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Siberia - The Next Silicon Valley?
eldavojohn writes "CNN Money is running a story about Siberia's rising tech industry.The movement towards tech is centered in Akademgorodok (Academy Town), with a 15 percent annual increase in the number of firms. Even though the area industry's worth is still fledgling compared to other areas, the growth cannot be ignored. 'President Vladimir Putin has also taken note, backing the construction of a $650 million technology business district with $100 million in state funding for infrastructure. "We simply mustn't waste this chance," Putin declared in Akademgorodok following a 2005 trip to tech-savvy India, "especially as other countries have achieved success without such a strong starting position." High tech is the sort of thing that the Kremlin, realizing that Russia's natural resources can't last forever, would like to develop.'"
To anyone who thinks that Silicon Valley is going to show up elsewhere in the world, I highly recommend reading the following essay by Paul Graham:
:-P
Why Startups Condense in America
Among his points, there is one in particular that (I think) gets overlooked the most. His seventh point, "America Is Not Too Fussy" is really a key issue. Like it or not, many Amercian startups bend the rules to find the most expedient solution to getting into business. 95% of the time, this bending of the rules is harmless, and actually benefits society. However, many countries would simply enforce their regulations to the point where that startup would never exist. I find his point to be amazingly enlightening.
Take a gander at his article, then come back to the matter of the Siberian Silicon Valley. Does Siberia have the infrastructure? The desire? The willingness to bend the rules? The lack of a police state? Free and open immigration? Cross pollination of employees between companies?
I think you'll find that many of these items exist there, but many do not. Silicon Valley is Silicon Valley because it has all of those things in spades. Now if only it didn't cost a bloody fortune to live there.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
The top coder stuff is showing you that the Russians are much better at math.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Surely, I reasoned, with the amount of time they took to set up that scam and avoid authorities, they could have gotten a job like I have and done something good for even more cash--but, that's my naïve American attitude for you. The job market probably doesn't exist there where they live.
Good jobs exist in Ukraine, but many of the people there have a "live for today, screw tomorrow" mindset, which is why they do things like this. They have learned that tomorrow may never come, so you better get what you can ASAP. This is why they do things like this.
Ukrainians are good people, but like the rest of the ex-USSR (the Baltic States may be an exception), they have this weird sense of entitlement that you can't really understand unless you go there. They think that because somebody in the West has more money than them that they have a right to steal some of that money to improve their own lives. They have very unrealistic expectations for their society. As Jim Morrison sang once "We want the world and we want it now!" They expect to have the same standard of living as the Western EU now instead of having a more realistic goal of trying to encourage foreign investment and trying within 10 years to get to where, say, Poland is today. Most of the Ukrainian citizens want to be where the UK is today and it's just not realistic. This lack of realistic expectations and sense of entitlement leads to massive disappointment with reality and a willingness to scam and steal on the internet to try to get closer to where they perceive they should be.
Good jobs do exist, especially in Kiev, but millionaires and rich foreigners have ruined the Kiev property market, which is another problem that the Ukrainian government is going to have to deal with down the road. Imagine making, say, $800 US a month and living in a city where all around you every day are new buildings with condos that cost $500,000 US and you have an idea of the kind of insane economic disparity that goes on. Similar craziness can be found in Russia too and I wouldn't be surprised if Belarus had some of it as well.
Not to start another endless thread, but it's better now to say "Ukraine" in English and not "the Ukraine". It's a long story, but basically it was considered OK to use "the" when it was part of the USSR but not now that it's an independent country. Do a search for a Ukrainian embassy in your favorite English speaking country and you'll see that at their website they don't use "the" in the country name. It's just Ukraine. Those who argue passionately for the use of "the" are either speakers of some language other than Russian, Ukrainian and English (ie. the rules are different for French) or a native of the region who learned English grammar using an old Soviet era grammar book where it was argued that the use of "the" was correct.
When I first visited Novosibirsk it was about -40C (-40F for the Americans :) ). Not that I was surprised - I live in Russia, but in area with a little bit more mild climate (we usually have only a few days per year with -30C, generally it's about -15C in winter).
But still, it may be a little bit extreme for the rest of the world. Besides, Novosibirsk is not very close to the European countries or the USA.
As for Technoparks (Tech parks), Putin is going to do a right thing (IMHO). Government is funding development of infrastructure and office buildings. So IT companies will have a good infrastructure and will be able to work without worrying about Internet connectivity and office space.
By Wikipedia's account, Academy Town seems more like the next Berkeley or Stanford to me: strong academic history, plenty of space and amenities, lots of young talent, good facilities, huge natural surroundings (check out arial photo). And it sounds like there was quite a bit of "rule bending" there (better rations, cottages instead of apartment blocks) during the Soviet era. It may not match Silicon Valleys' economic might, but it may surpass it in terms of creativity and innovation.
body massage!
They'll probably be in a building not much different than those found here in America. Which means that they'll have the same cooling and heating problems as we do. (We have horribly cold Chicago winters, I can assure you that they help cool our servers very little.)
Well, that might be due to poor design. I read an article about a data center built in Minneapolis, which can also be terribly cold. The Data Center made use of "environmental cooling" ie sucking in cold outside air. The DC operator bragged that he didn't need to run his chillers at all for 3 1/2 months of the year; that he used the excess heat to warm the offices, and if those got too warm he warmed the loading dock. In fact, often the incoming air was too cold so it had to be prewarmed first (also from the excess temp of the servers themselves). You might consider making better use of the natural cooling temps to help with your DC, it's the latest thing in DC design.
I wouldn't be surprised at all if DCs in Siberia were going to attempt to do this also, provided that Siberia is truly that cold.
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$tar -xvf
Or the next Dalian? Bangalore is booming despite its restrictions on immigration & emigration, hardware imports, and its flaky infrastructure. My company has a support center there, and some fairly epic problems sending hardware to India for internal use only (never mind resale).
Manpower is also a problem; you'd think Bangalore would be awash with engineering graduates, and IIT is churning them out, but what happens when you need someone with actual experience? In my company's case we've been lucky with expatriates returning to India from the Middle East (mostly) and the USA (a few). We just don't find quality local candidates worth interviewing.
Will Russia be any better, with its lack of internationally-recognised qualifications and standards? I fail to see how any Silicon Valley comparisons are worth considering, even as a joke.
(this is not a
We've heard this BS before. It doesn't work.
Once again an example of theory versus actuality.
We can test your hypothesis through observation. Make a list of countries where "rule of law applies" and a list of those for which the "rule of law" is secondary to rule of fist.
List 1: Wussies: Follows Rule Of Law
United States
Western Europe countries
Australia
Japan
List 2: Strongman: Uses Goons and Bribes to conduct business
African countries
Afghanistan
You can list all the countries in the world and rank them according to how well they ascribe to the importance of the rule of law and rank them according to almost any measure of success and you can see the nearly one-to-one correlation. Get fancy and manova it if you want.
My lists are short of course. They show the extremes and there's a continuum in between.
Countries in list 1 would be chief among what you call the "wussies and Communists".
Also list 1 is a list of the "richest, most powerful, capitalist and gets to have their way in almost everything".
As for list 2, well "market forces" do override "rule of law" there.