100% agree. Considering the incredible education system and engineers we have, the 2 only things restraining Europe from reaching Silicon Valley level are corrupt politicians and risk-adverse VCs.
I find it telling that it's mostly europeans who make these types of comments. The EU has tremendous barriers to labour mobility that most europeans don't even realise - differing bureaucracy and language being two of the most significant. And i cannot emphasise the bureaucratic hurdles enough when moving countries. Despite the EU crying itself hoarse about labour mobility, only around 5% of EU citizens relocate between EU countries. The majority of that 5% is people moving from poor to richer countries. The comparable number in the US is 20%.
Most rational people realise that despite all its flaws, some of the most key factors in US tech dominance are the existence of a large talent pool, all of whom speak the same language, the existence of a large market all of which operates in the same language and finally VCs willing to take on risk.
Corrupt politicians are not hobbling European tech success any more than corrupt US politicians are hobbling its success. The EU will not reach Silicon Valley's levels of success, at least not in my lifetime.
It's a chicken-egg problem, and Europe has no chicken nor eggs at the moment. But lots of grain and hay.
It has never been cheaper and easier to operate in several languages. Seriously, translation and internationalization is as cheap as it can get (and most folks in Europe are at least bilinguals!).
What they need to focus on is a unified marketplace and harmonized regulation. Now each tiny country has it's special snowflakes regulations (how to accept payment, who and how to pay taxes, huge amount of paperwork to get employees and ultra-restrictive labor laws). I mean it's good as a job program to keep EU civil servants employed, not so much to bootstrap a tech ecosystem!
The fact that the US operates entirely with the global lingua franca is a gigantic advantage that can crush competition before it even begins.
The unified marketplace is one problem but look at what has already been done - EU labour is free to move. Degrees are almost always mutually recognised. What stops further integration? It ultimately boils down to language. This is why a Greek doctor can't just move to Germany. Also why a Spanish lawyer can't easily move to Sweden. Language is a much bigger problem than people here seem to think.
These are all customer service positions (you get a prefix in front of your name but still).
That matters less with tech. You'll have a localized sales team/customer support sure, and that adds expenses, but it's not a huge burden.
Dealing with a huge amount of paperwork, taxes, special local laws of the N jurisdiction you're operating in, now that's a barrier to entry.
Law degrees might be harder to transfer generally though (easy to transfer in the Nordics at least iirc) but even in the US you need to take the bar in different states, so maybe that part isn't too different anyhow?
Actually, Might become easier in the EU in the future now that post-brexit there isn't any common law countries within the union and with mostly civil law systems it should be easier to unify principles in some sections of the law.
It's mostly northern Europe. Try France, Italy, Spain then you will change your mind.
I'm French, where I work I'm the only one on 200 people that can take a phone call in English.
>and risk-adverse VCs.
I don't know exactly how realistic this is. But from this side of the pond [Europe], it seems like, in the US there are VCs willing to throw millions [billions sometimes] at companies which are little more than a couple of guys with a silly idea, which would get you laughed out of your bank manager's office over here, if you went in asking to borrow a few hundred euros/pounds.
I've met a lot of European founders in the valley.
- labor laws (very hard to fire people in many European countries)
- lots of disjointed small-to-medium markets (with different laws and languages) make expansion on continental scale much harder than in the US
That's just not true now and hasn't been the case anymore since like the 2009 financial crisis. In most of Europe it's trivial to fire an underperforming non-unionized employee as the countries have adapted more business friendly laws to remain competitive after the financial crisis. Sure, there may still be some grey beards somewhere with old bulletproof contracts but for anyone entering the tech workforce now, getting fired is a rubber stamp basically especially since tech workers are not unionized and sometimes benefit from less protection than even some blue-collar professions which are unionized.
For example, in Austria you can fire anyone for no reason at all as long as you give them their notice period(usually 1 to 3 months) without them being entitled to any other financial compensation from their employer. Moreover, non-competes are legal here without any form of compensation and you can even fire employees while they're on sick leave. All this legally!
The whole you can't get fired in Europe maybe only applies to Scandinavia or France but it's mostly a meme nowadays.
Actually, contrary to popular belief, tech workers in California might enjoy better protection than tech workers in some European countries. Let that sink in for a bit.
On the other hand Silicon Valley is in California and has some of the strongest labor laws of the US, so if this is such a huge factor why is everyone in SV?
Even under the assumption that it's an important factor, would it be worth it for EU to adopt such policies considering the very real human cost?...
However you still have at least 1 month notice, and often more depending on the industry and seniority. Here in Zürich the standard in tech seems to be 3 month (anecdata though).
Where it gets kinda business friendly is that if you are fired for an illegal reason, it's up to you to prove that you were instead of your employer having to prove he fired you for something reasonable. The settlements are also nothing that would deter a company to behave badly I guess.
There is also a good tradition of union-like structure in the professions that need it (the ones where one is easily replaceable basically) that give workers a nice protection and benefits. It's not like in France of course but it's far from the US, based on the stories I gleaned about on HN.
In the larger ones (DE, FR) labor laws are a nightmare.
The range of reasons include coming too late to work, insulting coworkers and even underperformance.
France was famous for their approach of making an employees' life miserable in order to make them leave as they couldn't fire them easily. Honestly, I'd rather just be fired and get on unemployment than be subjected to psychological torture every day in a poisonous work environment.
