Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

>> Poland was the first country to make a remarkable peaceful transition from a bankrupt, failed Soviet satellite state.

In what sense? Czechia is richer per capita. Almost all of the former Soviet satellite states in eastern Europe have had largely peaceful (since 1991) sustained economic growth. The exceptions are exactly those countries which continue to have Russian troops occupying portions, namely Belarus, Ukraine, and Moldova.

Why wouldn't the story be that they succeeded despite the shock therapy? Honestly asking, I am not an expert on Polish economy, but I heard bad things.

Maybe all of those hardworking people could have done even better with a different macro strategy?

Notably, only five years have passed between last Russian solders leaving Poland and the country joining NATO. Quite a speedrun.

Solidarność was funded by the West, though you may credit Polish/Eastern European capture of US foreign policy and the Polish Pope, too.

It is true of course that they were the most persistent and brave. I don't think it would have been possible in East Germany for example, which ran a tighter regime until Poland managed the peaceful revolution.

> The story is longer: Poland was the first country to make a remarkable peaceful transition from a bankrupt, failed Soviet satellite state. The shock therapy, plus NATO and EU aspirations, paved the way.

The story is told in much more detail in the OP. What do you feel is missing from it?

That is how all economies grow. It is unnecessary to remove credit from Poland. You say labor is educated, for example. Is that also not their merit?

Didnt USA benefit from mostly not being bombed during ww2? Didnt Germany benefit from cheap Russian gas and educated immigrants after 2008 crisis in EU? In the end, we can keep going back looking for pthers to thank but the country did it, and it is fair to say so.

P.S. I also live in Poland, not Polish. I also lived in Berlin, and I dont think the salaries are always so different.

FDI is a legit way of increasing an economy's size and health. The fact that Poland created a safe country for foreign investments is great merit.

foreign dollars and euros being spent in the country definitely counts as growth no matter how you slice it and regardless whether you like it or not.

Yeah I think this what most miss. FDI is good, great if eventually lead to domestic brand to capture more % of value, like Asian Tigers. I'm not sure if the case in EU, some GDP accounting can grossly conflate actual FDI contribution, i.e. when PRC captured $6 labour for each iphone assembled but it was counting full device cost $100s towards GDP instead of just value add. Same concept as Ireland GDP & corporate tax laundering.

Cursory search shows 1% companies in Poland are foreign enterprises which drive ~40% of output, ~30% of workforce and ~70% of exports. These are companies that will dip if Poland gets too expensive or geopolitics, in the meantime what is Samsung or Hyundai or Huawei of Poland. At end of day, countries need national champions committed to their own midstream industries who end up capturing the rents.

Let’s be honest. If anyone would be building a brand new company in Poland or any other country with the intention of raising capital or IPOing they would still incorporate in the US or a handful of other countries. So any successful Polish company would count as American/ German / Singaporean / etc anyway.

It's the first step to building the top companies: You first need enough agglomeration of that labor so that, whenever there's a recession, you can scoop up some of that labor for a startup.

And as demand of those cheap engineers go up, salaries rise. It's not just Poland: Go see what happens to engineering salaries in, say, Spain vs Berlin. You find Capgemini opening offices, because the labor is that cheap. New grads making as little as 20k in some regions.

So compared to that, having big tech moving over and paying over local market rates, and expanding enough so salaries end up rising is much better than the alternative: They don't come, there's no money, the engineers emigrate, and the country becomes poorer.

How do you think China grew so much after 1990? A lot of FDI, a lot of protectionism. And look where they are today.

My understanding is that Poland is also seeking smart win-win arrangements with some of these foreign sources. For example, Poland has initiated several big equipment buys from South Korean military suppliers on the condition that most of the manufacturing is done in Poland and that there is technical sharing for future self-sustainment.

It's basically importing expensive R&D for "free" while helping establish a heavy industrial base (which has also proven very fruitful for South Koreans). I'm sure there are other examples like this. You also get a better trained workforce, and then the import of the technical knowledge later where it is slower to digest but with the ability now to turn that knowledge into working production.

> Western Europe and the US built their economy in Poland, because the labor is educated and cheap. > There are almost no globally competitive Polish companies.

Same issue in all southern and eastern European countries.

You gotta have "A" to do "B".

This is one way of having "A" that isn't "massive internal natural resources" like USA, China, Russia, Colonialism, or Oil States (I'm sure I missed other kickstarters here).

What kind of dev salaries are you seeing in Poland?

I have family in Poland, they are from smaller villages and they ALWAYS complain about EU and the economy. I wonder if things are similar in large cities.

There are plenty of polish companies, but like in Germany many are more in the middle of the spectrum, so they might be well known in their sector but not much beyond. I've seen e.g. plenty of polish building materials and furniture across shops on western Europe.

Poland has also the lowest fertility rate of the EU. This growth came at a cost and may be short-lived when the cheap workforce dies out with no replacement.

saying foreign investment is a bad or invalid growth strategy is wild

are you one of those anti-trade people where the only real ""growth"" doesn't involve foreigners

Providing educated labor is a kind of build.

