4 ms·

See EPAM with 2,500 employees in Belarus. Do you know of any other non-government entity with that amount of workers?

• anovikov 6y ago
  EPAM 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 ago
    This 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 ago
      I 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 ago
        And they got nothing out of it.
        • ramtatatam 6y ago
          To 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 ago
            Nginx is mostly open-source. If anything, NSA can inject backdoors as well.
    • worik 6y ago
      I 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.
      • cbnotfromthere 6y ago
        The comment you're replying to implies that the key persons of that company AND the legal entity are outside Belarus. Otherwise, as you clearly wrote, they would be at the mercy of whatever happens in / with Belarus.
      • anovikov 6y ago
        Except owners have foreign passports and never come to Belarus since many years. Only some middle managers are in, and key team is usually in the U.S. or in Cyprus, too.
      • maratc 6y ago
        If you had a manufacturing plant bringing $10M, the government takes over your plant, so now they get $10M. If you had a bank bringing $10M, the government takes over your bank, so now they get $10M. If you had a property-holding company bringing $10M, the government takes over your company and your properties, so now they get $10M. But if you had a software company bringing $10M, and the government takes over your software company and puts everyone in jail, they now get nothing. Moreover, where they had, say, $100k in taxes previously, they have $0 in taxes now. What you describe is possible, e.g. out of spite, but it does not make any financial sense. Everyone in Belarus is "very careful to stay entirely out of politics". Still banks and plants get appropriated. Software companies do not.
• belatw 6y ago
  Epam 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 ago
    What 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 ago
  More like 8k+ when i worked there in 2017. Wiki page is outdated.