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Europe's Software Problem

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Re: Europe's Software Problem

#281

Post by lesto »

raverbashing wrote: post #258
fvdessen wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It goes far beyond that. If you are in Italy and want to expand to Germany you need to hire german speaking people and that means opening a Sales Office in Germany, and dealing with different labour regulations etc.

> you need to hire german speaking people and that means opening a Sales Office in Germany No you don't need that. You can have your German speaking people move to Italy and work from there. That's the whole point of the EU. The same for VAT, you can register in one country and have that sent to multiple countries according to your sales. No presence needed

As EUropean living in a different country for work, is not that easy at all. Try to do your taxes in Swedish or German or French.. Or try to have a social life with people that while could speak English will probably switch to their own language when in more than 2-3 person. Yes of course you can learn the language, but dont think you can be proficient in a couple of year, especially if working 40h/week, and still you will be proficient in a country at max

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#282

Post by hardolaf »

raverbashing wrote: post #260
egman_ekki wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the wikipedia article: > Borland Ltd. was founded in August 1981 by three Danish citizens, Niels Jensen, Ole Henriksen, and Mogens Glad, to develop [...] However, response to the company's products at the CP/M-82 show in San Francisco showed that a U.S. company would be needed to reach the American market. They met Philippe Kahn, who had just moved to Silicon Valley... So yes, Borland is a US company, but founde…

Well in 1981 if you wanted to sell stuff for personal computers you would have to be in the Valley. No question about it. I'd say it would have been hard to sell anything that specific even elsewhere in the US at the time.

You could have been in NY near NYC too. But yes, at the time, you were either in the valley or by NYC if you were starting a personal computer related business.

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#283

Post by mikevm »

usaar333 wrote: post #214
jillesvangurp wrote: post #179

I'm a European, living in Europe, developing software. Lack of imagination is not our problem. It's so good that we supply our best talent to the US where it does extremely well revolutionizing AI, designing hardware for Apple, developing games, stream online music, etc. E.g. Amazon's CTO is Dutch. Basically the person that has been running AWS. The people and the education system are fine. Europe does have a few iss…

Given the small country issue, a better comparison would be Israel. It has a thriving startup scene while only having 10 million people.

Most Israeli startups target the US anyway. The R&D center is in Israel while sales/marketing are in the US HQ.

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#284

Post by odiroot »

thiago_fm wrote: post #4

This problem will never get fixed. The author forgot to mention in depth the main reason why EU isn't even in the game: culture. In order to be innovative and compete, we need very flexible working laws, people with a big growth mindset, a less relaxing lifestyle and AMBITIOUS people. A lot of third world countries are years ahead of the whole EU continent in that aspect. I say this because I live in Europe for the q…

> It is quite rare to find a [G]erman software developer on Startups.

Because they probably already left for Switzerland or North American, where they can get paid much better salaries.

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#285

Post by hardolaf »

selfhoster11 wrote: post #198
throwaway894345 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US has those things and it's turning into a "third world country with a Gucci belt" I get the distinct impression that people who liken the US to a third world country are from one particular spot on the political spectrum. This seems like political rhetoric, not a summary of some level-headed analysis. Inequality, crime, etc in the US are certainly problems, but that seems like a low bar for the "third world c…

America's problems are numerous and have been discussed elsewhere at length. Suffice to say that sometime between 9/11 and the 2008 financial crisis, America has not been keeping up with other economies in terms of what makes a first world country worth living in. Biden may change that, or he may not. In any case, America has a lot of catching up to do if they want to overtake Europe (and some other places) in anythi…

Poverty has been increasing rapidly here in the states and people just keep ignoring it. My employer isn't, we're gearing up to make tons of money on the next crash.

