Comment by inglor_cz
1 month ago
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.
> let's grab something to drink when we are both there.
Let's do it! I won't be back in the near future but I expect to be back soonish.
> 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.
To be honest, you aren't getting the best talent India has to offer in Central Europe (and especially Czechia) - salaries in the 75th and 90th percentiles in Indian STEM end up similar to Prague but with better purchasing parity, so the pull factor isn't there when Indians in that demographic can easily be poached by Citadel, Anthropic, or Google Deepmind.
Most top Indian researchers going abroad target American universities for postdocs (even with Trump) and maybe a Max Planck (Germany), UKRI, NSERC (Canada), CSIRO (Australia), INRIA, MEXT (Japan), NRF (SK), or ISF (Israel) instead so I'm not surprised that Charles University isn't getting good candidates - there's no pull factor when the countries listed can provide significantly more funding while also offering better commercialization opportunities.
On the other hand, a major reason a lot of my peers opened Prague offices was because it made it easier to recruit talent from the CIS following 2014 which made operating a Moscow office difficult. Around that time the Czech government also revamped their services investment attraction program which made Prague a better option than competitors like Tallinn or Budapest.
That said, I think Czechia has started resting on it's laurels and I'm starting to see much more competitive FDI attraction programs in Tier 2/3 tech hubs in Romania and Poland let alone perpetual competition from India - imo FDI is starting to cause a form of commercial real estate/IT Park induced Dutch disease within Czechia.
OK, looking forward to meet you! I tend to visit HN everyday and usually cannot stop myself from commenting, so once you have an itinerary, just write me a message somewhere in a forum.