alt Hacker NewsPoland is now among the 20 largest economies
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I live in Poland. This headline is misleading. Poland didn't build a top-20 economy. Western Europe and the US built their economy in Poland, because the labor is educated and cheap.
There are almost no globally competitive Polish companies. The "growth" is branch offices of German and American corporations taking advantage of engineers who'll work for 40% of Berlin rates. Remove the foreign-owned sector and you're looking at a mid-tier economy running on EU structural funds.
It's a great place to live, genuinely. But calling this "Poland's economy" is like calling a McDonald's franchise "your restaurant"
Years ago I bought some really nice brushless motors and was surprised to see they were made in Poland. I had no idea they were manufacturers of things like that.
Later I bought even nicer motors, meant to provide exceptional control and feedback for tactile/haptic behaviours, and they were from Poland too.
Then I got to work on a robotic arm which contained a bunch of components from Poland. At this point it was clear to me that it wasn’t coincidence.
Finally, I built a drone with my kids and again, the motors are Polish. And they’re excellent.
They went from being a place I would only expect to encounter cultural food items from to a place that entered a high tech supply chain which seems to produce high enough quality components that I see them without seeking them out.
As a Canadian it made me very envious. We should be able to do this. I’ve seen a handful of Canadian motors in my life, and they were all blower motors a long time ago. Our ability to build cutting edge technology seems to be so limited as to be virtually irrelevant in most cases.
I love the polish, but credit where credit is due:
„Poland is the largest beneficiary of EU funds 2014-2020, with one in four euro going to Poland“
https://www.gov.pl/web/funds-regional-policy/poland-at-the-f...
Update: The comments below this are strange.
I ment: „Poland gets money, Poland transforms it into more money”.
Is Poland more efficient in it than other countries? I do not know. Would Poland have generated less money without it ? Probably? Is an annual investment of the 2-3%of the GDP into a country a lot? I think so?
Educated AND motivated workforce will do the trick.
All the polish I know that work in IT enjoy handwork as well. They are hard workers.
7 years ago we got a Polish Hunting Spaniel, and did our first trip to Poland. Since then we've been back several times, and each time you really see the different - new and upgraded road, city buildings being renovated into new housing and commercial areas - also noticed the costs going up too.
But also you start to notice that definitely a lot of people who left Poland are coming back, and with that skills and new economic opportunities.
the EU funds argument works both ways. plenty of countries received similar transfers and didn't compound it the same way. the interesting question isn't where the money came from, it's what Poland did with it that others didn't.
I spent some time in Poland for work about 10 years ago. I remember the cities being very expensive and chic - on par with Paris, Berlin, etc but when you got out of the cities (my project was in Bydgoszcz) it's a completely different world - poor, rundown, etc. would be curious how it is now and also where most of the Ukrainian refugees settled.
Noah Smith had a good article about this in 2024 for those interested in reading more: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/six-ideas-for-poland
They have had good public education for the past decade or two and rank high in international student rankings. So, I would bet that high 'human capital' would be the cause here.
I am French but travelled extensively to Poalnd and lived there for some time. This is a truly wonderful country.
The one thing that is a insurmontable barrier to go and live there (I considered that) is the healthcare sstem. It is completely broken.
You have free healthcare where people behave like beggars in front of the demi-god MD. They do not pay him for hs work, officially, but there is money slipped under he table to make things work. It is unbereable.
Then you have provate health care whichis not not bad, until you have a serious problem and you are back to the public system.
Finally the medicines/drugs are not refunded. You have to pay for them. This is wild for someone coming from France.
I think that if Poland upgraded that part of its politics it would be a country bringing in lots and lots of people useful for the country.
They even have a space program! I hear they're planning to put the first man on the sun.
Two main reasons: Foreign direct investment, averaging ~5% GDP/year, largely to build and fully integrate Polish industrial base in to Germany. Secondly: an education system designed to create an economy on advanced manufacturing.
The same has been happening in Slovakia; GDP growth per annum very comparable to Poland since 1995.
As a typical example my very German car has many components with "made in <Poland/Slovakia/Hungary>" on the side.
Having studied in the Netherlands it was somewhat difficult finding a job (10 years ago), and my first job was in Poland at a large Pharma company. I started working there for a wage lower than Dutch minimum wage when I started, just to get an in into the industry.
There is a while set of jobs in Pharma that got moved to Warsaw and no longer available in NL/DE.
