The Silicon Valley of Transylvania

> You visited the US and "weren't impressed"?

Yes.

> Where did you visit exactly?

San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle. I plan on visiting New York this year or maybe next year.

> Its a very large country with over 200 million people.

I think it's over 300 million now :)

> What weren't you impressed with?

Well... homeless people. The fact that cities don't seem to be very "walkable" (and from what I've read SF is one of the best US cities in this regard). Food in supermarkets. Various other minor aspects.

> What was lacking?

I wouldn't say "lacking". Instead I'd say that I like other things more.

> Also where are you from that's more impressive?

I'm from Romania (not hard to guess, considering the topic). It's not "impressive" either.

What I find "impressive" instead is Germany.

And you seem to be bothered by a part of my previous comment. So I'll repost another part which you might have missed:

> But I wouldn't judge the US based on just what I saw in a couple of weeks, considering what I've read and seen about it.

Since I'm from that part of the world and traveling a lot there, here is my take on this:

- All eastern European countries have a great talent but that talent is created during socialist area (free education, focus on math, etc.). However, quality of new talent is not so great. If somebody is good, they go to work in Germany / Austria / Switzerland.

- Work and business habits are terrible. It seems like they always try to scam you.

- Society really looks down on entrepreneurship. To be honest, societies in Montenegro, Hercegovina, Romania and Albania are a little more open to entrepreneurship than others but..

- Laws are very unfriendly for small business / entrepreneurship. Basically, one needs to break the law in order to run the business.

In short, I'm not so optimistic :(

Ha, yeah that was a typo : ) I think its closer to 330 million these days.

The homeless problem in SF is really terrible and particularly glaring. Homelessness in general is a problem in many major cities in US however the intensity of it in SF is not not at all representative of the rest of the US.

I'm not impressed by either SF or San Jose either, but I wouldn't say the US doesn't impress me. The North East Corridor of the US is very different from the places you visited as is the South, the Midwest etc.

I am from Cluj, Romania and I am a developer for some years now. I really know how things are in the IT sector in Cluj and I really know how my country stacks up against others. The article is not accurate and highlights mostly positive aspects.

The programmers are decent and hard working, but nothing spectacular going on. They might not be your first pick when you want innovation. We are mostly self-taught ( thanks DoD for the Internet), and contrast the poor courses that are held at the Romanian universities. There are programmers that range from mediocre to good. Comparing to colleagues from London, or the US, we are not as good. They know more things and are more specialized. They work at a faster pace and work on hard problems. We make decent work though, but nothing mind blowing. If you want guys that can innovate, better look elsewhere like: the US, UK, Finland, Holland and other Nordic countries.

Here is the factual truth about Romania. It is a country of huge contrast. It has really good results in math and compute science Olympiads, but it is at the very bottom at math performance for the population at large. See PISA test results. 40 % of Romanians do not know basic and simple concepts from math. 40 % also are functional illiterates. This is much worse than the US. At the peak level We seem to be very good at IT, yet there is virtually not an algorithm or an innovation that bears a Romanian's name. You learn about Dijkstra, Turing, Fermat and Leibniz, but not Popescu or Iliescu. You hear about how good we are, but no Romanian University is within the top 500 at the computer science section. There is a lot of impostors in our universities and plagiarism is high. The dean of the Technical University of Cluj plagiarized courses from Berkeley and presents them as his own.

Romania has one of the largest internet speed, but only half of the country is connected. And within those that do use it, the vast majority are on Facebook and Youtube. Telekom just published that Romania has the poorest internet usage when it comes to business related activity.

Half of the population still lives in the rural areas, and the conditions are horrible. Over half of Romanian schools do not have running tap water or a decent toilet with flushing water. Mostly are again in the rural areas. But also in the surrounding regions of Cluj, and other major cities, there are entire neighborhoods that do not have access to the sewage network. And they are part of the city of Cluj, not other entities.

Romania is featured as a poor country by World Vision, which needs western support. It is listed among Albania, Georgia and a host of African countries. The orphanage footage of Romania in the 90' comes to mind.

And the list shocking contrast goes on and on.

Yeah renting good apartments and houses is really cheap. But imho try to avoid Bucharest, which is the London of Romania, that is, a bit of an overcrowded shithole. Any other major city is better (except maybe Iasi :D)...