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Comment by unixhero | Hacker News Reader

Good observations! You forgot one major thing. This goes for all of Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. The winter is horribly dark and boring. (Unless you're super rich). Therefore most turn inwards, staying indoors, thinking deeply at problems, spending endless afternoons and nights on things. Be it software development, game development, car tuning, car engine work, engineering, knitting or just reading loads of books.

I found this to be almost impossible to achieve when I moved from Norway to Australia. There I was outside hanging out with friends or just doing stuff on the beach or whatever. The deep focus was harder to achieve. Quality of life was insanely better there, yet somehow I missed the possibility to sit down and be productive in some narrow topic.

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I believe to have read somewhere that this is also the reason why so many Russians (and people born in the USSR) are great mathematicians and chess players. Math and Chess are both indoor activities and also absolutely unpolitical, which is a huge plus in an authoritarian regime.

>>Math and Chess are both indoor activities and also absolutely unpolitical, which is a huge plus in an authoritarian regime.

The history of chess is definitely very political, especially inside the Soviet Union. It was seen as the proxy for intelligence, and if Soviet players were better than Americans, it was their way of demonstrating superiority in yet another domain.

True, but ultra-authoritarian regimes will politicize almost everything imaginable.

I read somewhere that it was only way to distinguish themselfs and to travel.

The other major thing (and I would argue more important than the others) is Sweden's wealth and social safety net.

Wealth is one of the most important factors for someone to found a startup. You aren't going out and starting a company if you have to work 80 plus hours a week to live.

Just look at the clueless opinions of so many tech founders about how "you shouldn't pay yourself a salary at first after you take investment money". Oh really? So we should just buy groceries and pay rent from the trust fund mommy and daddy gave us?

I agree with your first 2 paragraphs, but the third is being overly simplistic (or potentially just not understanding the trade-off at play).

The scenario is that (roughly) 90% of the hypergrowth-style startups which raise a first round will fail to achieve enough momentum to successfully raise a second. And due to the business model choices they've committed to, failing to raise at that point is equivalent to going out of business. A first raise is often too small to be able to do everything they'd like, so they suggest decide that it's in their best interest (long term) to forgo a salary where possible, in order to buy a few extra months of progress before you're forced to start shopping for investment again.

Of course, folks give advice based on their own experience, but it doesn't always generalise to folks in different situations, which is potentially why that would seem like silly advice in (what I assume is) your scenario.

(minor edits toward the end for clarification)

You are completely missing his third point. For people without wealth (or a social safety-net which provides you the resources you need to survive), it isn't optional to work for free. You have to eat and have a roof over your head, which means taking a salary if you are working full-time on your startup. Its not a strategic decision.

I must have poorly explained. The strategic decision happens earlier, when you decide which idea to commit to. Certain ideas are both a) incapable of generating early profits and b) dependent on reaching uncertain milestones to unlock the next stage of crucial funding.

So if you don't have the personal finances to deal with that situation, then you make a different decision further upstream, in the past, by choosing to work on an idea which has either easier funding targets (allowing an early salary), or which can generate early profits (allowing an early salary), or which has lower development requirements (allowing you to work on it alongside another paying job).

The decision is about idea selection, where I agree with you. "If you need the money, then pick an idea which allows you to pay yourself quickly." But if you've chosen to play a different game (typical hypergrowth VC stuff), and you want to maximise your odds of winning at that particular game, then it's generally ideal to buy yourself more months business runway instead of more months of personal runway.

Perhaps still not clear, and I know it's an emotionally loaded topic, but hopefully that makes sense.

I think you make my point. Which is that unless you have some wealth already, family wealth or otherwise, your options for a startup are much more limited than those who do not have money.

The point is that you shouldn't take a regular market salary. Software people can live on way less than what the market currently offers so if you pay yourself the competitive rate you're burning a lot of your runway pointlessly.

> Good observations! You forgot one major thing. This goes for all of Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. The winter is horribly dark and boring. (Unless you're super rich). Therefore most turn inwards, staying indoors, thinking deeply at problems, spending endless afternoons and nights on things. Be it software development, game development, car tuning, car engine work, engineering, knitting or just reading loads of books.

Wonder if that's also a factor in the prevalence of tech/programmers/hackers in Russia. Don't think there's a startup scene there, but there definitely seems to be more technology experts coming from the area in general.

One of the vanishingly few things the Soviets did right was to emphasize STEM education. This seems to have stuck in Russia. And I’ve heard the same was true across the eastern bloc.

As an anecdote, a lot of programmers and heavy gamers I knew in high school lived on remote islands and took a water taxi over to ours for school. They couldn't do after school activities without sleeping over at someone's place. Their islands had even less to do on them than ours.

