Estonia – the Skype effect | Hacker News Reader

Estonia – the Skype effect

bbc.com

103 pointstagawa50 comments

I can completely agree with this article. I've worked at Skype, and now I see many of my ex-colleagues having large impact at other startups and tech companies - some Estonian, some international. Transferwise. Twillio. Pipedrive. Fleep. Just a few ones where ex Estonian Skypers and their network have a huge impact. Twillio and Transferwise are two good international examples who did this and have had excellent results - the Tallin offices producing some of the best engineering outputs globally.

Almost every talented Skype engineer I know of has joined either a new startup, or a promising tech company with European offices. And many of them have not moved from Tallin - having these companies open offices here, and hire more locals, who the seniors then mentor and train.

It's incredible what effect a single company - Skype - has had to the tech community for all of Estonia.

I am curious is the lingua franca English in the office generally? I find it amusing that Estonia's weather was mentioned here, is the winter in Tallin worse than Stockholm or Berlin? Also poor connections? Is that train only? Certainly Ryan Air flies there no?

Are salaries on par with the rest of Europe?

Yes, in tech it's pretty safe to take English as the lingua franca here.

Connections - we do indeed have Ryanair and easyJet but not that many destinations. Tallinn Airport has a good list[1] of what's available directly.

Salaries - we at Teleport (with deep Skype roots as well) just launched a salary comparison tool[2] this week, hope it helps to get an overview of salaries but also costs.

[1] http://www.tallinn-airport.ee/en/flight-info/destinations/ [2] https://teleport.org/salaries/

Thanks for the links, what's the Visa policy?

There is website called Work in Estonia[1],

I guess there is more specific information for different backgrounds.

[1] http://www.workinestonia.com/coming-to-estonia/

Thanks

> Yes, in tech it's pretty safe to take English as the lingua franca here.

Another thing, that was not mentioned in the article, is that the government of Estonia seems to be doing a better job of managing the country than the governments of most other European countries. Estonia seems to have relatively little bureaucracy and relatively low taxes.

For example, I currently live in Norway. If I wanted to start a new company, it seems that it would be better for me to move to Estonia and start it there, rather than do it here in Norway. I wonder how feasible that would be to do, though, without me speaking Estonian? Other than talking to tech people, can you live in Estonia and get by with only English?

> Estonia has quite a few disadvantages - a tiny home market, a winter that seems to go on forever (although the weather was lovely for our visit), and poor connections with the rest of Europe.

The weather? Sweden and Finland both have longer winters and it has not stopped them. Poor connections? Estonians are everywhere (London, NYC, SF) and their tech companies are all "global first", with investors from around the world and targeting the global market directly.

Yeah, I think the weather trope is getting old. Winters are fairly mild in the Baltic region and most people would prefer below freezing over rainy and windy anyway. It's not even the winter as such that gets to you, but the darkness.

Estonia isn't really comparable to Sweden and Finland though, mostly because of history and size. I want Estonia to become a tech hub, but realistically it's not currently that big of a player.

Perhaps it's a trope because the computer business basically originated in California, which is famed for its good weather.

I think the disadvantages have more to do with ethnic tensions between Estonians and Russians, I agree that the weather is a silly complaint. Estonia is also pretty impressively modern at least in terms of its information infrastructure. If you're gay, you might want to avoid it though.

I understand the history behind that tension but is that tension palpable on the street, and the homophobia is that sentiment palpable as well?

It's palpable if you're in the harder regions, and it's palpable if you're attuned to the local politics. The homophobia is a lot more direct and obvious, but in practice you don't see it much, because you don't see many people making targets of themselves.

A lot of what is true about Estonia though, is true about the whole region to an extent. I don't want to seem like I'm calling Estonia out in particular.

I see, thanks for the distinction.

There isn't any active witch hunt going on in regards to local Estonian-Russian relations, nor LGBT. If you avoid super drunk people at nights, then the threat of violence due to those reasons is low and most conflicts will be limited to verbal abuse & ostracizing. There's a much more real threat of violence if you look muslim though, as there are some vigilante groups unhappy with the Syrian refugee situation.

You know, a winter that lasts forever doesn't sound such a bad thing after all in terms of productivity. I live in Greece and every year when the summer approaches the last thing I want is staying inside and code.

Maybe, but you'd have to reconcile that with California's good productivity and good weather.

SF specifically is notorious for its mild climate, no? Average high in July (the hottest month) is 23 degrees. Compare that with e.g. 31 for DC or 34 for Athens.

That's 73, 87, and 93 degrees for the metric impaired...

Relevants xkcds: https://xkcd.com/526/ https://xkcd.com/1643/

"The worst winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco" -- Mark Twain

That was the summer following a volcanic eruption, indeed, it snowed during that summer!

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

also: While usually attributed to him, the actual source of these words is unknown and there is no evidence that Mark Twain ever said this.

Well September and October are warmer than July usually.. Yes its never swimming weather but its (almost) year around t-shirt during the day light jacket at night weather. No AC or heater needed year around (heater maybe 10 nights a year)..

