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Forging a Swiss Lens: How Zurich's tech scene changed my view of SV

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Re: Forging a Swiss Lens: How Zurich's tech scene changed my view of SV

#161

Post by dagw »

kuschku wrote: post #18
sailingparrot wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do not have world conquering ambitions - which kinda works against them. Works against them towards what? Not wanting to conquer the world is legitimate, I don't see why everyone should absolutely want to become the next Bezos.

Look at the example of Taxi apps. There are many in the European market, Germany alone has half a dozen local to the country. Yet, while uber operated in Germany, they could get basically 100% of the customers – simply by throwing billions of VC money at the task to subsidize rides. If competitors use such methods, there’s little you, as smaller company, can do.

they could get basically 100% of the customers – simply by throwing billions of VC money at the task to subsidize rides.

They could get a large market share, while they're heavily subsidizing their rides. The tricky part is keeping hold of the customers. Certainly where I live Uber made a pretty big push a couple of years ago, offering ridiculously cheap rides. During that period lots of people I know used Uber a lot. Once they stopped offering the subsidies and the prices rose back to 'normal' levels everybody went back to using taxis and public transport.

Re: Forging a Swiss Lens: How Zurich's tech scene changed my view of SV

#162

Post by ithkuil »

md_ wrote: post #160
timewarrior wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine you build an AirBnb like solution limited to Switzerland market. AirBnb will eventually come and eat your lunch. In today's globalized world - if you are not one of the bigger players and do not have moat (govt contract, some other kind of exclusivity) - other bigger players will come after you.

> Imagine you build an AirBnb like solution limited to Switzerland market. AirBnb will eventually come and eat your lunch. I don't think this is born out by the evidence. There are many social reasons that smaller markets prefer a local solution--both because of network effects and just because of branding. In the Swiss case, Swiss people (often) don't use Google; they use Search.ch. They don't use Amazon (which is m…

IIRC Amazon Germany will soon service Switzerland as well.

Re: Forging a Swiss Lens: How Zurich's tech scene changed my view of SV

#163

Post by icebraining »

ImSkeptical wrote: post #116
pm90 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the other hand, Trademe has never managed to penetrate markets outside New Zealand with any of its products, which limits its value. I don't understand why that is necessarily a bad thing. If someone is looking to make a shit ton of money, have a chance to monopolize or dominate the international market, then yes, that makes sense. But if you're happy and content serving nationally, and so are your customers, I…

If a product earns money, then hopefully it is providing value to users. If the number of users increase, more value is provided. If the number of users is arbitrarily limited, then people miss value they should get.

1) Why "should" them? Just because some people built a service doesn't mean they owe it to everyone.

2) The internet may scale worldwide, by that doesn't mean any service can do so while maintaining that value per user. Hell, it may not scale beyond a neighborhood, let alone a country.

Re: Forging a Swiss Lens: How Zurich's tech scene changed my view of SV

#164

Post by haeffin »

ithkuil wrote: post #162
md_ wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine you build an AirBnb like solution limited to Switzerland market. AirBnb will eventually come and eat your lunch. I don't think this is born out by the evidence. There are many social reasons that smaller markets prefer a local solution--both because of network effects and just because of branding. In the Swiss case, Swiss people (often) don't use Google; they use Search.ch. They don't use Amazon (which is m…

IIRC Amazon Germany will soon service Switzerland as well.

It does already and did for a long time, but customs are a hassle.

Re: Forging a Swiss Lens: How Zurich's tech scene changed my view of SV

#165

Post by MagnumOpus »

danielvinson wrote: post #84
_nalply wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually Swiss people find a way around this limitation. Swap laundry time slots with neighbours, for example.

I don't understand why would there be a time slot in the first place... do people not own their own laundry machines in Switzerland?

People in small apartments usually don't, people in houses always do - this is the same in the US though.

Re: Forging a Swiss Lens: How Zurich's tech scene changed my view of SV

#166

Post by MagnumOpus »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #121
barrkel wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zurich, along with London, has the highest salaries for development in Europe. You may need to work in a finance-related position, but you can make fairly big bucks.

London has very poor salaries for development, especially compared to Switzerland. Standard developers make 30-40k pounds...

20-year-old fresh uni graduates or government employees make 30-40k pounds.

