Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing? • Hacker News Board

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#411

Post by j_wtf_all_taken » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 8:36 AM UTC

jmkerr wrote: post #396

Barrin92 wrote: post #99

As usual the article is almost exclusively concerned with market capitalization as an indicator of economic success. Countries like Germany are dominated by small and middle-class, family owned business. 'Big corporate' is indeed more successful in the US or China but it's just one model to manage an economy and I don't think it's that great. One of the most important points is also buried at the end of the article >…

> "(Europe has over 100 mobile operators, compared with a handful in America or China.) These lack the economies of scale and opportunities to grow quickly enjoyed by firms plying the American or Chinese markets." This is such a bad example, I count 6 European carriers with more subscribers than AT&T. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mobile_network_operato... > "These internal barriers mean Europe has many small…

Also, don't Americans complain all the f**ing time how bad their broadband internet is?

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#412

Post by coldtea » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 8:36 AM UTC

refurb wrote: post #253

jamil7 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This thread is full of people explaining that Europeans are lazy and unproductive workers lacking ambition based on anecdotes of completely normal occurrences like an employee taking a vacation.

Disagree. It’s the mentality, not the vacation. My job in the US gives 5 weeks vacation per year. You are expected to disconnect and it’s embarrassing if email/text while on leave - people think you’re nuts. But the work attitude is usually “lets do something cool”, “lets solve that problem”, “why can’t we be the best?” versus a work mentality of “i don’t think that will work” and “we’ll never get support for that id…

The work mentality is more like "we're the slaves to the coproration, our lives belong to it".

It has nothing to do with “lets do something cool”, “lets solve that problem”, “why can’t we be the best?”.

That's easy to see, if one considers that it's not just the much fewer employees working on things they consider cool that try to solve interesting problems and be the best that willingly don't go for vacations.

The hundreds of millions of US employees in BS companies, with BS products, who don't like their jobs, and don't think they're building something cool, and so on, also don't get to enjoy any significant vacation time.

Heck, papers pushers, burger flipers, and corporate cubicle drones don't get to enjoy vacations. And it's not because the McDonalds employee "wants to build something cool" while burger-flipping...

It's a distortion to make it about "lets do something cool” US mentality vs "I don't care for my job" European mentality. It's purely the puritan work ethic culture, as established by the religious minded people that dominated early America, plus the rampant release of corporate rule and cut-throat neoliberalism post-80s.

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#413

Post by JumpCrisscross » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 8:37 AM UTC

j_wtf_all_taken wrote: post #403

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the entire EU economy grew at the same speed than the US one but not its 500 bigger companies This is literally the article’s point. Europe and the U.S. grew similarly. The U.S. and China produced more large companies. (The Continent’s larger companies also being older than the other two’s.) > supposedly more investment in R&D Not supposedly, factually. The article explicitly states this. It’s the Economist; if you…

>> the entire EU economy grew at the same speed than the US one but not its 500 bigger companies > This is literally the article’s point. Europe and the U.S. grew similarly. The U.S. and China produced more large companies. (The Continent’s larger companies also being older than the other two’s.) So Europe did a better job in distributing wealth more equally, while in the US and China you got a massive concentration…

> Europe did a better job in distributing wealth more equally

This assumes ex ante a similar quantity of wealth. Europe’s GDP per capita is lower than America’s. Where it’s higher, the growth is slower. The more-even distribution comes at the expense of quality of life or economic power. (Though not for Europe’s well-entrenched multi-generational and often legally-entitled wealthy.)

To be clear, I don’t believe in moralising this spectrum of tolerance of scale and creative destruction versus social stability and economic equality. There are multiple equilibria, and Europe and America’s are mutually compatible. The relationship does, however, require Europe take a backseat to the U.S. and China in certain matters. The Economist is protesting that arrangement. (I, as an American, am not.)

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#414

Post by JumpCrisscross » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 8:38 AM UTC

j_wtf_all_taken wrote: post #400

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how did European car makers then become what they are? Cars have for a long time been tightly linked to the military. Every major Western car maker up to the last decade at some point built tanks.

So basically you're saying Europe should start another World War to make sure their companies stay competitive?

> you're saying Europe should start another World War to make sure their companies stay competitive?

No. You asked how Europe got certain economies of scale. I answered. Through the engines of past wars. Future wars don't guarantee similar results.

If Europe wants globally-relevant big businesses, it will likely require social upheaval on the scale of war. (I’m not betting on it.)