It terms of the IT sector there is not much difference to the rest of the Europe. America has dominated the field, China is catching up, especially in global giants category.

Allegro is Polish, large and successful, no?

But I only know of them because they bought some successful small companies in my country and shut them down to reduce competition, for which they are universally hated around here.

I don’t live in Poland, but this is like comparing a thriving metro area to Silicon Valley. Just because the metro isn’t coming up with the latest ideas doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its own economy - it’s just different. From my outsider perspective this is very much a positive step for Poland and should be celebrated.

I don't think that's a good way to think about the modern economy. Large companies aren't American, German or Polish just because they're founded in one place. The surplus value that a country like Poland adds or that all the producers in the supply chain of Apple or Tesla add are real and contribute to their national economies.

Singapore isn't a "fake rich" country because most of the companies that have settled down there are international businesses, the money is as real as anywhere else, so are the jobs. Always strikes me as a bit atavistic when people talk about companies as if they're owned by a country despite the fact that the value creation and supply chains run through two hundred countries.

just like israel. even india is similar

Reading the article it attributed institutional strength to poland, which is great, but it sounds like this was something the west decided not to sabotage. The oligarchs taking over in e.g. Russia was engineered by the clinton administration and Larry Summers as "shock therapy" when the soviet government fell.

> Western Europe and the US built their economy in Poland, because the labor is educated and cheap.

Yes, for the benefit of their stock markets and at the expense of their own populations.

A rising tide lifts all luxury yachts.

As A Finn I’d like to see Canada figure out that “oh shit we could be a world superpower with all the smarts and natural resources we have” and start trading culture and goods with Nordic countries. We would rule!

I have to admit, I feel the same envy about industry and economic growth. But there also seem to be many explanations of why Canada continually fails to attract large cap business other than resource extraction. The cost of living / skilled worker wages / tax structure / high levels of regulation means that if you have large cap, you could just build your factory somewhere else and make more money. We've got golden handcuffs in many ways. Still, that 'envy' or ambition is what keeps me coming back to HN, I think it is still possible to start something successful and innovative in this country.

Some anecdata: in the area I'm from in the northeastern US which has a large number of manufacturing/tool & die companies of all sizes, and with a large Polish diaspora, 80% of the most skilled machinists are Polish (or 2nd or 3rd gen descendants), at least that was the case when I was working with these business between 20-30 years ago. Many of the best engineers at these business are Polish as well.

Would you happen to know any of the motor companies by name? I’m often trying to find quality motors and it’s surprisingly difficult.

Rockwell Automation has a facility in Katowice, Silesia which was/is a major centre of coal mining and locomotive manufacturing since the 1800s when it was part of Prussia, and continuing through the Polish Republic, WW2 era and beyond.

The industrial heritage is strong.

some audiophiles feel that the best transformers are made by https://sklep.toroidy.pl/en_US/index in poland.

> We should be able to do this.

That would require work. Canadians just want to buy real estate, watch it go up 10x, then sell and retire in Mexico.

I bought furniture, and i was surprised it came from poland actually. The website was something like a polish ikea.

Btw great furniture, it’s still in my living room many years after, pretty much still pristine.

Not arguing for this one way or another, but as countries become more economically developed, they invariably move off of manufacturing and more into services because it's a higher value part of the economic food chain (wish I could find the research article with all the data - I remember reading it as part of a post arguing that Trump's attempts to "bring back manufacturing jobs to the US" was doomed to fail)

So, the reason you can buy motors and robotics components from Poland and not Canada is because Poland has lower costs (i.e. people make less money because the economy is less developed), not because Canada doesn't know how to make them.

Again, I'm not saying this is a good or bad thing, and I think we've certainly started to see problems as the manufacturing know-how of advanced countries deteriorates as they outsource much of their manufacturing to lower cost locales. But having an economy with a lower percentage of economic activity from manufacturing isn't some sort of failure, as it just means that economy has moved into more profitable activities.

Think of it as an investment. The rest of the EU also benefits from their hard work, and economic prosperity. Other countries in the EU have also enjoyed economic growth and support over the years.

I'm old enough to remember internal borders with passport checks in Europe, before the wall fell and Poland was still on the other side of that. Nice to see them moving on from that.

Thanks to the EU free movement of people, I've now studied, worked and lived in four different countries. I know people all over Europe. I currently live in Germany. Germany benefits a lot from the EU. Yes it costs money. But there's trade, access to skilled labour, etc. as well. And if you look at Poland, it's what sits between Germany and Belarus & Ukraine. So, there's a strategic relevance as well. Poland doing fine is good for everyone else in the EU.

Yes, this is how European social welfare works. And it is fantastic! Because the entirety of the EU is benefitting from it. Polish people have larger spending power, interesting and safe places to visit, etc.

This is not a "present" given to Poland. This is ensuring a better life for all Europeans.

