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

politico.eu

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

#371

Post by afr0ck »

joelbluminator wrote: post #347
ur-whale wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's stopping EU from building an AWS equivalent? 1. Culture, tradition, apathy, risk-averseness 2. Regulations

So you're saying building an AWS equivalent is harder to do than building ASML? Again: if Europe could come up with ASML (which is just an example I'm familiar with, I assume there are successful companies), why can't it build in AWS equivalent? Which is even easier to do since the problem of scaling server instances is better understood and more intuitive than developing lithography machines like ASML is doing.

You should really reconsider your assumptions about server scaling and AWS business in general. AWS builds truely complex and ahead-of-time distributed systems that humans could never build before because of lack of knowledge and concentrated efforts. Distributed systems are really hard and not very well understood and algorithms are immensly complex and even harder to to engineer espeically on AWS scale. See DynamoDB for example, it's a masterpiece of engineering in distributed systems. You can read the paper entitled "Dynamo: Amazon's Highly Available Key-Value Store" to get a real feel of the challenge. I consider the way you see things as another part of Europs failure to build software quality awareness that can compete with the US engineering.

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

#372

Post by jevgeni »

Pedrit0 wrote: post #301
joelbluminator wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How the U.S looked the last few years they are in no position to laugh at anyone. In fact most Americans I talk to in Europe seem quite humble.

Maybe those you can meet in Europe... But on Hacker News, Europe is (most of the time) a laughing stock for Americans.

HN comments are just Reddit comments with a thin veneer of objectivity. So mostly just a group think of patting each other on the back, if your opinion conforms.

Europe did a lot of things that seemed unsexy, but habe proven to be good in the long run. That’s why most of the debates in Europe on healthcare, for example, are “the premiums are a tad high”. Compared to the American civil war inducing train wreck that is their healthcare reform debate.

There are tech powerhouses around major universities, like TU Berlin or ETH Zurich. The problem is that the VC market is nowhere near SV.

Also, SV unicorns are all consumer and ad businesses. This is where a homogeneous huge market helps. It’s easier to have network effects when everybody speaks the same language.

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

#373

Post by Nasrudith »

martius wrote: post #296
realusername wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are "good" French companies where you can grow a career and get a good salary. What surprises me is that these companies seem to either hide their French roots, and are often ignored by the academic world. When I was student in engineering school, the only companies we would hear from where the big French corps like Orange, Cap Gemini, Thales and co. I'm sad to see that these French companies don't get the supp…

Perhaps that they feel a need to actively hide their french origins is a hint at being seen as an active downside to work with - or perhaps it is just a result of the style being set by the existing "leaders" akin to the name zeitgeist from multiword to acronym companies (IBM/Standard Oil) to single word as fashionable (Amazon, Apple, Google).

Personally I am of the philosophy that if they have to appeal to nationalism they suck as they lack any other qualifications or other features to cite first.

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

#374

Post by Pedrit0 »

Udik wrote: post #364
Pedrit0 wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why is it that EU companies don't have the market share that US ones have? Why are our companies not big enough? They created the Cloud and we arrived late on this market, so we lag, therefore our companies are not big enough. This FR-GER initiative will secure market shares for european actors, in order they can grow enough to provide a sovereign platform for EU companies which need it. > Are you going to force EU…

> They created the Cloud and we arrived late on this market Same for the web, for the mobile, and for many other sectors. We seem to be always late on the market, why is it so? > All defense/sensitive/state owned companies, administration and maybe banking companies will not have the choice Ok, so if I understand it correctly the EU is going to regulate out from some sectors non-EU companies and has to both come up w…

> Same for the web, for the mobile, and for many other sectors. We seem to be always late on the market, why is it so?

1.We lost the WWII. The US won it and took the leadership of the world. At a moment we were rebuilding our continent, they developed very quickly and took a competitive advantage in many sectors. We managed to catch-up in some but not in others. And since the beginning IT has always been an American thing (apart Minitel in France in the 80's). The information era was shaped by IBM, Bell, Intel, Microsoft. Not by Thomson, Siemens or Olivetti.

2.The US are very good at selling stuff and making profit. But as I stated in another post this also has big downsides.

