Job Discussion Forums

[spiral78]

Ok, flame me. But Czech is proven to be the most difficult Slavic language, more so than Russian or Polish. Shall provide the sources tomorrow, if I must to have credibilty.

And I have enough Czech myself, and know others who do, to do business in the country.

C'mon. It's entirely unrealistic to suggest that Poles should give up or alter their language to suit your entreprenurial ambitions. You want to do business in Poland? Gotta learn to function in Polish.

Agreed, it's hard. But it's theirs. Country, culture, language, business.

[dynow]

we'll all be awaiting your proof of this claim, but even if you can prove that it is 2% harder than Polish, it still for the most part would put forth nothing against my argument.

there also leaves the question of "Spiral78, how long have you been living in the Czech Republic".......?

if in fact it is harder than Polish, and you have been living there for say 2 years with no previous knowledge of the language before you came, and today you're an advanced speaker and can handle all your business in Czech, you'd have an argument. if you answer 10 years, well........

Regarding Poland........yes, it's theirs. their culture, language, business.........we shall see in 10-20 years where it all gets them.

a country with a national avg. salary of 1500 PLN per month net ($500 USD) and an unemployment rate of 13%........there is much to be desired.

I'm simply stating that their language is part of the problem.

[spiral78]

Yes, I've been there 10 years, but could do all basic business in 3 (starting from zero).

I'm not disagreeing that the Polish language is part of the problem in terms of the internationalization process. Just pointing out that it's highly unrealistic to wish for it to be changed in favor of English.

I'm currently reading papers from my European Studies university students. They are all interested in how Poland and its people maintained their national identity so strongly in spite of the fact that Poland hasn't even been a nation for much of the past 150 + years. I think Polish is an integral part of the nationalistic feeling, and is very deeply rooted.
Personally, I couldn't argue with that, in the big picture.

Will seek the data re: Czech/Polish and post when I can (off to class now), but it's kind of an academic argument, and not really important.

[Richfilth]

[Jack Walker]

[dynow]

erroneous?

2749 net? I simply don't believe it.

I know several school teachers in Poland. They take home 1200.

My girlfriend's parents are a nurse and a policeman. Their combined salaries are a little over 3,000 a month.

I was recently talking to someone last week, he hired 8 new people to work under him, they told him their past salaries were 1200. When he offered them 1900, they were jumping for joy.

Everyone I know, in their mid twenties, young professionals with a master's degree, coming to my school to learn english, are earning between 1500-1800 a month net.

Are you suggesting that the avg. income in Poland is 38 zlotych per hour, NET???

Also, these numbers I'm telling you are incomes of people living in the major cities. If we assume that about 10,000,000 Poles make up the population of the major cities (Gdansk, Warsaw, Poznan, Lodz, Wroclaw, Krakow, Katowice), what do you think the other 30,000,000 are earning? I've been to several small towns in Poland where my extended family lives, and these people don't even have a pot to piss in.

"How are they outperforming their regional peers?"

Comparing Poland with France or Germany would be foolish.

Let's not even start with the UK or America. Have you BEEN to America?

I think it's foolish to take statistics for predicting economic growth for a one year period in time, and suggesting that is saying anything about the overall economy of a country. America has a negative predicted growth next year??? Do you really want to compare Poland to The United States of America???

"And if the Poles weren't eager to learn English, how come the EFL market isn't shrinking?"

I never said that Poland isn't eager to learn english. I'm talking about Polish.

AGAIN, I am not saying there are no possibilities in Poland, that there is no potential for business/growth. I do have some business ideas I've been considering, and I personally see opportunity, mainly stemming from how poorly I see so many things being run here.......what I am saying, again, is that if Poland's language was as easy as say a romance language, it would make things far easier for immigrants, and this fact in my opinion is hurting their economy.

Anyone can learn English with a little motivation and a couple years in an english speaking country (see Jack Walker's post), but in Poland, this almost never happens. If you can't see how this hurts an immigrant's chances of being successful here, I don't know what else to say.

[citizen X]

Most Poles make between 1500 - 2000 net a month, although, it seems to me, that salaries are slowly going up. However, the prices are going up as well, and even faster than the salaries.
Look at the Polish job adverts, they never say what the salary is, neither per hour, nor monthly, nor yearly. The only thing they say is "attractive salary" which means between 1500 and 2000 net a month. Why don't they never mention the salaries in the job adverts, because they know it's no more than 1500 - 2000, so they write "attractive salary"

Some Poles came back to Poland from, for example, England, but as far as I know they still keep complaining that (despite the economic crisis) it was easier to live there, i.e., abroad.
Some say they will probably come back in the future, but first they will check what's going on in Norway, Sweden, Denmark........