They're also the 3rd smallest net recipient of EU funds per capita:

https://i.imgur.com/VlRkDMy.png

You greatly overestimate its significance. The benefits are roughly 1% of the GDP. In 2023 Poland netted 8.2 bn€ [1]. The GDP was 751 bn€.

[1] https://www.pap.pl/en/news/poland-largest-recipient-eu-funds...

> I love the polish, but credit where credit is due

> I ment: „Poland gets money, Poland transforms it into more money”.

I have noticed that absolutely every time Poland's success is mentioned, someone from EU steps in to downplay it. A self-serving bias. Seriously, that type of comment is absolutely everywhere. Any YouTube video. Any Reddit post. In last couple days I have seen it about dozen times, last time today here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ArchitecturalRevival/comments/1t6k7...

And each time it's some unsubstantiated remark, not once do those people actually bother to check what the actual amount of subsidies did Poland receive over the past 22 years, or how does Poland fare against other EU members. They always imply that ALL THIS SUCCESS is thanks to EU.

For the record: Poland received in total about as much as its yearly budget is in 2026. Other recent EU members also received more-less the same or, per-capita, much more! Did you bother to see how other EU countries developed in that time?

Growth-wise, since 1990, Poland's economy grew substantially each year (even before joining the EU in 2004) and is only behind China: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F5Z8u1mWMAAHtUU?format=png&name=...

Seriously, look at that damn map. Find other EU members on that list.

Ergo, Poland must be doing something EXCEPTIONAL if its combined growth FAR SURPASSES not only any other recent EU members but ALL BUT ONE country worldwide? It can't just be that relatively small amount of the EU money, or the EU membership itself, can it?

So, for f*ks say, how about western EU shuts up and acknowledges IT'S NOT ALL THANKS TO THE EU, will it?

I am personally a big fan of the EU, but those downplaying comments are so annoying I can't but think it's some sort of jealousy. Credit where credit is due to POLES themselves.

You could just as well claim the growth is thanks to NATO membership because, if you look at Ukraine and Belaraus, it's quite plausible as well.

The EU is working as intended then.

Even without funds distributing EU cash, a common market works as a leveller this way and pulls up the poorer countries, because if you can live work and operate anywhere, people naturally pick the cheapest and easiest places to start a business serving the EU.

Spain and Portugal were the previous beneficiaries and everyone benefits really as jobs are created everywhere.

This is far better than a situation where larger economies dominate all others forever.

Since you seem to be implying causality here, I would assume that the other major beneficiaries have enjoyed a similar period of growth?

If there was a correlation you would see the same trend in Slovakia, Hungary and such

> „Poland is the largest beneficiary of EU funds 2014-2020, with one in four euro going to Poland“ https://www.gov.pl/web/funds-regional-policy/poland-at-the-f... Update: The comments below this are strange.

The comments are questioning what you wrote, which implies without evidence, that a small amount of EU money relative to Poland's own GDP, in just 6 years, is somehow entirely responsible for Poland's growth.

There are many countries in the EU that get many more funds per person than Poland and have much worse outcomes.

Some moron always show up with the "but it was all the EU subsidies" talking point, which is quite frankly part of racist tropes of eastern Europeans being dumb and worse than westerners. Could you imagine them accomplishing anything on their own? That's ridiculous. It's us, the western saviors, who did this with our penny subsidies!

Not surprised to see "German" quotation marks in this petty complaint...

Many (especially Germans) try to wrap it falsely as charity and throwing numbers without context.

It is not true for the entire EU budget: the 2014–2020 MFF allowed up to €959.99bn in commitments, so Poland’s €77.6bn cohesion allocation was about 8.1% of the whole EU long-term budget.

For context this is like 0.7% of yearly German overall public expenditure go to Poland. And this money per year is also like 5% of state budget spending.

a big share of this money goes back to foreign companies in form of sales and contracts.

This is no charity, this money largerly comes back to the countries that are biggest spenders on these funds. It's basically an equivalent of FDI

Poland had a relatively clear idea of what they wanted to do once the Russians were out unlike some of the other countries in the eastern block, and it didn’t hurt that some of their neighbors to the north Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia also had pretty good idea of what they wanted to do once they were out from under the Russians, it’s just too bad that the Ukraine when they had the brief chance, they didn’t take advantage of it hopefully they’ll get a second chance.

> I ment: „Poland gets money, Poland transforms it into more money”.

It's not trivial that this works. In Hungary we messed this up big time, hopefully it can get fixed now.

And 90 cents of every euro returning to the Old EU. Not to mention tax avoidance schemes, western companies transfer their profits out.

Finland has been an EU net contributor since 2001. Now it has among the highest unemployment rates in the EU and is going through austerity, while Poland is visibly building and converging. I understand the logic of cohesion funds, but from Finland it increasingly feels like: we cut, Poland builds.

But be fair: Poland had to rebuild after WWII and 40+ years of communism.

When Western countries got money via the Marshal Plan:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan

Poland had... "friendly" Soviets "supporting" their country for almost 44 years...

Since one of the major donors is Germany, I also like to consider this as reparations for WWII. I wish people in Poland would realize more how generous the EU has been to them.

