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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’

#381

Post by maelito »

Nextgrid wrote: post #106
flr03 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly there are very capable and smart engineers in France, and I don't blame the country ambition to develop its own solutions, but the SSII mafia (or how are they called now?) is killing innovation. It's a very top to bottom decision process (starting from the Government/MP), with big bucks involved, and very little understanding of how to drive these tech projects, all the way to the bottom. What I don't unders…

> there are very capable and smart engineers in France I would not be so sure. I looked at the IT salaries there (both as a permanent and as a contractor) and it just doesn’t make sense to stay there when you could earn way more money elsewhere in Europe.

I can assure you that with my salary, working as a Web developer for the french government, it makes a lot of sense to stay in France.

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

#382

Post by dalf »

Perhaps an out of topic comment.

I've been working for one of these CORDIS European projects : https://cordis.europa.eu/projects/en

The project was politically driven while most of the slides were selling dreams. As usual in this kind of project

- there was a schedule carved in stone

- the Conway's law gets a beautiful practical example

so the research becomes quickly a joke.

Some people:

- worked on out of topic subjects. At least no harm.

- criticized because of external/past/personal/out of topic reasons.

- criticized the work of others while doing literally nothing. My boss knew it, but since they are well known to wrote nice documents to get the fund for many years.

- worked very hard while being criticized through hidden communication.

- were here because of the data.

- were here to get the technology if by luck it ends up to be working project.

The usual burdens, I guess, but it basically kills the motivation (it is my experience in one specific project). In the end, people went to the different meetings to see Europe.

It seems some other projects are driven in the same way according to what I have heard.

It is only a sum up of experience. YMMV.

I sincerely hope that Gaia-X will be managed in better way.

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

#384

Post by rootusrootus »

tomatotomato37 wrote: post #349
f6v wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny that when Europe is mentioned, many people think "Germany". Ask Italians about their tech salaries, I've been told people are happy with 2.5k as a senior developer there...

Well I mean it's the same in the US. No one is talking salaries in Iowa whenever tech jobs are mentioned

The average software engineer in Iowa makes around 100K a year. That's pretty good, really, most people would consider it a lot of money. There is a reality distortion field around SV :)

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

#385

Post by joyj2nd »

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 German who's been exclusively working in the US tech space for the past few years,

As a new immigrant your are still in the euphoria phase of your new live...

> but the reality is that any European who truly grasps the pace of the US tech industry would rather go there directly..

Well, as a naturalized citizen with a PhD from the US and experience in technology I can assure you, that this is not the case for everybody. Neither me, nor my business partner with the same background - we both work now in China.

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

#386

Post by Nasrudith »

enriquto wrote: post #70
thamer wrote: post #14

It's no surprise the French government is involved in this. They love these moonshot projects that aim to create the French X for any X that is a successful service by an American company. Qwant[1], launched as "The French Google" with a focus on privacy, serves 10 million searches a day (a ridiculously small number). No one has heard of it, no one uses it, and it's another project with a dream of restoring France to…

While it is easy to laugh at these modern "maginot lines" that the french love to build, the concept of "technological sovereignity" seems very reasonable.

I am personally very cynical about sovereignty as a concept - it just means "nobody is willing to try to pay the heavy price to try to stop us" dressed up as something noble. Every whinge about loss of sovereignty is a complaint that they cannot control others anymore.

While there may be some good for avoiding outside control it is a cover for their drooling about shoving others inside their domain of control.

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

#387

Post by cdavid »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #248
Aeolun wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies maybe, but there’s zero reason for me to move back to the Netherlands if they’re not going to pay me at least what I earn in Japan, and Japan isn’t even particularly high paying.

Wow, that's the first time I hear this. Care to share why did you choose Japan out of all places?

Global and a few Japanese companies in Tokyo pay well compared to Europe. E.g. you can make 200+k$ total comp if you have skills in demand (ML, etc.), which is hard in Europe outside management consulting/finance.

How that compares to the US depends on your life choices, etc. I am aware I could "easily" earn 2x in SV, but I hate living in suburbs while I can cycle to work in Tokyo and live in one of the most vibrant city in the world.

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

#388

Post by rootusrootus »

pgeorgi wrote: post #377
disiplus wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What? LOL. ACH has been a thing for decades. Hardly anyone uses paper checks, and when they do, they are processed electronically.

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

#389

Post by Roritharr »

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…

>- When I tried to read or watch reviews about SaaS solutions for invoicing / bookkeeping for German companies, the first half of the review is usually spent trying to convince people that moving off paper-based invoices and folders to all-digital is a good idea in the first place.

As a CTO of a leading company in this space in Germany, I have to absolutely agree. The technology we can bring to the table is years if not decades ahead of the current state of the art and the growth of all contenders in our space is surprisingly slow compared to our US based counterparts.

There are a lot of reasons to this from a culture and market pov, but in general I agree that Germany & Europe as a whole is in a bad spot technologically especially as engineering salaries are simply far below the US so the braindrain is rampant.

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

#390

Post by stakkur »

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…

European startup tech companies with valuations >= $1 Billion:

* Klarna (Sweden)(online payments)

* N26 (Germany) (mobile banking)

* BlaBlaCar (France) (Ride sharing)

* Vinted (Lithuania) (ecommerce)

* Acronis (Switzerland) (backup/recovery)

* Glovo (Spain) (delivery)

* Outsystems (Portugal) (enterprise app platform)

* Bolt (Estonia)

* Veeam Software (Switzerland)(acquired, I think)

There are more. There's a trillion+ dollars in valuation in the European startup world, a deep and well-educated talent pool, and (in many countries) long experience in technology innovation. I think Europe's going to be just fine.

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