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Ask HN: Why is the US the center of the tech industry?

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Re: Ask HN: Why is the US the center of the tech industry?

#81

Post by DeonPenny »

TACIXAT wrote: post #30
donatj wrote: post #5

My 2¢ in taking to people from other countries, it's the American attitude. Americans for better or worse think we can do anything, and they will try incessantly. They will start a business with far less experience and qualifications than others, pull themselves up by the bootstraps and potentially fail spectacularly - just to get right back up and do it again. I do not get this sense taking to people from other coun…

I agree. My biggest fear is that we're getting a little too heavy on protectionism and regulation. We have giants in a lot of industries with regulatory capture. I think China's loose approach to IP may allow them to eat our lunch.

Nah thats why china is having so much trouble consolidating companies. They have the BAT companies but not much else. If not for their protectist policy I doubt they'd have those.

Re: Ask HN: Why is the US the center of the tech industry?

#82

Post by DeonPenny »

jenkinsj wrote: post #46
donatj wrote: post #5

My 2¢ in taking to people from other countries, it's the American attitude. Americans for better or worse think we can do anything, and they will try incessantly. They will start a business with far less experience and qualifications than others, pull themselves up by the bootstraps and potentially fail spectacularly - just to get right back up and do it again. I do not get this sense taking to people from other coun…

American attitude??? Andy Grove: Hungarian Nikola Tesla: Serbian Sergey Brin: Russian Patrick and John Collison: Irish Mathilde Collin: French Jerry Yang: Taiwanese

Thats very American. Americans don't differentiate between immigrates that move to the US and people born here. An ambitious immigrant is more "American" than an unambitious natural born "American"

Re: Ask HN: Why is the US the center of the tech industry?

#83

Post by codingslave »

One thing I'm surprised I havent seen here is the respect that programming gets in America. If youre a decent engineer you can basically walk into a job making at minimum 150k a year, at any time. You are paid well, given some level of autonomy, etc. In other countries engineers are at the absolute bottom of the totem pole, there is no respect for the craft, and you are expected to be promoted out of the ASAP. This has all sorts of secondary effects like bad technology, no progress, no risk taking from engineers who can get another well paid job if they fail. I honestly feel like there must be opportunities all over Europe to show up with a much better tech product and steam roll the incumbents.

Another clear reason is how fragmented Europe is. All of the different countries have different customs, languages, and cultures. This makes it hard to scale a product. It's the opposite case in the USA, no such barriers, easier to scale across 300M people.

Re: Ask HN: Why is the US the center of the tech industry?

#84

Post by ThJ »

redsymbol wrote: post #72

American and moderately successful entrepreneur here. I had to look up the Law of Jante. My reaction: Holeee crap. That's one set of beliefs that is practically guaranteed to block ANYONE from manifesting even a fraction of their innovative potential. (Is it even real? Can anyone from the Nordic region confirm or deny?) Going even further: If someone wants to shape their mindset, etc. into that of someone who is on a…

It was originally meant as satire of small-town Scandinavia. But... You're definitely not encouraged make a big deal out of yourself over here. Maturity means to do your part to help the people around you. Taking up space is somewhat frowned upon and people are generally uncomfortable with accepting compliments. The mindset is collective. But there's a social class of business people and professional athletes who don't think that way. I think you basically have to be in small circles, have special abilities or be born into a family of business people to get exposed to an individualist mindset like that.

Re: Ask HN: Why is the US the center of the tech industry?

#85

Post by ThJ »

ThJ wrote: post #84
redsymbol wrote: post #72

American and moderately successful entrepreneur here. I had to look up the Law of Jante. My reaction: Holeee crap. That's one set of beliefs that is practically guaranteed to block ANYONE from manifesting even a fraction of their innovative potential. (Is it even real? Can anyone from the Nordic region confirm or deny?) Going even further: If someone wants to shape their mindset, etc. into that of someone who is on a…

It was originally meant as satire of small-town Scandinavia. But... You're definitely not encouraged make a big deal out of yourself over here. Maturity means to do your part to help the people around you. Taking up space is somewhat frowned upon and people are generally uncomfortable with accepting compliments. The mindset is collective. But there's a social class of business people and professional athletes who don…

I'm from Norway and the Norwegian ideal of wealth is that you're not supposed to show it off.

