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Comment by Udik | Hacker News Reader

I agree completely: as a European, I find these projects pathetic. We need the humility to learn something from the US and create an environment and a framework in which private companies can thrive, instead of being constantly dragged down by bureaucracy, regulations, and a legal-judiciary system eager not to help but to assert its power.

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In terms of innovation in semiconductors, should also learn from the success of China, South Korea, Taiwan!

Definitely, I didn't mention them only because I'm more familiar with the culture of the US (although indirectly). One thing we should certainly learn from China (and I guess other Asian cultures) is to copy first, and only when good at it start innovating. It takes a lot of humbleness and pragmatism over pride. And it works.

That is literally how you innovate! What a lot of people are unaware of is that Europeans had been copying and stealing Chinese secrets for over a millenia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smuggling_of_silkworm_eggs_int...

https://www.chinese-antique-porcelain.com/european-porcelain...

The US have a history of stealing tech secrets from the British:

https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-02-18/us-complains-other-na...

Hell, even the name America for which we give to the United States today was stolen since America was originally given to "Latin America" named after Amerigo who had only set foot in Latin America.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amerigo_Vespucci

I was also astounded when I found out how much US brands actually copy each other. So really, there is no shame in copying from others first before innovating, because that's what essentially learning is all about right? I mean we are constantly standing on the shoulder of giants, but for some reason, for certain sectors, we tend to lock out that process.

well ASML is plenty successful

Learn to pay your programmers properly.

No kidding. When I was in France I was appalled at the rates they were paying software developers. For a collection of countries that boasts better living standards for people, the comparative gap in pay for technical positions is absurd.

A junior developer cannot at all afford renting an appartment in Paris with his basis salary. For other jobs outside of software, it is even worse.

> For other jobs outside of software, it is even worse.

My understanding is that it’s the opposite. Software is significantly underpaid but you can do quite well with a typical paper-pushing bullshit job.

An entry-level tenured professor or a nurse at a hospital earn less than 2000 EUR per month. This gives them barely enough to rent a small room in a shared apartment.

> A junior developer cannot at all afford renting an appartment in Paris with his basis salary

To be fair, that's the same in London or SF :)

a junior developer in SF can pretty easily afford to rent their own apartment straight out of university. most won't, but they could.

Pay is a problem but it’s one of many. The working culture is another big problem. Here’s a thread that summarises it quite well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17169504

Agreed, more than anything else it's a cultural problem. In France and Italy in particular. And salaries are a consequence of it.

Meh that's honestly not the number one problem in france. I'd even say it's a competitive advantage. Not everyone is willing to expatriate for salary, you can get really great engineers for half or even a third of what they'd be paid in SV

But then why hasn't France been invaded by US companies to hire these great engineers for half of SV money?

I know they have some small offices on campus at top universities where they employ a hand full of PhDs for ML/AI research but that's a drop in the ocean.

You could probably ask the same question of Romania, Russia or Poland. I think it's just a question of the general business friendliness of the place. And there are quite a few American companies in Paris and Sophia-Antipolis

Actually, I bet my horse Romania and Poland are hosting more US tech companies than France since they can get more developers per dollar there.

Sophia-Antipolis is mostly semiconductor and hardware and has the weather and property prices of SoCal without the pay.

Can't speak for France but London's tech scene is brimming with overseas offices of American companies. Out of my 5 tech jobs, 3 were with American companies, the other 2 being British.

It make sense for London to be more attractive to US companies than France due to language and cultural similarities.

I agree but by paying such low rates / salaries they don't get all the developers they need to do all the projects they would like to do (source: my experience in Italy, where there are more companies looking for developers than developers with spare time for them) and still those companies manage to keep going no matter if projects are delayed or cancelled. If they couldn't either they would close or find more money to spend. Of course that's great for those countries that can move faster, their advantage increases.

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