4. New Vocabulary
(I'm teaching you bad, bad words...)
• Outsourcing
• Precariat
• ‘Playbor’
• ‘The Vectoral
Class’
• ‘Audience
Commodity’
• Neoliberalism
McKenzie Wark: the
vectoral class is the one
whocontrols vectors of
information distribution
The dangers of neoliberalism: it destroys local economies and
works tothe advantage of largercapital owners.
5. Precariat vs. Digital White Collar
• ‘Freedom’
• Learns on the go
• Replaceable
• Works from
anywhere
• Small jobs, small
projects
• Sell themselves
• Social security
• Educated
• Headhunted
• Office hours
• Large and
challenging
projects
• Sales departments
find clients
7. Total Export of ICT Services
If we divideit per
population,thenwe are
betterthanRussiaand
Ukraine, but worsethan
LithuaniaandPoland,and
Latvia takesthe firstplace.
9. Back to Belarus
• We are a part of global job market now.
• We might be a bit better with English than Russia or Ukraine.
• Internet access is relatively high, most likely computers are
widely available.
• The level of social security is still relatively high.
• (Another side of the same coin) The legal system is still
backward, high level of legal uncertainty.
• Living standards are quite high, exploitative ‘digital labor’ not
so lucrative.
• Legal, language and organizational skills are still helping. (And
everyone’s an economist.)
• Disastrous state in the management and HR departments.
10.
11. The Dark Side
• We don’t have any sustainable domestic industry (and
we might not be able to afford it in the future). That's
why EPAM Systems and Wargaming invest in R&D.
• No matter if we like it, we are just a convenient
assembly line (just like in the Soviet times). Look at the
history of the USSR and guess what happens if the
current order fails (and Trump is capable of making it
fail miserably).
• Look at China – they have never been great at
outsourced development, but China has been investing
fortunes into R&D for decades, and now they are
buying American companies.
12.
13. R&D Expenses as % of GDP, 2013, UNESCO
Latvia 0.61
Belarus 0.67
Ukraine 0.76
Poland 0.87
Lithuania 0.95
Russia 1.13
China 2.01
USA 2.73
14. Conclusion
• We won’t see much exploitative ‘digital labor’ here.
• People and companies are relatively ‘digitally literate’,
comparing to Russia and Ukraine, so they ‘fight for their
rights’.
• Wargaming is a Cyprus company. Viber is an Israeli
company. Epam Systems is a USA company. Even MapsMe
was a Swiss company before Mail.ru bought it. Think about
it. Think why.
• Outsourcing drains the resources that could be spent on
research and development.
• In a long-term perspective, the industry might still generate
stable income, on behalf of transnational companies
acquiring successful projects.
“Digital labor” is a term to describe the state of the global labor market in the age of Internet.
McKenzie Wark: the vectoral class is the one who controls vectors of information distribution
The dangers of neoliberalism: it destroys local economies and works to the advantage of larger capital owners.
If we divide it per population, then we are better than Russia and Ukraine, but worse than Lithuania and Poland, and Latvia takes the first place.
Actually, Latvia is also the country with the highest level of poverty, according to the same statistics. Latvia is just too small. Latvian statistics are crazy. Statistics for small countries are crazy!
This index also shows high correlation between ICT export and the level of English proficiency.