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#286

Post by throwaway894345 »

selfhoster11 wrote: post #198
throwaway894345 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US has those things and it's turning into a "third world country with a Gucci belt" I get the distinct impression that people who liken the US to a third world country are from one particular spot on the political spectrum. This seems like political rhetoric, not a summary of some level-headed analysis. Inequality, crime, etc in the US are certainly problems, but that seems like a low bar for the "third world c…

America's problems are numerous and have been discussed elsewhere at length. Suffice to say that sometime between 9/11 and the 2008 financial crisis, America has not been keeping up with other economies in terms of what makes a first world country worth living in. Biden may change that, or he may not. In any case, America has a lot of catching up to do if they want to overtake Europe (and some other places) in anythi…

> America's problems are numerous and have been discussed elsewhere at length. Suffice to say that sometime between 9/11 and the 2008 financial crisis, America has not been keeping up with other economies in terms of what makes a first world country worth living in.

Maybe. Or maybe the media is just peddling negativity such that we are overexposed. I moved to Europe a decade ago and have since returned, and plan to go back occasionally. When I went, I definitely had the impression that Europeans had it together and that Europe was some kind of liberal Utopia. And it was neat and European countries have political ideas worth borrowing, but it turns out that Europeans are also just people with their own distinct problems. They aren't more enlightened as American liberal media would have you believe. Europe has some really cool cultures, but they aren't "better" than American culture(s). IMO what Europe does have that America lacks is a deep, vibrant history (pre-Columbian American history is relatively impoverished for a variety of reasons).

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#287

Post by odiroot »

selfhoster11 wrote: post #255
wyager wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a "third world country with a Gucci belt" (as someone put it) for everyone except the 1% The median American is much richer than the median European.

While also spending more money on various things, or having to spend them on privatised health care etc. It's not directly comparable. My point also discussed things like infrastructure and public services, which are often very neglected compared to their European counterparts.

Maybe if you only take San Francisco and New York City in consideration.

USA has famously cheaper life than EU (especially gas and food). Not that I would trade places.

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#288

Post by cannabis_sam »

Needs a corresponding article called «the US anti-trust problem», of course american companies are bigger when they can just buy up the competition while continuing to run the actual service into the ground (facebook, twitter and youtube/google all fits here) since there’s no alternative…

Or maybe it should just be called «the US Social Media problem»…

(There’s also the tax issue, but that’s mostly on countries like Ireland and The Netherlands being tax havens (UK too, but they left, kinda…))

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#289

Post by jkingsbery »

ramboldio wrote: post #162

The EU should just pay anybody who makes Open Source contributions. Problem solved. Europeans get their own tech stack. Can compete again with US companies, as the all the cost for building infrastructure is externalized.

Right. Last I read, Hacktoberfest created a huge amount of spam for Open Source contributions, and all that was on the line there was a t-shirt. You seem to be suggesting that real money should be involved - do you think the outcome will be different than Hacktoberfest?

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#290

Post by zerkten »

dgaaaaaaaaaa wrote: post #242
misterbwong wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A second reason is simply that the US as a big homogeneous market is a nice one to tackle for European companies as well. And often that means having a (big) presence in the US. The EU is basically many markets unified by really complex rules, bureaucracy, etc. There is free traffic of people but companies have a harder time dealing with local variations in legislation, hurdles for billing and taxation (e.g. VAT), ba…

True. But I think the problems are more nuanced. It is just harder to scale across EU than US. You'll need localization, marketing, customer support separately set up for different languages/countries.

As a data point, per user support costs (financial and other) are often much larger for European customers compared to the US or Asia. In my experience, it tends to be lower bump for consumer. Once you get into B2B or enterprise, European customers are significantly costlier to support than US equivalent.

It's a combination of requirements specific to markets (EU mandates like GDPR are easier train a support team on and build an escalation process), cultural expectations around handholding, not wanting to hear no for an answer unless it is delivered by an exec (and EU support teams inconsistently delivering the same message that a US would because they fear the response), and general language barriers.

In some ways, it is better to deliver arguably lower-quality support via the US with special treatment for a few key customers just to avoid having to setup support in Europe. Once you invest, you have to go all-in.

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