FFS - I live and only have ever worked in Silicon Valley and I couldn't even get freaking DSL for five years after it was invented in San Jose!
What's going on is larger counties made the jump sooner so small countries have many examples to learn from.
So smaller countries need to spend a higher % of GDP on IT
Remember, things like local tax laws are not going to simply reflect some other country's rules 100% of the time.
If nothing else, it's a shining example of what can be achieved when a collective effort is put into modernizing digital infrastructure, i.e. putting a little -- otherwise [economically] unremarkable -- baltic country on the economic map. Moreover, this comes at a time during which there is much discussion of the US (and several European countries') aging infrastructures, and in which the economic opportunity of modernizing them is being scrutinized.
Granted, this kind of transformation may or may not be possible elsewhere, but to brush it aside as "uninteresting" is to suggest a lack of intellectual curiosity.
But ultimately the biggest culprit is probably the major political, economic and cultural hangovers from over a century of political instability.
Yet, but the prime majority of all that wonderful digital cornucopia is being developed by underfed and underpaid devs with level of technical comprehension comparable to people called "jquery monkeys" in the West. By the time most of them reach late twenties, more experienced ones will move on to become professional devs abroad, another will, sadly, join the socioeconomic construct/caste of "going to nowhere 30 somethings." You guys in the West complain about age discrimination and skill obsolescence only by the time you hit forties, fifties, if not sixties, but here people hit the same stage much earlier. Companies do not pay for skill even 1/10th of what an American Dotcom would.
What makes a seeming difference in the level of quality is that experienced tech people are found more evenly distributed than in US where Dotcoms and well funded companies vacuum significant portion of any much senior developers on the job market, or in China where Alibaba and Tencent literally employ double digit of all tech workforce and almost all real talent. Here, the fact that a software developer is just yet another "nothing special" white collar occupation somehow, counterintuitively brings some benefit.
I make $40k after tax, in Russia, employed locally, and while that doesn't sound like much to an American ear, I've bought my apartment for $90k a year before. I seriously doubt anyone is going to pay me $400k before tax in the US as you suggested. I'm 32 by the way. And I never work more than 40 hr/week.
I don't see how you can underpay a dev in Russia. Maybe you can by hiring in really small and depressive towns? Or promising rocket science job?
That makes you a rather expensive employee if the company hiring you actually pays your pension contributions, EI, medical bills, and other quasi-tax charges (which are much higher than in the West.)
24k a year is what a good grad can expect in a company that pays taxes in full. The full cost of employing such a guy will be right about $40k
It's frequent nowdays to be cited your salary before 13% tax.
Compared to Denmark or Norway where virtually everyone (from kids to elderly people) actually speak decent English, none of the Baltic countries have 'exceptional English'.
"Even doctors may not have good English" -- in Paris I'm happy to find one that will speak English at all. Do not underestimate how unwilling or afraid to speak English a lot of people are even in places like Paris and Berlin.
Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian (which is non indo european language) have virtually no non-native speakers and large amounts of the Russian born citizens (and aliens) may not speak the language, rendering English a good choice to obtain information. Having tiny user base forces the case compared to France, Germany or Italy (imo worse than both France/Germany).
For instance movies at the theater (and largely on the TV) have no dubbing unless they are targeted to kids who are unable to read.
Russia doesn't seem very limited to me.
"Russia-China Bilateral Trade Up 30% In Q1 2017" [0]
"Russia upgraded to top rank in world wheat exports in 2017-18" [1]
"In Moscow, Saudi king slams Iran, signs billion dollar defense, energy deals" [2]
"King Salman and Putin Deals Leave the U.S. Out in the Cold" [3]
"Russia, world's 2nd-biggest arms seller, wants to expand its arms sales abroad" [4]
[0] https://www.russia-briefing.com/news/russia-china-bilateral-...
[1] http://www.agrimoney.com/news/russia-upgraded-to-top-rank-in...
[2] https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-moscow-saudi-king-slams-ira...
[3] https://www.rand.org/blog/2017/10/king-salman-and-putin-deal...
[4] http://www.businessinsider.com/ap-russia-poised-to-expand-it...
Check out another one I found -- "Russia US Trade up 25% in 2017"
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenroberts/2017/04/22/russia-u-...
There no doubt that Russia is still a major player in trade, in fact economists see it as one of the countries with the most potential for development in BRIC (brasil russia india china).
Unfortunately, the way the strata of government and society are has left the population to stagnate in terms of their well being and they are missing the opportunities in new-age, non-oligarchical industries - Russia is held back by its antiquated social structures and lacks incentive to change.
One can look at the populations in circa 1300 and extrapolate from that. Without going into details - the baltic coast had it's own catholic/pagan populations with trade ties to hanseatic cities, and those populations are the basis for current nation states.
Russia, with it's slavic culture strongly tied to the greek orthodox church was a bit further to east.
See for example
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_changes_of_Russi...
and other wikipedia pages on the baltic states.
None of this have much to do with the current tech scene, though :)
They had an insane monarchy that delayed industrialization, missed out on the middle class development and went through a scorched earth total war and communist regime.
It’s a nation of contrast and paradox. Russia is a lot like the US in many ways.
That actually isn't true. Russian monarchy wasn't late to industrialize, and around half of industrial success claimed by USSR is rooted before 1917. For example, Donbass was already a thing back then.
The other half was built by the USA.
It was decades behind the UK and others. That’s not to say there was no industry, but over half of output was peasant agriculture circa 1900, and the old methods were unable to adequately feed the nation.
Soviet period is when mass starvations happened. And not only during wars.