They've been saying this about Portugal for years
Croatia could be Europe's hidden tech haven in 2024
21–30 of 59 posts
Re: Croatia could be Europe's hidden tech haven in 2024
#22Europe is going to have a long hibernation in the global scene. Whatever existed was killed by bureaucracy and taxation. Whatever doesn't exist, it will simply not happen, the ship has sailed
Don't know mate, seems to me Europe controls a, maybe the, major component of tech through ASML. If they decide you can't buy their machines anymore, then good luck with your home grown chips on 10+ year old lithography.
Whenever there is a comment about EU doing not great tech wise there is somebody mentioning ASML or Mistral. This is not very productive.
Re: Croatia could be Europe's hidden tech haven in 2024
#23They've been saying this about Portugal for years
And to some extent it is true, but fortunately Portugal is not so easy to overrun. The area in and around Cascais is very popular with 'expats' (aka immigrants). At 200K+ inhabitants it is large enough to have all facilities, quite warm and not so large that you get the trouble associated with large cities in the South of Europe. The fact that it always was fairly wealthy probably also helps.
Re: Croatia could be Europe's hidden tech haven in 2024
#24As someone who has built and sold an original software startup in Serbia, and has followed the evolution of the local tech scene in the Balkans over the last decade pretty closely, the one thing the region absolutely needs more of is this kind of positive press. While there's been a fair bit written about the growth of the "IT Sector"[0] there, for the longest time that sector was mostly made up of outsourcers and bo…
> outsourcers and body shops
spot on. Example for Bulgaria - see who's big there.. Re-sellers of man-hours. And that trend created a big percentage of butterflies (who fly off to next door/flower for $100 or bag of peanuts more, anytime)
yeah the talent is (still) there. Some are even Returning..
But.. The burocracy though and taxation etc hurdles, for having (and keeping) a company is staggering..
Essentially, at last in .bg, everybody is tax-treated as BigCorp. Too bad if you are not one. (And, if one grows enough so that does not bug you, there is still some mafia, which.. will)
Re: Croatia could be Europe's hidden tech haven in 2024
#25People go where the money is. It is capitalism. SV is where the money is so people are going to go there. Same as wall street before it. You want the best talent you pay the most money. With Europe paying so little compared to the US I don't know if Crotia or anywhere in europe will be a real tech hotbed.
Re: Croatia could be Europe's hidden tech haven in 2024
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you base this opinion on? Northern European countries consistently rank at the top of the world in ease of doing business https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ease_of_doing_business_index Some of them have more entrepreneurs per capita than USA. What you don’t have is the ability to attract a crazy amount of international capital to mega corporations like in California/Texas or some places in China. So it’s hard t…
Any article that mentions Europe either directly or in passing will attract at least a couple of comments that mention 'regulation' and how everything is going down the drain here. It's all bs but that doesn't seem to stop the influx of these comments, in this case from a brave novelty account no less.
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Re: Croatia could be Europe's hidden tech haven in 2024
#27Europe is going to have a long hibernation in the global scene. Whatever existed was killed by bureaucracy and taxation. Whatever doesn't exist, it will simply not happen, the ship has sailed
What do you base this opinion on? Northern European countries consistently rank at the top of the world in ease of doing business https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ease_of_doing_business_index Some of them have more entrepreneurs per capita than USA. What you don’t have is the ability to attract a crazy amount of international capital to mega corporations like in California/Texas or some places in China. So it’s hard t…
To attract top tech talent you need to offer 200k per year at least.
A salary like this in Western Europe pays 70% of taxes (UK is the most favorable one with "only" 50%)
Re: Croatia could be Europe's hidden tech haven in 2024
#28It's like California but with Roman emperor's palaces and Habsburg vacation homes strewn around the shoreline. Happy to see this trend and hope it continues.
It's also a mix of half a country (...well, the shoreline) being a tourist trap during summer and basically empty and dead during winter. The inner parts are mostly based around socialist infrastructure and more boring.
Re: Croatia could be Europe's hidden tech haven in 2024
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you base this opinion on? Northern European countries consistently rank at the top of the world in ease of doing business https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ease_of_doing_business_index Some of them have more entrepreneurs per capita than USA. What you don’t have is the ability to attract a crazy amount of international capital to mega corporations like in California/Texas or some places in China. So it’s hard t…
Any article that mentions Europe either directly or in passing will attract at least a couple of comments that mention 'regulation' and how everything is going down the drain here. It's all bs but that doesn't seem to stop the influx of these comments, in this case from a brave novelty account no less.
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Re: Croatia could be Europe's hidden tech haven in 2024
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you base this opinion on? Northern European countries consistently rank at the top of the world in ease of doing business https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ease_of_doing_business_index Some of them have more entrepreneurs per capita than USA. What you don’t have is the ability to attract a crazy amount of international capital to mega corporations like in California/Texas or some places in China. So it’s hard t…
Any article that mentions Europe either directly or in passing will attract at least a couple of comments that mention 'regulation' and how everything is going down the drain here. It's all bs but that doesn't seem to stop the influx of these comments, in this case from a brave novelty account no less.
One quick example: Germany has a 3 month required severance period. So if you are doing something where funding may be uncertain, a German employee is somewhat risky. A startup in California that fails to raise funding can cut staff and take another swing in 6 months. In Germany, this is less likely. You could just budget for this up front and sock away 1/4 salary for every hire, but along with the employer taxes, that really starts to negate any cost advantage vs California.
It also cuts the other way. German hires often cannot start for 3 months, so in addition to the time it takes for a developer to start learning the codebase once they’re hired, it might take 6 months between the time that you realize you need a developer and when they are hired and up to speed.
I’m not sure, but I believe it is also more complex to freelance in Germany, requiring more of an official business entity, vs the US where you can just send someone an email with an invoice and everyone’s happy.
Adding this all together, German employment law is heavily tilted towards larger businesses with longer time horizons and the funding and scale to absorb uncertainty.