The Baltics and the Balkan states probably get just as many handouts as Poland, and still show lesser rate of economic growth.

In 2023 they got a measly 10% (8.2Billion) of the GM and Chrysler bailout that will never be repaid ($85Billion)

The EU gets huge benefits for that investment, the CEO of GM gets a multi-milion dollar pay packet.

Definitely not the largest per capita though. There's a lot of people in Poland.

Per capita tho it isn't the largest beneficiary. The funds were just well spent.

Oh no, other countries have been in that position but it did not go well

Countries don't mechanically convert inputs into development. There are many examples of countries with large capital inflows and/or strong capabilities that still fail to become strong economies. Corruption is one of the major frictions that prevents those resources from translating into broad economic success.

This is such a bad take. I'm impressed how often this gets parroted online.

Next time, please check how many Poles left Poland for western EU since they joined.

It’s a factor that’s not any more significant than the Marshall Plan was in your Wirtschaftswunder in the 1970s, which, oddly enough, a lot of Germans have no issue attributing to a domestic merit alone. Funny how that works!

If it was the EU contributions that were the dominant force here, Germany could… simply do the same and prop up its own struggling economy with money printed by the ECB. Instead, it prefers to see it crumble under an obese welfare state that largely funds inactive third-world fake asylum seekers. So clearly, there’s way more nuance to economic success than simply having funds redirected from one account to another.

>credit where credit is due

Eh, as an American I've spent many hours reading Europeans railing against the United States here on HN.

Not once has a European ever given the US credit for the Marshall Plan.

I actually look forward to seeing the EU become the global hegemon so they can learn about how much "fun" it is. The US can sit in the stands eating popcorn just like Switzerland.

Well, Germany had their own EU funds when they raided other countries. Today, noone bats an eye?

At least Poland does it legally.

No one can deny EU funds have helped, but putting credits only there is pure misinformation. Take a look at what part of GDP are EU funds and what is the size per capita. Hard work and open market were actually the biggest contributors to the development of Poland.

It seems to be almost universally agreed across the former Soviet Bloc that Poland indeed used the EU funds more wisely than anyone else.

> „Poland is the largest beneficiary of EU funds 2014-2020, with one in four euro going to Poland“

The lion share of this budget has been defrauded, fraud is only slightly less widespread than in Hungary. Piles of (only) documentation are produced by professionals then funds are funnelled to the families of local authorities. Honestly I'm confused, maybe that's indeed how EU funds are suppoused to work?

It's important to understand the difference between handouts and investments with an expected ROI.

It's unfortunate that 0th order thinking jumps to this framing, it's one reason I always laugh when people talk about SpaceX taking 'government handouts' without these folks realizing the 100x ROI the government got out of their investment. All investments are 'hand outs' but not all 'hand outs' are investments.

Clear thinking at a large enough scale will prevent a populace from self destructing due to stupidity about this topic.

it's far from enough given they didn't pay reparation yet for wwii

Honestly, it’s not why their economy has grown. That money is just wasted on government projects? Has it hurt? No, but it is a small amount when it comes to the entire Polish economy.

It's a first line buffer state against Putin.

Think of it as defense spending

Government investment works. That's why America's billionaires are mostly just people stealing as much of it as they can.

Cue the butthurt Germans, decimating their own bread and butter industries by ridiculous policies like diesel and nuclear bans, immigration straight into the welfare state, then complaining that others - who did not commit economic suicide - fare better. Note that Germany vastly profits from the EU as well, as it allows Germany to push e.g. their established supermarkets into Eastern Europe, undercutting any competition. This is never mentioned when talking about "largest beneficiaries of EU funds"

Now compare that number to this number:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_material_losses_during_...

And don’t forget the Partitions and The Deluge, too.

Crazy how people just like to pretend that wealth acquired before 1950 somehow just appeared there naturally.

As a Polish IT worker I feel that we enjoy hardwork too much. I'm talking here about "kultura zapierdolu" [0] which is what we call the specific Polish version of culture of unhealthy work/life balance.

[0] https://lubimyczytac.pl/ksiazka/5124728/czesc-pracy-o-kultur...

They have a strong reputation as hard-working. After the liberation of Eastern Europe, Polish crews were all over Eastern Europe doing everything from restoring historic town centers to quickly and reliably putting a fresh coat of paint on apartments.

I guess it's anecdata. Polish engineers I've worked with weren't that good at technical stuff nor communication (in English). They're overprotective with "their" code and in general we've had more luck with western/southern Europeans.

All the Polish engineers I've worked with have been top notch.

They also enjoy 15% tax, through some arrangement I’m still not convinced is legal for IT contractors…

But yeah, some of the most skilled and passionate engineers I’ve worked with have been from Poland and the surrounding countries like Czechia.

Were they not educated and motivated before?

Yes, I agree. I believe cultural norms dictated their rate of expansion. Without so many people who enjoyed hard work they like would not have been able to expand their economy as much.