Soft forms of isolation certainly seem to lead to solitary activities.

Hmmm interesting observation about the long dark winters. Edinburgh similarly has a disproportionately successful tech industry (it's the same latitude as Moscow) and Estonia has also done very well in tech (for many other reasons but that might be a contributing factor).

Winter is not horribly dark and boring in Scandinavia unless you are super rich. It’s equally dark and boring for everyone. And virtually everybody in Scandinavia can afford to travel south to sunnier places for a few weeks, if that’s what they want.

I’d say proficiency in English and quite wealthy populations is what matters.

That's not true. The super rich are taking luxury vacations and spa trips.

Finnish travel agencies offer a week long trip to Canary islands for €500, you don't need to be rich to save for that once a year. Most cities have spas too.

I don't think it is that relevant. You can be happy in Sweden and miserable in Malta. They funny thing is that people tend to say the same thing about SV, but because of the nice weather. Not to say that dark afternoon can't be special, but it is generally everything else (like having something relevant to work on) that makes it so. And that doesn't necessarily lose its value if it is sunny instead.

This is a plausible story, but that doesn't mean it's true. Anecdotally I felt more productive living in a warmer place than when living in Scandinavia. I think it completely depends on your situation and an actual study is needed to prove it one way or the other.

I also recall Jared Diamond debunking this as a theory for why "the west" got ahead in his book Guns, Germs, and Steel.

The same is basically true with Seattle. Well, not so dark (the sun is out til 4:30), winters are quite mild, but wet enough to keep everyone focused.

the most boring weather is reflected in the most boring software

Seattle's weather is hardly boring. And there is plenty of software going on here, is Facebook, Google, Apple, Unreal, Unity, Oculus, really that boring?

it's always raining in windows?

But then if that's true, you wouldn't get lots of devs in the Bay Area California. Lots of great weather here.

How many devs have you met that grew up in the Bay Area?

I know a handful. Is it really surprising?

Also a hypothesized reason for why canadians are unreasonably well represented in esports.

Israel doesn't have long dark winters and yet they're the pioneers of innovation and start-up culture.

Well, their summers are kinda long and hot.

As someone who has worked with teams from Israel, I'd like to hear more about this if you have good sources.

In my experience, it's been the opposite. They like to play office politics, focus on keeping work off their plate, and they're not really team players.

I may just have a bad sample of Israel tech workers, though.

Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle makes a good case. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Start-up_Nation

I didn't comment on how good or bad they're to work with but on the assumption that weather conditions can affect productivity.

I have also experienced this - in addition, rampant nationalism is an issue when dealing with Israeli companies, in my experience (5 different customers, similar problems..)

Where I think Israeli tech startups get most of their mojo, is desperation. Their culture involves so much struggle and effort .. and I think the reaction to it at a personal level, results in the laziness, non-team-playing, political problems.

Just because something is a factor doesn't mean there can't be other factors that lead to a similar outcome.

I'm an Israeli and it comes from a few factors:

1. Israelis basically have no choice. If you want to make a good income, working hard in a technology startup(we have very few big tech companies) is one of the very few good options.

2. The army: at a very young age,a decent percentage of Israelis who join the army lead, in high value, high risk situations. That creates a sense of responsibility and strong ambition at a relatively early age.

The army is also a place where a lot of new tech is being developed , so people get exposure, and often in roles of major responsibility.

3. The Jewish people have lived among other people, in very hostile conditions, often forced to do banking(loans) and commerce at times when most people did agriculture. That forces a certain entrepreneurial spirit, and possibly higher intelligence(also witnessed by the higher rate of genetic illnesses in Ashkenazi Jews). That, plus a culture that always focused on learning(religiously).

>and possibly higher intelligence

Interesting what would happen if this is said about any other country

Obviously this discussion is a minefield. But there is some merit in asserting some relations there. In The Netherlands, Iranian and Afghani immigrants are often of a more privileged descent than Moroccan and Turkish immigrants, because of the reason of their migration. Moroccans and Turks generally migrated for manual labor, where Irani and Afghans usually fled religious oppression.

Of course this does not mean Dutch Iranians are smarter than Dutch Moroccans, but it could mean there might be more smart/entrepreneurial Iranians than Moroccans in The Netherlands.

These statistics might die out very quickly though, for example Turks are often already second or third generation, so many have been born in the privilege of The Netherlands.

Perhaps similarly, the second world war cost us a huge percentage of Jewish people, being privileged has meant having a larger chance of survival through moving to less dangerous countries (like the U.S.).

