Why do European experts have to come to Silicon Valley? I see it all the time. They should build up expertise at home - start the new ST Microelectronics
It is a very effective strategy for a country.
Part of the explanation for the lower cost of capital, is that US investors have a higher risk appetite than those in most other OECD economies; also, the US has an arguably more efficient pipeline (VC firms, etc) for getting money from investors to entrepreneurs.
Some of it is no doubt influenced by regulatory issues (such as taxation differences), but cultural differences likely also play a role.
A lot of the VC pipeline also reaps rewards from how USA was the one country with untouched industry at the end of WW2 and then funneled huge amounts of moneys into expanding, not reconstruction.
A lot of American cultural difference relative to the rest of the world can be explained almost entirely by the unusual absence of Tall Poppy Syndrome[0] that is a hallmark of most other industrialized societies. American culture respects those taking large risks for concomitant rewards, and doesn't begrudge the rewards that might accrue to someone taking those risks. It is easy to have a high risk appetite when it increases one's social status.
I think fear of bankruptcy can be a higher deterrent for foolish risks than social stigma.
> In many parts of the world, trying something and failing is held against you In Europe you don't lose people's sympathy if you try something and fail.
Certainly here in the UK and certainly upto the mid 00's, if someone ended up bankrupt their life was over, blocked from credit in most cases, massively high interest rates in the future if they could get credit, the lenders certainly got their pound of flesh so it wasnt worth feeding the parasites, the population became risk averse.
Repression comes back to bite...
The other problem is the Class system, something Royalty holds onto dearly, and what some euphemistically call the old boys network, but it keeps people in their place so the [European] Caste system acts as a drag on the economy.
The legislation around bankruptcy, however, is definitely very repressive on the continent too. TBH I don't think it's particularly lenient in the US either, but over there creating and operating companies is easier and cheaper, which means people can more easily offload debt obligations.
> The legislation around bankruptcy, however, is definitely very repressive on the continent too.
Europe has the largest slice of banking and financial interests but thats being slowly chipped away by the US. Look at some of the old banks which have gone bust or been swallowed up for liquidity reasons since the financial crisis in 2008. You have the US and UK printing money to dilute China's hard work, the Weimar republic has a lot of parallels.
What makes the difference is the regulatory environment around corporations.
So many of my coworkers were completely aware that they could double (or even triple) their salaries by moving to San Francisco/Seattle, but chose not to. Nasty politics, homelessness, crime, public defacation, a general "fuck the poor" culture (on both sides of the political isle), gun violence, cost of living and the fact you'd be leaving your family behind if you left made it an easy choice to stay in Melbourne. The people that did go often intended on going there for 5-10 years then coming back rich.
Point is, I think the reason that so many huge tech companies are there is much more complex than just "more money attracts more smart people" and perhaps some other factor at play too.
Not to be an apologist for any of this, but I find it hard to believe any of these were more important deterrents to the emigration of your peers than our capricious, byzantine, and dehumanizing immigration system.
People seem to have the bizarre attitude that San Francisco and its suburbs (which make up the great majority of the population of the SFBA) are some post-apocalyptic hellscape, which is mostly a narrative promulgated by the right-wing media, and with the exception of cost of living and homelessness/housing issues (which are hardly unique among major metros, including Melbourne) it's pretty far from the objective truth. Try visiting sometime.
While being rich enough
I realize you are just being snarky but Australians are no strangers to hellscape wildfires. Australia suffered a 60+ million acre wildfire in 2020, way larger than all California wildfires in that year combined.
Here's a couple of news clippings from different days in 2020
https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/one-year-ago-san-francis...
https://www.abc7news.com/amp/red-sunrise-bay-area-smoke-in-s...
Can't really say that is a problem where I live, although recreational fires in fire pits are increasingly annoying as people increase outdoor gatherings in covid times.
On average, it is easier for Australians to immigrate to the US than for people of most other countries, largely due to the special E-3 visa which the US has for Australians only.
I know several Australians who have moved to the US, mostly on E-3s and L-1s, and for university-educated professionals, the immigration process itself usually isn't a big issue. The question of whether you want to do it, whether it is the right thing for you and your family, generally looms much larger than visas.
No doubt US immigration can sometimes subject the unlucky to bureaucratic stuff-ups, the capricious application of arcane, unfair and incomprehensible rules – but on average Australians are less on the receiving end of that than most other nationalities – and Australia's immigration department is just as capable of that as the US is. An ex-colleague of mine has a Master's degree in IT, many years experience working in New York's financial sector, fluent in both English and Spanish (he's Puerto Rican), came to Australia on a temporary work visa, wanted to stay here for good, tried to switch to a permanent resident visa – he eventually succeeded, but Australian immigration put him on a very stressful "how can I find enough points?" run-around - when I'm thinking "why are we making someone like this jump through all these hoops? isn't he the kind of high value immigrant a country should be laying out the welcome mat for?"
