Ukraine’s tech industry was well positioned to capitalize on this opportunity thanks to the dramatic evolution it’s undergone in recent years. Since the first IT companies appeared in the mid-1990s the sector has experienced a meteoric rise. Today it accounts for 4 percent of GDP and employs roughly 200,000 people, boasting some of the country’s highest salaries. Much of this growth has been built on outsourcing. But while in the early days the main sell for international customers was the ability to hire competent programmers at lower prices, as the industry has matured the value proposition has shifted considerably, says Chubay. “It’s not about the cost anymore, it’s about the expertise and ultimate outcomes,” says Chubay. “We have moved up the value chain. We have become more holistic, and we are gaining more and more responsibility over bigger chunks of our client’s businesses.”

BBC World News.

Oh yes. Ukrainian programmers charge like total bastards. And good for them. I don’t think anybody should undersell their labor. But the idea that you can hire them cheaply – this hasn’t been true since last century. This creates a weird situation in Ukraine where a class of people makes the kind of money that’s way higher than even the US median while the rest makes between 1/10 and 1/5 of US median.

I’m still not fully over the poor guy who left all this and went to Mexico with the hopes of recreating the Ukrainian programmers there.

“Among a cohort of 432,302 persons aged 2–19, rate of body mass index increase approximately doubled during pandemic compared to prepandemic period. Persons w/ prepandemic overweight or obesity & younger school-aged children experienced largest increases.” https://t.co/vQPl5ILd17

I’m not sure I understand why, though. We didn’t have Spanish-style lockdowns where people weren’t allowed to go outside. Most people with children don’t live in huge, blue megalopolises. I was outside with Klara for 5-6 hours every day in April-May 2020 (before the schools reopened on June 1). Playgrounds were closed but there was a ton of other outside options. How come “no sitting at school all day” means more and not less fat?

It’s gotten to the point that people who pooh-poohed my concerns about the increasingly totalitarian COVID measures for a year now freak out and I have to repeat, “Let’s stay calm! We’ll get through it. Many things can still happen to turn this back.”

One issue that trips up conservatives constantly is that they keep trying to play woke games and hope to beat wokesters at them. “Democrats are the real racists” is one of the saddest among such games. You can’t win if you start running around calling people racists because the other side has years of experience on you. Just stop. Don’t support this nefarious practice by participating in it. It’s not OK, it’s not helping anything.

All these blackfaces, watermelon juices, climate changes, “more people of color support X than Y” – leave all that crap to the idiots who invented it. Talk to those of us who couldn’t care less who’s “a bigger racist” and who’s got more diverse whatevers.

There’s no bigger sign of losership than mimicking the behavior and language of your opponent.