Live data from Hacker News

Moving the Evernote center of operations to Europe

evernote.com

41–50 of 127 posts

Re: Moving the Evernote center of operations to Europe

#41
post #21

There's a massive population of software developers that don't care about software, don't have a passion for the problem solving, don't feel accomplishment when they ship something. They just got into the business because of the money and the hype. These people will never amount to much and will cost companies lots of opportunity cost money. It makes sense to not pay Bay Area salaries for these people and to go pay p…

Your comment implies European tech workers are somehow less passionate or that passionate tech workers can't be found here. This is a harmful myth that perpetuates our depressed wages. We're not America's backwater for tech sourcing. We're just as capable and passionate.

I read this as since Evernote is not a cutting edge, hypey startup they don’t need to have as high a calibre/pay grade of staff as they currently do have by being based in California. Hence can halve labour costs by moving to Europe and still maintain a decent standard of technical employee.

Re: Moving the Evernote center of operations to Europe

#43
post #36

My mother was a banker. She asked a hypothetical question of me, 30 years ago, that I've never been able to answer: "Name for me one company that was better, for the customer or the employees, after a merger."

This was an acquisition, not a merger, but if we misquote your mother a bit to fit this situation: YouTube?

YouTube’s algorithm routinely drives people to more and more extreme content and is designed to be as addictive as possible so that users don’t leave. A lot of this is the result of Google’s acquiring them. I’m curious how you think it’s better.

Let me also be clear that it’s not like it was squeaky clean and friendly prior. But to say it has improved since the acquisition…I’m having a hard time seeing that.

Re: Moving the Evernote center of operations to Europe

#44

My mother was a banker. She asked a hypothetical question of me, 30 years ago, that I've never been able to answer: "Name for me one company that was better, for the customer or the employees, after a merger."

Madrigal Electromotive GmbH.

Re: Moving the Evernote center of operations to Europe

#46

My mother was a banker. She asked a hypothetical question of me, 30 years ago, that I've never been able to answer: "Name for me one company that was better, for the customer or the employees, after a merger."

Didn't the Sprint/TMobile merger provide a real competition to the AT&T/Verizon duopoly?

Re: Moving the Evernote center of operations to Europe

#47
post #36

My mother was a banker. She asked a hypothetical question of me, 30 years ago, that I've never been able to answer: "Name for me one company that was better, for the customer or the employees, after a merger."

This was an acquisition, not a merger, but if we misquote your mother a bit to fit this situation: YouTube?

youtube is significantly worse other than maybe in stability/uptime.

remember google tried to force that weird google plus login instead?

and now it’s so corporatized/ad filled

Re: Moving the Evernote center of operations to Europe

#49
post #21

There's a massive population of software developers that don't care about software, don't have a passion for the problem solving, don't feel accomplishment when they ship something. They just got into the business because of the money and the hype. These people will never amount to much and will cost companies lots of opportunity cost money. It makes sense to not pay Bay Area salaries for these people and to go pay p…

I don’t understand your critique. Are you saying that European software developers don’t have a passion for shipping products?

> It makes sense to not pay Bay Area salaries for these people and to go pay people in Europe to have this attitude

This sentence implies that "this kind of people" exist in both places. I don't see any judgment in terms of where they are more prevalent.

Re: Moving the Evernote center of operations to Europe

#50
post #21

There's a massive population of software developers that don't care about software, don't have a passion for the problem solving, don't feel accomplishment when they ship something. They just got into the business because of the money and the hype. These people will never amount to much and will cost companies lots of opportunity cost money. It makes sense to not pay Bay Area salaries for these people and to go pay p…

Your comment implies European tech workers are somehow less passionate or that passionate tech workers can't be found here. This is a harmful myth that perpetuates our depressed wages. We're not America's backwater for tech sourcing. We're just as capable and passionate.

> This is a harmful myth that perpetuates our depressed wages

In some European countries, conditions are more favorable to workers, and this can be reflected in the wages as well. For instance, an employee in France will enjoy 35 weeks of holiday per year (not including public holidays), and also stronger protections regarding layoffs. This is somewhat expected that wages are also lower.

EDIT: 35 days, not weeks.

Post reply on HN