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by kozikow 3025 days ago
> 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.

1 comments

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.
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.