His mission is pretty understandable. Microsoft is in mortal combat with Google for better piece of Search Engine market pie. Bing, launched not that long ago, needs serious reinforcements to compete better with Google. So fresh ideas and beautiful minds are in need. I am pretty sure they are being searched for everywhere, not only in Russia. It just happened to be that this particular Talent Sourcer was quite successful in exploiting social network to make himself heard.
Knowing roughly what exactly going on in Russia with computer science and science in general, I would say that manager will be overwhelmed with applicants to interview but it may be harder for him to make selection than it used to be few years ago. Russian university centers, where minds and ideas are boiling, are not exactly in perfect shape. So many scientists and technology guys left for the West (and Far East like Japan) and so many are prepared to follow them I keep recollecting the story of Yellowstone National Park.
In Yellowstone wolves were hunted down to extinction and for about half of century there were no wolves at all. Without predators pressure elk herds multiplied and aspen trees began to experience serious decline. Elks just simply ate aspen sprouts in such quantities that very few survived to become full grown trees. Then in 1995 wolves were reintroduced in Yellowstone and aspen woods bounced back to century old level because number of elks decreased.
You may think of those selected applicants for Bing jobs at Microsoft as aspen sprouts. Long before they grow to become real scientists or engineers, they are scooped out of the country by companies like Microsoft. The difference is unlike Yellowstone aspen sprouts they will eventually become full grown scientists and engineers but not in Russia. It is unlikely that some of them will be considering moving back to Russia although it is not altogether impossible. Western businesses take those sprouts and replant them in the extremely fertile soil of places like Redmond or Mountain View.
Now, the very Russian question may pop up - who is to blame and what to do? In general the picture is not extremely favorable for Russia. It loses its best and brightest to faraway land with few prospects getting them back. But look at the picture a little longer. Those kids who will eventually end up in Redmond will have opportunities to realize their potential they may never had in their lives back home. If they stay in Russia, the old country will not gain much if those talents are buried speaking biblically (and there are plenty of reasons for why they may be buried). Is Microsoft to blame? Hardly. Microsoft is a business and it is a business nature to look the very best of human resources everywhere. Its behavior is no different from say some Russian energy company that may be employing experts from abroad.
If Bing gets better everybody would win on the global scale. Internet will be delivering relevant results faster for any web surfer in the world, Russian kids in Redmond will be glad to see their work, Microsoft may profit, and even Russian mass media might offer a new source for national pride just like they did when they mentioned about figure skating trainers who coached Canadian and US medalists in last Olympics (those coaches are from Russia).
Genuinely sad emotions will be experienced by those who perfectly remembers brain power houses of Moscow or Novosibirsk, who used to observe true intellectual giants at work. It will be sad for those people because they understand that with every young "sprout" going overseas probability of Renaissance for Russian science is fading away as steam from breathing in a frosty day. And those people in their bitterness may start blaming different things for that, from collapse of Soviet Union to pandemic corruption.
Experts will be debating about rights and wrongs of that particular manifestation of so universally uneasy phenomenon as globalization. Rest of us should hope that Bing will get better.
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