Posted on 03/05/2022 8:01:27 AM PST by fluorescence
Technology has been at the center of national security and global economic concerns for years.
U.S. President Joe Biden used his State of the Union address this week to again focus on competition with China and competitiveness in technology manufacturing. But that speech was overwhelmed by the more immediate concern of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and there is another key link in the technology sector that the first land war in Europe since WWII has highlighted: the booming hub of tech workers in Eastern Europe.
Ukraine, Belarus and Russia – three countries now intertwined in war – have grown into essential growth areas for tech talent in a world more reliant on digital than ever before. From start-ups sourcing the developers and engineers they need to get to the next level, to already established corporations relying on software partners for digital transformation, hundreds of thousands of tech workers in the region have become critical to the global economy.
Gartner estimates there are over one million IT professionals in the three countries, with one-quarter (250,000) working for consulting or outsourcing firms. There were 200,000 Ukrainian developers in the country in 2020, according to Amsterdam-based software development outsourcing company Daxx, which says that 20% of Fortune 500 companies have their remote development teams in Ukraine.
Software vendors working on behalf of big corporations, from financials to retail, rely on the talent that the region has cultivated. Take EPAM Systems, as an example. More than 50% of its tech staff are across the three nations – over 30,000 employees. It is an example of just how quickly war can disrupt the functioning of organizations in ways impossible to imagine, with internal dissension now an issue for EPAM leadership as workers in Ukraine call for its CEO to take a much harder anti-Putin line.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
Breadbasket of the world, 25% of the earth's grain production.
Oil and gas, abundant and cheap
Europe's largest nuclear plant
If the people there could stand each other and work together, they could be rich people in paradise, but no, let's turn it into a flaming radiobiological hell instead.
I wonder sometimes if/why the human race even deserves to live.
Do they still use 640k floppies?
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