Ukraine Holds 4th Largest Programmer Population

andrewuoft points out this BusinessWeek article on the budding technology sector of Ukraine; the article points out that Ukraine has -- "after the U.S., India, and Russia -- the fourth largest number of computer programmers in the world" and that "Even today, scientific institutes each year churn out some 50,000 science or technology graduates. Not surprisingly, Ukrainians don't see why their country can't become a big player in the global technology market, like India."

Quality Not Quantity

[derEikopf]

What the future of technology needs more than anything is the reversal of the quantity philosophy. More is not always better.

speak for yourself, object.

[Man in Spandex]

more of quantity can turn in this case into more of quality.

We as humans evolve.

A crappy car will remain a crappy car no matter how much type-r stickers you put on it but as individuals who study and gain experience, programmers may not study in anything "outstanding" in the beginning but you never know what path they will take.

Re:hold on

[bestadvocate]

Thats the real problem with outsourcing jobs anyway.
the basic inequality of rights and responcebility

wouldent it be nice if we held international corporations to provide the same level of economic and humanitarian funding outside the country, and taxed the pajamas out of importers that don't

bye bye wallmart :*(

Re:hold on

[arbi]

India will always have a natural advantage over countries like Russia and Ukraine in terms of American IT outsourcing because they can speak English.

Not exactly

[a.different.perspect]

The infrastructure is important: not only the physical infrastructure like roads, trains and powerlines, but also the governmental infrastructure (like courts, government offices, etc.). Plus, a stable government (not a one-man show like in many other places) is necessary: money flees uncertainty.

While generally your comment makes sense, I take issue with the last statement. Money doesn't flee uncertainty. It would be far more correct to say it flees the certainty of unprofitability and the certainty of unstable infrastructure and government and an arbitrary court system, like in Indonesia for example. Investment pours into uncertain economies like Russia after the end of the Cold War because they promise change, and change is the essence of growth.

Re:speak for yourself, object.

[derEikopf]

Indeed, that is where people like Linus Torvalds make an odds-defying explosion into mainstream computing. However, there is more to my statement than just programmer population. Quality also refers to program quality. Not half-assed buggy software that was hurriedly released because of a dealine, and then half-assed patches and updates that were also released on a deadline.

Re:hold on

[Anonymous Coward]

Ukraine has some, ahem, moral issues that make it politically difficult for American companies to outsource there.

So what!? Large multinational companies are amoral in nature, they don't give a shit about "moral issues", only about profit and the bottom line.

Re:hold on

[tftp]

Is there any law of physics that stops everyone else from learning English? If you don't know already, Indian English is not any better than Polish English, for example. Indians often use a writing style totally alien to western literature and to western readers.

Re:hold on

[BobaFett]

wouldent it be nice if we held international corporations to provide the same level of economic and humanitarian funding outside the country, and taxed the pajamas out of importers that don't

Are you prepared to pay the significantly higher price for the goods you can by today cheap precisely because the companies do not provide the same level of funding outside the country?

I have great respect for people who argue for equal wages and labor conditions and then live by their ideals (which means their level of life is significantly lower than what they could afford otherwise). I may not agree with their ideas, but I respect them. Hypocrites who yak about terrible working conditions in the 3rd world and then go by chineese t-shirts on sale get no respect from me.

incorrect assumption

[Kohath]

Ukrainians don't see why their country can't become a big player in the global technology market, like India."

Because "programming" isn't the key factor in whether your nation is a "big player" in the global technology market. It is a factor, but it's a ways down the list.

This is not serious!

[Simonetta]

Should we seriously believe that The Ukraine has more computer programmer productivity and output than:

China - 1.3 billion people and a booming economy with millions of students studying technology?

Korea - where 1/4 of the people have at-home broadband, and like China, has millions of people working in the technology industry?

Taiwan - where nearly everything technological that isn't specifically designed to kill people who don't shop at the Baby Gap is designed, programmed, and manufactured?

Japan - With the world's second largest economy and a world leader in electronic R&D and embedded-systems computers?

I think some second-rate journalist got an all-expenses-paid government tour and spent a lot of time with Hot, Available Ukrainian Brides-to-be
and then wrote up this wild fantasy of Ukrainian computer mastery in order to get invited back on next year's government tour.

We must not take these snow-jobs seriously.

