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Dear Europe, please wake up

klinger.io

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Re: Dear Europe, please wake up

#271

Post by epolanski »

NeutralForest wrote: post #86
jandrese wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to admit I raised an eyebrow at Greece being near the top of the list. That's going against stereotype hard.

What is not mentioned in the article is that productivity is much more important than the number of hours worked. By productivity, I mean output per hour worked, which is usually an estimation made from the total output of the country (GDP) and the numbers of hours worked by the working population.

Well, that's a very inadequate productivity metric imho.

How can two people with exactly the same output (say two doctors working a shift with similar number of patience) lead one to be 20 times more productive because one bills $400 per hour and the other makes that number in a week (such as in say Turkey).

That's a 40x difference in productivity.

Re: Dear Europe, please wake up

#274

Post by peoplefromibiza »

alephnerd wrote: post #245
peoplefromibiza wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many of them are working in Romanian tech industry? In EU the share of ICT workers is pretty much homogeneous among the different countries. It's their salary that varies a lot (but not as wildly as in the US) It's much easier to get a decent wage for a Romanian in Italy than for a Romanian tech worker in Romania It's the reason why a lot of Italians go to live abroad as well.

> In EU the share of ICT workers is pretty much homogeneous among the different countries. Italy has a population of ~58m but an ICT service population of ~500k [0]. Romania has a population of 19m but an ICT service population of ~200k [1] And this masks the large Romanian tech diaspora in Germany, the UK, and ofc a portion in Italy. So the question is, why are so few Italians work in tech in comparison to a much po…

> Italy has a population of ~58m but an ICT service population of ~500k [0].

> Romania has a population of 19m but an ICT service population of ~200k [1]

Yeah and in Italy around ~9% of the population was not born in Italy (mostly coming from non EU/ poorer countries with no tech skill whatsoever, not a judgement, just a fact) while in Romania is basically 0%

So, as I've said, ICT workers are pretty much 10% everywhere in EU

You're putting your biases in your stats. We're also not taking into account many other factors such as the type of jobs we are referring to

Many countries have lots of tech workers doing mechanical turk kind of work (not saying it's true for Romania, just a data point that is missing here)

Moreover, hiring managers of course prefer to pay less than to pay more in absolute, regardless of the buying power

If I had to live with a Romanian salary in Italy, I would be in the lower tier while now I am in the top 10%, but of course tech workers have better salaries on average everywhere in Europe,so they are less incentivized to move especially coming from poorer countries, where their more than average salary would immediately become normal or less than average abroad. To get a better salary in Europe I should move to Netherlands or Ireland and work for some US Company. Not even UK is competitive in my case, all things considered, including the lifestyle I am used to.

Last, but not least. Amazon employes ~20 thousand people in Italy and of course has a strong presence in Milan (I worked for them in Milan) while it's only about 3.5k in Romania.

Re: Dear Europe, please wake up

#275

Post by therealdrag0 »

kazen44 wrote: post #247
kwere wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China has eaten European manufacturing, India will eat most of Europe Service jobs through remote positions. Europe will be saddled with debts, looking like a disfunctional Argentina squabbling about populist socialist /nationalist talking points.

except that globalisation is on the downturns, especially in terms of the political will in europe. Exporting the manufacturing of to china is currently seen by many as a mistake (especially deindustrialization in regards to military hardware). I highly doubt service jobs will be exported, especially considering the many different languages and the fragmentation of those languages.

Seeing exporting as a mistake and doing something about it are different things. Will be interesting to see what happens.

Generative AI may help with the export or deprecation of service jobs.

Re: Dear Europe, please wake up

#276

Post by pas »

elevatedastalt wrote: post #105
y-curious wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not trying to be obtuse, but at what point do the worker protections discourage employment? If I have to pay the huge employee fees associated with the EU, I may just go hire someone in Asia.

From almost the beginning itself. Whenever you hire, you have to consider how hard it would be to get rid of the employee for whatever reason (underperformance, changing business needs etc.)

employees as contractors is very common. this is a solved problem.

and firing people is also not a mystery, interestingly PIPs are a US invention (but if labor laws are so lax, why were they needed there? :))

Re: Dear Europe, please wake up

#277

Post by pas »

marcinzm wrote: post #22

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.

how? you have 3 months of semi-free time. what will they do if you show up late and, fire you? don't be ridiculous.

it's perfect for starting a company, working on your startup on the side.

Re: Dear Europe, please wake up

#278

Post by pas »

Muromec wrote: post #108
bradhe wrote: post #62

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.

I did that in the EU, there's a price attached to it. (we were the SRE team, had a lot of control, good extra pay every time it called, etc.)

Re: Dear Europe, please wake up

#279

Post by KBme »

Taxes in California were very different when SV started. It's now running on intertia and fumes.

People who compare salaries obviously have no idea about the difference in cost of living in the US especially in California and especially in SV.

The productivity graph is obviously totally useless and not a representation of tech workers, but maybe fast food workers and diversity officers.

The characterisation of taxes and ease to start a business is utterly false.

Re: Dear Europe, please wake up

#280

Post by rhl »

mountainb wrote: post #145

The EU does not have an equivalent of US commerce clause jurisprudence (which descends from Hamilton's original economic design to prevent exactly the kinds of problems that this author is complaining about). The EU does have an equivalent to the supremacy clause, but due to cultural and political forces it cannot have the same effect that it has in the US. Another major factor that makes the US more competitive is o…

First sentence is blatantly false. Regulation of trade and commerce between member states is the foundation and raison d’être of the European Union, exactly like the interstate commerce clause for the US federal government.
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