The State of European Tech 2016
atomico.com
atomico.com
If you want to start a company, you'll face some social issues (failure is considered failure) but the infrastructure is decent enough. The social issues have changed a lot in recent years though. Anecdotally I feel like recruiting good devs right out of universities is a lot easier if you're a typical startup because many of the good developers will have fought the standard curriculum of the java-bot and be rather happy to work in a more agile setting (but still want to stay in their home country).
Having kids in college is at least 30 years out. Knowing that an expense 30 years away will be taken care of is better than the alternative, but would do nothing for my stress level in the next ~20.
I don't buy that either of these things make any actual difference for an early-career programmer.
Probably the most important thing is rent. I suspect most European cities can offer a 1-bedroom apartment within 30 minutes of work by foot/public transit for a much lower proportion of a developer's salary than SF can, even when developer salaries are much lower. And in places not SF, $50k USD is not particularly low for a developer salary.
It takes 18 years for kids to grow up and go to college right? Do you mean that you know you won't have kids for at least another 12 years?
Our firm is actively not in Silicon Valley (or CA at all). And as such, we don't offer six figure starting salaries. And that does hurt us when it comes to getting new grads as they say "I can go work for Google and get paid X. Or I can work for you and get a fraction of that"
But the smart ones realize that cost of living is a LOT cheaper out here and that fraction goes a lot farther. I have colleagues who went the SV-industry route and one weekend over beers we realized I had saved more per year AND had far more "dicking around" money than they did. And I live by myself (no SO not by choice, but no flatmates is) rather than having three flatmates. Their salaries are still a fair amount higher than mine, but my cost of living is a tiny fraction of theirs.
Also you're a bit naive if you think raising kids will cost you only once they go to college. If you compare direct (daycare, preschool) and indirect (like moving to a good neighborhood) costs in the Bay area vs. a big European city, the difference is easily 5 figures year. And then there are things like parental leave.
But of course, as a 20-something you might not need these things.
If I'm unable to work for months, I'll have to draw down my emergency fund (probably move somewhere cheap to slow the burn rate). If in Europe I don't have to save for this, and can freely spend all of my paycheck, then that's a huge benefit. Ditto with retirement, which takes ~15% off the top of American salaries (unless you are irresponsible or in crisis so not saving for it).
Preschool is a valid point; moving to a good neighborhood is captured in rent.
I'm just saying healthcare and education aren't the interesting arguments. Housing costs and socialized savings plans are.
http://www.atomico.com/downloads/state-of-european-tech/atom...
The slideshow won't go full screen for me, so it's next to useless.
Ah, so they are excited.
I see no limits to the ambition of young Europeans. We've broken the glass ceiling etc.
Looks dumb to me. Just show me the data compared to American tech.
Such as the 10'000€ minimum assets that were required for an Ltd. in Germany until a few years ago. (The problem was basically: How do you handle a company going bankrupt? The legislators said that any company should always have enough assets to cover its liabilities. Obviously not compatible with the snowball-scheme based startup scene).
This is indeed an obstacle to creating a company, but there are quite a few more, all having to do with just plain ol' bureaucracy (handling monthly tax reporting, interacting with the tax authorities, handling insurance, etc.) The previous issue of The Economist made a case that these bureaucratic problems are even bigger in Italy.
I've recently been kicking around the idea that it's kind of weird that some hard-hit places in the EU like Spain or Greece sport up to 50% unemployed young folks (18-35) - these people are highly educated, just out of college, eager to build/work and yet they are economically inactive. My theory is that this is because it's hard to set up any sort of business activity due to the bureaucracy. It's also socially discouraged because it's risky.
If you're in something like software and have no immediate plans for employees or large investments you can get the bureaucracy done in 30 min. It's literally a one-page form with address, name, purpose.
That is a significantly higher cost of entry when compared with an Ltd/LLC, not to mention a sole proprietorship.
I went this way after consulting some other folks in Berlin and a tax consultant that I found myself. I'm kind of surprised that there's a different, easier way to go. Thanks for sharing the information.
You could create similar optimistic charts for US, China, India, etc.
