Hacker News Reader

Comment by wrong_variable | Hacker News Reader

(cough cringe PR cough)

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 ---

View on HN

> 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.

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.

Contract rates in London are really rather good, at least in my particular little world (ops/"devops")...

Really, we're talking minimum 500gbp/day and there is so much work you can quit a contract and have another within hours....

that does seem to be rather low for an expensive city and a falling currency.

That's an avg of 10k a month, then add 6% on that if you're on flat rate vat scheme. Take off 20% if you don't have a ninja accountant and with the (now sadly, over) dividend rules and such you're still looking at a pretty healthy 8-9k take home a month..

Even in london where a 2 bed 30 mins from the center is about 2k/month that's not exactly hard living is it?

As I said 500gbp/day is not much. I see a lot of IT people earning this is Germany, especially in the Devops field. With something like that you would get an average qualified person hired in, say, Munich.

That is my impression as well. My rate is currently around 445gbp/day for backend development in Berlin and it is far from being at the high end (according to a yearly survey run by gulp.de). My total monthly expenses including rent, health insurance, etc. are below 2k gbp. I do pay higher taxes though.

What's the situation like there with having your own business vs as things are here with a uk ltd company, or do you work via an umbrella corp?

As far as I know, setting up a "UG" is easy enough. I'm registered as a freelancer ("Freiberufler") with the tax authorities. I guess that's like a sole proprietor? Upside is that I don't pay corporate tax (because there's no corporation). Downside is that I pay taxes on all my income instead of keeping most of it in the corporation.

TIL I basically work for free. But then again, I hardly do any work, so it seems to even out in the end.

Honestly I don't see this as a bad thing. It would be a tragedy if every country turned into a cut-throat capitalist place like the US.

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.

I agree with the broad strokes of your comment, but I have some nitpicks. I think it's culture that's holding the European tech sector back. Investors in Europe are generally very risk-averse and anything that's less than 100 years old isn't really taken seriously. It's fascinating to see how the more neophile countries pull ahead of the rest; how much financial conservatism holds the economy back. When Germans invest, they think mostly of dividends, not growth. And Germany is reasonably sane. Many countries (Italy, Spain) don't have functioning stock markets at all.

>(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.

i can only comment on the german economy, but i think it's not always comparable. It's true that germany is not producing the same number and caliber of startups as silicon valley, but it's very good at supporting medium sized, specialised business in the long term (from enabling them to conduct cutting edge research though heavily distributed government research institutions to a high number of organisations that help them tackle foreign markets and opportunities). If you're not into these things it's challenging, but as a student i see the different paths and institutions helping the more german subjects like chemistry or building engineer.

> Many countries (Italy, Spain) don't have functioning stock markets at all.

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.

They have stock exchanges, but ordinary companies don't list there. It's mostly just big banks and similar.

"Every European developer's final 'dream' is to work in the US tech industry - London is the second best thing to reach."

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.

To be fair, Europe isn't much stabler imo. AFD in Germany in the 15-20% range, Le Pen might win in France etc.

Europe is much, much stabler, at least right now. I follow the political polls in Europe and what you say is... mostly not true.

> 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.

And even if Le Pen is elected in France, the election for the parliament the following month would surely go in the opposite direction, meaning her power would be limited (since, in France, the government is chosen from the party with the majority in the parliament).

Still, I don't think that Le Pen would be that bad, especially considering the failures of the two last présidents.

That does not matter much in Germany, where the political system is very different from the UK and the US. Germany has proportional representation, which does not produce the two party system of the US.

The conservative parties CDU/CSU are totally sane compared to large parts of the UK tories or the republicans in the US.

Completely agree. I live in Europe, am a part of the tech scene, and am sitting in the contitental craziness you speak of in Germany. This report is largely nonsense.

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...

> 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]

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.

while i think you're right, but these things are not always visible to an developer/foreigner. Fraunhofer is not as visible as they should, because they are conduction a lot of commercial research in joint ventures with local businesses and are not specialising into research areas where they are most visible. I recently read an interview with the director of an ivy-league university where he stated that they only finance research team that have an realistic shot at being leading, outstanding and visible in the research world. If you compare that to germany where you might end up in one of the countless mechanical engineering research groups it's way harder to be outstanding, just because it's more crowded. But that's not what the Fraunhofer Society is about, it's doing very practical research, mostly driven by local businesses and their needs.