But it feels (and smell) like a third world culture if you look at the air pollution level during 6 to 8 month a year (https://maps.sensor.community/#7/52.210/18.223): nearly everywhere people burn coal (among other biomass) the air is incredibly polluted.
One of the most underrated countries in Europe to visit if you’re a fan of history, architecture or food. I am so blessed to Be able to go every year and am hoping for continued prosperity for both Poland and the region.
For travel? I prefer Poland over Paris.
Poland is an underrated European destination (and I assume most Eastern European former USSR-aligned countries are too). If you haven't been you should definitely visit. I've been to both Paris and Warsaw recently and tbh I prefer Warsaw over Paris. Warsaw is clean (little graffiti, little trash on streets), safe, no homeless, etc and is a relatively high-trust society (another comment in this thread also mentioned that). Police actually enforce laws. The worst I saw was a drunk man on the street (although not violent or anything), and within minutes 4 police officers came to him. Few tourists. Everyone knows English.
Paris: I won't go into the negatives here (like the Africans/gypsies trying to scam you, sell you useless stuff, etc), it was nice overall, a little dirty, but I actually liked Warsaw better.
I'm from Poland, it sucks as usual. Our GDP comes from buying groceries.
Article totally missed the big immigration wave from Belarus in 2020-2021, after a heavy authoritarian crackdown there.
Contrary to immigration wave from Ukraine (war refugees), immigrants from Belarus were mostly political refugees. They we mostly composed of politically and economically active people (as non-active people had no reason to emigrate). So even with less total number, immigrants from Belarus have higher contribution to Polish GDP per immigrant capita.
I live here and I know why. It is also not solely connected to any EU funds. Not at all. We have a large tech sector here. IT, software engineering, embedded, agentic AI, genAI, backend, platforms, and consulting firms and startups. We have hyper growth that is actively sponsored with economic development teams from govt in each region. Mfg also. Cheaper labor and growth in many sectors and industries.
Poland went more free market than the other former Soviet bloc countries. Free markets are the fastest and best way to prosperity.
I am simply so happy for them. I used to have insomnia and in a music filesharing hub mostly Euros are awake around midnight Singapore time, so had so many online Euro friends mostly from Poland, Finland, Sweden, and especially Romania. It is from my Polish friends that I learned of so many great artists and authors, Beksinski and the nobel laureate Wislawa among many others. I memorized the Polish anthem once but I just know the first line now, Marsz, Marsz, Dabrowski! Polish diaspora especially Polish Americans are just too cool too, Mark Z Danielewski is a favorite.
Worked with many Polish developers for the last 8 years. Great group, very talented. However, the initial motivations to go there were to keep costs low. Eventually they saw their salaries increase 3x or 4x over the years. They totally deserved it, but the economics change if you're running a startup. Now with AI, not clear if the tech outsourcing dynamic will remain.
before Brexit - a decent number of polish people in the UK doing all types of work.
after Brexit - noticed polish engineers didn't want to be in the UK
Look at the demography though. Poland will fall very hard, faster than its neighbours.
The story of Poland is also a story of migration.
A significant percentage of the polish population participated in what is labled today economic migration.
They went Germany, Ireland, UK experienced an influx of migrants taking up all the low pay jobs.
But that was before the Russian bots took over the news on the internet and Russia-sponsored extreme right parties entered the parliaments. So the political effect from the migrants was roughly equivalent to their impact on pop
Filed from Poznań, which is where I'm typing from. The dateline alone made me smile.
I've been building software here for almost 20 years. Started a software house, grew it to ~50 people, sold it, now back to bootstrapping from scratch. The fact that this is a normal sentence to type from a Polish city is, honestly, kind of the whole story.
That "institutional framework" line in the article is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Having run companies through Polish bureaucracy — it's fine. It works. A generation ago that bar was on the floor. Boring is a feature.
Politics aside, the 35-year arc has been quietly extraordinary. European to the bone, with old roots and a real appetite for what's next.
I read Mila 18 by Leon Uris (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mila_18) decades ago and been a big admirer of Polish people since then.
In the early 2000's I've read about the "next wave", after BRICS, where Poland and Turkey were leading the pack. It was mainly due to the population tree. Both countries did relatively well, as expected. Turkey a bit worse, probably due to politics, changing geostrategic pivots, and strained relations with the big EU market.
How it happened? (Source: I'm working with polish companies)
1. Hard working people
2. Biggest recipient of EU subsidies used for projects which generates more profit. Infrastructure, internet, etc. To compare, Czechia used it for stupid things like bicycle lanes, child playgrounds etc.