The EU ( 550 million ) tech industry is dwarfed by the US ( 350 million )
Looking from a higher abstract plane, EU produces the least new entrepreneurs and innovative companies compared to the beast that is US and Asia.
The EU also has the most unstable political and financial system globally with entire countries on the verge of defaulting on their sovereign debt.
The reason why every European developer migrates to London is to escape the craziness of the continent.
Every European developer's final 'dream' is to work in the US tech industry - London is the second best thing to reach.
(.. Money Talks .. )
You can see how much value that tech is given in europe by just looking at the salaries in europe vs N.A - so much for valuing hard tech.
Seeing that both the US and Europe have similar numbers of developers (~ 3 mil) - how is european tech industry 1/8 the size of the US ??
Oversupply of developers due to better engineering school ? ( my sides )
More like MBAs from Cambridge are not as smart as their counterparts graduating from Sloan in creating value out of tech.
-- Not an American --- Direct experience with London and Berlin tech scene ---
It talks about "top research institutions" are in Europe, neglecting the #1,#2,#4,#5, and #6 in the world are in the USA. [1]
Honestly, I have no idea why an investor would want to try to tackle this nightmare of 30+ target markets, especially when you have huge homogeneous markets in the USA and Asia.
1. http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/universit...
One would hope they would have the sense to go global. You have to to survive in most software. Where the HQ of the company is doesn't matter. I always cringe when I hear software execs talk of being a leader in their home country. Well, some company who actually went global and therefore have a lot less development cost per user will eat any local leader for breakfast. Companies that care about their home markets are dead men walking.
Yeah, because making millions (or billions) in one's home country is cringe-worthy.
That's not a given. There are tons of entrenched companies, from web services to local restaurants, than no multinational managed to drive out of business.
In many cases the multinational had to work with them or buy them to gain a serious share into a particular country.
If you don't count any German research institutions, and only count those releasing their results in US magazines.
Sure.
If I don't count for-profit universities, and only those releasing their results in Esperanto, I can also top my own ranking.
Those rankings completely ignore that in Europe, research doesn't happen at universities - but at research groups where multiple universities come together.
Think of the Max Planck Society (Wendelstein 7-X Fusion Experiment), or the Fraunhofer Society (they brought you mp3), or the Helmholtz Society (globally leading in Marine Research).
But all that is disqualified from the rankings.
If we actually want that, though, is another question.
I'm about to exit london for .de simply because of quality of life concerns; the 1000ft view I'm holding though is I'm pretty sure I'll be able to build a crew there which will have fun working on difficult problems, and hopefully even find a reasonable amount of 'stuff' to do (surely with internet access and some good staff picks that could be applied almost anywhere in the world?) -- while you're probably right in that the vast floods of VC cash won't be so available there (I don't think the situ in london is much diff anyway) or that things are more complex w/r/t markets; I'm not sure that I really care too much about "30+" target markets when we're talking B2B hardcore geekery stuff. We make an API to solve -some-random-hackernews_capable_consumer-problem- then I'm not sure having a few diff VAT rules around .eu is anything more than some extra time billed by my accountant..
What I'm more concerned about is the work/company culture differences there which will probably at a minimum will prevent me whoring myself out for some quick cash to fund my devs, should things get tight, and at a max make it much harder to sell to Gmbh's there...
Are you in Germany? Ever worked with a German company or tried to integrate your product with theirs? The vogons have a quicker moving bureaucracy, I was really shocked. The crazy adherence to working hours, clocking in/out for breaks and such even for senior technical staff creates a really strange dynamic especially if you're used to letting your teams do whatever the hell they want as long as you're delivering. This kind of free attitude to work seems largely to only exist in London, at least to me -- and once you've walked on the wild side it's hard to accept a master.. shrug
Germany may have excellent technical prowess in manufacturing and such; from our side of the perspective though, so far to me at de $bigcorp it seems like SAP, 2 week change windows, hour long discussions on what FTP client the customer uses, J2EE, Oracle, monitored lunch breaks and some very overqualified staff (call me 'dr') who aren't even interesting in moving faster...
