Slides from my presentation delivered at GeeCON 2017. Have you ever wondered why great multi-billion dollar software products changing our lives are built in the US, Western Europe or Australia and not in Poland, Ukraine or Bulgaria? Uber, Facebook, Spotify, Tesla (sic!), JIRA - all of them built by software geeks. Are Polish (or other CEE) IT specialists less intelligent or worse than their colleagues from the West? Or maybe it’s about the huge capital those countries have and we don’t. Or maybe the problem is in our approach to IT and our mindset? Regardless of the true reasons, as the effect, tens and hundreds of thousands of relatively low-cost and controllable people in Poland and other CEE countries work on conserving and maintaining software systems envisioned and usually designed elsewhere. Together with other emerging countries, we have become a development plantation for the most modern countries. I’d like to analyse some reasons of this situation and present what mindset change must happen so that Poland and other CEE countries are not anymore colonies providing human resources, but instead have a creational impact on the advancement of the civilisation and modern economy.

1. Developer plantations
Colonialism of XXI century
Wojciech Seliga
Kraków, 17-19 May 2017
@wseliga
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0

2. A FEW QUESTIONS
➤ Who works in Poland or other CEE
countries?
➤ Who works in a company with the
headquarters in the US, Australia or
Western Europe?
➤ Who frequently talks to the end users of
the system you develop?

3. HISTORICAL RESOURCES OF POLAND
➤ woods
➤ crops
➤ coal
➤ iron
,

4. MODERN RESOURCES OF POLAND
➤ Educated, ambitious and hard-
working people resources
➤ Default go-to country for building
Shared Service and Outsourcing
Centres:
➤ Accounting services
➤ Human Resources
➤ Payroll services
➤ IT services

5. SOFTWARE
DEVELOPMENT
OUTSOURCING /
SHARED SERVICES
Picture courtesy of Luc Galoppin - CC BY 2.0

6. SOFTWARE
DEVELOPMENT
SERVICES BECOME
A COMMODITY

8. A DEMAND FOR DEVELOPERS
FOREVER?

9. MINERS
ENGLISH TEACHERS
LAWYERS
BANKERS
Picture courtesy of Willian Soares - CC BY 2.0

10. GFC
SEPTEMBER 11TH
DOTCOM BUBBLE Picture courtesy of Marco Bellucci - CC BY 2.0

11. 2005

12. ABILITY TO WRITE
COMPUTER
PROGRAMS
BECOMES
COMMODITY
(like literacy in XX century)

13. TECHNOLOGY EXCITEMENT & FOCUS
Java
Scala
Ruby
React
Angular2
Akka
Hibernate
Node.js
Ember.js
Vue.js
Django
Play
Mesos
Kubernetes
Docker
Spring
C#
Hadoop
RDS
Nagios
Redis
MongoDB
S3
Python
Bootstrap
Bricks - by Egor Smile - CC BY-SA 4.0
Cement mixer - by Ben Sutherland - CC BY 2.0
Trowel - by Obersachse - CC BY-SA 3.0
Hammer - by Shakespeare at English Wikipedia - CC BY-SA 3.0

14. BRICKSGOODFOREVERYTHING?

15. BRICKSGOODFOREVERYTHING?

16. BRICKSGOODFOREVERYTHING?

17. BRICKSGOODFOREVERYTHING?

18. BRICKSGOODFOREVERYTHING?

19. BRICKSGOODFOREVERYTHING?
Ege University Sport Hall courtesy of Mach - CC BY SA 3.0LOT Dreamliner courtesy of Tony Hisgett - CC BY 2.0
Brick house courtesy of Chris Light at English Wikipedia - CC BY SA 3.0 Brick bridge courtesy of Gillie Rhodes - CC BY NC 2.0

21. Race to the Bottom

22. WE NEED TO PROVIDE FAR MORE
VALUE THAN JUST THE CODE

23. “TECHNOLOGY” BECOMES
IMPLIED

24. TechnologyProduct
Real solution
to a real problem

25. Why
How
What
Technology and software development processes here
Traditionally this is “Business”
Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle

26. Why
How
What
Technology and software development processes here
Traditionally this is “Business”
Developers should try
to enter this circle
Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle

28. Tester
QA Engineer
Project Manager
Support Engineer
System Admin
Product Manager
Product Marketing Manager
Business Developer
Business Analyst
Growth Hacker
Customer Advocate
Account Manager
Designer
Release Manager
Globe by TUBS - CC BY-SA 3.0
Telemarketer
Data Scientist
Developer

29. SOFTWARE BUSINESS &
PRODUCT SPECIALISTS ARE
UNICORNS IN POLAND

30. The Matrix, WarnerBros, 1999

32. ARE WE DOOMED?
Picture courtesy of Robert Hruzek - CC BY NC ND 2.0

33. PROGRAMMING

34. PROGRAMMING
SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

35. PROGRAMMING
PRODUCT ENGINEERING
SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

36. PRODUCT ENGINEERING
From Wikipedia:
…Product engineering usually entails activity dealing with issues
of cost, producibility, quality, performance, reliability,
serviceability, intended lifespan and user features. These product
characteristics are generally all sought in the attempt to make the
resulting product attractive to its intended market and a
successful contributor to the business of the organization
that intends to offer the product to that market….

