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Why Can’t Europe Do Tech?
31–40 of 121 posts
Re: Why Can’t Europe Do Tech?
#32Does it matter? My country's economy is trucking on nicely.
And we do tech, ASML for one.
Re: Why Can’t Europe Do Tech?
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
> obsess about pipe dreams that come through for one in a million people? Speaking as someone from Europe... I don't have any first hand experience, but when browsing HN or Reddit, developer salaries above $150k seem to be the norm [1], not the "one in a million people" exception. As you may know, such salaries are unheard in Europe. It seems to me that becoming financially independent in the US is a matter of years…
> salaries are unheard in Europe This income exists in the UK for contractors. $150k/year is a day-rate of approximately £500/day if you take four weeks off per year. This is slightly higher than the median but reasonably achievable (more so in London). https://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/Contract-IT-Job-Market
Same in Switzerland, for contractors (actually more than 150k/year)
Re: Why Can’t Europe Do Tech?
#34Maybe because most Europeans are happy with a good work/life balance, and don't constantly obsess about pipe dreams that come through for one in a million people? Obviously such obsessives exist, but I bet they are a lot less common than in countries with a, let's say, get big or go home attitude. Also, state funded safety nets means it's less urgent to have $lots saved up to survive the next crisis.
> obsess about pipe dreams that come through for one in a million people? Speaking as someone from Europe... I don't have any first hand experience, but when browsing HN or Reddit, developer salaries above $150k seem to be the norm [1], not the "one in a million people" exception. As you may know, such salaries are unheard in Europe. It seems to me that becoming financially independent in the US is a matter of years…
Becoming a millionaire is harder, yes, but so is also crash down to poverty. Safety nets such as cheap/free education, free healthcare, public retirement funds, more protective labor laws and such make it easier for everybody to avoid falling and/or getting out of poverty when times are bad. Your example of putting 3-4 months of US paychecks only work if you get paid a lot already, but not if you're poor or have high expenses (kids through college, medical costs). The social agreement in Europe appears to be that it is more depressing to see people losing everything to "market forces", and that letting people become millionaires in years is not a priority at all.
Re: Why Can’t Europe Do Tech?
#35We do tech. There are more startups on my city (which is small) than what the article is mentioning as average. The article assumes that "doing tech" needs to be something like a facebook or google and sell customer data like there is no tomorrow. It's a bit different around here, we like it that way.
The thing is, from my experience, there are start ups and lots of them. But the quality of the work would not be considered good and in many case their stuff is nothing but an unstable crud. Their banners may be taking about data and machine learning but all they have is a simple website that struggles with 10 requests per second.
Not sure where you've been looking, but this is not my experience at all here in Berlin. You can't generalise from a few crap startups (which exist everywhere, btw) to the entire ecosystem.
Re: Why Can’t Europe Do Tech?
#36Is this article satire? Conflating inflated valuations, VC, and tech? I thought Bloomberg was a serious source. https://www.epo.org/news-issues/news/2017/20170307.html Europe's potential in terms of innovation and technology is also highlighted by the number of European patent applications filed relative to a country's population. Switzerland again topped the ranking in 2016, with 892 applications per million inhabit…
"inflated valuations" sounds an aweful lot like the investor's problem, not mine.
If these USA, inflated valuations cause me, as the developer, to receive inflated salaries, I am perfectly happy with that.
Re: Why Can’t Europe Do Tech?
#37They picked GDPR instead.
Re: Why Can’t Europe Do Tech?
#38I dunno; why can't the American press do subtlety, nuance and fact checking?
Re: Why Can’t Europe Do Tech?
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
> obsess about pipe dreams that come through for one in a million people? Speaking as someone from Europe... I don't have any first hand experience, but when browsing HN or Reddit, developer salaries above $150k seem to be the norm [1], not the "one in a million people" exception. As you may know, such salaries are unheard in Europe. It seems to me that becoming financially independent in the US is a matter of years…
You can't compare a US salary with a EU salary 1:1. In the EU you get retirement money, you get health insurance, and all kind of other benefits. You need to calculate all these positive and negative and then compare. And that's a lot of work!
Yes, obviously it is not a 1:1 comparison, but even with additional costs for getting private healthcare etc. you are better of by far in the US. Also, i'd prefer to pay into a 401k plan over some EU government pension plan any time.
Re: Why Can’t Europe Do Tech?
#40Maybe because most Europeans are happy with a good work/life balance, and don't constantly obsess about pipe dreams that come through for one in a million people? Obviously such obsessives exist, but I bet they are a lot less common than in countries with a, let's say, get big or go home attitude. Also, state funded safety nets means it's less urgent to have $lots saved up to survive the next crisis.
> obsess about pipe dreams that come through for one in a million people? Speaking as someone from Europe... I don't have any first hand experience, but when browsing HN or Reddit, developer salaries above $150k seem to be the norm [1], not the "one in a million people" exception. As you may know, such salaries are unheard in Europe. It seems to me that becoming financially independent in the US is a matter of years…
>becoming financially independent in the US is a matter of years [2], not decades
(European here) I don't care about being financially dependent on the state, because the state is not my enemy. The state gave me healthcare, the state gave me a free education, the state takes care of stuff. I don't care about "freedom".