I guess there are a lot of startups there which follow a model more like what we're used to, but after so long you're not going to be able to avoid working with the vogons if you're selling them software they want to integrate with..
I'm not sure the majority view of big german businesses really even understood what agile was pushing for.. Hopefully I'm wrong, I'll find out soon anyhow, but things seem really fucking backwards compared to how we've been living even in the relative backwater that's London....
What's your view?
I'm not sure about the money argument still though -- a joke? How much more money do you think your avg dev is getting paid in the US vs what we get here in Europe? A regular employee/salaried dev is looking at at least 90k euro/year in nl, which is a very very comfortable living before bonus/benefits and NL also has the 13'th month thing which allows for easy laptop buying every year... Senior/Lead folks are looking at more plus options and whatever..
It's obviously a hard thing to measure, but I think the quality of life argument for your typical european is somewhat higher than your generic american worker (25 days holiday, employee-biased employment laws, various lifestyle protections (e.g in holland if you're a fully 'paid up' taxpayer and you lose your job then the govt will give you some 75% of your last salary while you find another role)).
I guess there's no way to really compare all these things, there are too many other factors -- I'm really curious on how much more money you're talking about here though...
It might be easier in hardware, I don't know how well ASML pays.
According Payscale, the average salary for a developer in Netherlands is 41k Euro/Year (http://www.payscale.com/research/NL/Job=Software_Engineer/Sa...), and in Amsterdam, the capital, 53k (http://www.payscale.com/research/NL/Job=Senior_Software_Engi...).
In Copenhagen and Barcelona (the two Euro cities where I have worked) 90k is totally off the market.
Berlin doesn't have an much of an industrial base, though. It was an enclave during the 40 years where most of the large manufacturing companies grew and it was impossible to do so from here. Siemens, for example, moved to Munich after 1945. So it may depend on the industry you're targeting. For some (mobility, politics, web, environment) Berlin has gotten more attractive in the last years, with companies sometimes opening offices to connect with the tech scene.
Large companies are obviously more conservative, but the differences are minor compared to their international peers. Bureaucracy tends to be much less of a hassle as people make it out to be.
It's not some intentional psychological ploy or anything, but I've found that people generally don't take the absolute piss if you let them manage themselves totally (we are all adults, after all, and who the hell am I to tell anyone how to handle themselves professionally as long as our obligations are being met)
Sure, everyone has to get together sometimes, but being onsite and having a normal lifestyle doesn't work for everyone, especially some of the 'top tier' engineers I've had who tend to be a bit wild.. Pushing 'school rules' on people just leads to them exiting, and it's no use kidding yourself that they need you more than you need them.
One of the best engineers I ever had had some sort of really insane drink/drugs lifestyle, he would drop commits in between 2-7am and they'd be brilliant, then he'd vanish for a few days, and repeat. Did I depend on this person completely for the whole project? No. But why should I care as long as no one else is annoyed by this behaviour on the team, and the work was solid?
I've never had someone actually emigrate during a role, but often people would go away for a few weeks and it wasn't a problem, again, as long as work is being done.
I'm not really sure why this isn't the case everywhere, but as long as my staff act like adults then they'll be treated as such. Onsite requirements are usually a symptom of a lack of trust or an insecure lead.
If you rock up to a client and immediately let them set any kind of requirements on your life instead of having a "this is our goal, make it so!" relationship then a subtle kind of power relationship has been created, where they'll think it's acceptible to mandate employee rules on you like this.
If you're a contractor, then the corp you're whoring out to is NOT your employer and you must not let them act as such (this makes it worse for all of us, not just you).
They're paying your buisness to do something for theirs, how you do that is your business and yours alone. There's no need to be a total weirdo about the whole thing and go off on one because they want you at a meeting at 10 some day or whatever -- you have to be diplomatic and be mindful of the way you're being percieved by the perm staff -- but generally I will not tolerate requests from clients w/r/t anything like attendance outside of meetings, dress code, general sobriety or whatever else which isn't impacting the deliberables we're providing, and wouldn't attempt to push them on my staff either (contract or not).