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#415

Post by j_wtf_all_taken » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 8:38 AM UTC

yorwba wrote: post #371

kortilla wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“No big companies” is a fine policy for things that don’t require a lot of money to innovate on. A small business will never be capable of producing anything like the iPhone for example. Pushing the envelope on tech is very expensive and this is where Europe’s current model doesn’t work. If it’s just companies reselling existing things or incremental tech (e.g. grocers, telecoms, utilities, airlines, etc), then small…

On January 8, 2007, the day before Jobs announced the iPhone, Apple had a market cap of $73.76B (source: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AAPL/apple/market-... ) That's not exactly tiny (except if you compare to their $2T today) but it's also not exceptional. There are hundreds of companies of comparable size, including in Europe. And they gained experience producing mobile devices with the iPod released in…

Yeah isn't that kind of the idea how innovation in working markets with healthy innovation (i.e. no monopolies preventing innovation by smaller companies) should work? Funny how that is forgotten when it comes to comparing penis sizes.

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#416

Post by Yoric » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 8:39 AM UTC

reader_mode wrote: post #150

thijsc wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reporting back: Your comment is utter nonsense. There is a thriving tech scene in Europe and we do quite well! Reliable and cheap health care is a huge boon for small entrepreneurs. There’s little regulation to deal with as a software company. Child care and great schools are cheap or free. Yes firing people is much harder, that is a different context compared to the US you have to properly plan for. Which we do over…

> There is a thriving tech scene in Europe and we do quite well! Is there really ? I see attempts at copying the US tech scene, but a lot of it seems structured to suck money out of government funds and programs. I see very little private investment. Just recently I talked to a local VC, in a casual chat about how they started their fund I found out they pulled money out of a EU fund, they had to put up like 25% of t…

The lack of VC funding is a real problem.

On the other hand, I've seen many EU start-ups with lots of potential, developing things way ahead of the wave. Having ideas and skills is not a problem. Keeping afloat long enough to make them reality is hard.

There is also an important but unspoken cultural factor that really hurts EU initiatives: more-or-less subtle cultural imperialism. No, really, I mean it. As with many things, to succeed in the world of start-ups, you need to be validated by Silicon Valley pundits, to adopt the language of the Silicon Valley, the cultural codes of the Silicon Valley, and ultimately Silicon Valley money etc. That's really hard when you come from a culture that has different definitions of things as basic as "yes", "no" and "please", different definitions of what a good pitch is, different definitions of ethics, of the employer/employee relationship, etc. not to mention the need to live in a foreign language and, to a large extent, in a foreign timezone.

In many cases, the EU start-up bashing I've seen feels like (a reduced form of) poor-bashing, attempting to explain to people who started with fewer chances that everything is their fault.

Now, this doesn't mean that nothing should be done to improve the situation. But I've started to take EU start-up criticism with a pinch of salt.

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#417

Post by j_wtf_all_taken » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 8:40 AM UTC

sildur wrote: post #209

wpasc wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In defense of the article (not agreeing nor disagreeing), the article then includes reasons why it is concerned with market capitalization: >But if it continues, the waning of Europe’s business will bring consequences. Big firms invest in innovation, which boosts economic growth. Left to regulate only foreign groups, Europe’s ability to shape global business norms—on privacy, say, or the uses of artificial intelligen…

We prefer to influence global norms/best practices via our democratically elected governments, instead of via corporate behemoths who probably don't have our interests in mind. On the other hand, contrary to the US, in Europe we generally trust in our governments. Since we do not have huge corporations here, it's more difficult to influence government decisions, specially at Europe level.

I just hope it stays that way. I fear that all the cynics blaming everything that's bad on politicians and the EU (instead of the voters putting those politicians in power) will eventually degrade trust in that in itself nicely working system ... and then, what's the point defending that system against the populists and fascists wanting to take over? They can't be that much worse ... :-(( [same with media that does a good job in Europe]

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#418

Post by kmlx » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 8:42 AM UTC

Entalpi wrote: post #217

238475235243 wrote: post #43

I've lived in a few different parts of the EU, and couldn't imagine a worse idea than starting a company there (which I did, once). Starting is hard enough without the general negative attitudes, the government insanities, the insane taxes, the low work ethic, the 8 weeks of vacation every month (I exaggerate, slightly). And I was in one of the two best EU countries, God only knows how bad it is in Spain or Italy or…

Ah, ”the EU”, only something like 27 countries with highly different laws and economies..

… languages, markets, histories, governments etc etc

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#419

Post by okareaman » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 8:43 AM UTC

j_wtf_all_taken wrote: post #399

okareaman wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't say if my code is still in use, but it had an impact on a lot of people for awhile

Every person that ever committed a patch to the Linux Kernel probably has more impact. Not because if the code itself but Linux is just so much more important than Apple, Facebook and Google altogether.

What a weird thing to say since you don't know what code I wrote, but anyway my larger point is all of us programmers and IT workers should be proud of what we have accomplished. We all together made those companies possible. Now the fact that I live here and we're part of a community is just a cherry on top for me, but that part seems to annoy people so I'll never mention it again and keep it as my private enjoyment.

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#420

Post by kmlx » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 8:43 AM UTC

meheleventyone wrote: post #394

kortilla wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Low pay and not meaningful/interesting work but otherwise it’s good as a “lifestyle” gig.

Where was DeepMind founded?

in London, UK, which is a different beast than the continent.