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Comment by balloot | Hacker News Reader

Define "top-notch". Because under my definition of the term, I would expect there to be very few engineers in Hungary that match that description.

IMHO, Silicon Valley works because it houses a hugely disproportionate amount of the very best engineers, and from my experience the top .1% or so of engineers open up possibilities that otherwise simply aren't there.

Yes, the capital is here, but I think that's an effect and not a cause. If you took Facebook and started it in any other place in 2004 (with just a handful of exceptions) with exactly the same access to funds I highly doubt it ends up as it is today.

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Eastern Europe is notorious for highly skilled engineers. Because careers in Engineering and natural sciences have a long history and have always been viewed as prestigious positions.

And not everyone has emigrated to California, some have but US emigration is just too rigid. Many of us would want to move to SV, but unless we want to endure H1B slavery status our doors are pretty much closed.

However if anyone out there wants to take a shot at hiring some of us as contract workers, contact me.

I am from a milieu with excellent Engineering talent and could easily build a 5-10 man team of excellent engineers at roughly 60.000$ annual price point.

Totally agreed with. We have an office in Romania and they do better work than most developers I've worked with in the UK.

...Oh and they cost roughly 70% less

I'm all about the don't complain about down votes protocol.

However I am getting massive down votes here, for something that is neither rude, neither false, neither off topic.

I find this kind of attitude (not even bothering to teach me a lesson if I erred) very rude.

All companies started in Hungary, even if they later become US entities, chose to keep their engineering in Budapest, because talent is available, and for much less than in SV. Also, it's less saturated.

E.g. I had a chat with a VP of a chech-US startup and they were inquiring about the possibility of expanding in Hungary, because they satured their chech sources, but SV is too expensive / also saturated.

Also, companies like Morgan Stanley, SAP or Microsoft are not starting new offices or expanding in SV, but they are over here.

So, talent is available. In fact, this is so obvious that companies like Morgan Stanley et.al. showed up here, giving good salaries, making my job as a startup guy trying to hire much more difficult.

To be fair though, specific talent like "has worked with Hadoop for a year" or "has worked at Google on the core search engine" is not present here. Also, people are much more likely to prefer to work at a BigCo than in a small startup, compared to SV.

You will not experience the problems I pictured in the post, when you don't have to compete in Hungary. In other words, of course it makes sense to hire excellent Hungarian engineers, and sell the product elsewhere. Problem is, when you have to compete with companies, who do not pay their taxes, who do not pay social security after their employees etc, and their prices are HALF of your costs. And of course they have excellent contacts, and they will sue you with obviously false claims, and then you go to court, and loose. Then you will understand depression.

Szia!

I understand what you're saying, and it's true, in fact I've worked at small companies and been subject to it.

My post was specifically meant to refute the parent's point that:

"I would expect there to be very few engineers in Hungary that match that [top-notch] description".

:) Thanks mate.

> Define "top-notch".

According to the dictionary: outstanding, notable, superior. Seriously, though, take any reasonable definition. If you asked me a number I'd say 1% but yeah, you could say top 0.1%. I can't see how that gives any more precise information though, given that we don't have a practical, objective way of measuring programming skills.

> Because under my definition of the term, I would expect there to be very few engineers in Hungary that match that description.

Why? I'd expect any country with >10 million people, very high level of literacy, a couple of good universities and internet connectivity to be home to a good number of top-notch programmers. I can't see how that's particularly controversial.

In any case I'm not sure why you're taking issue with this. I never said that Hungary has proportionally as many top-notch programmers as in Silicon Valley. My point is simply: hiring people in Hungary is no more expensive than in California in terms of U$; if you have a company with 20 programmers in SF you could sure find 20 replacements in Hungary and save on payroll.

Here's my minimalist definition of "top-notch engineer" in regards to Silicon Valley startups:

- has experience working in the early stages of a venture-backed startup

- went to one of the top schools in the world, such as Stanford, MIT, Harvard, etc

- has an extensive personal portfolio of software projects on which they contributed

My point is that Silicon Valley "works" because it has lots of people that meet 2 or 3 of these bullet points. There is no place in the world that really comes close.

Nobody is objecting that you can surely hire people cheaper in other countries, but for small companies the cheapest labor source is almost never the winner. It's far more important to have the very best engineers.

> - has experience working in the early stages of a venture-backed startup

This has no effect on someone's ability.

- went to one of the top schools in the world, such as Stanford, MIT, Harvard, etc

Those are not "top schools in the world". The only advantage they provide are great contacts and opportunities thans to those contacts. In terms of knowledge, many schools around the world (including many in the former Eastern bloc) provide excellent education.

> - has an extensive personal portfolio of software projects on which they contributed

Again, this has nothing to do with being in SV. Many bast-known open-source projects were started outside US (I'll leave it to someone else to list them, but I'm sure you can think of a few off the top of your head).

Woz would have met at most 1 of your bullet points when he started at Apple.

The world was a way different place 30 years ago. You couldn't reasonably have expected someone to have an extensive software portfolio or have experience at a tech startup. Now, both are commonplace among top hires.

The definition of a "top-notch" programmer is about how competently he/she can write required programs, not about how "commonplace" among Valley programmers are his/her biographical details.

ADDENDUM - An example of your bullet points working just as badly more recently than 30 years ago:

Cevat Yerli when he started Crytek

I would expect there to be very few engineers in Hungary that match that description

And you would be so incredibly wrong. Hungarians are smart. Smart like Americans used to be, back in the 19th century when an American who did his work out in the barn could revolutionize entire industries for breakfast.

And why are there so many top-notch engineers in SV? Because of the climate, because there are more natural-born engineers, or because many top-notch engineers have moved and move there because there is the capital and the best environment for startups?

And why would you expect Hungary to have very few top-notch engineers?

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