I've walked away from several really lucrative contracts because of this sort of client behaviour and I don't regret that at all. Your clients aren't, and never will be in control of you, you're there because they need you and they should treat you with the respect an engineer with your day rate has earned.. shrug
Generally, this sort of attitude has been accepted in every contract I've had in london in the last 5 years or so..
The secret is to get this point across very soon after, or even before, starting the gig. Absolute confidence is probably rq too tho...
edit: butterfingers
I only have experience with two big corps so far (keep coming back to the second one ;), but I've seen quite a few contractors at both and some of them were just plain flaky. That of course makes it worse for all of us as well, wrt to clients tolerance for things like remote work, etc.
I'll be in Berlin next week (I missed Nikolaus and I have some belated shoes to fill; failing that though definately again around silvester)
If you're up for a beer or sixteen on me, I'd really find the insider scoop useful on a more personal medium; I'm sure we could probably both get something from it, at least the worst would be a lot of free beer!
You can find me on freenode as 'cyb3rpunk' (inside a shiny new irssi in some tmux somewhere so might take me a while to respond) if you're up for it -- otherwise, prost!
>(cough cringe PR cough)
I so agree. This is a VC blowing its own horn and disguising it as information. Painful.
>the craziness of the continent
Britain isn't especially rich by European standards (poorer than Germany). London is a deviation. People are flocking to London, not away from the continent. Britain is pretty average in the European silliness contest. We're talking about a country that doesn't have a written constitution or equivalent thereof.
Is there some kind of irony in this comment that I am not getting? I mean, both countries have fully functioning stock markets. The main index for the Spanish stock market is IBEX35 and the Italian is the FTSE MIB.
Uhh.. what? O.o In 2016?
> Every European developer's final 'dream' is to work in the US tech industry - London is the second best thing to reach.
Sorry but no. I think you're delusional about tech salaries in London. And if you want to sell your soul to the finance industry, there are other places where developers make good money, without the need to live in an overcrowded city.
Really, we're talking minimum 500gbp/day and there is so much work you can quit a contract and have another within hours....
Even in london where a 2 bed 30 mins from the center is about 2k/month that's not exactly hard living is it?
In fact I'd go further and say it would be better if the US is like NYC of the world - a place where hyper ambitious people live for varying periods of time. Leave the rest of the world to preserve culture, produce human capital etc. and in return reap benefit from tech progress in the US.
London salaries have always been rather good in my view (if we ignore the shocking cost of living here) and although the higher remittances tend to based on experience here vs having a good degree, I'm not sure for me at least I could make more money anywhere else outside of the arab countries.
I've interviewed for some UK jobs, and the best I've been offered was 60,000 GBP (which equates to about 75k USD at current exchange rates). I routinely see job postings requiring quite a bit of experience and expertise, and offering salaries in the 40-50k GBP range.
Honestly, I don't understand it. It seems like London tech firms are competing in the same market (in some cases, they literally are satellite offices of the same companies) as the US firms, so how do they get away with offering so much less money?
Maybe in the pre-Brexit or pre-Trump era but today... . I turned down a London offer because of the uncertainty Brexit brings and I'm certainly not alone.
It's not that Great Brittain or the US is that political stable with al that happende the last couple or months.
The conservative parties CDU/CSU are totally sane compared to large parts of the UK tories or the republicans in the US.
> AFD in Germany in the 15-20% range
According Wikipedia, no poll ever has given AFD more than a 15%, with the vast majority giving it around a 12.5% (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_German...). Even if AfD would get to 20% (which it's very far away from their predicted results) it's very unlikely they would get to the government.
> Le Pen might win in France
She might, but right now is very unlikely, much more than a Trump victory or Brexit. The problem is that she is losing in the polls by... a lot. For the French presidential election, all polls predict Fillon v. Le Pen. The only two polls conducted since Fillon was chosen candidate give him +34 and +42 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_French...). 42 points was the distance between President-elect Trump and Johnson, the Libertarian candidate, in the last election.
I'm not saying it's impossible. Just very unlikely. The errors in the polling for the US Presidential Election and the Brexit referendum were much smaller.
Still, I don't think that Le Pen would be that bad, especially considering the failures of the two last présidents.
Not me. I have no interest in living and working in the US.