Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’ • Hacker News Board

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#181

Post by gspr » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 11:27 AM UTC

heipei wrote: post #164

As a German who's been exclusively working in the US tech space for the past few years, there's so many anecdotes that come to mind to highlight how far behind the old world is, both in tech as in spirit: - Article about Gaia-X in major German newspaper FAZ explained that on AWS you can spin up your own infrastructure, "sometimes even without talking to anyone from sales", from your home! - When I tried to read or wa…

I think the two first points are more specific to Germany than to the old world as a whole. Up here in Scandinavia, we often laugh at how much Germans interact with humans, send letters and faxes, and make phonecalls in their business lives. They are woefully far behind. From what I understand the same is true for the south.

While I agree with the basic premise of the last point too I think you maybe underestimate the value of quality of life over salary for many of those people.

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#182

Post by moring » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 11:28 AM UTC

heipei wrote: post #155

piokoch wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's very true. Another thing is that it is not like EU is somehow very far behind the US in terms of services hosting or "the cloud". There is French OVH provider and there is German Hetzner. While the former has an opinion of being cheap but no so great (especially in terms of support), the Hetzner really shines. Hetzner does not have all the AWS like "cloud" bells and whistles, however their VPS-es and especiall…

As much as I'd love for Hetzner to step up and start offering more managed services a la AWS, I just don't see it happening, and if it were I'm not sure I'd like the side-effects of that. Hetzner is laser-focused on delivering beefy and very affordable dedicated servers, apparently the way they are able to trim costs is by running most support functions on auto-pilot and having a very narrow set of products (servers,…

Isn't that an opportunity for another company to run managed services like S3, RDS, SQS, SES on top of Hetzner servers? I see some issues with multiple companies being involved in support requests, but nothing that can't be solved.

Or, in case their virtual servers suck (which I don't know about), running VM hosts on Hetzner servers as a service.

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#183

Post by 9q9 » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 11:29 AM UTC

close04 wrote: post #93

WanderPanda wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I is too easy to attribute this to some „culture“ that randomly formed and which did not happen in europe. I mean how likely is that? I believe there is a much more structural thing to it

It is also a matter of culture. For example cutthroat capitalism is not really a thing in Europe, social capitalism (or soziale Marktwirtschaft) is. Culture plays a huge role in this. Most Europeans have a lower risk appetite since it's not like Europe is swimming in successful, well funded, well advertised startups to set an example for a new generation of entrepreneurs. Most also value personal life too much to be…

France has been world-leading in verification, e.g. CompCert and Coq come from INRIA, model-checking was co-invented in France. This stuff is largely language independent. Yet the big sellers of this kind of stuff (e.g. EDA software from Synopsys, Cadence, and Mentor) is in the US.

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#184

Post by thecleaner » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 11:29 AM UTC

heipei wrote: post #164

As a German who's been exclusively working in the US tech space for the past few years, there's so many anecdotes that come to mind to highlight how far behind the old world is, both in tech as in spirit: - Article about Gaia-X in major German newspaper FAZ explained that on AWS you can spin up your own infrastructure, "sometimes even without talking to anyone from sales", from your home! - When I tried to read or wa…

Tech salaries in Europe really are a joke. Even American companies don't pay well here because why would they, the market itself sucks. Combine that with easy immigration to US for Europeans and good affordable education it seems unlikely that talented people would choose to stay here. Part of the reason is the old money in this ecosystem. The problem with digitization in Germany specifically is that our paperwork is supposedly something to be proud of. "Germans love paperwork" says every article about German culture as if its a great thing. Its really sad to hear this. We should hate paperwork and seek to replace it wherever possible.

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#185

Post by Vespasian » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 11:30 AM UTC

majewsky wrote: post #74

Tomte wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything the federal government does is a huge contract. Of course, in a hypothetical paradise it wouldn't have to be. But in the real world, it is. That's still no reason to be surprised.

From what I know, SAP and Deutsche Telekom were chosen because: - SAP built an app on very short notice where Germans traveling abroad could register for one of the government-organized flights back to Germany. The government was satisfied with how this played out, therefore they were the first choice for building the app part. - Telekom is already operating several backend services for the RKI (the German counterpar…

Quick off topic question: How is the work culture at SAP?

Is the public sentiment that it's software is impossibly hard to manage and develop for based in reality?

