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’

#311

Post by loufe » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 1:49 PM UTC

realusername wrote: post #126

thiht wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how it works, not everyone wants to move country just for a (way) better salary.

There's definitely an IT brain drain in France due to low salaries, very few people of my former school actually work for a french company anymore, they almost all went somewhere else to get a better pay. In the post-covid world of increased remote working, the brain drain will likely increase tenfold since developers won't even have to leave the country anymore.

I don't think the definition of brain drain and remote work allowing people to stay in their country really fit together.

If I, a french worker, stay working in France, I pay French taxes and my lineage and social impact remain in France. I can't imagine how that is not a plus pour mon cher pays.

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

#312

Post by ketzu » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 1:50 PM UTC

mandevil wrote: post #289

4636760295 wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a counter point, I have seen technology adopted in the EU in ways that the US has lagged far, far behind. Probably the best example of this is chip & PIN for credit cards. In the US we finally have chips, but still no PIN.

Isn't that because credit cards came later to the EU, so they had better standards because they didn't have to worry about supporting huge quantities of obsolete technology? I don't know the exact details on credit cards, but I know that's true for CDMA vs. GSM and NTSC vs PAL. In the US there were so many black and white TV's already out there that they couldn't abandon them, hence NTSC (which allowed the older blac…

As far as I know, the tech of credit cards is also borne from liability regulation. The higher security of the european system allowed the european banks to move liability to the users.

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

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Post by anewdirection » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 1:51 PM UTC

4636760295 wrote: post #275

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…

As a counter point, I have seen technology adopted in the EU in ways that the US has lagged far, far behind. Probably the best example of this is chip & PIN for credit cards. In the US we finally have chips, but still no PIN.

Chip and pin hs been broken for 20 years, its security theatre.

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

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Post by ur-whale » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 1:51 PM UTC

Vosporos wrote: post #302

joelbluminator wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The talent is there, the money could be there if Europeans governments take it seriously, so why not? What's stopping EU from building an AWS equivalent? It's not rocket science. If Europe could come up with companies like ASML which are at the top of chip engineering, they can definitely build software infrastructure. Some of your points ring true but A) What used to be doesn't mean it will always be B) U.S has it's…

I am French and the few last software projects the state has been involved in were utter catastrophes. The code that is used to dispatch high-school graduates according to their choice was recently audited by the Court of Auditors[0], and the StopCOVID application's source code was released[1]. The problem is that innovation is just a buzzword. They still hand out millions to private actors like Atos, Accenture, etc,…

> that the French state should not be trusted to produce high-quality software.

States should neither be trusted nor simply be involved in producing anything.

That's not what they're for and they are therefore profoundly incapable of doing it.

The simple fact that they are not subjected to competitive pressure is argument enough to prove my point, but it's far from the only one.

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

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Post by boudin » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 1:52 PM UTC

iagovar wrote: post #128

boudin wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand there's already some well established hosting companies in both countries. I would hope that this initiative will not be built from the ground up but capitalizing on that. Qwant is poorly managed, but that doesn't mean every project is doomed to fail. If you would judge Google success based on their failed projects, it would be the same conclusion.

Well but Qwant has its core product in its infancy, if they can't even manage that, you tell me. The problem has many layers, Europe is not really united, which makes most markets small, the governments are pretty bad at managing investiments in tech fields, and there's not enough private capital going around pouring money into this.

You're a bit harsh, it does work, so they do manage that. I don't think there's the intent to kill google or become as big. Competing against Google is also a huge task...

It's far from perfect, there's definitely stuff they do wrong, but it's also far from being the Quaero fiasco.

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

#316

Post by close04 » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 1:53 PM UTC

9q9 wrote: post #183

close04 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That doesn't invalidate my points. SAP is a market leader and comes from Germany. A lot of leading finetch also comes from Germany or UK. A lot of major antivirus vendors in the Czech Republic or Romania, etc. Berlin, Barcelona, Paris, London are all big IT tech innovation and startup hubs in Europe.

Yet the overall scene is not quite as dynamic as the one on the other side of the Atlantic. Startups never seem to be as well funded or advertised. People take fewer risks here, there's no obvious culture of risking it all to found a startup. The whole ecosystem is not designed around this. Maybe this is changing now but today the market really isn't flooded with local products but rather with products of Silicon Valley. A lot of investments in European startups still come from SV instead of being local. There are some products that are big in one European country but don't really seem to make it over the border and it's probably because Europe is not as unified a marked as it could be.

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

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Post by anewdirection » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 1:53 PM UTC

clappski wrote: post #260

cosmodisk wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today I was looking at some job ads for mid-senior devs in London. £50K and 200+ applicants. And then it says:fruits, free parking, private healthcare after 1 year.. And this suppose to be the tech center of Europe..

That's pretty average for dev jobs in commercial enterprises in London (e.g. working for a B2C). In the UK, the big money for developers is in finance (either at a bank, or prop trading, or insurance, or gambling, etc). If you want a shock have a look at the wages in some of the surrounding areas (e.g. Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire) - you'll be lucky to break 40k£, even if your skill set is very specific to what is re…

Average bieng that poor, is, something to scoff at.

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

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Post by loufe » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 1:53 PM UTC

paganel wrote: post #151

Nextgrid wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any reason why the engineers from poorer countries will emigrate to France instead of the better-paying countries?

Romanian programmer here (I still live in Romania), I would choose another European country over a well-better paid job in the US in almost all cases, the reason being that that way I'd be closer to home, we actually have decent healthcare in Europe and the social contract as a whole is more robust compared to the US (it mentally helps going out on the street and not seeing the multitude of homeless people that I've…

Have you been to any major French city recently? There is still a crisis of homeless refugees, there is clearly different reasoning behind why they are there but in general I'd argue the effect is the same.

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

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Post by namdnay » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 1:56 PM UTC

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #180

namdnay wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh that's honestly not the number one problem in france. I'd even say it's a competitive advantage. Not everyone is willing to expatriate for salary, you can get really great engineers for half or even a third of what they'd be paid in SV

But then why hasn't France been invaded by US companies to hire these great engineers for half of SV money? I know they have some small offices on campus at top universities where they employ a hand full of PhDs for ML/AI research but that's a drop in the ocean.

You could probably ask the same question of Romania, Russia or Poland. I think it's just a question of the general business friendliness of the place. And there are quite a few American companies in Paris and Sophia-Antipolis

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

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Post by ketzu » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 1:56 PM UTC

joelbluminator wrote: post #272

cmdshiftf4 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you compared them to Japan / Australia / Canada Can't speak for Japan, but the tech salaries in the big cities in Australia and Canada are far more competitive than those in Europe. The European tech industry is an absolute joke overall, and I say this as a European. It would take an utterly massive overhaul to correct without relying on outright Chinese-style protectionism, and as more companies move remote and…

Not according to most surveys I saw https://qubit-labs.com/average-software-developer-salaries-s... . Australia is just like Germany or west europe in general. The big payers are U.S and Switzerland

Not trying to discredit those numbers, but I wonder about the split per US state. Are they very close? Are there states that pay a lot more than others?