Western europe- eastern europe is not afflicted by this particular malaise.
How about we talk openly about it- there is a limited number of perfectly good heads- and fabrication industries and service industries are in systemic competition on that limited pool. And they create their own support environment ("bloated universities") where the service wins and destroy the competition.
I have personal anecdote how bonkers eastern european digital system is.
My child was born in NZ and in order to gain dual citizenship you need to submit form in Lithuanian.
To access e-gov you used to have so many cool methods - most popular is your bank (makes sense since they’d have highest stakes and worked out security), then your local SIM card finally your ID card. Well first ones are off the table since I was away for so long. I managed to source a usb smart card reader. Even somehow more luckily find working software. By shred of luck my card is not expired (card is valid for 10years, but digital certificates on chip for 18 months lol).
I’m in. The digital form is ok, albeit designed before mobile era so definitely won’t work in mobile screen. Fine. Submit it. Two weeks later I get a response (clearly my form was just dumped as an email) that in fact I need to meet face to face to ID me and my child…
Fortunately thru personal connections I was able to do so via video call.
Contrast that to NZ. In 10 years here I didn’t get to meet beurocrat even once. I’ve mailed a form and received passport by post. Low tech but sublime experience.
As if western europe wouldn't have the skills. Eastern Europe has not relevant international software industry outside of JetBrains. Same as western europe which at least has SAP and Spotify.
I very much agree from contractors I’ve worked with from Poland and the like, but the same areas don’t produce a lot of international software companies. Lack of capital for venture businesses in those regions? Hard to pin down.
Why aren't they meaningfully competing with Ireland as centres for software, if that's the case?
Obviously Czechoslovakia has a great excuse, not having existed for 32 years, but neither Czechia nor Slovakia come close to Ireland, either is terms of Euro-value or number of software jobs.
Ireland's software exports dwarf Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, and the Baltics combined. That's ignoring the inflated GDP figures from international IP revenue tax-dodging.
Ireland is a tax haven that parasitically deprives the rest of the EU of tax revenue. It's not a viable model to emulate and would cause a race to the bottom, at the expense of the public and to the benefit of the modern day robber barons.
> Ireland is a tax haven that parasitically deprives the rest of the EU of tax revenue.
The days of the Double Irish are long gone and comparing effective tax rates paints a very different story, so this is 5 years out of date in as true as it ever was.
Even excluding the EU IP revenue of multinationals with EMEA HQs in Ireland, real software development revenue is over double Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, and the Baltics combined.
Not by tax cuts, by tax policy. One which the bloc was happy to enable when it wanted to pass the Lisbon treaty.
But that's irrelevant, as ghost HQs can avail of Ireland's tax regime with minimal employees.
Ireland's extremely educated workforce and exceptionally stable and peaceful governance along with business friendly economic climate are the reason Ireland is a software powerhouse, independent of tax regime (which is not particularly conducive to large employers).
Wasn't Ireland used for tax evasion for a long time ? Wondering if that might be somehow related & how irish some of those companies are in practice.
Also there are quite a few successful gaming companies in central and eastern Europe - like CD project (Witcher/Cyberpunk) in Poland and Factorio, Mafia, Kingdom Come from Czech Republic.
Also on the IT driven services are there are quite big companies like like Alza/Allegro (eq. local Amazon), Seznam (eq. local Google), Windy (weather), etc.
How about we talk openly about it- there is a limited number of perfectly good heads- and fabrication industries and service industries are in systemic competition on that limited pool. And they create their own support environment ("bloated universities") where the service wins and destroy the competition.