191–200 of 323 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be fair, the author wrote about tech workers in SV specifically, not about the "overall work with of America" (which btw is a continent, not a country). The hero arc story is true and has to do with large Protestant population.
There is no continent called America.
“The problem is not that regulation 1 or 100 is too much. The problem is that every country has different regulations, creating a mess of complexity if you want to act across a larger consumer market” If you’re building the next Uber sure, this might be a problem. But this is also a HUGE advantage if you’re not though. If you’re building the Workday for Estonia, or the LinkedIn for Germany (ie Xing) you have a huge a…
It's amusing that you used Uber as an example as Bolt is a direct competitor to Uber that is founded and operated in Estonia, but other than that, your purported advantage is pretty meager. Assuming you build a product custom tailored to Estonia's unique regulatory requirements that is targeting primarily business users, then you are targeting a maximum market of 324,000 businesses. It's realistic to assume, given Es…
This last thing you said is worth pondering more on. Many places are happy not growing, doing what they love, in a way that suits their workers lifestyles. They can afford to stay small and protected, at the cost of needing to be locally focused, and they love it.
If we look at other major developed countries (say Japan, S Korea, Canada, Austalia, New Zealand) they also lack the same innovation ecosystem the US has. Their economies have also been largely stagnating since the 2008 GFC in terms of metrics like nominal GDP per capita, labor prodictivity (GDP/hours worked), market cap of their national stock exchanges and diposable income. Canadian GDP per capita was $52k in 2011, and in 2021 it was still $52k. Meanwhile, these countries also saw their tech sectors decay. Blackberry was so big in late 2000s. Japan had the world's most advanced tech sector in the 80s and 90s. All of it gone, and the breaking point was 2008. You can see that in the productivity and GDP per capita charts of all developed economies except the US.
Why did the US outperform everyone so much? The main dynamic change in 2008 was QE. In my opinion, because the USD is the global reserve currency, it meant that the printed money gave an outsized benefit to the US due to the seigniorage effect, and distorted the dynamics of capital formation greatly in the US' favor.
That's a bit gratuitous
Europeans always like to approach this issue from the perspective of Europe being uncompetitive vs the US. I'd say it's not Europe that is underperforming, rather the US has been over-performing since the 2008 GFC. If we look at other major developed countries (say Japan, S Korea, Canada, Austalia, New Zealand) they also lack the same innovation ecosystem the US has. Their economies have also been largely stagnating…
Europeans always like to approach this issue from the perspective of Europe being uncompetitive vs the US. I'd say it's not Europe that is underperforming, rather the US has been over-performing since the 2008 GFC. If we look at other major developed countries (say Japan, S Korea, Canada, Austalia, New Zealand) they also lack the same innovation ecosystem the US has. Their economies have also been largely stagnating…
So the US government got all this money. And this led somehow to the US economy outperforming the rest of the developed world?
Yup, in my experience Europeans value quality of life over making their boss's richer.
Read TFA.
This misses the big one: California bans non-competes, bans anti-moonlighting clauses and lets you quit with no notice. If you’re at an EU company and need to give 3+ months notice to quit that will discourage starting your own company on the side.
The flipside is your company can't just fire you at will, which is rather nice in this day and age.
Im an American currently living in Europe (Germany). I’ve founded a few companies in the US. I have a project that’s going well, could easily turn into a startup, but I’m not sure I’d found it here—genuinely struggling with it. The way companies fundraise here is a bit weird to me. Much smaller rounds. Also typically thinking smaller in general. Obviously, everything is very commercially focused. In Germany, the work…
> Don’t even get me started about on-call culture. No, I don't want to answer to your pager robot at 3 am for things I have no control over and don't want to touch. Get another robot to answer that or hire an SRE. I want to write my CSS and my 1 hour lunch break and live a life.
Why should Europe care where they are amongst this myopic ranking of “best tech hub”? Western Europe is a great place to live, raise a family, and retire. None of the tech hub countries are even remotely comparable to Europe in this sense. If there are people in Europe who want to work in a high growth industry that desperately, they can move to USA or China.
Why stagnate now? Why not the economy of the 60s? 70s? 80s?
Today life is significantly better than back then. If Europe stagnates even more then we will still be in the same place in a few decades as we are now.