It doesn't mean Jewish people are smarter, it might mean though that you could find a bit more smart Jews in their population. Of course the second world war has already been a long time, so the effect might already be gone.

The problem is that people (Jews and non-Jews, Israelis and non-Israelis) really believe and expect it.

I'm probably average intelligence, but I've had it expressed to me by people who hardly know me that they expect that I'm brilliant or something because I'm an Ashkanazi Jew. Its one of those stigmas that get attached to any race, such as Russians drinking Vodka or Argentinians eating meat. I'm sure that there are sober Russians, vegetarians in Argentina, and there's me!

It's not about nationality: Ashkenazi Jews in general -- Israeli or not -- tend to be smarter. ~20% of Nobel prize winners are Jews compared to less than 1% of the global population. So either there's a Jewish conspiracy (which some people believe...) or Jews tend to be smarter.

Some people would say that this is cultural. I doubt it -- I think it's genetic. Intelligence is a physical attribute determined by genes, just like every other physical attribute. It's really no different from the observation that Kenyans and Ethiopians win most marathons.

In general, we should expect different traits to be exhibited at different frequencies by different populations that were reproductively isolated in the past. This doesn't mean prejudice is okay. Not all Jews are smart, and not all Kenyans are going to win marathons. We can acknowledge these correlations without behaving in a prejudiced way toward individuals.

Most people would rather not talk about this. And that's certainly my rule of thumb for in-person conversations. But, hey, we're on the internet.

> It's really no different from the observation that Kenyans and Ethiopians win most marathons.

But don't most Kenyan and Ethiopian marathon winners also grow up in Kenya or Ethiopia? I.e. how do we discount at very least environmental factors (including, for instance, diet), even if you doubt cultural ones?

> But don't most Kenyan and Ethiopian marathon winners also grow up in Kenya or Ethiopia?

No. There is a hugely disproportionate number of Americans and British of Somali, Kenyan, and Ethiopian origin who excel in world class distance running (Adbirahman, Farah, and many more, including a big new wave of Somali American after).

Interesting. That still wouldn't completely rule out environmental/cultural factors though, including diet and so on (e.g. maybe eating teff is good for long-distance runners).

> So either there's a Jewish conspiracy (which some people believe...) or Jews tend to be smarter.

You're assuming that intelligence is the determining factor in winning a Nobel prize, which seems spurious at best. Work ethic and training, particularly early in life seem, to me, like they'd be better predictors. I'd posit that Jewish culture is better at nurturing intelligence before I'd conclude that there's some ethnic superiority going on.

You used the term "ethnic superiority". That's you making a value judgement about intelligence. It has absolutely nothing to do with what I wrote. Personally, I don't think intelligence is a good proxy for "value of a human being".

While there isn't a bullet-proof case, there is quite a bit of evidence for an ethnicity-intelligence correlation.

You left off a key word when you took the term "ethnic superiority" out of context. I prefaced it with the word "some" to indicate that I was considering only a single dimension, intelligence. I said nothing about "value of being a human being," so don't put words in my mouth.

The only value judgement I was making is that higher intelligence is superior to lower intelligence and that Nobel prizes is an extremely poor proxy for intelligence.

I guess you've heard of The Bell Curve and the related controversy (check Sam Harris podcast with Charles Murray)?

Fwiw I don't think you're necessarily wrong about intelligence but from what I remember The Gene (Siddhartha Mukherjee) does have a few passages contradicting this theory. Also by questioning the validity of IQ tests.

Could it also not be that jews are just more motivated to get in to STEM fields and perform well, for cultural reasons or otherwise?

Similarly, Malcolm Gladwell mentions a theory about why "Asians are smarter" which according to him may be related to hard and smart work leading to bigger rice harvests, and other factors (see here https://www.cs.unh.edu/~sbhatia/outliers/outliers.pdf).

While I have zero interest in the cultural implications and all the moral panics surrounding these issues, I don't think intelligence being mostly down to genetics is a proven fact. I find it gets extremely complicated very quickly.

Genes are hugely influenced by their environmental (cultural) triggers and those should not be ignored.

> 2. The army: at a very young age,a decent percentage of Israelis who join the army lead, in high value, high risk situations. That creates a sense of responsibility and strong ambition at a relatively early age.

Summed up in one word - discipline. The glamorous myth of startups is just that, a myth. Some outliers go from zero to hero overnight, but most require slogging away day in and day out. Motivation can only last so long, and after it's gone all you have left is discipline. Military writings both current and historic routinely speak of discipline being the single most important aspect of achieving a goal.