The richest man in Norway is real estate mogul Olav Thon, and he basically dresses like a tramp.

Re: Ask HN: Why is the US the center of the tech industry?

#86

Post by brianpgordon »

jinushaun wrote: post #65
jenkinsj wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American attitude??? Andy Grove: Hungarian Nikola Tesla: Serbian Sergey Brin: Russian Patrick and John Collison: Irish Mathilde Collin: French Jerry Yang: Taiwanese

America attracts innovators. They do it in America because they can’t do it at home. Whether it’s true or not, for immigrants, there’s a sense that upward mobility is possible in America. There was an old episode of Top Gear where Clarkson was driving around an exotic car in America. He noted that Americans were super excited about the car, giving him complements, posing for pictures, saying that one day they’ll own…

That's incredibly depressing to me. If he really talked to a representative cross-section of America, almost all of those optimistic people will never be wealthy enough to afford the car. At least the Brits know where they stand. We're never going to be able to effectively address wealth inequality if every person on the street believes that they're going to be a multimillionaire some day.

Re: Ask HN: Why is the US the center of the tech industry?

#87

Post by gremlinsinc »

jenkinsj wrote: post #46
donatj wrote: post #5

My 2¢ in taking to people from other countries, it's the American attitude. Americans for better or worse think we can do anything, and they will try incessantly. They will start a business with far less experience and qualifications than others, pull themselves up by the bootstraps and potentially fail spectacularly - just to get right back up and do it again. I do not get this sense taking to people from other coun…

American attitude??? Andy Grove: Hungarian Nikola Tesla: Serbian Sergey Brin: Russian Patrick and John Collison: Irish Mathilde Collin: French Jerry Yang: Taiwanese

Can you follow up with how many of those people spent 90% or more of their successful business days in their country of origin vs How many emigrated to America? Because foreign nationals needing America as a catalyst still makes it a U.S. built business.

Re: Ask HN: Why is the US the center of the tech industry?

#88

Post by arduinomancer »

codingslave wrote: post #83

One thing I'm surprised I havent seen here is the respect that programming gets in America. If youre a decent engineer you can basically walk into a job making at minimum 150k a year, at any time. You are paid well, given some level of autonomy, etc. In other countries engineers are at the absolute bottom of the totem pole, there is no respect for the craft, and you are expected to be promoted out of the ASAP. This h…

Yeah reading what some people say online, it sounds like in some countries programming is seen as more like grunt work or the same as IT work. Whereas America really glorifies the hacker/startup mentality, for example in stuff like The Social Network or HBO’s Silicon Valley.

Re: Ask HN: Why is the US the center of the tech industry?

#89

Post by atmosx »

My take on this: I believe the 2nd WW is the major historical event that led the most bright scientists of that era to the USA. From that point on, most major technological advancements were made in the USA. Whoever has the most advanced technology wins the war. At the beginning the other equally technologically advanced site was believed to be the USSR. Nowadays is China. Europe relies on the USA for protection and the price to pay is to stay technologically irrelevant, which means irrelevant in every sense.

Re: Ask HN: Why is the US the center of the tech industry?

#90

Post by atmosx »

jcranmer wrote: post #31

There are several things that contributed to the rise of the dominance of American tech industry. In no particular order: * World War II. In WWII, the only country that had the means to meaningfully fund longer-term military research projects was the US; in other countries such as Germany and the UK, these projects were defunded or reduced in scope to let the money and resources be allocated to things that would help…

> The development of a strong education and research system.

Are you talking about the 5-10 top universities? On average Europeans have by far and large better educational system. It's not even comparable IMHO. On average Europeans are much better educated and that has to do with the fact that education is part of state-funded welfare in most European countries, while in the US education is expensive and only a small minority can afford it.

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