I frequently participate in debates about why Poles playing an outsized role in building frontier AI1 in the US doesn’t translate into an AI boom in their home country. Why are Poles successful and often in critical technical roles in the US, but not in Poland? What’s up with the air in Central Europe?
The answer to this question is multi-faceted, and I will try to pull it apart in a series of essays. I’ll challenge some, in my opinion, misplaced beliefs prevalent in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) that cloud the discussion.
People often point to a lack of funding, a lack of business acumen, or other day-to-day issues, but I think something more fundamental is going on. We’re culturally taught to be world-class problem solvers, not problem pickers.
Poles, and more broadly, Central and Eastern Europeans, are talented and smart people who value science and hardcore engineering. I’ll focus on Poland, which I know best, but most of my comments extend to Belarus, Ukraine, Slovakia, Lithuania, Hungary, Romania, etc.
Poland has a long tradition of preparing students for international programming competitions, such as ICPC or IOI, and Poles consistently score in the top five in the world. If we’re so good, then why don’t we see world-roaring technology coming out of Poland? The best we seem to achieve is having second-tier branches of American companies handling scaling established business units and other lower-risk functions.
If we can win gold in the IOI, why can’t we win gold at building an advanced economy based on developing technology and software products?
If you look at programming competitions like the IOI, they require ingenuity in solving very hard programming puzzles—that someone else very clearly defined. In business, that level of precise problem articulation usually can only be found at large, late-stage companies where Poles find themselves at.
In contrast, starting a technology business is, first and foremost, an act of problem picking. Poles are culturally blind to techniques for selecting and honing the right problems. As a result, the best we can do is dive into extremely technical discussions (mostly in the realm of problem-solving) while zoning out on problem selection. This manifests itself everywhere I go, but definitely at Warsaw AI Breakfast, where my biggest struggle as a host has been convincing people presenting their demos to explain clearly why they built that library or app.
Who excels at problem picking? In my experience, Americans2 and Israeli absolutely do, and they have a rich set of tools for it: storytelling, prototyping, thinking about value creation, understanding markets and ecosystem dynamics, defining business models, connecting human psychology and technology, and more.
In our culture of only intensely concentrating on problem solving, we’re like fish that don’t know they’re in water. If you try to explain water to a fish, they’d say, “Water? What’s water?” They’re so surrounded by it that they can’t see it—until they jump out of it.
This is how I feel about the Polish and CEE culture of not appreciating problem picking and problem defining. Until we embrace this as a serious skill that requires practice, thought, effort, and depth, we’ll be destined to solve problems handed over by others. Until we start noticing the water, we’re set to either sell programmers by the hour (and see all value accrue elsewhere) or have our most ambitious talent leave for the US, where world-class problem thinking takes place.
This cultural handicap, not a lack of government or VC funding or many other superficial elements, is the real bottleneck for the region truly blossoming.
PS. Some people who read this post pointed to ‘structural factors’ rather than culture as the underlying force. However, problem defining (and product skills) is a trade skill. If only we had (as a structural factor) a nexus of high-quality, product-oriented companies in CEE, people would naturally learn in droves. Observing interns and young employees in the Silicon Valley, who have almost complete freedom over their career trajectories yet often gravitate toward algorithm-heavy, backend-focused careers, is where this argument falls apart. Another way to observe culture is through spare time: there are many engineers tinkering with libraries, backend development, and algorithms-heavy work, but you hardly see much less product tinkering.
Thanks to Maciek Małysz and Michał Domański for reading drafts of this post.