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>You're an elite engineer in Russia, top ~1%-3% globally. What do you do? Earn several thousand dollars per month doing legit software development in Russia Be

>You're an elite engineer in Russia, top ~1%-3% globally. What do you do? Earn several thousand dollars per month doing legit software development in Russia Become software entrepreneur? And many international software companies have software development teams and presence in Russia.

emerongi 5y ago
> Become software entrepreneur? Exactly. Hacking for hire, making cheats, botnets, SEO farms, selling exploits and hacked social media accounts; practically anything you can think of that US software engineers can't be bothered with, as they already earn a healthy salary. That is entrepreneurism.
- mrkramer 5y ago
  I wasn't speaking about that kind of entrepreneurism but about making legal software and legal web services that solve problems and are useful. So many Russian hackers got arrested when they travelled somewhere outside Russia and now they are serving 10 or 20 year sentences in US jails.
  - PeterisP 5y ago
    > So many Russian hackers got arrested when they travelled somewhere outside Russia How many? 20? 30? 50? IMHO the cases are rare (and get widely publicized whenever that happens, creating a disproportional visibility), you get a couple captures per year but the number is just a tiny fraction of the actual participants, more like an exception than the rule.
    - mrkramer 5y ago
      My assumption is beyond 20. US is only after big time cybercriminals[0] smaller ones get away. [0] https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/cyber https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/cyber
  - denton-scratch 5y ago
    > making legal software and legal web services SEO is perfectly legal. So is spamming, regrettably. I think Goo no longer cares about the quality of search results; they have other business priorities, so SEO works. Spam is another thing again; we still, after 30 years, don't have an agreed definition of spam. We still don't have a flawless spam filter - far from it. So it astonishes me how much email spam I get promoting SEO services for my non-existent website.
    - mrkramer 5y ago
      >SEO is perfectly legal. So is spamming, regrettably. SEO is legal but spam is not at least not in US and many other jurisdictions. >I think Goo no longer cares about the quality of search results; they have other business priorities, so SEO works. Google cares about spam but there is so much data and information on the web that it is impossible to figure out what is spam and what is not. Another big problem is fake data and information that is also very hard to figure out. Generally Google prefers popularity over quality because it is easier to detect what is popular than what is of good quality. >Spam is another thing again; we still, after 30 years, don't have an agreed definition of spam. We still don't have a flawless spam filter - far from it. Definition of spam is unsolicited message. So if I get pharma emails in my email inbox that I didn't ask for it is considered spam. SMS messages are another example for example if I get SMS message promoting free coupons but I didn't ask for it then it is spam. Considering how much spam Google saw in the last 20 years both on the web and on the Gmail they should have some decent machine learning/AI algorithms which could flag spam pretty efficiently.
      - denton-scratch 5y ago
        > Definition of spam is unsolicited message That may be your definition. As I observed, not everyone agrees with it. Most definitions of spam include the word "bulk", for example.
        mrkramer 5y ago
        Bulk unsolicited messages?
- freeflight 5y ago
  It's hardly only shady stuff; Kaspersky, ABBYY FineReader, VKontakte, Telegram are Russian software products that come to mind. Russia also has its own SaaS enterprise sector with companies like SKB Kontur or Diasoft. Just like the US has to this day warez and cracking groups, where it's for the longest time mostly been about scene prestige, and not making the big bucks.
PeterisP 5y ago
In places with a less-established legal system it's harder to make money by above-board entrepreneurship and keep it instead of handing it over to local strongmen (two colorful examples that have stayed in my memory and unlike many others have become public and have also been described in non-Russian media - https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/valery-pshenichny-russian-elon-musk-raped-tortured-death-custody-a8309111.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/valery-pshen... and https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/us-embassy-russia-allowed-visit-jailed-investor-calvey-61323336 https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/us-embassy-ru... , but of course those are the exceptions because the usual result is complying with threats and handing over your business or most of it). But it's not really about Russia, it's a general issue with parallels in other countries as well. And of course, there's the issue of the local market; the financial advantages for a skilled tech person going towards entrepreneurship legitimately are less attractive in most places compared to USA; heck, even EU potential tech entrepreneurs often just go 'across the pond' to start their business. If you can't get a work visa to a first world country, you do have less options than someone already living there; and the salaries offered by first-world "international software companies" in their remote subsidiaries tend to be 'according to local market rates' (the same "several thousand dollars per month" mentioned by the parent poster is a decent rate) and thus not as competitive with "black entrepreneurship" which pays according to global standards.

