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Dear Europe, please wake up

klinger.io

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Re: Dear Europe, please wake up

#301

Post by fjdjshsh »

steeve wrote: post #264
subsubzero wrote: post #157

So many things here. Lets talk pay, US tech workers, lets just say Sr SWE and up, and lets look at SF as the author uses this as a focal point. Salary is roughly $300-400k a year(in SF FANGish company), in Europe or England its about half of that, and maybe even less. I know as I have family I married into that points out this fact, the best workers all go over to the US and make large salaries over there at US tech…

> In France you are not allowed to even layoff employees unless you are close to bankruptcy(I think this was changed a few years back). Of course, this is not true. What is true is when you hire somebody, they are on a trial period of 3-4 months that can be renewed once. After the trial period is done, you need a cause to fire them.

What kind of causes do you need? Is a documented underperformance a sufficient cause? (And I mean underperformance, but still doing the minimum like showing up to work for example)

Re: Dear Europe, please wake up

#302

Post by fjdjshsh »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #274
alephnerd wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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% everywhe…

>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%

9% is low in three ways: lower than most western european countries, lower than many countries with a thriving IT industry and, finally, low enough that it wouldn't change the overall numbers too much

Re: Dear Europe, please wake up

#303

Post by fjdjshsh »

j7ake wrote: post #97

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.

I get your point, but the author is proposing that Europeans loose their working rights or start working 70 hours a week.

I think the biggest suggestion is that the EU should standardize their legislation for creating and keeping a company. That (I think, but I'd love to hear arguments against it) shouldn't involve or be correlated with becoming more crappy capitalism like the USA (less working rights, weird health industry, etc)

Re: Dear Europe, please wake up

#304

Post by red-iron-pine »

occz wrote: post #188
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.

Stereotypes aren't necessarily true. There's for example a stereotype about Mexicans being lazy, but anyone who's actually taken the time to look at the statistics - and gotten to know any number of Mexicans, for that matter - knows that to be a complete fabrication.

Lotta tech offshoring to Mexico these days over India, PI, etc. Perception is that the Indians generally get their skills through diploma mills while the Mexicans were generally more reliable and qualified. Better overlap with timezones -- Mexico City is on Central Time, and it's not hard to open a shop in Baja for Pacific Time -- and you also have access to the NAFTA TN Visa if you want to bring people across the border; no H1B visas headaches.

Re: Dear Europe, please wake up

#305

Post by AlchemistCamp »

dukeyukey wrote: post #269
xhkkffbf wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit unfair to talk about the garages in Palo Alto being attached to "multi-million-dollar" houses. When the people starting Apple, HP, Google and Facebook took over a garage, the places were solidly middle class. Even now, the price tags distort our perceptions. I've heard some venture capitalists say that most of their investments would go for salaries that would be turned over to the real estate world.

I mean, I live in London in the biggest place I've ever lived in (700sqft!) since moving out of my parents home. Having a garage would add another £200/month easily. Having that amount of spare room in a tech hub is a massive advantage!

Apple didn't start in New York, which was a major hub and where space was at way too much of a premium for teenagers to have free reign to build things in a garage. It started in a middle class suburb. The area later became very expensive, largely due to the success of so many startups.

Move to a suburb of Birmingham or Manchester, an hour outside of the city (just as SV was from SF, and then there will be plenty of room for teenagers to build things in garages.

Re: Dear Europe, please wake up

#306

Post by AlchemistCamp »

atmosx wrote: post #137
danielvaughn wrote: post #2

I have no idea whether Europeans work harder than Americans, but I do want to say that you can't extrapolate the overall work ethic of America by looking at the SF tech world. It's a very, very small (and very privileged) microcosm of the country.

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.

No. In English, "America" refers to the country, "North America" and "South America" each refer to a continent and "the Americas" refers to the two continents.

Re: Dear Europe, please wake up

#307

Post by AlchemistCamp »

em-bee wrote: post #246
pvitz wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, certainly the USA ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States ). The author is most likely Austrian or German and it is quite common to say "Amerika" for the USA there.

it is also equally common there to have an argument about that, just like on HN ;-) i was referring to this btw: America" (which btw is a continent, not a country)

アメリカ (the romanization of America) is also how the country is referred to in Japanese. There are many languages (including English) that use America as the common name for the United States of America.

A notable exception, and where much of the disagreement comes from is Spanish. I generally try to follow the convention of the language I'm speaking.

Re: Dear Europe, please wake up

#308

Post by jwagenet »

ant6n wrote: post #170
jwagenet wrote: post #26

Wake up from what? I couldn’t find the thesis in the first few paragraphs… I keep seeing more and more from business types in the EU salivating over US business conditions: weaker labor laws, weaker regulations, record profits, etc. From the US it seems like the EU is doing fine and enviable from an employee perspective (except wages).

> From the US it seems like the EU is doing fine and enviable from an employee perspective (except wages). „Except the wages“ is kind of the problem. The source of that issue is the ability to raise capital, which is kind of addressed in the article, if you’d bothered to read before commenting.

I didn’t find that in the article, but that’s besides the point: wages across eu are lower for tech work and I don’t think it’s access to capital. It’s not like startups are the only high payers.

Re: Dear Europe, please wake up

#309

Post by greenavocado »

alephnerd wrote: post #124
greenavocado wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Following this guy's logic, a country which the Western world has historically shunned, aggressively avoided investment in, and generally turned its back to for decades, Russia, should have completely folded and collapsed after being completely choked off from the world by sanctions imposed on it years ago.

> Western world has historically shunned, aggressively avoided investment in, and generally turned its back to for decades Before 2020-22, Russia was a major tech hub in Europe, and most of that was because Russian founders would incorporate in the UK or Netherlands, but operate with a subsidiary within Russia.

Russia was absolutely NOT a major tech hub for anything but locals, come on. Warsaw was and is the only one out East.

Re: Dear Europe, please wake up

#310

Post by fragmede »

fragmede wrote: post #297
defrost wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both state and federal are progressive tax brackets and the 50.3% tax rate is only paid on dollars earnt over a threshold. https://youtu.be/4PJfDNfg5KI?t=77

Yes, that's correct. If I did my math correctly, if you made $4 million, you'd end up with $2,052,391.57, which is an overall rate of 48.69%, for those that don't understand progressive tax rates.

(For someone who's single; unmarried)
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