing for the head office. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPAM_Systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPAM_Systems so just 2500 out of 41K people are in Belarus (while it is from where it all started). it makes no sense for Lukashenka harassing EPAM. So you do it and they just move these 6% of heads to other country offices.
- maratc 6y agoThis is irrelevant to my point, which is: If you have a 2,500-strong manufacturing plant, the government can come and take over your plant. If you have a 2,500-strong bank, the government can come and take over your bank. If you have a 2,500-strong property-holding company, the government can come and take over your company and your properties. But if you have a 2,500-strong software development center, the government cannot come and take over your software development center. And this is why software development centers strive in Belarus.
- ramtatatam 6y agoI was very worried when I was reading about FSB entering NginX offices in Russia. I think your statement might be a bit too optimistic..
- sam_lowry_ 6y agoAnd they got nothing out of it.
- ramtatatam 6y agoTo be honest - I don't know. I was thinking - can FSB, as a result, inject some back-doors to NginX? I don't audit every line of code of software I use, and I don't know if situation like this would be easily spotted...
- sam_lowry_ 6y agoNginx is mostly open-source. If anything, NSA can inject backdoors as well.
- worik 6y agoI disagree. They take over your software company, and put you in jail. Sure they do not get your IP, but you loose it. I will hazard a guess that the software development centres striving in Belarus are very careful to stay entirely out of politics. Belarus is not a democracy.
- belatw 6y agoEpam has far few workers left in Belarus now. This past summer they temporarily expatriated a significant percentage of the company. I manage about 40 engineers from EPAM. Before the troubles, 5 were in ukraine and one in Russia (but he was supposed to move to Minsk). Now most of my team is working from Ukraine or Russia. A few choose to take on-site gigs in Netherlands and were replaced with more Belarussians in Ukraine. One of our team disappeared entirely, presumed to be in prison but our TAMs are downright cagey if we ever asked what happened to him. EPAM is a good company, they saw the writing on the wall and hustles to get their people to safety.
- Nzen 6y agoWhat is a TAM, in this context ? It's clear this is some administrative person, but not whether this is law enforcement or a representative.
- pianoben 6y ago"Technical Account Manager". An official point of contact for a customer with a vendor, often responsible for some amount of tech support as well as customer-relation management.
- proxysna 6y agoMore like 8k+ when i worked there in 2017. Wiki page is outdated.