To be clear I listed the hottest monthly average high for each of those cities - it was July for SF, August for Athens and I don't remember for DC.

Californians have stock options. They must guard them by being in the office at all times.

My bet would be air conditioning

The problem is that an eternal winter would eventually have your employees killing themselves one by one. I imagine that on the long slide down depression and into despair, productivity is bound to suffer. You also have to look at alcoholism rates in countries all over the world with extreme winters, and it's not a happy statistic.

The Greenland stats seem to imply that the actual killer is the corresponding awfully bright summers. As someone who lived slightly south of the arctic circle for almost half my life, I'd be inclined to agree with that theory.

Really?! Is there some article or study that talked about this, because I'd love to read it. To be clear, I'm not doubting you at all, I just want to learn more about this.

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

> According to a report published in the Science Daily in 2009, the suicide rate in Greenland increases during the summer. Researchers have blamed insomnia caused by incessant daylight.[10]

One hypothesis some suicide researchers have floated is that suicide has multiple aspects; the dark winters damage people emotionally while reducing energy, and then when the light comes flooding back, their energy levels recover before their emotions. Result: suicide. Apparently there's some analogies in depression treatment where you're briefly more likely to commit suicide after a treatment starts working. Here's one paper on the topic: Vyssoki et al 2014 http://www.gwern.net/docs/2014-vyssoki.pdf "Direct Effect of Sunshine on Suicide". There might be something similar at play in Greenland.

That's interesting, and almost seem related to what you see in the first weeks of anti-depressant therapy (especially in teens). The depression and distorted thinking haven't changed, but they get a huge blast of energy. It's one of the possible explanations for why the first few weeks on an anti-depressant are particularly risky in terms of suicide.

It does take that odd combination of pain and energy to drive people to end their lives, not just despair and enervation.

No, it's an advantage: they're not distracted by the good weather and they're not tempted to go outside. So people stay in front of their computer working :-)

...Until they die? Then again, if you really invested in full-spectrum lighting indoors, and build a large campus...

Stop making me think evil things! lol

Estonia totally puzzles me. The first time I ever met anyone from there was when I attended a Linux conference in Singapore in 1999. What puzzled me was that there was representatives of many countries businesses of course but the density of Estonian company was totally mind blowing. A country with just about 1.2 mio people and here they are with quite a lot of companies representing their passion for Open Source. Also 4/5 from them were selling infosec products like VPN solutions and firewalls etc. But it shows that there was already something fundamentally right with how open they are in their mind towards adopting technology (e-citizenship etc, ... and the ease it is to open and run a business there)

There is no doubt that Skype had a massive impact as a role model to form a strong local entrepreneurial identity and pride. But what I want to say is that Skype was already in the right place to start with.

i'll tell you why: they've been one of the first countries in the eu to push digital infrastructure and ftth since around 2000. you'd be astounded what big pile of clusterfuck germany's infrastructure is, by comparison.

ftth is far away because deutsche telekom is eager to grab subsidies, squeeze every bit out of copper and customers, and not get out of their bloody way.

Have worked with a few Estonians, and Seasonal Affective Disorder appears to be pretty prominent. One of the developers stopped working all of a sudden, and had to relocate to Thailand to get more sunlight.

I think theres another name for the affliction characterized by a sudden impulse to relocate to a beach in southern Thailand : )

Interesting, I think it's a good thing to see people at least trying to avoid the clichés of starting up in silicon valley or NYC. Even the US for that matter, it's only gonna help the world economy if people say "hey, I can make the best of things right here" instead of thinking they NEED to be a US based startup company

Having been in a "ho-hum that's nice" environment and a "let's murder the competition" environment, I would say it goes beyond THINKING you NEED to be a US based startup company.

The fact of the matter is that your environment defines who you are, as a person. Why would that not matter for your company?

Can the environment be replicated somewhere else? Sure, with the right amount of luck. But people who think environment doesn't matter are fooling themselves.

> Estonia has quite a few disadvantages - [...] a winter that seems to go on forever

Awesome. In the Netherlands it's currently 23 degrees and it's already too warm. I'm dreading the approach of July.

Temperature is not the problem.

Lack of sunlight from October till February is depressing.

Agreed. I've never been depressed in my life, then I moved to Finland!

Seriously though, my first winter was rough, and despite how obvious it was, despite how much I'd heard about it, it took me a long time to recognize the symptoms of not wanting to do anything, and not being productive.

I'm sure now I know what to look for things will be better in the future..

Yeah, I'm with the article's author; those delivery bots won't last 5 minutes in most American or European cities once people understand what they are.

NPCs with treasure inside!

Do you know that there are things full of cash called ATMs?

Yeah, some robots will be stolen in the beginning, but they are filled with all kind of sensors & cameras.

You'll be caught pretty quickly.

They're secured to buildings, pretty much immobile, usually have CCTV covering them (in the UK at least) ... but they still get stolen occasionally, eg ripped out the wall using heavy plant (diggers and such).

The robots look a lot flimsier than an ATM.

And now they're just spyware for Microsoft.

And now it's just more spyware for Microsoft.

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