Thank you. Many say our institutions are underdeveloped but I think it takes a certain maturity of the society to be able to execute projects successfully. It's not perfect, but I think we've come a long way.

Yep. Looking at Hungary.

Poland 10 years ago and Poland today is night and day.

That's funny, I spent several days in Bydgoszcz in 2015 due solely to a marvelous and slightly misleading video from the tourism board: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiogaJADvPw

I learned on arrival that the city was not in fact color-graded and filled with beautiful slow motion video opportunities. Since then, every time I mention to any Pole that I've been to Bydgoszcz, the question is always "Why?"

All my memories of two fairly long trips around Poland are now ten years out of date, and I've heard only good things about its development since then.

Most Ukrainians (and Belarusians) settled in major cities, starting with Warsaw. In 2022 I had a Belarusian girlfriend, and at some point I tried convincing people coming here to target smaller towns, to no avail. Still, most of them stayed here, work hard and make it, despite rents literally doubling since when the war started.

That basically describes the US as well.

I haven't been to Poland but have a second home in Czech Republic (my wife's country) which has the same phenomenon. It has nothing to do with economics or poverty and everything to do with people. Young people move to where the jobs are which means the larger towns and cities (this happens worldwide BTW). This means old villages are entirely inhabited by old people, most of whom only worked during the days of communism. They can't and won't change. They don't want to renovate or live in a new house. So the village gets run down. Canada (where I was born) also has run down towns and even ghost-towns, you'll just never see them. In Europe secondary highways pass through every town it seems, so you do see them.

My wife's grandma, now in her 90's, lives in a >100 year old farmhouse that's crumbling and only 1/3 of the home is even heated. Hell installing the electric heaters and indoor toilet involved a ton of arm-twisting. She's been insisting she'll die any day for the last decade and refuses to move or renovate. Meanwhile my wife's cousin lives in the same town (is a remote worker) and lives in a super-modern new home that's built to a much higher standard than the average new home in Canada. Old people are just stubborn...

Anyhow the point is that things only get renovated when the owner wants to renovate it, it has nothing to do with wealth. In the city, land is worth $$$ so inevitably it gets bought and improved. In small towns, meh...

Mostly nodding along, with a few of these aged in interesting ways from where I'm sitting.

The drones bit hurts the most. There's a war an hour from our border eating FPVs by the millions, and Poland - sitting on batteries, motors, chips, a generation of engineers - has not stood up a real domestic drone industry. Money is there. Will is there. We just... haven't shipped. That should keep ministers awake.

EVs are worse. Izera is a punchline at this point. Noah literally called the play in 2024 - "don't bet on one champion, run a bunch and let them fight" - and the state did the exact opposite. We picked one horse and it never left the stable.

The Korea idea, on the other hand, Noah might have undersold. Framework agreement is for ~1,000 K2 tanks. By 2030 Poland will field more main battle tanks than Germany, France, the UK and Italy combined.

Rest holds up. "Try all the things" is right - we're just very uneven at the trying. Defense procurement: shipping. Civilian industrial policy: not so much. Software still works the way it always has: quietly, in apartments, mostly without the state in the loop. Which honestly might be a feature.

I don't know much about Poland

Why was other comment flagged and dead???

> They have had good public education for the past decade or two and rank high in international student rankings.

I suspect good public education is a symptom, not the cause.

The cause likely is valuing a good education. Culture always wins. You can give people who don't value it a good education and they'll barely benefit.

I suspect Ukraine and Belarus brain drain to be a measurable factor here too.

Polish education has a long tradition of excellence. Indeed, the last decade has seen reforms that have been heavily criticized for working against that.

To explain the joke, a Żabka is like a 7-Eleven, but there is way more of them per unit of area. And they have more services in offer.

There's a large set of jobs in everything that expanded operations in Poland, for salary reasons, e.g. automotive (Stellantis, Volkswagen, MAN) electronics (Electrolux, Whirlpool), food (Ferrero)...

But Poland did well capturing them and then growing new businesses locally, so now there's local brands and such that are expanding abroad on their own.

What food would you recommend?

Polish people migrating to the rest of Europe, sending money back, and eventually returning is probably a big part of the success.

Except over 2 million Ukranian refugees: https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies/migration-and-asy...

Anecdotal, but the company I work for offers to the juniors only +15% to what it used to offer 15 years ago. The salaries are growing mostly because previous government introduced huge increases to minimal salaries, but I don't feel the wages in IT grew significantly over the years. Which actually make sense - we used to have huge disproportion between regular worker salaries and IT ones, now the difference is getting smaller.

Why would they want to bear the burden of an "hostile environment" (as the UK Home Office named their policy towards foreigners) AND declining economic prospects due to an economic suicide they had no say in?

Poland has been booming for a long time even before Brexit. I think it was a latent force just waiting to be set free by Perestroika and free market forces.

I'd travelled to Warsaw a few times maybe 20 or so years ago, and you could feel the vibrancy and energy in the air.