Indeed. That's an issue Germany seems to have repeatedly recently: While the US went full on into marketing, we've never done that - and that's exactly what's missing, not the research, but the marketing and propaganda of being the #1.

If we actually want that, though, is another question.

>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.

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.

>I always cringe when I hear software execs talk of being a leader in their home country.

Yeah, because making millions (or billions) in one's home country is cringe-worthy.

It's OK, if you look at it as a cow to be milked until a multinational drives you out of business. From a business perspective there's nothing necessarily wrong with milking a cow until it runs dry, but you should have made a conscious decision to do it. The execs I'm talking about haven't.

>It's OK, if you look at it as a cow to be milked until a multinational drives you out of business.

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.

Hmm. I'd really like to hear more about how you see things if you've got the time..

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?

Berlin is a pretty excellent place if you're after a compromise b/w QoL and business. The tech scene is 50%+ expats and the mixture does wonders for company culture. It's also quite easy to connect with people and do freelancing, and I know many people fluidly joining and leaving different teams – doing freelancing for some, joining for equity at others, and sometimes groups form for exciting ad-hoc collaborations without an immediate profit motive.

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.

I'm curious what this wild side is like. "letting your teams do whatever the hell they want as long as you're delivering" sounds like working remotely from a beach is common. Yet almost all job postings I see from companies in London are on site. Or does it mean I can leave work after six hours on very productive days?

Well, as it goes, as often as I'm able to (sometimes it takes a while to change the culture/gain enough trust to be left alone) I don't put any requirements at all on attendance/appearence/sanity/whatever as long as everything is being done and the team is performing. Nailed all the work for the day before 12:00 and want to hit up the pub -- how could any sane person stop you? Working remote makes you more productive and no one else on the team feels you're just slacking, then go for it.

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.

That's when you are running a team, right? But it's not the norm to walk into any corp in London as a devops/dev/whatever contractor and work like this. There is no reason why you couldn't run a team that way in Berlin or anywhere else in the world.

Depends on your attitude really.

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

Makes perfect sense, thanks. I think the situation here is very similar. Telling a contractor when and where to work can get the client in legal trouble ("Scheinselbstständigkeit", one of those lovely german words ;). How that works out in practice probably depends on the company. If you work a gig at Siemens it might be different than at a startup (that is funded well enough to afford freelancers).

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.

Hmm.

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!

Totally up for it! Will ping you on irc.

It is not what you are asking for, but as I repeatedly hear is that The Netherlands is closer to the UK with regards to the business practice. Less strict, less formal, no hierarchies. But VC isn't big in The Netherlands as well. Salaries are still a joke compared to the US.

I worked in NL a few years ago and the corp culture there was good generally. I'll never acknowledge frikandellen as fit for human consumption however..

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...

> A regular employee/salaried dev is looking at at least 90k euro/year in nl

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.

What company in NL pays 90k for new grads?

or senior devs

90k is attainable at Booking.com for a senior dev, but you have to be into Perl :) And I imagine that your total comp is pretty big at Uber too (at least on paper). Clearly not the norm in NL though.

It might be easier in hardware, I don't know how well ASML pays.

Not really into Perl or into moving anywhere, but good to know. :)

As an American who recently moved to London, I agree with this. The salaries here are shockingly lower, especially considering how expensive London cost of living is. I wound up just working remotely for a SF firm, which I realize is a luxury thanks to my US passport.

Out of curiosity what area are you working in and if you're willing to share, what sort of numbers are we talking about?

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'm a backend web developer (Django, Postgres, Redis) and I get paid right around 100k USD (plus some extra money in bonus and pension contributions). My understanding is that this is actually on the low end for SF/Silicon Valley.

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?

Also: http://www.itworld.com/article/2947616/careers/developers-ma...

> The reason why every European developer migrates to London is to escape the craziness of the continent.

Uhh.. what? O.o In 2016?

I have been actively avoiding London for years as I dislike the place. Likewise with the States.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the supposed quality difference of MBAs is mostly unrelated to tech startups.

> Every European developer's final 'dream' is to work in the US tech industry

Not me. I have no interest in living and working in the US.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com