[Richfilth]

You can all look gobsmaked at the figure I posted for net monthly - to be honest I ran my own calculations because the statistic provided by GUS is for gross monthly - 3241zl. Im sorry if that seems incredulous, but most businesses would rather trust statistical evidence than anecdotal. That's why firms pay data agencies to hear what the National Statistics Office is saying, and not the National Office of What My Girlfriend's Best Mate's Cousin Told Me.

This is also why people pay agencies like OECD massive amounts of cash for their yearly reports and summaries. Data agencies will not and do not risk their years' worth of reputations printing fallacies or hearsay; they compile statistics from a variety of sources for international financiers, who pay a LOT of attention to them. You can ignore them and say "I don't see the relevance," but if, for example, I wanted to buy stuff from one country and sell it to another, wouldn't I want to sell it to a country that a had more readily available cash? One that wasn't going into a recession and suffering deflation? If I wanted to get out of teaching and into commerce, I WOULD therefore compare Poland to Germany, France and the UK. And ooh, how handy, the OECD report predicts a 3.6% growth in consumer demand for the next year, and a 1.6% cut in the same level for the UK.

Dynow, I don't deny that the Polish language is a hindrance, it's a harming factor, it needs development. On all that, we're perfectly in agreement. All I'm saying is that it shouldn't be the deciding issue - other people can and do work around it and make money in Poland, with or without speaking the lingo.

Jack - you can't say Poles are in debt up to their eyeballs in one thread, and only take in 2000PLN/month in another. No bank would be so mental, certainly not in a developing country like Poland, to lend so high to those who earn so low. NINJA loans simply weren't an option here. How, too, can shopping malls open and thrive, Castorama be packed full every week (and the tills crammed to bursting too, this isn't windowshopping) and Poles being able to afford to import one million cars a year. I know Germany has a huge used car market, but motors over there are still not cheap, especially when you add the registration and tax on top of that. How can Poles be spending so much, and debt not going up, if the wages are as low as your anecdotal "evidence" tells us.

Maybe we're all struggling with the language because our lives revolve around English. I'm fairly sure that if I HAD to speak Polish day in, day out, I'd pick it up a lot quicker; I improved tremendously living with my mother-in-law over the summer, rather than with just my fluenty-english-speaking girlfriend for the previous three years. Fact is, I speak English at home and at work, at the bank, with my friends and online. Im not going to watch TVN Turbo if Top Gear is available, and no matter what Poles tell you, Seksmisja and Miś simply aren't that funny - I'd rather watch films from other countries. However, when I have to speak Polish (with my mechanic, say, or in the shops or at the town hall) I pick up enough to get stuff done, and it comes quickly. Needs must when the Devil drives, and all that.

Am I playing Devil's advocate here? Am I really the only one who can see a bright future in Poland? Have the rest of you been here so long you've turned into the same moaning, whinging pejorists you claim to dislike so much?

[simon_porter00]

I've got two feet firmly planted in the "bitchin' Rich, sock-it-to-'em" camp. Yee-haw.

I've got to be really, I've got a business plan to make a least 1 billion squillion zloty in 3 years time. Really. Ok, more like 12k net a month - just by teaching English too.

[Richfilth]

12k net, Mr Porter? I don't believe you. A relative of a friend of a friend was a student whose last teacher told him he didn't make more than 4000 gross, and therefore I think you must be a government employee hired to post outrageous exaggerations on the internet for no plausible benefit whatsoever.

[dynow]

[Jack Walker]

Do I detect a hint of sarcasm Mr.Richfilth?

Listen,I can't spout off government propoga....errr.....statistics about average wages and economic growth and GPD etc but like many other old timers on these forums,I can simply talk about the people I know and others in my circle.This is where anecdotal evidence comes to the forefront.

If I were to walk down "high street" in my grimey little city and throw snowballs at all the people in my view,I don't think many snowballs would land upon 2800zl netters.

Those bank executives and other "important" figures hauling in 100,000zl per month are throwing off the average me thinks.

Living in Poland has a tendency to make us realists bitter and edgy I'll give you that much.The republic can be a cruel master and a bitch to boot.

If you have some great business ideas,more power to you.

About the credit thing,anyone and their dog can secure credit in this country.If they can't ,they find ways to get it.

[Harry from NWE]

[Jack Walker]

[lundjstuart]

Can't you see something when people have such a low salary? They aren't in the right field! My mother-in-law makes over 4k net a month in the airline production industry. There is no capital gain in crystal production, who buys crystal anymore?

Jack W.- What city does your father-in-law work in or the closest big city? The wages from W-wa are much different than in lets say Bielsko-Biała. People are limiting themselves by living in smaller cities, they should have followed the path of industrialization like most of our ancestors that have made the transition.
Supply vs. Demand- too many workers, less pay to the employee, low amount of workers, higher pay. Villages have a lot of people that need jobs but not a lot of jobs for all of them. Quite opposite in Krakow, Warsaw, Gdansk, Wrocław and others.