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Europe's Software Problem

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Re: Europe's Software Problem

#231

Post by pier25 »

cletus wrote: post #99

Hot take: the problems here are cultural. Consider these data points: 1. The US is a country of migrants (ignoring the blight of slavery for now), whether those be those seeking a better life from Europe originally, later China and later still Central and South America. These are all people who uprooted whatever lives they had and legally or illegally migrated to the US. IMHO you still see echoes of this "pioneering"…

As a European I kinda agree with this.

The US as a country was founded on very high risk. It makes sense that this remains in the culture today.

I don't think that European policies (vacation, universal health care, etc) are the cause of Europe being more risk averse. I think it's the other way around. We have those policies because we have a more risk averse culture compared to the US.

This isn't a bad thing per se. The problem is that we live in an age where technological innovation is fueling the global economy, and there is no innovation without risk.

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#232

Post by logicalmonster »

I think the author's reasoning that the entire continent of Europe lacks imagination was a major weakness of this article, and perhaps unintentionally some kind of -ist or -ism. Anecdotally, many of the brightest American software developers I've met hail from Europe: UK, Greece, Russia, Serbia, Italy, etc. I can go on and on and think of many geniuses I've had the privilege to work with. The question that people should be asking is why do the best and brightest often tend to migrate to American companies? My personal perspective on why European software doesn't seem to ever become market leading boils down to their government culture of wanting to regulate almost everything. Software is a world of possibilities. You can start from nothing and code literally anything. To me, the European tendency to want to have government regulate that and confine you to a narrow box of allowed services stifles that. Anybody who has a unique idea (unique ideas always step you outside of the box of existing regulated services) is going to be hampered. To give an example: something as simple as their Cookie law, which no doubt started with good intentions, just makes the first impression with any European website ugly and focuses away from the actual product. Does anybody really not know what a cookie is by now? Seriously?

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#233

Post by kazen44 »

sime2009 wrote: post #182
pjc50 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Europe is currently coasting along on the spoils of centuries of loot and plunder. A lavish, comfortable lifestyle was handed to the citizens of western europe Well, apart from the whole WW2 business. This is the trouble with generalisations across the continent, the closer you look the less well they fit. And if you look across a continent and back in time, the situation varies even further. Germany used to be "th…

> Well, apart from the whole WW2 business. Let's be clear. By the time the last bullet was fired in WW2, Europe was basically destroyed, rumble, from the North Sea cross to Moscow. Brittan, although not occupied, was also hopelessly broke after the war. This weakness in Europe was one of the prime reasons why the colonies could break away from their European overlords. Europe was in no condition to do much about it e…

people from the US seem to underesti

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#234

Post by misterbwong »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #179

I'm a European, living in Europe, developing software. Lack of imagination is not our problem. It's so good that we supply our best talent to the US where it does extremely well revolutionizing AI, designing hardware for Apple, developing games, stream online music, etc. E.g. Amazon's CTO is Dutch. Basically the person that has been running AWS. The people and the education system are fine. Europe does have a few iss…

  A second reason is simply that the US as a big homogeneous market is a nice one to tackle for European companies as well. And often that means having a (big) presence in the US. The EU is basically many markets unified by really complex rules, bureaucracy, etc. There is free traffic of people but companies have a harder time dealing with local variations in legislation, hurdles for billing and taxation (e.g. VAT), banking, bureaucracy, etc.
Seems like this would be a really cool idea for a startup (that might already exist?). Stripe stripe/shopify for EU?

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#235

Post by benlivengood »

If the goal is trustworthy software then just write and host trustworthy software.

If the goal is to have a thriving economy based on writing and hosting trustworthy software then it's going to need subsidies; it costs more to pay for high quality software written by engineers protected by strong labor laws than it does to pay Silicon Valley rates with RSUs complicit in large-scale data gathering and exploitation.

Ironically in economic terms Europe (the EU and Ireland specifically) already hosts a huge fraction of FAANG profits and IP ownership/licensing due to double-Irish arrangements. They just offshore the development to the U.S. So mission accomplished I guess?

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#236

Post by kazen44 »

sime2009 wrote: post #182
pjc50 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Europe is currently coasting along on the spoils of centuries of loot and plunder. A lavish, comfortable lifestyle was handed to the citizens of western europe Well, apart from the whole WW2 business. This is the trouble with generalisations across the continent, the closer you look the less well they fit. And if you look across a continent and back in time, the situation varies even further. Germany used to be "th…

> Well, apart from the whole WW2 business. Let's be clear. By the time the last bullet was fired in WW2, Europe was basically destroyed, rumble, from the North Sea cross to Moscow. Brittan, although not occupied, was also hopelessly broke after the war. This weakness in Europe was one of the prime reasons why the colonies could break away from their European overlords. Europe was in no condition to do much about it e…

the destruction of world war two was absolutely insane, especially on the eastern front.

for instance: Belarus lost a quarter of it's population many villages and cities where utterly destroyed. also, don't forget world war 1 (and the other conflicts sparked after, like Russian civil war, breakup of Austria Hungary, Greco Turkish war etc) was only 25 years prior..