Seasoned competent devs easily earn twice as much -- or three times as much if they are contracting, or four times as much if they are good enough to hack it in the well-paying industries (bigTech or finance).

Re: Forging a Swiss Lens: How Zurich's tech scene changed my view of SV

#167

Post by jimmywanger »

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #108
timewarrior wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite a few of these were produced out of Google and FB, so it makes sense they would be based out of MV/Meno Park. However most of the unicorns or near unicorns since 2010 have been based in SF. Dropbox, AirBnb, Uber, Lyft, Stripe, Zenefits, SoFi, Credit Karma, CloudFlare, DocuSign, Wish, Slack, Github, Instacart, Prosper, Automattic, Eventbrite, Okta, Docker, Gusto, Nextdoor. Let list could go on and on. I stand by…

I’d argue SV does so well because SV is fundamentally extractive in how it uses tech. It uses tech as a way to strip mine a particular domain, often bypassing incumbents in the process. There is nothing innovative about this process. It is not ‘high’ tech so much as applied tech. Another take on this: look at the type of people that SV idolizes by and large. Are they mostly hackers? Or business people? SV is a colony…

> It uses tech as a way to strip mine a particular domain, often bypassing incumbents in the process.

The term strip mine is a loaded term. In the classical sense, it devastates the ecosystem while extracting resources that are impossible to replace.

In fact, Silicon Valley does not do that. People aren't going to stop needing transportation because Uber used up all the transportation, and it won't stop needing places to stay because AirBnB lets you rent out your apartment.

> SV is a colony of capital B business

What is a capital B business as opposed to a lower case b business?

Re: Forging a Swiss Lens: How Zurich's tech scene changed my view of SV

#168

Post by jimmywanger »

untog wrote: post #63
propman wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Need to get this fixed. A bipartisan bill cosponsered by 340 house representatives is there but Paul Ryan is not allowing the vote on it. Perhaps not the limit fixed, but the backlog that's currently there for H1bs. It will be extremely beneficial for the country, for the H1bs and family, and would drive up tech wages. Literally no negatives. Their cause is even more sympathetic than DACA. I sincerely believe if they…

> Their cause is even more sympathetic than DACA. I wouldn't go that far. DACA recipients were brought to the country as children and literally know nothing else, often including the language of their "home" country. H1Bs might be more beneficial economically, but I'm not convinced they are more sympathetic.

> DACA recipients were brought to the country as children and literally know nothing else, often including the language of their "home" country.

Not the country's problem. If you expose children to the consequences of your wrongdoing and mistakes, they suffer as well as you. Otherwise, that incentivizes wrongdoing.

Another example - if you rob a bank, and pay for your kid's private school tuition is it "wrong" to take away the money you stole because the kid is just accustomed to attending private school?

The laws are fairly clear. Most illegal immigrants know full well they're breaking the law by entering illegally. If they get caught, everybody involved suffers the consequences.

Re: Forging a Swiss Lens: How Zurich's tech scene changed my view of SV

#169

Post by barrkel »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #121
barrkel wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zurich, along with London, has the highest salaries for development in Europe. You may need to work in a finance-related position, but you can make fairly big bucks.

London has very poor salaries for development, especially compared to Switzerland. Standard developers make 30-40k pounds...

Entry-level developers with a couple of years experience, perhaps. Not the case for senior developers (more like 60-90k), and getting six figures GBP is not difficult if you're working in finance.

Re: Forging a Swiss Lens: How Zurich's tech scene changed my view of SV

#170

Post by hocuspocus »

kgwgk wrote: post #159
hocuspocus wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Zurich also has a high cost of living and well above any US cities. SF and NYC are a lot more expensive. You're right about the size of the job market though, it's tiny, even relative to the population size.

It depends on how you calculate the cost. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_citie... https://www.atlasandboots.com/remote-jobs/most-expensive-cit... https://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/index

If you calculate unrealistically, yes, sure :)

Day-to-day expenses are a tiny part of a typical budget. In most scenarios, housing, income taxes and transportation alone will easily cost you twice as much in SF compared to Zürich.

As a software engineer, the salary difference should make up for it, or even reach levels that are unlikely in Switzerland. That's great, but for most people, I can guarantee you, Zürich is a lot cheaper.

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