emerongi 5y ago

> Become software entrepreneur? Exactly. Hacking for hire, making cheats, botnets, SEO farms, selling exploits and hacked social media accounts; practically anything you can think of that US software engineers can't be bothered with, as they already earn a healthy salary. That is entrepreneurism.

mrkramer 5y ago
I wasn't speaking about that kind of entrepreneurism but about making legal software and legal web services that solve problems and are useful. So many Russian hackers got arrested when they travelled somewhere outside Russia and now they are serving 10 or 20 year sentences in US jails.
- PeterisP 5y ago
  > So many Russian hackers got arrested when they travelled somewhere outside Russia How many? 20? 30? 50? IMHO the cases are rare (and get widely publicized whenever that happens, creating a disproportional visibility), you get a couple captures per year but the number is just a tiny fraction of the actual participants, more like an exception than the rule.
  - mrkramer 5y ago
    My assumption is beyond 20. US is only after big time cybercriminals[0] smaller ones get away. [0] https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/cyber https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/cyber
- denton-scratch 5y ago
  > making legal software and legal web services SEO is perfectly legal. So is spamming, regrettably. I think Goo no longer cares about the quality of search results; they have other business priorities, so SEO works. Spam is another thing again; we still, after 30 years, don't have an agreed definition of spam. We still don't have a flawless spam filter - far from it. So it astonishes me how much email spam I get promoting SEO services for my non-existent website.
  - mrkramer 5y ago
    >SEO is perfectly legal. So is spamming, regrettably. SEO is legal but spam is not at least not in US and many other jurisdictions. >I think Goo no longer cares about the quality of search results; they have other business priorities, so SEO works. Google cares about spam but there is so much data and information on the web that it is impossible to figure out what is spam and what is not. Another big problem is fake data and information that is also very hard to figure out. Generally Google prefers popularity over quality because it is easier to detect what is popular than what is of good quality. >Spam is another thing again; we still, after 30 years, don't have an agreed definition of spam. We still don't have a flawless spam filter - far from it. Definition of spam is unsolicited message. So if I get pharma emails in my email inbox that I didn't ask for it is considered spam. SMS messages are another example for example if I get SMS message promoting free coupons but I didn't ask for it then it is spam. Considering how much spam Google saw in the last 20 years both on the web and on the Gmail they should have some decent machine learning/AI algorithms which could flag spam pretty efficiently.
    - denton-scratch 5y ago
      > Definition of spam is unsolicited message That may be your definition. As I observed, not everyone agrees with it. Most definitions of spam include the word "bulk", for example.
      - mrkramer 5y ago
        Bulk unsolicited messages?
freeflight 5y ago
It's hardly only shady stuff; Kaspersky, ABBYY FineReader, VKontakte, Telegram are Russian software products that come to mind. Russia also has its own SaaS enterprise sector with companies like SKB Kontur or Diasoft. Just like the US has to this day warez and cracking groups, where it's for the longest time mostly been about scene prestige, and not making the big bucks.

PeterisP 5y ago

In places with a less-established legal system it's harder to make money by above-board entrepreneurship and keep it instead of handing it over to local strongmen (two colorful examples that have stayed in my memory and unlike many others have become public and have also been described in non-Russian media - https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/valery-pshenichny-russian-elon-musk-raped-tortured-death-custody-a8309111.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/valery-pshen... and https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/us-embassy-russia-allowed-visit-jailed-investor-calvey-61323336 https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/us-embassy-ru... , but of course those are the exceptions because the usual result is complying with threats and handing over your business or most of it). But it's not really about Russia, it's a general issue with parallels in other countries as well. And of course, there's the issue of the local market; the financial advantages for a skilled tech person going towards entrepreneurship legitimately are less attractive in most places compared to USA; heck, even EU potential tech entrepreneurs often just go 'across the pond' to start their business. If you can't get a work visa to a first world country, you do have less options than someone already living there; and the salaries offered by first-world "international software companies" in their remote subsidiaries tend to be 'according to local market rates' (the same "several thousand dollars per month" mentioned by the parent poster is a decent rate) and thus not as competitive with "black entrepreneurship" which pays according to global standards.