EU tech sector fights for a Level Playing Field with Microsoft

I mean, I'll never use MS products nor buy an Apple product, ever. Not even if they have the nicest X. Because I don't like the prospect of a world where it's only MS/Apple. So I use products that are good for an open world as much as possible.

In the real world, people support local businesses. People support small business and hand-made products, even if it's more expensive. Because that's how you grow your local economy.

Right now US companies are hiring eastern European developers directly for "whatever they want to be paid" and local companies cannot compete on salaries. Whole world is paying US companies, EU companies are local at best in couple of European countries and even then they have to spend loads of money on localization.

While US is 331,449,281 people and EU is 447,706,209 differences between EU counties are a lot bigger than between US states. If you start up with a company you can start in single language and single country - moving to other country takes loads of effort.

I might be wrong about how it is easy to scale business between US states but I expect it is a lot easier than in EU.

Most use Mac.

But their infrastructure sure as hell isn't Windows Server on Azure...

And it's pretty well known that Google uses a lot of Linux internally, even if I'm sure some devs are also on MacOS and Windows for reasons.

I definitely didn't avocate for any legislation. I'm saying they need to shift their perspective. Tech isn't booming because US startups played it safe...

However there's a flip side to this like our much better social welfare systems and affordable healthcare. I personally prefer it this way. It does hurt us economically but economy isn't the only thing that matters.

In Europe we limit how high you can climb and this limits the amount of risky investment we attract because a big win is not automatically a mountain of profits due to more taxes and more regulations. But on the other hand we limit how far you can fall too. As a non-entrepreneur nor investor the latter matters much more to me.

There is less accountability for essential business functions that a product provides.

I don’t work on anything exceptional really. It’s all simple stuff. But there’s just so many broken things all the time that I had to walk away.

I’m writing this on the only tool I’ve got that doesn’t melt in my hands regularly, an ass end 9th gen ipad paired with a fairly old apple keyboard. It just works. This gives me more time to do things I actually derive value from in my life.

https://teddit.net/r/linux/comments/hioivn/libreoffice_is_st...

This is one of the things I like about Numbers etc on iOS. It abstracts this away so we’ll I don’t have to give a crap and it appears instantly on all my devices.

BANAMMA or NABAMMA

TL;DR: European senior devs certainly don't make as much as their FAANG counterparts (most U.S. based seniors probably don't make that much either) but €40k isn't a usual senior salary in most (west-)european countries.

Threatening with doing something you are already doing, is not very effective leverage.

The American trade war on the EU, started by the US in 2018, is technically still in effect until January 1, 2022. The decision to end it was made only earlier this month.

Aren’t there tons of legal paperwork to go through, and why would the EU be attractive to those investors?

So your theory is "the less a person has, the more motivated and productive they are". Surely some poverty striken nation like Somalia should be pinnacle of productivity?

Or do you need infrastructure and education, perhaps lets try Russia, mexico?

If that's still not good enough, what makes you believe thay the sweetspot of support is the US?

Or could an alternative, much simpler theory be true, that the country that's the world's money printing press and global center of capital has some kind of advantage?

Not sure how you got Croatia on a map of startups. That digital nomad thing is nothing more than a few nice phrases made to look like its some heaven for IT companies. It couldn't be further from the truth.

The taxes and bureaucracy roadblocks on the individuals and companies are one of the highest in the world. One must be completely crazy to come over for some (non-existing) startup (or even established) scene. The government doesn't give a rat's ass about this industry.

The only reason why there are a lot of people in this industry working for foreign companies is that the salaries are quite low (compared to rest of the EU) but still considerable better than a median domestic salary. But as the last census is going to show (there were already some leaked statistics) the young people are leaving in droves and the shit is no joke as the population is rapidly decreasing. Why work here for say double the median salary (a little less than 1K euro) for some foreign company, when you can emigrate and make at least 7 times more? But more truthfully, people are leaving because they cannot even get a bit more than half of the average salary.

So if I were thinking of opening a startup, it would be pretty much anywhere else but here, it just doesn't make any economical sense.

