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Europe's Software Problem

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Re: Europe's Software Problem

#431

Post by rad_gruchalski »

pvaldes wrote: post #277
MichaelRazum wrote: post #113

Living in EU. Can only say, the main reason is in my perspective regulatory and taxes. Some points - It is difficult to issue equity and get equity (tax) - Each EU country has different taxes. You are taxed lower in Netherlands than in Germany. - Each country has different regulation rules. If you do something exciting. Wow let's say a social network. You would be killed by regulation and data privacy rules. Autonomo…

Not to mention the VAT (Value Added Tax) that is a big weapon of market selfdestruction.

How so? It only affects the end consumer. It’s deductible for businesses.

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#432

Post by 6f8986c3 »

b20000 wrote: post #403
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…

I moved roughly 10 years ago to the US from europe. In my experience, raising small amounts of money is possible in Europe and not too hard. Once you need more money, it becomes extremely difficult or nearly impossible, unless you can spend all your time networking, which is not going to happen if you are busy building a product. I would say that banking in Europe is much better developed than in the US. In the US, w…

> You remain a foreigner, who should still work for less pay than those who grew up locally and went to an ivy league school, even though you have the same credentials and graduated at a top school in Europe (in my case, I have an ivy league degree on top of that).

Bingo. There's a set of something like ten schools from which Silicon Valley companies hire.

If you're not from one of those, you will be cordially invited to eat shit.

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#433

Post by beebeepka »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #422
beebeepka wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it, though? I thought they are only required if the site is setting tracking cookies. Is that not straight forward enough?

No it's required for all types of tracking including but not exclusively cookies. Only days collection that is absolutely required to provide the service may be collected without consent and for that purpose only.

Law is reasonable then. You track your user, you notify them . I fail to see the problem.

Then again, I am not running shady websites and selling user data

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#434

Post by abrokenpipe »

varispeed wrote: post #380
mnouquet wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Europe, everybody wants to be a manager because mere developers is not high enough status. In the US, a 45yo DB engineer is akin to highly skilled wizard.

Developers are the modern bricklayers that just sit by the computer and find what to copy and paste from stackoverflow.

I feel like I'm fixing your software right now.

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#435

Post by stadium »

6f8986c3 wrote: post #432
b20000 wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I moved roughly 10 years ago to the US from europe. In my experience, raising small amounts of money is possible in Europe and not too hard. Once you need more money, it becomes extremely difficult or nearly impossible, unless you can spend all your time networking, which is not going to happen if you are busy building a product. I would say that banking in Europe is much better developed than in the US. In the US, w…

> You remain a foreigner, who should still work for less pay than those who grew up locally and went to an ivy league school, even though you have the same credentials and graduated at a top school in Europe (in my case, I have an ivy league degree on top of that). Bingo. There's a set of something like ten schools from which Silicon Valley companies hire. If you're not from one of those, you will be cordially invite…

I might be an outlier but I went to a tiny middle America liberal arts university that you probably never heard of, and work for a SV startup. And I haven't heard the topic of where people went to school come up a single time.

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#436

Post by systemvoltage »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #168
selfhoster11 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In order to be innovative and compete, we need very flexible working laws, people with a big growth mindset, a less relaxing lifestyle and AMBITIOUS people. The US has those things and it's turning into a "third world country with a Gucci belt" (as someone put it) for everyone except the 1% and the indispensable knowledge worker class that can't be automated away or juiced dry for all the productivity they are capa…

> 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…

One can just look at objective data: https://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/

People that say US is a third world country are mostly illinformed, my guess is due to political affiliation as you said, but also the city dynamics, arm chair media consumption (NYT exclusively reports vocal minority issues day in day out) and uninformed about what actual third-world countries are like.

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#437

Post by opportune »

kazen44 wrote: post #360
opportune wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something I’ve noticed working with European people and also traveling. I think there is a cycle here where because working with software is considered low status, many good software people leave, and lots of smart people probably do not go into the field at all unless they truly love software. This would tend to drive the talent pool down, IMO, which keeps away good software jobs, keeping it low status. In t…

> In the US for example writing software is usually considered wholly different from “IT” whereas in Europe IT encompasses both. That’s probably another thing bringing its status down. You are grouping software engineers with people plugging in printers and solving Karen’s support ticket (no offense IT people). oh boy, if you think IT is just pluggin in printers and fixing easy support tickets you are easily mistaken…

Agreed with the sibling comment, that’s kinda my point, in the US those would also not be considered IT (depending on what they do).

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#438

Post by GuB-42 »

sschueller wrote: post #333
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…

Generally I define a 3rd world country as a place that has a lot of inequality, corruption across the board, poor to no worker protection, failing and antiquated infrastructure, no free access to health care, high incarceration rate, persecution of journalists, a large working poor population with no ability to move up the social ladder, etc. Which one of those does the US not have?

The US does not have much corruption. It is present, obviously, but you probably don't realize what corruption is like in "real" 3rd world countries.

About the infrastructure, the one in the US is comparable to that of most rich countries. If you cherry-pick, sure you are going to find something.

Health care in the US is problematic but I think the best indicator of quality is life expectancy, and the US is high tier.

And you think journalists are persecuted? The US is one of the most free country in that regard, more than Europe and much more than in Asia. In "real" 3rd world countries, they get killed, tortured, and all sorts of fun things if they disagree with the local ruler.

Climbing the social ladder is far from impossible in the US. It is hard, but it is hard everywhere, the ones on top of the ladder never want to let go, but at least, in the US, there is no rule officially preventing it like castes in India.

Worker protection could be better but it is no nonexistent either. At least, there are contracts that mean something, safety standards, etc...

Incarceration rate is not necessarily the sign of a third world country. In the worst places, there are no prisons to keep criminals locked in, and they are out to get you.

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#439

Post by fomine3 »

cletus wrote: post #322
MisterPea wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's interesting is that India (which has many languages throughout the country) pretty much adopted English as the de facto business language. Are EU countries not the same? Genuinely don't know how English is perceived in these countries. Although this is probably much easier for India since it is one country.

The status of English is... complicated. So all the languages of EU members are officially recognized. This has become increasingly unwieldy as you need translators in the EU Parliament for every combination and there probably aren't that many people who can translate Portugese to Estonian, for example. There have been proposals over time to instead translate into a particular language. This has been resisted heavily…

What's going on for English after Brexit?

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#440

Post by sangnoir »

usaar333 wrote: post #214
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…

Given the small country issue, a better comparison would be Israel. It has a thriving startup scene while only having 10 million people.

Israeli companies having funding up the wazoo, especially those that have products with military/security applications.
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