Dear Europe, please wake up

It's a tricky thing: my experience does mirror some of the "propaganda" despite coming to Europe with heavily rose-tinted glasses. I'm not going to pretend that my limited data is enough to extrapolate to the whole of the continent but it's still a data point.

The work culture is very different. There's a clear attitude of working until the next holiday and the company never gets one minute more than what they pay me for. That's honestly not a _bad_ perspective to have but it's not ideal if you're trying to build a startup

“Europe” is not a thing I tell most people trying to expand. It’s just a bunch of countries. Yes, some things are unified but it really doesn’t matter. It’s fragmented, extra work, and it’s bullshit compared to just building for a unified market like US or China. Tall poppy syndrome is also very real in Europe. It’s a dream killer and is deeply ingrained in many societies here. You can work hard all you want but these are the true frictions for risking capital and time.

In all honesty, tech people in EE show up to the office at 11 and take a legit one hour plus lunch break to eat proper food at the restaurant together. To ensure team cohesion of course. I'm not sure if that counts as a hard work or the result is simply better because you hire smart people and can't micromanage from SF due to 10h time zone difference.

>German, French, and British government officials are the worst to deal with imo

I would dread dealing with my countries government anything if I have time pressure. The result could be anything. In Western Europe I know that things will be done even if slow (ish).

> Expect India to look more like China - with similar economic pitfalls - in the next few decades

Pretty much this. The best way to operate in India is to use a mixed Chinese and Israeli mindset tbh.

> India’s where offshoring from the us is

True, but there is a massive change now from the 2000s where it's just BPO. Literally the crown jewels of enterprise and deep tech and increasingly innovated and designed by the India teams directly (eg. the cybersecurity backbone of a major 5G telco in the US, the Apple mobile chips, Google Pay, etc).

Incorporation is already simple in the EU. Just pick the easiest jurisdiction, access the common market. Yes, local labor laws for employing people in different countries vary, but so does the states.

The English language thing, meh. I used to think the same but no longer do. Diversity is a good thing, it's Anglos who could use learning to work in different languages and cultural contexts.

Last but not least, just the tech bro-itis is so strong with this article. Like yeah if your identity and life is consumed by being a tech bro and you want the world to optimize for that and your startups, sure, let's make everywhere Delaware and the Bay Area. But that's not what most of the world wants or tries to do.