Do you have concrete examples? I can imagine that if you're working on avionics Sweden might not be the best place, but otherwise it really doesn't seem to be lacking opportunities for a small country.
I’m interested in fundamental challenges around computing: programming languages, cloud platforms, operating systems, combinatorial optimization, database technology, machine learning and the like. Not many bleeding edge opportunities around that here.
We also have a work culture were effort and ability is not rewarded (which at least I associate with strong unions), but “playing politics” is. It’s very hard to stay motivated in a culture like that. I think this is an important part of the downward spiral.
To me that sounds like your typical large company. I've had a great time working at small startups but I've found that my job satisfaction pretty much scales with the inverse of company size (within limits, it seems 20-30 employees is the sweet-spot for me).
Yeah, for programming languages you should probably have been Danish and for operating systems the Finnish have had quite an impact. Both socially stable countries with dare I say pretty strong unions...
I'm guessing that their decision to move west had very little to do with the "stifling" unions and more to do with the increased opportunity for a skilled SWE over there. I would say that that increased opportunity has also very little to do with "stifling" unions and more to do with the huge single market that the US is. That huge single market allows companies to grow fast. The EU works hard to be a single market as well but we have language barriers, bigger legal differences and dare I say bigger cultural differences.
Also talking about Scandinavia, as tiny as it is population-wise, we've had a disproportionately large impact on the world in many different areas. Some factors that contribute to this, I believe, are our free education system and the social safety net that unions have played an important part upholding.