This is a vague and exaggerated statement, it makes you sound quite biased. If we're going to argue in that direction then let me point out that China has "way more socialism" (as you put it) than Europe, yet their lightening speed in making advancements in their private tech sector, digitalisation and even scientific research such as computer vision and quantum computing puts even the US to shame.

"People here don't want to be part of a company that does exciting things"

Absolutely false. Have you ever spoken to anyone at a German car company? They live and die for the pride they have working with their "team". Same goes for other Mittelstand companies, employees tend to be very loyal and have a personal relationship with their company and product, even if it is as simple as a company making world-class pencils. Maybe this is because of all the "socialism" (i.e. reasonable amount of time off and workers rights and being treated like a human with a personal life)

That is not to say that there aren't groups of long-tenured 20 year+ employees at such corporations who occupy a cushy job with almost no chance of being fired. Yes they exist, and I've met them.

But I think you're trying to equate the mindset in Europe to the American ideal of the individual person doing something that 'CHANGES THE WORLD'. Europeans certainly dream and want to do exciting things that make the world a better place, but the way to do this isn't exclusively held by this radical capitalist view (I say this as a believer capitalism) that one man/woman with an idea can change the world. I think we take on a more longer-term view, taking the time to research, perfect one's craft and slowly make small steps of change that last longer. And I think this view and mindset is what drives so much medical and scientific innovation in Europe.

Seems it doesn't really prevent competition.

You want a government standard for social networks, so they all have the same features? Essentially it would be frozen how social networks work, and we would be stuck with that forever? Or if we are lucky, we can elect a committee that decides on new features and gets paid billions of tax payer money?

In this case, they could encourage European competitors to YouTube by using their services and infusing them with some capital. By digitalizing the processes across the union, and by again, using European services.

They certainly have the money; maybe they can spend a bit less on those "[meetings and conferences]".

I'll give you another example. Because Germany is big in Pharma, they encourage the pharma industry along with its research and development. Because of this, when the pandemic hit, we were already exploring some interesting options. This should be the tech case also, not just pharma.

"but that was mostly the government fostering the demand side" - this is a great way to do it, yes.

> there aren't many cases where the government itself created 'innovation'

Maybe my understanding is wrong, but I feel like a lot of innovation comes from heavy government-backed entities. And then the capitalists come and distribute these innovations in various forms to the population.

"Literally every single sliver of technology that makes the iPhone a smartphone instead of a stupidphone – internet, GPS, touchscreen, battery, hard drive, voice recognition – was developed by researchers on the government payroll." - The Entrepreneurial State

I'm not arguing that it's unfair, I'm arguing that the EU is not doing enough to encourage development within its borders.

> Why aren’t European innovators creating YouTube alternatives?

I have unsourced beliefs in this matter, that a lot of innovators follow capital outside of EU. There is not a single start-up that I worked with locally, that didn't end up incorporating in US for the capital and the market.

Recently, the EU start-up scene is picking up, so I hope we can see more and more successful companies springing up here. But we're very far from competing with the US and China.

> If they are, what specifically is it about EU law that prevents them from being successful?

I'm not an expert, so I couldn't really say this, however, I know one major issue is the cultural and language barrier. There must be solutions to it, and there must be money in the EU to finance looking for such solutions.

> I keep hearing about how European VCs are much more conservative, and European banks/investors in general just don’t want to invest in software like they do in the US

This is also true; changing recently. I also agree with everything that you posted after this, with the mention that it should be a market-led choice, which type of engagement you want with whichever company you choose.

> I understand the European solution is to have national champions that are heavily subsidized (the US does this to some degree, too, at its peril) - but should that be the first choice?

I believe that, in general, investing smaller sums in more companies across multiple industries is the best solution in terms of government intervention. Then specialized programs for more capital infusion to companies in various stages of development, based on proper due diligence. But again, I'm not an expert.

The EU would seem to think creating a Vimeo would be a waste. The US is winning because they recognize that Vimeo is successful, even if small.

How can anyone create a viable youtube alternative if it's free? The adtech monster killed dozens fo companies.