Before and after Covid. It made a lot of people (in general - not thinking about Poles in particular) think about where they wanted to live. it was a pretty bad time to be away from home, family, etc.

> before Brexit - a decent number of polish people in the UK doing all types of work.

The comedian Omid Djalili (a Brit of Iranian descent) had a number of "Polish plumber" skits:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vppmzUZENfc

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8mjzu0Runo

To be fair the gap has been tightening for quite a while and it’s likely that adjusted by living expenses it’s not that hard for those engineers to find higher paying jobs in Poland compared to the UK.

Before 2004 there used to be a decent number of antipodeans working in finance in London.

After 2004, the numbers dropped noticeably.

This feels apt: https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

I’m not polish (but still european) and i wouldn’t go to the uk anymore.

The UK used to be “the dream” when i was a teenager, now it’s the empty shell of what it used to be.

This is because big corporations supporting Brexit figured out it will be better for their bottom line if they could source labour from wider pool and have it tied to visa. Something EU workers would never be comfortable with. Hence you had the so called Boriswave - an influx of workers paid below market rates supporting big corporations able to navigate Home Office corrupt system. Conservative party never told the public what it was really about - bringing in very much slave workforce to exploit - at the expense of working class and SMEs.

By the looks of it, Conservative party will never recover from this betrayal and soon followed by Labour who decided to maintain the status quo.

I mean, it makes things more difficult, right?

I think the bigger factor is that Polish immigration has effectively ended. We're seeing more Poles returning from abroad than leaving. With the prosperity and stability of Poland, coupled by living in your home culture, immigration is simply not that attractive.

(Traditionally, much of Polish immigration was meant to be temporary. A good number of Poles stayed abroad and assimilated, because immigration tends to be "sticky".)

Tbf, SWE salaries are constant across much of Europe, so anyone who is working in CEE feels less of a pull to work in London as a line-level engineer for roughly the same salary as they'd get in Warsaw. Funnily enough, even Bangalore salaries [0] are catching up to Italy [1] and Romania [2].

As a founder, it's a different story though - London is hard to beat from an entrepreneurship and capital access standpoint aside from parts of the CEE with strong ties to to American VC due to diaspora ties.

Edit: can't reply

> dzonga

Completely agree. I've O-1'ed plenty of European and British founders. But London is better than the rest of Europe from a raising perspective, which shows how bad the situation is in the rest of the continent.

[0] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/greater...

[1] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/italy

[2] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/romania

God I miss Eastern European tradespeople.

British tradespeople in my experience are duplicitous, lazy, unmotivated, low quality, cocky and expensive.

The Warsaw Uprising Museum is an excellent place to visit if you're into WWII history.

I hadn’t come across this before. Looks really good, thanks for sharing

> Czechia used it for stupid things like bicycle lanes, child playgrounds etc.

Without the full picture, these don’t seem like stupid things at all. What makes it stupid for them to invest in these things?

I feel the need to correct the record. The only reason, there is this racist stereotype in some western countries that such and such ethnicities are not working, is because those countries make it exceedingly hard for those ethnicities to gain employment. For example requiring language fluency and forcing immigrants to attend language school full time instead of giving them a mop and a bucket and a minimum wage. In places where this banal legislation does not exist those same ethnicities are working fine in mixed ethnicity factory floors alongside Poles and Romanians.

And btw those same countries who make it super hard for, for example Syrians, to gain employment, then made a whole bunch of exceptions for Ukrainians. For example in Germany, Syrians without full command of German were told to attend language schools, but when the Ukrainians arrived they suddenly made exceptions and suddenly in our department we had Ukrainian cleaning crew who spoke neither German nor English.

Poland benefited significantly from immigration (of Poles to other countries and then back).

The US spends over $1T per year on education, more than almost any other country on a per capita basis by a large margin. What is the rationale for characterizing this as "defunding"?

I would say that outsourcing and moving manufacturing to other countries is what has killed the US economy - now in a death spiral with interest payments on the debt starting to dominate government spending.

Can you give examples of western countries other than the US doing that?

I’ve never seen it, I travel a lot.

The US has done everything but defund public education lol.

> defund education,

People have already addressed this falsehood.

As I hinted at in another comment, more money for education doesn't help if the culture doesn't value it. And largely, US culture does not value a good education.[2] Or more precisely, not possessing what many other countries consider "basic skills" is quite acceptable here.

Case in point: I've spent time in a poor country with terrible education. Over there, if you were slow doing arithmetic on paper (multiplication, division, etc), everyone considered you to be an idiot. Because of that, even mediocre students who merely graduated high school and didn't go to college have those skills.

Over here, you have Verizon Math.[1] After that crazy episode, I've seen this problem. And it's not just that interchanging dollars and cents is a custom, a lot of people genuinely don't understand the issue. I've been to yard sales where things are advertised as 0.25 cents, and asked them about it. I was expecting a response like "Yeah, yeah, it's sloppy but everyone knows what it means." Instead I got genuine confusion.

Verizon Math isn't an isolated quirk. If you come from any of these countries to the US, much of the US population will appear to be idiots to you (rightly or wrongly).

