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Comment by wolvoleo | Hacker News Reader

> Would you rather them never hire them in the first place?

If it's not sustainable? Yes. They shouldn't have hired them in the first place then. Such a major round of firing (the second one in only a few months) shows a completely failing leadership.

I'm glad in Europe companies are much more conservative with hiring and firing. Because it's much harder to let employees go and there's strings attached.

Don't forget when you fire an employee you're giving them a lot of stress about their livelihood, you're externalising a lot to society. Internalise the profits, externalise the problems. Typical.

I'm so glad I don't live in the US and that things don't work like that here.

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There's also a reason why there are no innovative companies in Europe. If you make it hard to fire someone you make it hard to hire someone.

Companies won't spin up risky projects if they can't spin them down. This is why Europe continues to fall behind the US and China.

Accepting the mediocrity is abdicating the leadership of the world to China. If you like that, good for you. But I doubt the low-growth, low-innovation world of Europe will make the next iPhone, AI, or chip.

Oh, and Europe can only do this stuff because of the USA military, by the way.

You heard it here first, Zuck and his peers are brave generals in the battle against the Y...Chinese Peril and we are all...cannon fodder, I guess.

Is Meta innovative?

They make products, sure, but output isn't the same as innovation.

You have brain poisoning from reading too much slop online.

>But I doubt the low-growth, low-innovation world of Europe will make the next iPhone, AI, or chip. >chip

Do you realize that the cutting edge in chip technology is a Dutch company

That obtained the cutting edge technology by buying an American company that had been founded to productize technology developed at an American defense laboratory based on a Japanese researcher’s work

You are forgetting 20 years and billions of dollars developing, in collaboration with research institutes like IMEC and funding from chipmakers like Intel, Samsung, and TSMC.

But it doesn’t fit your ideological narrative of how innovation functions so…

I am not the person you originally replied to. I have no ideological motivation here. I am merely pointing out ASML did not invent EUV, nor did they fund its initial development or the first decade or so of its productization. ASML employs plenty of scientists and engineers who did important work getting EUV to market, but your characterization implied that ASML single-handedly introduced a step-function increase in semiconductor fabrication technology from their labs in the Netherlands, and that is a misleading impression to give. It’s belied by the fact that ASML can’t even choose their own customers without approval from the U.S. government.

I believe that it's a bit more complicated than that especially if we look at the contributions of IMEC.

But irregardless I can hand you the point that you are making and then say that yours is a very tight standard that would not pass most of what passes for innovation in Silicon Valley.

The point I'm trying to make for the initial poster is that they are confusing "technological innovation" for money making. And yes you don't have a money printing machine in the EU, but you have A LOT of technological innovation that eventually goes to market through SV.

Where is the Silicon Valley of Europe?

I'll wait for your answer.

I think it’s to their credit that they don’t have one and instead got cern. A bunch of shitty crud apps made by mediocre rent seekers that got rich on tax avoidance, gov money + research, and low interest rates vs actual ground breaking research that benefits humanity. Silicon Valley is probably the worst thing that happened to humanity between the 2008 crash and Covid. People have been figuring it out but not after they have already given these scammers permission to inspect their wallets.

Wow. Can't tell if this is a parody or just very, very uninformed. Either way, good day. Hope you understand, one day, how technology has helped millions of people in many different ways.

100% agree with this. I think where it really went wrong is around 2005 with Google, Facebook etc. Adtech, engagement-driven social media.

Please use more mature language on this forum and engage in an adult way. People can disagree without being brain poisoned, kid.

No idea what Dutch company you’re alluding to. FWIW my guess for cutting edge chip tech is TSMC.

ASML

It's a 30-something day old account. An obvious troll. Just don't engage.

I'm tired of this American exceptionalism. Success is not only about money. It's about making a positive impact on the world for everyone. This is where the big tech companies deeply fail.

America poisons the world with pollution (eg pulling out of Paris Agreement), misinformation, promoting discord as 'engagement', unnecessary military engagements and screwing up the rest of the world.

And really, abdicating 'leadership' was already done by America by voting for Trump.

Billions and billions of people willingly use these products. Are you saying they use them because they are bad for them and they don't like them and don't value them?

No they use them because they are addictive, intentionally. But they reinforce negative emotional content because it is more engaging. This is what causes all the polarisation in society, what gave us Brexit and Trump. See for example the book Careless People, it describes how Facebook set up a huge consulting operation with the Trump campaign to get him into office.

But they are bad for society, it's not for no reason that a lot of countries are trying to ban them for the younger generations now, similar to smoking.

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