37. Software Development
Quality Assurance
Maintenance
Deployment
APIs
Support
Performance Engineering
Software Engineering
UI Design
Vision Data Analysis
Design Extensibility
Documentation
Market Awareness
Advocacy
Strategy
Pricing Strategy
User Experience
Customer Engagement
Competitive Analysis
Market Research
Inspiring Customers
User Research
Adoption

38. Software Development
Quality Assurance
Maintenance
Deployment
APIs
Support
Performance Engineering
Product Engineering
UI Design
Vision Data Analysis
Design Extensibility
Documentation
Market Awareness
Advocacy
Strategy
Pricing Strategy
User Experience
Customer Engagement
Competitive Analysis
Market Research
Inspiring Customers
User Research
Adoption

39. buy/acquire/integrate over build
kill over let it rot
measure over hope
de-scope over half-bake
research over guess
challenge over believe
ask & validate over assume

40. PRODUCT
ENGINEERS ARE
NOT ARTISTS

41. FEEDBACK LOOP WITH
THE MARKET/CUSTOMER/USER
IS THE ULTIMATE FEEDBACK LOOP
PRODUCT ENGINEER IS INTERESTED IN

42. Photo by wackystuff - CC BY-NC 2.0
Even God himself created the world in 6 iterations!
Iterative Execution

43. PLAYING AS
A TEAM
Product Engineering is
a multi-discipline game

44. ENGINEERS
JUMP TO
SOLUTIONS
TOO QUICKLY
(including yours truly)

45. PRODUCT ENGINEERING IS ABOUT
LEAVING YOUR COMFORT ZONE
➤ enter uncharted territories
➤ make connections with people not from
your tribe
➤ go dangerously fast
➤ make constant tradeoffs between time,
cost, technical quality and scope
Picture courtesy of oklanica - CC BY-NC 2.0

46. “If everything seems under control, you're not
going fast enough
-Mario Andretti
Photo by Legends of Motorsports - CC BY-SA 2.0

47. ENGINEERS SEEK ORDER
➤ By default engineers want to see or
establish an Order around them
➤ Software engineers want it even more, as
the software is infinitely flexible -
refactoring, renaming, code style, process
improvement & automation, “Clean
Code”, …
➤ The balance between The Chaos and The
Order is the key - otherwise risk-takers
win or you collapse
Photo by Rich Renomeron - CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

48. PRODUCT ENGINEERING IS HARD
Photo by jochenWolters - CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

50. RELATIVELY POOR ECONOMY DOES NOT HELP - CEE VS SILICON VALLEY
Plenty of investors?
Great networking options?
Rich parents?
Greater courage?
Bigger market?
More persistence?
Better companies?
Photo by Artur Andrzej CC BY-SA 4.0

51. RELATIVELY POOR ECONOMY DOES NOT HELP - CEE VS SILICON VALLEY
Plenty of investors?
Great networking options?
Rich parents?
Greater courage?
Bigger market?
More persistence?
Better companies?

52. Photo by Jeremy Segrott - CC BY 2.0

53. The Matrix, WarnerBros, 1999

54. REALITY - THOSE WHO KNOW “WHY” - TAKE IT ALL
Subcontractors / Craftsmen
Construction Companies
Investment
Group
Resource Engagement
Business - Why & How
Technology
Outsourcing Companies

55. REALITY - THOSE WHO KNOW “WHY” - TAKE IT ALL
Subcontractors / Craftsmen
Construction Companies
Investment
Group
Resource Engagement
Subcontractors
Craftsmen
Construction Companies
Investment Group
Profits

56. TECHNOLOGY IS A MEAN, NOT A GOAL
FOCUSING JUST ON IT PUTS YOU
IN DANGER

57. KNOW-HOW
KNOW-WHY

58. THE QUEST FOR THE PLACE TO GROW
➤ Direct exposure to customers and the market
➤ Direct exposure to “Business People”
➤ No single centre of gravity abroad
➤ Career paths in “Business”, ideally without the
need to relocate
➤ No people pigeonholing (aka. devs can do only
coding), a place for generalists
➤ Headquarters in Poland/CEE…?
➤ No slave-driver culture amongst local
management (think: Stephen for Django
Unchained…)
➤ Local capital involved

59. PEOPLE WHO STAY IN THEIR
COMFORT ZONE DO NOT EVOLVE
AND … BECOME IRRELEVANT

60. IT’S GOOD TIME TO TAKE RISKS
WHILE THERE IS STILL A DEMAND FOR
DEVELOPERS AND … YOU CAN DEMAND

61. THANK YOU
Twitter: @wseliga
We are
hiring
in Gdańsk!
Shameless
plug