Contradicting the popular opinion

[DataDragon]

I've just gotten done reading the initial reaction of trolls and jokes about this.

Ukraine does have quality engineers, does have better economics and less corruption than other CIS countries, and has been a considerable supporter of US interests (e.g., they dropped one of the highest levels of troops into Iraq for support. Even though, honestly, a country like that couldn't afford large military action, they did so anyway and I might add- with a level of political push considerably lower than others.)

They are a society with European heritage, a large number of the population understands English, German, French, Italian, etc.) and for most Americans travelling to a typical "outsource" destination, Ukraine is both a familiar and not-so-culture-shocking destination (Compared, say, to China or India, for most Americans)

I cannot say they don't have drawbacks, but I've researched the area heavilly and found that the people are much like the USA glory days -- preferring "Handles" and such, for fun mostly, and their display of individual pride. Here in old Silicon Valley, I'm corporate Borg. Getting sick of it.

The organized crime aspects, well, I've had many discussions about that as well-- software isn't really their target, though. In most cases, its usually "competition" that drives the hostilities, and likewise, the vast majority of such cases are non-violent... just annoying (phone turned off, electricity cut, etc.) Like anywhere in the world, if you don't want trouble, don't start trouble. Respect goes a long way in those cultures.

Personally, I'd jump at the chance to go to Ukraine myself. I think it would be rewarding and fun to help cultivate not only the economic flow, but to work with the people there.

For those who are more politically inclined about how the Ukrainian air is going, the present Presidential Elections in Ukraine are showing a huge outpouring of support for the new candidate that wishes to bring Ukraine into the EEC.

There aren't that many CIS countries that can say they are trying quite as hard to embrace the Westernized world by cooperation and with as little grandstanding as Ukraine is doing.

Anyway, they aren't so bad: Wikkkipedia on Ukraine [wikipedia.org] and they can ROCK [wikipedia.org] too!

Peace out. :)

Skills

[pipingguy]

I used to have a defineable, pretty unique skill. I can draw stuff as a draftsman on paper. My unique "skill" was pretty much killed by widespread CAD adoption. This major change didn't just affect me, it screwed quite a few hundred thousand other people that had decades of experience and knowledge.

This is not really a problem as it will only take two or three generations of designers to adapt to the new technology. Death will eventually solve this problem.

I could elaborate, but it's probably pointless to do so in this forum where computerization=cool.

Re:This is not serious!

[antoy]

Get a hold of yourself.

Have you ever been to Ukraine? I haven't, but I've been to Romania, a neighbouring country with the same mindset regarding computer programming. I was there for BOI (the Balkan Olympiad in informatics) and let me tell you that Romanians kicked our Balkan (and in other times international) asses. I'm not going to chalk this up to training and practice because they were awfully talented guys (and it would like I'm bitter, which I am not), but they *do* have an excellent education system which, as I've heard, would teach them about graphs and minimum spanning trees while we were being taught on using MS Paint on Windows 3.1.

Is it a rich country? From what I've seen in Iasi, it's not. Do they know how to get there? Somebody in their Ministry of Education sure does.

Re:Globalization

[Tablizer]

some countries seem to overspecialize in one specific area (in this case, IT) to outperform competition on a worldwide scale. Risky for sure, but it seems to work right now

With our newfound IT dependence on India as a nation (US), imagine the termoil generated by a nuclear war between India and Pakistan. The tech centers of India are probably the top targets of Pakistan war planners. And, Pakistan is a power-keg of fundimentalism and India-haters inches from going off.

For example, the moderate prime-minister was close to being assassinated about a ago IIRC. Next time the radicals may not miss. The north is full of Bin Laden fans.

India is high on the list of Nations Most Likely to get Nuked. (Unfortunately, the US is also up there.)

Re:Skills

[Zen Punk]

I don't understand...if you are skilled draftsman, why is it that you cannot learn to use a CAD program in order to stay current with industry? You already understand the concepts, and you're here so I assume you aren't afraid of computers...

Engineers and designers don't use CAD because "computerization is cool," they use it becuase it opens up the possibility of professional-level drafting to those who don't have the special skill of drawing, like yourself.

Re:more to it

[Ohreally_factor]

First of all, I don't think Silly is patentable outright. I think you might be able to patent a silly implementation or silly method, but you can't just patent Silly, as it is a concept.

