[cmdkeen]

Having visited recently and met with several tech companies and western firms utilising it I'd say it is already a tech hub, and has a bright future. The sheer number of graduates being produced, and the proven ability to scale up operations there makes it really attractive.

It is also a lovely city to visit, which is always worth bearing in mind when it comes to where companies might open a satellite office...

[thraway180306]

The sheer number of graduates being produced

At the diploma mills that are Polish universities. Google was unable to scale up in Poland for a decade. They opted for creating marketing & accounting offices in several Polish workforce hubs, while the man who organized Krakow tech office has resigned in frustration over mainship's final shelving of any plans for expansion in that space. Likewise the Warsaw tech office is mainly for the few smart people who don't want to leave for family reasons.

Students from the very few quality CS programmes emigrate in droves. Polish ministry keeps record of graduates entering national workforce and from the good programmes as much as 80% are missing.

Outside these, quality quickly falls off a cliff, even from the same school (Krakow local AGH has no less than 5 departments offering CS degrees).

Just last month a typical scandal in academic circles emerged where former president (rektor) of AGH advised a PhD thesis in CS that was plagiarized from another that itself turned out to be fishy. Moreover the reviewers from the more prestigious Jagiellonian University plagiarized verbatim their own reviews (and they were reviewers of both somehow). Things happen, but the main scandal was the body overseeing higher ed in Poland refused to acknowledge any wrongdoing. They've set up schools there to be diploma mills in the first place.

[dannylandau]

I've had pretty amazing experience working with polish developers and designers. Definitely very top notch. Found them through Github mostly. Romanians, Belarussian and Bulgarians also turned out to be smart and hard working.

[thraway180306]

They are amazing and one of, no, in fact the best in the world, both Poles and Russians. But that's a selection bias. Don't expect to drop there and find streets overflowing with such people eager to work for you in the actual Poland and Russia. The best already found their cozy spots and are not trading them for your offer whatever it might be (and let's face it: you're not going there after the talent but a cheaper talent), given their fears and insecurity (and exploitation) of the local labour market. Or otherwise, found their way out of the country or are actively looking (will I get promoted to your UK HQ in a year or two?).

[kozikow]

> Google was unable to scale up in Poland for a decade.

AFAIK, the problem with Krakow was not with lack of good programmers, but organizational setup - too many PAs in too small office.

[thraway180306]

Offices are not an issue in Krakow, there is oversupply and the space is cheap. What I heard there is a lot of sour grapes and back-and-forth blame (still) going on about that Krakow failure. But what is clear for a bystander: the office stayed at the same headcount since being opened. They changed buildings and were mulling over expansion for many years. Some Warsaw people were generously compensated to move Krakow, then the other way, then the manager jumped ship prompting a wave, and then management gave up on Krakow entirely. And Warsaw doesn't grow either. Facebook too explored growing a tech branch in Warsaw and backed up. Samsung decided to make a sweatshop approach, they are big, pay peanuts even for Poland and have a lot of churn. There is a large, established for decades and recently quickly growing Intel office in Gdansk, that's where all the buggy drivers allegedly come from.

[kozikow]

My previous post might have been confusing - it was a problem with too many PAs relative to number of people, not with the office space size.

[yazr]

Are the devs/QA english speaking or just the managers ?!

[HighlandSpring]

Every recent Polish graduate will speak decent English, they'll speak it especially well if they studied something technical where the bulk of the material being published is being done in English (CS/software engineering).

[jeffreyrogers]

The Polish people I've worked with (in the US, but recently moved from Poland) speak passable English. Their grammar hasn't been very good, but they are able to understand everything as far as I could tell. Definitely not as fluent as Germans or Scandinavians though.

[zootam]

english is typically taught in primary school to everyone

[marak830]

While I don't want to disagree with you about that locale, it's also taught here in Japan, and the English level is abhorebt. (Source: part time English teacher in Japan in my free time, taught every level from kindergarten to senior highschool).

My point being, teaching from an early age, while is an advantage, does not necessarily mean a good comprehension or ability to speak.

[Tharkun]

I had a chat with a bunch of Japanese university students last month. They told me the same thing. They told me their English classes weren't too bad when it came to grammar, but they hardly ever practiced speaking the language. I can't even imagine learning a language without speaking it!

Edit: sausage fingers

[odiroot]

From my own experience working in Poland (albeit in Warsaw) engineers usually communicate better in English than their managers.

[expertentipp]

No we not speaking English. /s

[m_fayer]

I agree about it being a lovely city to visit. But as someone in the startup scene in Berlin, I think many here would be hesitant to open a satellite office there, simply to avoid inviting cultural conflict between the typical Berlin startup's lefty and cosmopolitan workforce and increasingly culturally conservative Polish attitudes.

[expertentipp]

Would you prefer your dolce grande latte with brown sugar or aspartame, Sir? Look, some eastern Europeans are stealing your fixed-gear bicycle!

[m_fayer]

Make fun of hipsters all you like, heck it's not hard. But that won't change the fact that hipsters, a cultural group like any other, control a big chunk of the tech world, especially in Berlin. Meaning that you flippantly ignore their cultural preferences at your own peril.

[expertentipp]

I have no idea who the hipsters are. An Anglosphere subculture?

[m_fayer]

Nothing Anglosphere about hipsterism. Plenty of that from Southern Europe and East Asia. A typical member is youngish (born early 1980 and forward), secular, educated in tech, media, the arts, sometimes (social) science, left-leaning, with an urban and transnational worldview. I think honestly it's more of a social and economic class than a subculture. It's a new word for "intelligentsia".