My assessment after having a few years perspective:
- There's quite a big span between the average level to high level to top level when it comes to polish devs. Specifically, it goes a lot lever than what I'm used to. It goes high too, though, but those individuals are not necessarily cheaper than a western european employee of the same calibre (probably similar).
- (Engineering) Management culture is totally whacko and quite a bit behind the western world. I blame the machoismo.
Tizen was/is mostly built out of a Samsung subsidiary in Warsaw, Poland. (Several thousand software engineers in total.) I worked with Polish software engineers for a western company that used the same outsourcing method during the same time that Tizen was being built. We had hires from Samsung and they had hires from us.
I think that what I witnessed at our company (which I won't name) is representative for what Samsung saw.
The stereotypical development model was one where individual developers were perceived as lego blocks that could be moved from one area to another about as the project(s) progressed without any regard for the individual contributors accumulated knowledge. Large volumes of contributors ("bug resolvers") were valued over smaller, coherent teams with smarter contributors.
There was also a disturbing amount of machoismo surrounding everything - nothing could be questioned; everything was a of sense pride to someone.
(What I heard from the local engineering managers supports the above.)
- There's quite a big span between the average level to high level to top level when it comes to polish devs. Specifically, it goes a lot lever than what I'm used to. It goes high too, though, but those individuals are not necessarily cheaper than a western european employee of the same calibre (probably similar).
- (Engineering) Management culture is totally whacko and quite a bit behind the western world. I blame the machoismo.