Second, (and seriously now), you are confusing the legal system with the fucked up US patent system, and you seem to want to throw the baby out with the bath water due to your hatred of patents. If you think that modern society could get along without the rule of law and a legal system, you are probably terribly naive.

Modern business is one of those human endeavors that absolutely relies on legal systems for dispute resolution. Now, we can question whether going to court is always the best first action to take, but I don't think many would question that the courts provide the best last word when other methods of dispute resolution have failed.

Countries without rule of law and court systems are far too risky for most investors and conventional business people.

Re:The first computer built in continental Europe

[Guy Harris]

was build 1936 in Germany (Zuse Z1) and not 1951 in Ukraine as BusinessWeek claimed.

Business Week should have said "stored program computer", or "Von Neumann computer", as per the timeline on this page [icfcst.kiev.ua]. (Emphasis on "continental Europe"; the first Von Neumann machine ever, as far as I know, was built at the University of Manchester.)

Sergey Alekseyevich Lebedev [wikipedia.org], the head of the group that developed that machine (MESM), was born in Russia; that group also created the Big-Ass Computer [wikipedia.org] series (OK, that's not an exact translation of "Bolshaja Elektronno-Schetnaja Mashina" :-)). There's a BESM-6 Nostalgia page [mailcom.com] about the sixth series of BESM machines. (It's a bit tricky to do the usual sort of buffer overflow tricks on those machines:

Each memory word had two parity bits - one for each half, the combined parity for the whole word must have been odd. Thus, the distinction between code and data was achieved: one had the halfword parities even-odd, the other - odd-even, so code overwriting or branches to data got caught as soon as an offending instruction was executed. (The program had to ask the kernel to switch the mode of the store instruction to "code" before generating executable code, or to use a special system call, so using self-modifying code was discouraged.);

The potential will remain there

[danila]

My view on this is that this huge potential will remain just that - potential, without translating into anything tangible, like a huge booming offshore programming industry like in India.

There are many reasons for this, but I'll list the main ones only:

1) The government doesn't give a squat about programming industry or economy in general. They won't care about it unless there are some money to be had for them. It won't happen unless the industry magically develops by itself and even then will only be to its detriment.
2) Yes, Ukraine is better than most other CIS countries, but that only means they are neck-deep in shit instead of being totally submerged like Uzbekistan, Kyrgistan, Tajikistan and other whateverstans. Ukraine is worse off than Russia and that's saying something.
3) These graduates aren't good. You all know about problems in American educational system, but in Ukraine (and other CIS countries) people who graduate from schools are often simply functionally illiterate. They are just going through the motions without actually learning or understanding anything. You may think cheating and grade inflation became problems in the US. You aint's seen nothing until you visit CIS. These 50000 graduates are really bad programmers (ditto for 100000 in Russia).
4) Obviously, with such a huge pool of programmers there are bound to be some who are really great. That's why Russia wins so many programming competitions. This doesn't mean that the other 99.9% of programmers are any good. So forget the stereotypes. Ukrainian/Russian programmers suck.
5) You need good management to do this kind of business and the business education in Ukraine is basically as bad as IT education.
6) Ukraine doesn't have good image abroad and noone really does anything to change it, so it would be hard to persuade the prospecting clients.

So the only possible result is that the IT industry in Ukraine will remain quite small and insignificant in the international market. Sad, but true. Ditto for Russia.

Re:This is not serious!

[drgonzo59]

You are looking at numbers. But have you been to all those countries? I grew up in Soviet Union, lived close to Ukraine but I am a Romanian. Now I live in US and work and study along Indians, and Asians. I have to say, that China, Korea and India might have a larger population and more graduate students come from those countries, and the students from Ukraine, Russia, and Romania are fewer but they kick everyone's behind when it comes to doing math or developing an application from scratch, or doing something innovative. Indians and Chinese are good at programming if they have the flowchart or the algorithm ready. I think there are mainly two reasons behind this, one is that people from Eastern Europe a more competitive and also they have a better education system. One of the replies to the comment was that 99% of students there cheat and just "get by" to graduate, that is true but the rest %1 come out to be pretty darn good and end up all over the world as experts.

Yeah I know I stereotyped everyone, but behind most stereotypes there is a grain of truth.