In one of my jobs, we had a bunch of Russian and other East European coworkers. They were appalled by all of this and started working on after-school tutoring activities for their kids. Because they came from a culture that viewed a lack of certain skills as "being idiots", they were really concerned that their kids would grow up to become idiots like the rest of the Americans.

My point isn't that one should know basic arithmetic. There are plenty of legitimate arguments to say it's OK not to.

What my point is that there is no baseline knowledge level in the US where being below it is socially problematic. Because of that, there is no peer pressure to retain the knowledge they learn in school. It's OK not to know how many days are in a year.

I used to tutor 3-5th grade students, and after I realized this, I gave up. The kids didn't need help understanding the material. They already did. They just didn't see a need to retain it. If their friends don't value the knowledge, and their parents don't value the knowledge, there's little I can do to help them.

[1] https://verizonmath.blogspot.com/

[2] The good education is there for the few who value it. But the rest of the population doesn't benefit from it.

Education hasn't been defunded. I don't know why so many people keep posting that misinformation when the opposite is true.

Inflation-adjusted funding per student rose from $14,969 to $20,322 over the past two decades.

K-12 funding rose $1,610 per student in real terms between 2020 and 2023 alone.

"Schools in the United States spend an average of $20,387 per pupil, which is the 3rd highest amount per pupil (after adjusting to local currency values) among the 40 other developed nations in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)."

Over the past 4 years, millions of Ukrainians have fled there because of the war — many of whom had businesses and money in Ukraine and are integrating seamlessly into the Polish economy. Almost the entire Ukrainian IT sector that used to operate on an outsourcing basis is now there. Before the war, Ukrainians were mainly a source of cheap labor there, while Poles were doing the same work in other European countries. And since Ukraine is a bargaining chip in the current war, it is in the interest of all its neighbors for Poland to become strong, so that the Russians don’t cross the border.

"What are you going to do" was a phrase you could hear in Poland as well in 90ties and early 2000th. What differentiated PL w/ UA in my opinion is 2 things:

1. Lack of oligarchy - which in fact was not obvious outcome and little bit of luck on our part and little bit of cultural zeitgeist of 90ties and 00ths. 2. No east-west dithering - PL knew right away to which economic and cultural sphere wanted to belong

Hmm, I think you’re not ever supposed to say anything negative about Ukraine.

The opiate of the intellectual; forever afforded the benefit of every doubt.

These days it’s forbidden to deny the horrors of nazism but quite fashionable to glorify the murders and confiscations of communism and to even justify Marxist murderers like Mangione.

Yeah in modern media you always have to pander to the left, it’s clownish.

Polish-born person living abroad here. There definitely ARE "mind viruses" in the polish psyche, and pretty nasty ones at that. You might not have noticed them because they are from a different nature than the ones that infected Wester Europe and North American. For example, Poles by and large harbor an inferiority complex due to the decades of oppression and suppresson that makes them sell themselves short and act as people-pleasers to western nations and western firms (that's precisely what makes us so liked by those firms! and that's also your "looking to America" here). Poles as a nation are driven by romantism, not pragmatism, and that is the reason why we always get screwed on the world stage one way or another and have the reputation of being "dumb". I am as happy as the next guy to see economic development, but our mental maps let us down regularly, and I am not particularly optimistic for a change on that front.

> A general lack of ideological “mind viruses” that seem to plague the western world. Most Poles are pretty straightforward, common sense people. They might have opinions you don’t agree with but it’s not a country of extremists in any direction.

I want to stray from the politics too much, but we definitely self-sabotage in canada. It's kind of an immature teenage angst to self-loathe to the point of punishing yourself all the time.

"it was kind of inevitable once Poland stopped being oppressed by its neighbors"

No. Not at all inevitable. Poland might have descended into kleptocracy, e.g. Hungary. That this did not happen is worthy of investigation. I'm not holding my breath however; the findings would probably not be welcome.

"A general lack of ideological 'mind viruses' that seem to plague the western world"

Indeed. Poland frequently disappoints the rest of the EU with its stubborn indifference to obligatory Western moral panics.

Poland has somewhat of a culture of overworking, "kultura zapierdolu".

> A general lack of ideological “mind viruses” that seem to plague the western world

Uhh, the Law and Justice party was packing the Polish Constitutional Court, filling the government with party loyalists, and placing restrictions on freedom of speech and assembly only a few years ago. I suppose veering close to a constitutional crisis isn’t ideological per se, but that framing doesn’t seem quite right

> A general lack of ideological “mind viruses”

Yeah when Poland banned abortion and declared a number of "LGBT free zones" a lot of Poles I know came here to Czech Republic

We just didn't have oligarchs.

> without the historical baggage

Oh boy, are you wrong on that...

What's led to the higher prices than Germany? Usually substantially lower earnings would mean lower prices, even if not substantially lower (look at the UK, higher prices than much (all?) of Europe, average earnings slightly less).