Well they usually do it by compensating the employee quite heavily. Psychologically torturing an employee isn't that good for team morale, even if the employee was underperforming. I also don't think it's as culturally prevalent as you imply.
Where outside of the US/UK does that happen? Never heard in Europe that you get paid more so you leave when they can boot you out for free and I talked to lawyers about this. The reasoning behind the generous safety nets in Europe is also to make it easier for employee-employer terminations in case it doesn't work out. The laws here are that employers aren't allowed to abuse you, force you into unpaid overtime, etc. but fire you for free they can otherwise nobody would dare become an entrepreneur/investor in an environment where it's impossible to fire someone.
> when they can boot you out for free
You can't really. It's extremely difficult and no lawyer can magically change the fact that the culture and the courts are in favor of the worker, not the employer.
Now the laws might change a bit, making the terms of termination a bit easier for the employer in the future (we'll see what the next government brings), but in general I expect it to still be quite difficult. So it may be easier to pay the employee 30K extra compensation to let him go then trying a game of psychological torture. And if that sounds unreal to you, know that in the Netherlands employees can get paid up to 2 years if they have a nervous breakdown. And nervous breakdown is quite common culturally. So employees have dirty tricks of their own if the employer wants to play dirty.
Now of course, there are obvious disadvantages to this approach, not necessarily for the employer actually. The employer can protect himself by simply not hiring anyone for more than a couple of years, making "flex work" a real problem in NL. But yes, firing could be hard and I'd be surprised if it's much different in Germany/France etc.
As much as I like being on the side of the little guy, in any civilized society, the courts should be impartial and not favor the employer nor the employee and pass verdicts based on the law and not based on the culture and if the law says you can fire someone who continuously underperforms over a period of time then that law will be applied.
>After 3 years [...] a worker has to be moved to a permanent contract.
That sounds pretty poor IMHO. In most of the EU you're permanent after passing the first year of employment. I've never worked more than 3 years in a place so far, so in the NL I would have never reached permanent status, continuously being at the risk of on the spot termination. I dunno man, sounds pretty bad for me IMHO.
>And nervous breakdown is quite common culturally.
That actually sounds legit bad IMHO if mental issues are the becoming the norm in employment relationships.
>The employer can protect himself by simply not hiring anyone for more than a couple of years, making "flex work" a real problem in NL
I used to work for a top NL based company and this situation was often discussed around the office that NL companies are abusing expat workers from poorer countries by promising them riches in exchange for hard work and sacrifice and instead using them for 2-3 years then rotating them with new workers until they get fed up with this and move back to their home countries. Rinse and repeat. Sounds really good for Dutch business though.
Gonna ignore that one.
> I used to work for a top NL based company and this situation was often discussed around the office that NL companies are abusing expat workers promising them riches and instead using them for 2-3 years then rotating them with new workers until they get fed up with this and move back to their home countries
I really haven't experienced this at all. Tons of expats I know are on permanent contract (btw - many employers offer a permanent contract after 1-1.5 years if they're happy with the emplyoee, at least that's what I see in tech). Of course people in the hotel/entertainment business may have a different experience. I bet flex work is more common there.
> That actually sounds legit bad IMHO if mental issues are the becoming the norm in employment relationships.
I didn't say mental issues are the norm in the Netherlands, lol. Far from it, it's one of the happiest countries in the world according to research. I'm just saying - the law enables you to take a LONG paid leave if you have burnout. Now some employees actually get burned out, and some are probably abusing it a bit. When you're protecting employees there'll always be people who dishonestly try to take advantage.
Laws have huge margins left for judge's interpretation of what is fair and just in a given case.
It doesn't happen with the one large corruption scheme taking all of the money. Its hundreds of small corruptions like a locust.
Here is a fair and neutral attempt to catalog all the schemes in play: https://www.oecd.org/gov/ethics/prevention-fraud-corruption-...
In return: Do you have an example of where the EU paid anywhere below 200% of industry standard price for anything?
I'm not arguing its more corrupt than say the US Congress. Its on par, with some weird extremes. For example: Berlusconi, a prime minister, spending public money on under age prostitutes, serving today freely as a member of the EP. That kind also owned most media companies in his country and implemented favourable regulation and tax exemptions for himself.
Here in the Netherlands, there is something referred to as the 'job carousel'. Where favourable regulation by politicians is rewarded in the future (after a political carreer) by very highly paid gigs in the industries and companies they favoured. Technically legal, and very hard to legislate against. Its a refined form of corruption, but it has all the same downsides. During Corona for example, the Netherlands had trouble getting its testing in order. Turned out we had excluded big commercial labs from consideration because we had represenatites of the 'small artisinal labs' in our taskforce lobbying. A small scale corruption, with heavy economic distortion as a result!
I'm also not perse blaming corruption on the politicians themselves. We are all together responsible for the corporate and governance culture we breed. Yet we shouldn't pretend we currently have the ability to spend/invest money effectively and fairly as a collective.
Do u have a link to that story?
https://www.ftm.nl/artikelen/coronatesten-belangen-arts-micr...
However, this stuff is paywalled by now.
https://nos.nl/nieuwsuur/artikel/2346643-testlabs-kunnen-wel...
Or, an easy video summary by Arjen Lubach (has english subtitles): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUx-kdbKQys
The lobbyist, part of the Outbreak Management Team, is Ann Vossen. And she argued from her experise that there should be specific requirements that effectively kept larger laboratories from being able to be suppliers. Ironically, the trick used was the Tower of Babel (pretending language differences could be a risk)