Dear Europe, please wake up
11–20 of 323 posts
Re: Dear Europe, please wake up
#12These e/acc types are insufferable and if anything "SF" has been ruined by them. I know I'll get downvoted or flagged given this is HN, but there's more to life than startups and private equity[0]. Let's leave Europe alone, huh? [0]: https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2023/world-happiness-trust-...
Re: Dear Europe, please wake up
#13I can't scroll this webpage to read it unless I plug my laptop in. Scroll events have a lag time measured in whole seconds, then the page scrolls down by either a fraction of a line or by multiple paragraphs, so I can't keep track of where I was reading. Plugging in my laptop, which changes the power mode, makes the webpage barely usable, but my cooling fans are spun up to full speed now. This is using Chrome on a De…
Re: Dear Europe, please wake up
#14I have no idea whether Europeans work harder than Americans, but I do want to say that you can't extrapolate the overall work ethic of America by looking at the SF tech world. It's a very, very small (and very privileged) microcosm of the country.
> US folks love talking about how hard they work. And honestly with service workers and blue collars I believe it. But not in tech.
Re: Dear Europe, please wake up
#15I have no idea whether Europeans work harder than Americans, but I do want to say that you can't extrapolate the overall work ethic of America by looking at the SF tech world. It's a very, very small (and very privileged) microcosm of the country.
Re: Dear Europe, please wake up
#16God people still haven't figured out how knowledge work and work ethic there is illustrated when you are giving your brain to your employer instead of your body. Some of these workers are thinking about work problems literally 24 hours a day, and come up with solutions in their dreams, but because they aren't literally chained to their desk writing lines of code every single second they are observed they are lazy slackers.
Can't stand this crap and it's just gonna get worse. Unless executives see you in pain, or are forced to sacrifice something you value like attending your kids piano recital they don't beleive you are dedicated enough to the cause like they are.
Re: Dear Europe, please wake up
#17Re: Dear Europe, please wake up
#18Somehow I don’t think many people living in the EU want the work/life balance of the US with paltry benefits and no social safety net.
Re: Dear Europe, please wake up
#19The Eastern and Central European countries have always felt much more dynamic and open to work hard.
There's a reason why the countries on the lefthand side of the graph provided are also the ones with some of the better innovation industries in Europe.
There is still much work to be done in the CEE, but I'd be fairly confident that they'll become truly developed first world countries in the next 10-15 years, and some already have such as Czechia.
Andreas is exactly right imo - his points about simplifying incorporation (there's a reason why CH does so well) and normalizing English (there's a reason why every developing Asian country from India to Vietnam to China is pushing English fluency, and lots of the CEE countries) will help.
German, French, and British government officials are the worst to deal with imo - they will bend over the barrel for local conglomerates but ignore domestic challengers. Datadog could have been a fully French company, but the French ecosystem stifled them.
Also, ime - Western Europeans seem to idolize Finance, Law, Management, and Civil Service careers more than innovation or entrepreneurship, unlike their CEE (Germany and Austria excluded) peers.
Re: Dear Europe, please wake up
#20I can't scroll this webpage to read it unless I plug my laptop in. Scroll events have a lag time measured in whole seconds, then the page scrolls down by either a fraction of a line or by multiple paragraphs, so I can't keep track of where I was reading. Plugging in my laptop, which changes the power mode, makes the webpage barely usable, but my cooling fans are spun up to full speed now. This is using Chrome on a De…