Also, the Poles who I talked to have the feeling like money is going into the right projects and corruption is relatively low. This is quite different if you talk to people from Bulgaria, for example.

Even if for many years the net value of EU subsidies is close to 0, many people claim that money is still better spent, because of checks and balances forced by the EU system.

250 миллиардов субсидий ЕС

My Polish coworkers say that's due to the senior citizens stuck in a Soviet occupation mindset, and they're doing things like burning plastic trash to heat their homes.

I really enjoyed Warsaw in December, the air seemed fine to me.

True. But this problem is fixable individually with a smog mask outdoors and air purifier indooes. Systemic issues in other countries are rarely so easy to work around.

The Polish economy is not built on sending workers to Germany.

Opinions will vary. Most people on that plane (not all) represented the equivalent of UK Reform party - isolationist, backward-looking, populist. That party, ironically called PiS (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, Law and Justice) brought in a lot of reckless spending and anti-growth measures. Still, GDP rocketed on under their government just as much as under the other ones. As did inflation.

In Poland, we have a president and a parliament, with parliament holding most of the power. It was the president who died in the crash, and he was most likely going to lose the upcoming re-election later that year. In short, I don’t think it changed much.

> Eastern Europe immigration

It’s hard to believe those type of people actually wanted to replace it with non European immigration, though (which is what happened). Of course cause and effect is a complex concept to wrap ones head around..

It warms my heart that my country contributed to ejecting Britain, and right before it turned completely to shit.

Not for any particular dislike, I wish that the actual brits actually take back the power from the scum government and fix it, just a sight of relief that their mess could be whole EU mess if Brexit didn't happen

Surely there are more than 20 countries that have been in a position where their neighbors aren’t all trying to exterminate them for at least as long as Poland.

That only explains some sort of “noob gainz”, not moving into the top 20.

Don’t know why this is downvoted. The history of Poland for the last 300 years is pretty much exactly what you wrote.

I remember when Poland colonised half the world.

We did that in the US and became the #1 economy. Leadership just changed.

Why are polish people like this.

Hundreds of billions in subsidies and Polish workers displacing West European workers inside and outside of their country have nothing to do with the success of course.

The EU is based on greedy West European corporations maximizing shareholder value at the expense of their own populations.

The EU is too big and should be reduced to the Western core countries. I wonder how Poland would fare then.

I'd also be a classical liberal if I were getting 1 out of 4 euros of the EU taxpayers.

Positive actions cited in the article: "independent courts, an anti-monopoly agency to ensure fair competition, and strong regulation to keep troubled banks from choking off credit"

While many in US say "liberal economics" means not interfering with businesses with regulations or anti-trust.

I suppose people have different definitions of "classical liberal", "neo-liberal", etc.

The rest of Europe would be also afraid if they didn’t have the nice cushy buffer of Ukraine and Poland to give them breathing room.

Try 3city (Gańsk-Sopot-Gdynia up north on Baltic). Definitely better air quality then in other places in Poland. Do not know how it compares to other European cities though.

I'm Polish and I left because of the air quality. But, 15 years passed, and it got much better (obs. through holiday visits). People no longer heat with trash and coal isn't less of an option. Also, it isn't as cold in the winter so there is less need for heavy heating. Really thinking of coming back, to family.

It's getting better year by year but I suspect it'll take another decade before we'll have acceptable air quality during the heating season. During earmer seasons it's fine tho.

Subjective air quality is SO much better than it was in the early nineties though...

I definitely blame my difficulties with respiratory illnesses on living there as a kid...

I'm pretty sure I got prescribed an antibiotic at least once :) Also, my father has been through 5 cancer "journeys", all successfully treated via public healthcare, last few caught "too early to operate" due to early detection PET scan programs. I don't know much about 19th century medicine, but it seems off.

Except when millions of Ukrainian refugees have been allowed in since 2022. You could say that they said "no" to mass brown people migration.

This is not true. Over 5% of population is foreign and it’s growing every year.

Here's per capita:

https://i.imgur.com/VlRkDMy.png

We get a lot of Ukrainians in IT jobs

They recently joined the EU?

You jelly

This is a poorly supported take, once you factor in the productive parts of the economy.

If you have a lot of farmland in a red state and the profits are reported in a blue state, then counting the reported profits on the corporate balance sheet will give a distorted picture of what is happening.

Look at e.g. General Mills, based in a blue state, but a great deal of what they buy are ag inputs from red states.

German working class is actually benefiting from this as Poland it one of their biggest importers now. And they are still benefiting from slave labor, stolen precious metals, and art they got during the WW2. Not to mention the Marshall Plan. They really can't be complaining.

It's the South Korea model and road, people are working hard to chase constantly and quickly moving goal of securing extremely expensive home, basic setup for having the family. But process itself is exhausting and depleting.

It's not prosperity, but consumerism. Consumerism causes demographic decline, because it unhinges people's priorities. Their conception of the purpose of life becomes more materialistic, and children compete with that kind of materialistic, self-indulgent consumption.

In that sense, the Poles have been seduced by consumerism.