(Disclosure the one time I had to access SAP Data via an API it felt like running against a wall of legacy tables and badly documented interactions -> My sentiment may be biased)

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#186

Post by heipei » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 11:35 AM UTC

gspr wrote: post #181

heipei wrote: post #164

As a German who's been exclusively working in the US tech space for the past few years, there's so many anecdotes that come to mind to highlight how far behind the old world is, both in tech as in spirit: - Article about Gaia-X in major German newspaper FAZ explained that on AWS you can spin up your own infrastructure, "sometimes even without talking to anyone from sales", from your home! - When I tried to read or wa…

I think the two first points are more specific to Germany than to the old world as a whole. Up here in Scandinavia, we often laugh at how much Germans interact with humans, send letters and faxes, and make phonecalls in their business lives. They are woefully far behind. From what I understand the same is true for the south. While I agree with the basic premise of the last point too I think you maybe underestimate th…

You're right, and I'm glad I started by saying that I'm German because lots of smaller European countries run circles around us in terms of tech adoption.

I don't underestimate the value of quality of life, and I don't blame anyone who knowingly works for a stable, "boring", old-school German company which has been the world-leader in its niche for the past 100 years. But I think many people here are not aware that there even is a radically different approach to building up a business (the US/VC/growth model), and that this might be the only model to create modern tech companies to rival the US players. You won't compete with AWS by creating a family-owned business over a few decades where your primary objective is to provide stable and fair employment to people, often for their entire working lives. I'm not saying either one is better, just that I think that's the reality.

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#187

Post by ChuckNorris89 » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 11:38 AM UTC

narag wrote: post #102

icelancer wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do they think Google became what it is, or most American companies like Amazon? That the US government funded it and kickstarted them with VC funds? A company like Airbus makes some sort of sense since the government heavily funds Boeing/Lockheed Martin via defense contracts. But Amazon/Google and VC-backed tech startups and companies? Not to mention that the pay for software developers and engineers in general i…

The problem is not retaining talent. People doesn't just migrate in mass to the USA. The problem is how easy is to create a company, raise funds and get the needed licenses.

>People doesn't just migrate in mass to the USA.

Pretty sure the strict and difficult process of getting a working visa has something to do with that as well, not just that not everyone on the planet is interested in migrating.

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#188

Post by iagovar » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 11:39 AM UTC

baxtr wrote: post #137

This is so sad. As a European I would love to see some Internet giants created. Everybody says it's because we don't have homogenous market and so on. But my hunch is it is something different: Existing European companies are much more protected than their US counterparts, or even their UK counterparts. Think ThomasCook - would have been definitely been "saved" like TUI in Germany. That doesn't happen that much in th…

> Existing European companies are much more protected than their US counterparts

I'm sorry but that's not even remotely true. You have several instances of EU companies acquired by foreign capital.

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#189

Post by thecleaner » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 11:39 AM UTC

iagovar wrote: post #107

turbinerneiter wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I.e. Germany has: * A good, free education system * Social security * Good healthcare system * Proper democracy * Politicians who aren't clowns * A total of 500 police killings ... in total since 1950 The US is close to becoming a failed state due to the increasing wealth and income gap. Also, please do me a favour and read up a bit on the history of silicon valley and us innovation. It's hard to claim the government…

Yes, the DoD is behind a lot of stuff but they seem to get it right, unlike most EU countries with gov funded programs that are an absolute disaster. EU taxpayers consider unacceptable that govt funding goes to waste, but in the end gov funding goes to waster anyway because the amount of bureaucracy is staggering and we don't even get internal competition like the US. So we waster money and we basically burn it witho…

This is because most decisions in the EU are dictated by France and Germany. Germany for example is very hierarchical in how things get done and hence this is reflected in the EU too.

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#190

Post by disiplus » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 11:41 AM UTC

thecleaner wrote: post #184

heipei wrote: post #164

As a German who's been exclusively working in the US tech space for the past few years, there's so many anecdotes that come to mind to highlight how far behind the old world is, both in tech as in spirit: - Article about Gaia-X in major German newspaper FAZ explained that on AWS you can spin up your own infrastructure, "sometimes even without talking to anyone from sales", from your home! - When I tried to read or wa…

Tech salaries in Europe really are a joke. Even American companies don't pay well here because why would they, the market itself sucks. Combine that with easy immigration to US for Europeans and good affordable education it seems unlikely that talented people would choose to stay here. Part of the reason is the old money in this ecosystem. The problem with digitization in Germany specifically is that our paperwork is…

germany is also one of the only west countryes that uses fax machines. some of our customers are sending orders with fax.