Does anyone know why JetBrains, which seems to very much be a Russian company, has their head office in Prague?
I've long assumed it was for marketing and business reasons. So many of us in the west automatically are suspicious of dealing with a Russian company, especially when it comes to handing over credit card information. A prejudice for sure.
The Czech Republic, however, is close enough to Russia, with a closely related language, with good travel connections to Russia, is more integrated with the west, especially since 2004 when it joined the EU, suffers less from the prejudice we often hold towards Russia, but still has a low cost of living relative to, say, Germany, UK, or - God forbid - Silicon Valley.
Oh, and when you tell staff, "Hey, we need you to make a trip to Prague to visit the Czech office", very few of them are disappointed...
In short: 90% of employes (including founders) in JetBrains are Russians, and founders moved to Prague in 1999 because of economic reasons. Headquaters remains in Prague mostly because of it was founded here and, probably, because of reasons you are mentioned.
By being in certain countries you exclude certain talent because of discriminatory laws.
Russia for instance can forget about any talent that might be part of or supportive of LGBT. Not sure if Prague is better though, but at this moment most countries are better than 'state sponsored' national socialist attacks.
Any discrimination based on sexual preferences, sex, race, age and so on is strictly forbidden. One could sue for an ad which says they want 'younger' workers. Gay discrimination would be national scandal. There is also handful of agencies which are very keen to enforce Work Law.
There is violence against LGBT, but most cases are severely punished by state. What is 'war on drugs' in US, is 'war on neonazis' in Czech Republic.
I would suggest other subjects for discussion. For example the gay rape in US prison is widely accepted, comedians even joke about it on TV.
HAHAHAHAHAHAH sure man, sure.
He coughed up some coffee and told stories about St P, the cost of life (well, the cost of death) and so on.
So, it is not dangerous now? It is good that things get better, good luck with getting rid of the present thieving criminals. If I still remembered some math, it would be fun to get a job there and see the place a bit more.
I've only been to gay parties a few times in my life. Very depressing, since they have much more fun than we hetero people. You feel a bit ashamed even, for your "preferences". :-( It doesn't matter, since (at least for Sweden) they have horrible music taste, Eurovision is the least bad component.
I'm pretty sure blinding people by shooting BB-guns at an LGBT meetup [1] would still be considered a crime by Prague's police department.
P.S. It's former soviet union states. And I think Prague was never officially a Soviet state, so former Communist countries perhaps?
[1] http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/two-injured-in-at...
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/01/russia-rise-hom...
That's important for a company who are building tools that lean heavily on compilers/compiler techniques..
In total there are 8 JetBrains offices, in addition to remote workers: http://www.jetbrains.com/company/contacts/
The trick is always the same, when you use english as the common language in your company, you immediately give a strong communication power to native english speakers, they always look so confident when they speak. They look more professional by not doing mistakes, by using a wide vocabulary and by mastering the corporate lingo. That's a place where Europe could innovate: finding a third way between using English that completely obliterate non-native speakers in arguments and using hundred of translators, one for each couple of languages.
Imagine they would be a vast minority, that most of them would be struggling to make a sentence, and that sentence would be hard to understand (this problem sometimes arise inside a language with local accents and dialects), how would meetings turn?