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#237

Post by mmarq »

notanormalnerd wrote: post #72
open-source-ux wrote: post #51

Although the EU is a marketplace of 27 countries, it is not a digitally homogeneous marketplace. Adoption and acceptance of digital tools varies by country. Language is also important - the tech giants localise their apps and tools. But many software companies in larger European countries (France, Germany, Italy, Spain etc) concentrate on their home country first before they focus on international reach. That makes s…

I want to highlight this. There is always talk about a european market, but it is more like 27 markets with one access ticket. You have 27 languages, 27 cultures, 27 political systems, 27 markets, 27 levels of development and infrastructure. Although you have a market of 300 million consumers, they all have different spending habits, different spending power, different needs... America is one market of 300 million pe…

> Also most of souther europe doesn't have the get rich quick mentality. They live by "dolce vita" - the good life. Nobody is gonna be bending over backwards here to become a millionaire anytime soon. They happily live with 20k€ a year and their families and Relationships.

Sometimes it seems that Northern Europeans think that the southern European is the noble savage of the developed world.

I'll speak for Italy, not having direct experience of other southern European countries. Taxes are very high, bureaucracy is omnipresent and openly hostile. A friend of mine once won a price for an invention, ~5K euros. The money was barely enough to register the company (not to pay for an office, just to register a company, a procedure that in the UK would cost 20£). The process took months. Salaries are much lower than in other European countries and people work longer hours, people of my age have been employed at-will for almost their whole careers. Unpaid overtime is the norm. Companies are small, do not provide chances to grow professionally and do not invest, productivity is low and unpaid overtime is often a means to compensate. At least once in everybody's life, your boss would come to you saying that there isn't enough money to pay your salary this month. Working hard simply doesn't matter, many software developers and translators and designers and whatnot earn as much as janitors. I don't come from southern Italy, where I suspect the situation is even worse.

In this context, you don't "happily" live with 20K euros per annum, you just have to accept that. And you have to live with your family because you can't afford otherwise. If you are lucky enough to get a government job or to retire early (which since the 70s have been the government's favourite ways of tackling unemployment), you may get a chance of enjoying this "dolce vita" of yours.

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#238

Post by [deleted] »

selfhoster11 wrote: post #198
throwaway894345 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US has those things and it's turning into a "third world country with a Gucci belt" I get the distinct impression that people who liken the US to a third world country are from one particular spot on the political spectrum. This seems like political rhetoric, not a summary of some level-headed analysis. Inequality, crime, etc in the US are certainly problems, but that seems like a low bar for the "third world c…

America's problems are numerous and have been discussed elsewhere at length. Suffice to say that sometime between 9/11 and the 2008 financial crisis, America has not been keeping up with other economies in terms of what makes a first world country worth living in. Biden may change that, or he may not. In any case, America has a lot of catching up to do if they want to overtake Europe (and some other places) in anythi…

[deleted]

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#239

Post by kgwgk »

arcturus17 wrote: post #195
pjc50 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Europe is currently coasting along on the spoils of centuries of loot and plunder. A lavish, comfortable lifestyle was handed to the citizens of western europe Well, apart from the whole WW2 business. This is the trouble with generalisations across the continent, the closer you look the less well they fit. And if you look across a continent and back in time, the situation varies even further. Germany used to be "th…

Spain was razed to the ground during the Civil War (1936-1939) and people were literally eating cats and rats off the streets so I doubt that any of our current wealth is inherited from our former Imperial glory, aside from maybe some intangible, indirect and minuscule effects such as “historic capital”. To your point, same goes for Germany indeed… Have you guys seen the pics of what cities like Berlin, Nuremberg or…

"Spain was razed to the ground during the Civil War [...] same goes for Germany indeed"

I wouldn't say that Spain was "razed to the ground" compared to Germany.

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#240

Post by fvdessen »

misterbwong wrote: post #234
jillesvangurp wrote: post #179

I'm a European, living in Europe, developing software. Lack of imagination is not our problem. It's so good that we supply our best talent to the US where it does extremely well revolutionizing AI, designing hardware for Apple, developing games, stream online music, etc. E.g. Amazon's CTO is Dutch. Basically the person that has been running AWS. The people and the education system are fine. Europe does have a few iss…

A second reason is simply that the US as a big homogeneous market is a nice one to tackle for European companies as well. And often that means having a (big) presence in the US. The EU is basically many markets unified by really complex rules, bureaucracy, etc. There is free traffic of people but companies have a harder time dealing with local variations in legislation, hurdles for billing and taxation (e.g. VAT), ba…

It goes far beyond that. If you are in Italy and want to expand to Germany you need to hire german speaking people and that means opening a Sales Office in Germany, and dealing with different labour regulations etc.
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