Jews were forced into banking, because they were forbidden to do agriculture or cattle back in Europe. Banking was considered dirty, so Christians didn't want to do it. Jews did what they were allowed - banking, philosophy, medicine, science - and they became masters of the craft.

I thought it was also about usury not being allowed (for Christians, Jews, or Muslims) intrareligiously but only extrareligiously, i.e. Jews could loan money to Christians, but Christians couldn't loan money to Christians.

Yes. That's the usual story indeed. I'm not sure where the concept that banking was 'dirty' came from - I suspect that's mixing up banking with lending. Lending at interest was subject to religious prohibition for all but Jews who interpreted the Torah in a way that forbade lending only to other Jews. Thus Jewish people were not "forced" into banking because they were banned from agriculture (lol, how would that even work?) but rather, became bankers by default because it was highly profitable and others wouldn't do it for religious reasons.

This is the main reason for the ancient historical stereotypes linking Judaism and money/wealth/power/etc. And why names like Goldstein (gold stone) are considered Jewish names.

>> and possibly higher intelligence

I heard that a lot of times from mostly uneducated people. All nations have equal level of intelligence. The difference might be access to education, environment, common wealth, and social inequality.

This seems like a dogmatic response rather than a reasoned one. All other aspects of human beings vary by region to some degree, why would intellectual be an exception?

Source?

Edit: I would argue to the contrary, that there is a appreciable difference in average IQ between some countries which expresses itself among other things in GDP and quality of life. Perhaps the nature of this difference is based on things like nutrition, environment quality, pre-natal screening and care, so improvements in all these things will decrease the gap. If it happens that after all of that there is still a certain gap , who cares? As long as the citizens live in peace and relative prosperity.

> All nations have equal level of intelligence

How do you know this?

By far the biggest factor is the over $130B of aid the U.S. has provided to Israel which directly nurtured the high technology industry.[1]

This is also true for the U.S. itself; Silicon Valley is largely a creation of Pentagon investment (see: DARPA).

[1] https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/interactive/2018/03/unders...

Don't forget Iceland, with its "Christmas Book Flood" (https://www.npr.org/2012/12/25/167537939/literary-iceland-re...).

(disclaimer: I am an American and don't know what I'm talking about. I have visited Norway but it was summer.)

On the other hand, here on the other side of the Atlantic ... Silicon Valley is not only at a temperate latitude but also downwind (jetstreamwise) of an ocean; placing it in the middle of one of our continent's few bastions of reliably non-shitty weather. And there isn't much tech-related stuff happening on the north coast of Alaska or the northern regions of Canada, either.

So I daresay there's more to this than just the Arctic Circle.

Then how do you explain Silicon Valley? Outdoor life is great here. You have good point but may not be as important as you think.

How many engineers have you met that grew up in Silicon Valley?

Because when Silicon Valley established its dominance, access to computing resources, digital networks, tech talent, and venture capital were by far the crucial factors. All those things were much rarer back then, and startups more costly, especially to get off the ground. Given today’s low costs and ubiquitous computing and internet access — and the trends in this direction even 20 years ago - it makes sense other, softer factors can now come into play.

One counterargument against that indoor scenario would be The Valley™. Unless you consider fog.

> Quality of life was insanely better there

Just because of sun? Did you try UV?

> Quality of life was insanely better there,

> yet somehow I missed the possibility to sit down and be productive in some narrow topic.

Do you mean that you preferred the life you led in Australia to the one in Norway? If not, how do you mean that quality of life was insanely better?

>> I found this to be almost impossible to achieve when I moved from Norway to Australia.

> Do you mean that you preferred the life you led in Australia to the one in Denmark?

Calling a Norwegian a Dane is about as popular as saying a Canadian is from USA or calling an American British I guess ;-)

Ah, a simple mistake :)

That's what I guessed :-)

(Seems I've offended someone else though, but I have no idea why.)

Why wouldn't they prefer it?

I never implied they didn't prefer it, so I wonder why you seem to think so.

Well, he literally called it "insanely better", and you felt the need to double-check whether they do prefer it.

That's enough implying in my books.

(Besides, if we're to play this game, I never said that _you_ "implied they didn't prefer it". I just asked, "why wouldn't they prefer it").

Nothing beats sitting in front of a computer in the dark.

I can't stand it. Feels like staring at a light bulb. The only thing that makes it passable for me is Night Mode in F.lux on OSX. Nothing else works. I keep a Mid-2012 MacBook Pro around just so I can have a computer I can actually use in a dark room.

Even then it's not ideal. The lowest brightness setting still isn't low enough.

In my twenties I could happily destroy my circadian rhythm and sit in front of a screen til 4-5 in the morning. At 35 that shit's gotten real old.

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