I don't think the SF Bay Area is a post-apocalyptic hellscape. Most of urban California is... fine.
It's just that when one immigrates to go take a job there, one isn't just immigrating to the Bay Area. One is immigrating to the United States of America. And ... that's a much bigger kettle of fish.
I finally acquired it by visiting in 2015. Landed at SFO, went through pretty mediocre airport, then visited SF... and went "hey, this looks more like middle east war torn country than what I expected" - and my expectations were already dashed by things such as crowdsourced maps of tenderloin based on quantity of human feces on sidewalk.
Thing is, my mental model assumes that other places in USA are probably worse, if not in the same ways.
But the immigration system is biggest stopper, even for visiting, indeed.
In that regard the other more day to day aspects would be more impacting.
On San Francisco+suburbs, I think it can't be that bad, but if I'm going to move somewhere, being able to freely explore the other cities/states is nice.
Also only judging from the net, I find it harder and harder to understand what to expect for a person of color for example. It seems to vary a lot depending on the city, or even the neighborhood, and there's enough cultural difference that just looking at people's twitter doesn't help much. The picture is either super bleak, or super bleached, with little nuance in many discussions.
The last time I visited SF (for WWDC), I witnessed more crime first-hand in one week than I had in my entire life before (and since). I also witnessed more homelessness than I've seen in any single city.
I earn probably half what I would in the US (and pay far more tax on what I do earn)
Not that I've ever lived there (fellow Aussie like you, just visited it for work) – but my impression is that some of those problems – especially the homelessness, crime and public defecation issues – are much worse in San Francisco proper (Oakland too) than in (say) Silicon Valley.
One language issue here – Australians tend to use bare city names to primarily refer to metropolitan areas – an Australian who says "Sydney" or "Melbourne" likely means the whole metro area, not the "City of Sydney" or "City of Melbourne" local government areas specifically – whereas to an American, "San Francisco" usually only means "the City and County of San Francisco", and the whole metro area is "the Bay Area". An Australian is likely to think of Silicon Valley as part of San Francisco, to most Americans Silicon Valley is not part of San Francisco, rather (roughly) 45 minutes south of it (maybe closer to 30 minutes from the southern end of San Francisco proper to the northern end of Silicon Valley).
So if we're actually in San Francisco metro area and I talk about "San Francisco", I probably mean the city proper. But if we're in DC and I talk about "San Francisco", I probably mean the metro area. Or, commonly, I actually mean somewhere specific but I don't expect my listener to know the more specific areas, so I just say "San Francisco".
I still think there is a difference here between American and Australian usage – American popular conceptions of geography pay far greater attention to local government boundaries than Australians do. That makes complete sense, considering that local governments in the US have vastly more power than those in Australia – here, courts, elections (even local elections), prosecutors, corrections departments, law enforcement, fire departments, ambulances/paramedics, public schools, public hospitals, public transport and land titles are all exclusively state government responsibilities, and in inner metropolitan areas, the state government runs the water supply and sewerage system as well. Americans pay much more mental attention to local government boundaries than Australians do, because those boundaries have a significantly greater impact on their everyday lives.
Kind of? Violent crime is always going to be higher in a city than the suburbs, that’s just life.
But homelessness…it’s rampant everywhere, although a different kind of homelessness. Think fewer tent encampments and more motor homes. There are RVs parked on El Camino for miles down Palo Alto and Mountain View.
Not, of course, on the actual residential streets, because the city made that illegal - which brings us on to the nasty politics, which I’d argue is worse in the suburbs than the cities.
There is little chance to find a US employer sponsoring a new one. They just don't care to go through the process. Even though it's not too cumbersome.
I think that large part of the reason is that government, public companies, academia and private investors in US have funneled a lot of resources into tech, or even invented it.
This created an ecosystem the rest of the world has consistently had a hard time to follow.
I'd say the scale/vision/management of American companies is also "on average" better (of course, helped by generous and realistic financing)
Try financing facebook (think - at the beginning) outside of the US. Or every other service that has been net negative so far.
Also, I don't think it's so much "risk appetite" but the fact that they know how to manage the risks and expectations (on tech startups) better.
In a way that is how an empire works, sucking dry the areas that it controls, while constantly waging war to conquer new land.