Ruminations on Russia

Tony Nash on Always On talking about export of jobs. Somewhere down the comments it morphed in to a discussion on Russian outsourcing. I reread my comments and am pretty proud of them - its not often that you make short comments and feel in retrospect that you hit the nail on the head;

I have joined this discussion a little late - the joys of traveling through low-bandwith / high charge countries, otherwise known as Europe and only now catching up on my reading. The comments on Russia as an offshore programming / products center somewhere to the top of this page are pretty much spot on. Russia enjoys an enormous wealth of programming talent; its more expensive than India or China on a per hour basis but a number of companies have concluded that on a per line basis it competes well. Where it competes badly is in management, both strategic and line, and productization and sales of ideas. Almost none of the companies that I am involved with in Russia maintain Russian senior management or product managers. Its not a cultural failing but one born of isolation. Whilst the USSR collapsed over a decade ago it is only in the last few years (the start date is after the 1998 crisis) that people have started to take Russia and Russians seriously. It will take a decade for the cross-culutral osmosis to occur that will result in Russia regularly churning out world class products - be they IT or tech general.

A string of Russian tech companies will start to make headway in the next few years - however most people won't know them to have originated in Russia as they will have an almost entirely western front end.