3. Building permit is very easy to get for basically anything. Yes, this way you can sometimes get chaotic new buildings, but this can be solved later. In comparison, in Czechia, obtaining a building permit is difficult and depends on the whim of the official. Also we have basically non-existent property taxes, so new homes are unaffordable for everybody and only used as an investment.
4. Not allowing imigration from countries where people don't want to work and with hugely different religions and customs. This worked for Czechia too though, our biggest immigrants are Ukranians which are also slavs and very hard working. Official statistics is, that they paid in taxes more than they got from social support.
It looks that not many talked about the fact that there is a lot Chinese investment in Poland, bringing in manufacturing and management experiences.
Living only a good hour away from the Polish border I must say that this is really great for our region, too. When the income difference was higher, there was a lot of property crime (mostly cars, but also other things) originating from Poland. I went to a Polish village just at border once and you could feel the crime there. Young guys driving too expensive cars despite houses being run down, suspicious looks if you drive by with your German number plates. But that is over. If you go to Szczecin or Bydgoszcz you feel no wealth gap at all and I am happy that it turned out this way.
I wish I could go back in time and tell my 10 year old self to knock it off with the polish jokes (which were all the rage at that time, although I can remember only one now).
Intresting systemic bias around the country despite large improvements. I would be curious if those views would be a signal for investment in some of poland's tech startups. I believe their economy is still growing and companies will flourish even more.
Investment, infrastructure, education. Same as China. Same as every other growing country.
What the US and most other western countries do are: Let infrastructure rot, defund education, reroute money to large corporations. This is how you end up with failed state.
Poland made the brilliant decision to protect its heritage and not allow unchecked immigration and illegal immigration. It is a very high trust society with far lower crime rates, especially violent crimes than other places like the UK and France that went the other way.
To add to the argument about European funding, Polish people are also very hard-working and probably have the mentality closest among European countries to what the USA had in the twentieth century with the pursuit of the American Dream. The only difference is motivation. Polish people suffered a lot in the past, so they do not want to experience poverty again; thus, their drive is powered by insecurity compared to an optimistic confidence that hard work would lead to prosperity in the future (this is also seen in the Polish sense of humour, which is much darker). I suppose it is mostly because of the post-communist Balcerowicz Plan transformation and the first generations travelling to the West for work, which further solidified the belief in upward mobility from the lower class to the middle class to the upper class through hard work.
Poland will rule the Europe in the coming decades
Vacuuming working age population from Ukraine since 2014. Poland did everything right, while Ukrainian governments and businesses were smirking "What are you going to do?" during salary discussions.
This paragraph is really odd: “As oppressive as it was, communism contributed by breaking down old social barriers and opening higher education to factory and farmworkers who had no chance before. A post-Communist boom in higher education means half of young people now have degrees.”
It feels like despite overwhelming evidence presented in the own article that communism was bad, they felt they had to say something vaguely nice about communism. But they can’t even keep it going for more than a sentence, because the next sentence says actually education was better after communism.
And yet, their air pollution level during winter months is so bad that local government issues public alerts to encourage people to stay indoors. Every winter there are days when air is in top 10 most polluted areas around the globe.
And yet it's still not all roses in the actual everyday life given that we have higher prices than Germany (food, phones, computers) while earning 3x less. But it surely beats how we had it the 90s.
I'm a red, white, and blue American, born and raised in the USA. My family is all from Poland, and made America a home. The other day, someone asked my ethnicity, I said American Polish. Each of us are from somewhere, that where my family happens to be from. Nice Polska.
Poland is basically Germany without the historical baggage and with less cultural cruft (to avoid trigger words). Having said that there is one Olympic discipline that they perfected even beyond German standards (which are quite high in that department already) and that is: whining.
Nit, but I don't think we're there anymore. We were there briefly around March, when this article was posted.
The story is longer: Poland was the first country to make a remarkable peaceful transition from a bankrupt, failed Soviet satellite state. The shock therapy, plus NATO and EU aspirations, paved the way.
It is a story of a country that made a lot of the right decisions along the way. Managed to keep consistent high growth, not a pony trick or boom/bust mode.
Poland should be a role model for many other countries.
Recommend a book: https://www.amazon.com/Europes-Growth-Champion-Insights-Econ...
And Noah's blog post: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-polandmalaysia-model