3. Europe is not a country and there are 27 economic policies and strategies which does not help European companies...

4. I think mobile developed first in Europe (Nokia ?)and not in the US but this is detail.

. > And if the alternative is mediocre it won't be much of an issue because there will be no choice anyway.

This move is not about making good products or value the european savoir-faire. It is about geopolitics.

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

#375

Post by t0mas88 »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #246
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just Germany though. The UK is absolutely obsessed with making phone calls. Lots and lots of completely useless phone calls. Most of them could easily be replaced by an online booking system. Others serve no purpose at all, because all that's required is for them to take some action. Same with US corporations. I recently tried to sign up for Microsoft's partner network because that's required for an Office 3…

Believe me, the UK is ages ahead of Germany in terms of digitization.

The UK is ages ahead of Germany, but that's because Germany is very non-digital, not because the UK is so ahead.

When I lived in the UK things like online banking, internet speeds (even in London) and 4G/5G coverage all felt a few years behind as well.

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

#376

Post by stu2b50 »

deathcakes wrote: post #359
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…

"University-educated people in my social circle are often woefully unaware of economic trends that have swept the US, be it the gig economy, X-as-a-service, the nature of Venture Capital, the idea of scaling a company aggressively, the value of information, mobility of labor and paying market rate for experts, the high profit margins of offering a software product vs. (for example) doing one-off consulting for a Germ…

I don't see how SaaS as a concept has made anyone's life particularly bad. For many B2B the consumer gets exactly what they want--constant support and updates--and the producer gets that sweet sweet high margin subscription payment.

Same for "high profit margins of offering a software product vs. (for example) doing one-off consulting for a German industrial company". Honestly that's a lesson from all the way back to MSFT.

I'm guessing by "paying market rate for experts", they're referring to the pretty large gap between US and European software salaries (even if you're not looking at the Bay).

When that comes up, there's usually some people who say that Bay area engineers are overpaid, but rather I think everyone else is underpaid and should fight for better compensation in general. Evidently you can afford to pay these salaries as a business.

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

#377

Post by pgeorgi »

disiplus wrote: post #190
thecleaner wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And the US is one of the only western countries where wiring money from one bank to another might mean that the originating bank prints a check, mails it to the receiving bank where it's typed in manually (hopefully correctly) and clears 6 weeks later.

Germany nailed that process in 1983.

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

#378

Post by rootusrootus »

viraptor wrote: post #256
thecleaner wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Tech salaries in Europe really are a joke. Don't look at just the number. Once you consider the cost of living, health coverage, days off, sick days, long service leave, parental leave, and lots of other benefits, it's actually not that impressive. > easy immigration to US for Europeans "Europeans" don't exist. UK has drastically different immigration rules than Poland for example. > good affordable education Some…

> Once you consider the cost of living, health coverage, days off, sick days, long service leave, parental leave, and lots of other benefits, it's actually not that impressive.

You don't think that tech workers in the US get most of that? Software engineering in the US is a pretty cushy gig. A lot of the problems you hear about for regular middle class Americans don't really happen if you're working in tech. It's not fair, but it's the current reality.

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

#379

Post by rootusrootus »

twic wrote: post #303
viraptor wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tech salaries in Europe really are a joke. Don't look at just the number. Once you consider the cost of living, health coverage, days off, sick days, long service leave, parental leave, and lots of other benefits, it's actually not that impressive. > easy immigration to US for Europeans "Europeans" don't exist. UK has drastically different immigration rules than Poland for example. > good affordable education Some…

Don't just look at the list of things not included either. Actually look at the numbers. A Silicon Valley total compensation can easily be double that in the UK. That pays for a lot of cost of living, healthcare, time off, etc. It actually is an impressive difference.

It's more than double. The engineers on my team in Portland earn more than 2x the experienced senior engineer we have in the UK. The engineers we have in San Jose make 1.5x what most of our Portland engineers make. And we are not a FAANG.

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

#380

Post by hydraxis »

adev_ wrote: post #336
hydraxis wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compare for example with Denmark where the social contributions are close to 0 and the income tax up to 50%. The total of the employment taxes paid in Denmark is still lower than the total in France.

Denmark seems to be a particular case compared to other OECD countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_rates_in_Europe#/media/Fil...

Yes, I chose this extreme example on purpose to show that evaluating only the income tax is not meaningful.
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