Comment by alephnerd
1 month ago
That's rich coming from someone in Czechia. Indian tech salaries [0] are comparable to Italian [1] and Romanian salaries [2].
We deal with the same problems in Czechia, Poland, Romania, and India when paying at the lower end of the spectrum.
A Czech, Pole, Romanian, and Indian are all equally commodifiable to me as an American.
Either way you guys are taking American jobs, which represent the majority of tech jobs. And it's ironic that you sound the same as the Brits who railed about Polish, Romanian, and Czech immigrants before Brexit.
Anyhow, it doesn't matter. India's working with Czechia to lobby against CBAM, Agrofert has JVs with Indian SoEs, and India is one of the only non-CEE markets where Skoda has PMF so everyone who matters in Czechia will fall behind the deal.
[0] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/india
[1] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/italy
[2] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/romania
I am sure you do. Czechs aren't particularly honest people on average (why should I pretend otherwise? Mine is a medium-trust society at best, no Denmark or Iceland), and without the necessary cultural knowledge you will struggle to spot the red flags that the locals can spot easily.
Maybe the whole idea of just easily cherrypicking talent from very distant nations with very different cultures is less workable than naive people think?
Edit: you edited your response, I will add something to mine.
In capitalism, jobs are commodity. Business really only cares about efficiency, not nationalist sensitivities. For every "American" job taken, there is an "American" boss who gives it away, but that is the point: the boss does not feel any patriotic duty to keep jobs onshore. He is beholden to the bottom line of his business.
Edit 2: (this will be a long war of edits). Where did I "rail" against anything? Are you having some stereotype in your head and simply decided that I am a good fit?
I literally wrote that fishing for actual talent in India from the outside is hard. Not desirable or undesirable, but hard. That is the result of actual experiences of people around me. I didn't say even a single word about whether it should be done or not.
> this will be a long war of edits
That's my fault. I abused my HN account instead of using the HN API years ago during a drunken hackathon in the early days of LLMs. As such my replies are rate limited.
> without the necessary cultural knowledge you will struggle to spot the red flags that the locals can spot easily
I agree. This is why most VC/PE funds have a deep bench of Asian American operators.
> In capitalism, jobs are commodity. Business really only cares about efficiency, not nationalist sensitivities. For every "American" job taken, there is an "American" boss who gives it away, but that is the point: the boss does not feel any patriotic duty to keep jobs onshore. He is beholden to the bottom line of his business
Absolutely. Hence why I made choices to move offices from SV to Karlin, or moving Brno offices to Delhi. And that's my point. I don't give a shit if I'm hiring in Karlin, Koramangala, Krakow, Capitol Hill (Seattle not DC), ir Cebu (imo the next Bangalore).
> Maybe the whole idea of just easily cherrypicking talent from very distant nations with very different cultures is less workable than naive people think
It's not that difficult. Most VC/PE funds have a roster of a couple dozen (VC) to couple hundred (Megacap PE) operators we can poach to manage investments. This is why the recent boom in Indian American C-Suites and VPs happened.
> Czechs aren't particularly honest people on average
Ehn, y'all are honest enough. Czech pragmatism is refreshing after dealing with Germans.
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I think what happened was a mutually heated moment of emotion, but largely we sound aligned (and from personal experience, I have tended to agree with your thoughts somewhat). When I'm back in Praha let's grab some Pivo - I'm a Mliko guy to be honest.
Good morning from Ostrava! Yeah, misunderstanding travels fast and efficient over TCP/IP... especially around midnight.
I am not Prague based anymore, but I travel there quite often, so sure, let's grab something to drink when we are both there. My Prague office is actually in Karlín and Karlín was "my" neighbourhood since 1996, when I started studying there. (Back then, it was a veritable dump. Gentrification in action.)
" Czech pragmatism is refreshing after dealing with Germans."
LOL, that is a common observation I heard often enough, but then again, even the local embassy of Hell would likely feel refreshing after dealing with the Germans :)
I will be in Prague from Feb 1 to Feb 5, then again later in February. Looking forward to meet you. Have a mliko if you fancy it, I can't, my body stopped liking it when I was twentysomething. I still like the taste, but the consequences are nasty.
"It's not that difficult. Most VC/PE funds have a roster of a couple dozen (VC) to couple hundred (Megacap PE) operators we can poach to manage investments. This is why the recent boom in Indian American C-Suites and VPs happened."
Sure, if you can rely on this sort of infrastructure, it won't be hard for ya.
But in the context of the EU-India deal that is being discussed here, plenty of us continentals will find that without such infrastructure, it is hard. Just a few weeks ago I sat with a friend from Charles' University who described various funny incidents when dealing with postdoc applications from distant countries, India prominently included.
From our local point of view, Western Ukraine is the edge of "intuitive" cultural understanding and anything east of the Dnipro river and south of Bulgaria really needs dedicated people with cultural competence to work.
In case of India, the Anglo-Saxons can rely on three centuries of mutual interactions. That helps a lot.
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