Great article, as always. You are among my favorite bloggers to read.
70,000 IT personnel have left and another 100,000 will follow. Google estimates this is out of an IT work force of 1.3 million, so substantial but not obviously a crisis level problem yet.
It is my experience interacting with IT personnel leaving Russia that it is the best of them who are leaving. The IT personnel leaving Russia are a nonrandom sample. If you treat a company’s employees badly and employees suddenly start quitting then it’s the smartest, hardest-working, most proactive people who leave first—the employees who are confident they can work elsewhere. The same applies to countries.
Engineering is a long-tailed profession. A small number of people produce most of the value. If we lost the 5% best engineers in America we’d lose >90% of new tech companies (weighted by market capitalization).
The basic idea is clear. Do not use the air force, that would cause an incident. But one can use gunboat diplomacy with the navy (‘coasting up and down your coast’ is a great line, don’t try to deny it) and with other forms of aid. General incremental escalation, with a side of ‘I have no idea what I am talking about so who knows what I might do.’
In this context, the purpose of sailing ships back and forth is usually to claim some sort of ownership (or the enemy’s lack thereof) over a body of water or to threaten the passage of enemy forces through the body of water. Russia is not contesting the international law governing international waters. NATO does not intend to strike Russian ships.
NATO’s objective is to aid Ukraine without accidentally triggering an escalation that leads to the use of nuclear weapons. NATO coasting up and down the Russian coast with its navy increases the odds of nuclear war because it increases the odds of an accident where NATO and Russia fire upon each other. NATO sailing ships back and forth beyond Russian waters would benefit Ukraine because Ukraine wants NATO and Russia to engage in a direct war.
NATO should be positioning its navy in range of Russia but not in order to escalate the conflict (which goes against NATO interests) but because NATO does not want its forces out of position in case there is a direct war.
Great article, as always. You are among my favorite bloggers to read.
It is my experience interacting with IT personnel leaving Russia that it is the best of them who are leaving. The IT personnel leaving Russia are a nonrandom sample. If you treat a company’s employees badly and employees suddenly start quitting then it’s the smartest, hardest-working, most proactive people who leave first—the employees who are confident they can work elsewhere. The same applies to countries.
Engineering is a long-tailed profession. A small number of people produce most of the value. If we lost the 5% best engineers in America we’d lose >90% of new tech companies (weighted by market capitalization).
In this context, the purpose of sailing ships back and forth is usually to claim some sort of ownership (or the enemy’s lack thereof) over a body of water or to threaten the passage of enemy forces through the body of water. Russia is not contesting the international law governing international waters. NATO does not intend to strike Russian ships.
NATO’s objective is to aid Ukraine without accidentally triggering an escalation that leads to the use of nuclear weapons. NATO coasting up and down the Russian coast with its navy increases the odds of nuclear war because it increases the odds of an accident where NATO and Russia fire upon each other. NATO sailing ships back and forth beyond Russian waters would benefit Ukraine because Ukraine wants NATO and Russia to engage in a direct war.
NATO should be positioning its navy in range of Russia but not in order to escalate the conflict (which goes against NATO interests) but because NATO does not want its forces out of position in case there is a direct war.
Where does the 5%/90% statistic come from?