Comment by alephnil | Hacker News Reader

Comment by alephnil | Hacker News Reader

Norway have plenty of tech startups. It is just that most of them are in the oil technology and oil services, and very few are in the IT business. In fact, the oil technology business is the second largest industry in Norway after oil production itself, and I think that is the case even when only the part that is exported is counted. Besides that, Norway only import about 15% of the equipment needed for oil production and exploration, while many other oil producing Nations import most equipment.

The problem for Norwegian startup founders is that they have to compete with the oil industry as well as said oil service industry for the best people. Since both of these are insanely lucrative, it is hard for web and other IT-related startup to afford the salaries the oil related companies can pay. In Oslo you have less of that kind of industry, but on the other hand, bloated administrations of the government and said oil companies that makes it similary lucrative to get into IT consulting rather than doing startups.

The result is that there is little incentive for an engineer to start a web and other IT-related startups in Norway.

This conclusion assumes that employees have to also be from Norway, which is emblematic of the insular and narrow mindset that is the real cause of the problem.

I disagree. There are plenty of foreign workers in most Norwegian tech companies I know about, but the problem still exists. Norwegian employers could be more actively recruiting abroad, and can freely do that inside the EU. I doubt that will change that much.

Say you are a young Norwegian engineer. The incentive for doing a startup is not there, because the oil industry are there and offer you high income risk-free. You may of cause make much more if you succeed with a startup, but most will not.

For a non-Norwegian, if you are going to Norway, you will also go to the places that pay best and have the most secure jobs, so to go to Norway to join or (especially) start a new new IT-business in an area that is by no means a hub for that makes less sense than joining an oil company. If you want to do a Web startup, it will probably make more sense, even for a Norwegian, to do that outside of Norway.

In Norway there has been a considerable immigration of workers the later years. There is a still a much lower mobility of the workforce in Europe than what you see in the US, much because of language.

I wasn't going to comment more as I don't have much more to say about the subject, but I just have to point out the flaw in this statement:

"There is a still a much lower mobility of the workforce in Europe than what you see in the US, much because of language."

The assumption behind this statement is exactly the kind of mentality I am referring to. There is little mobility because employers don't hire the employees because there is little mobility. It's circular reasoning.

With the jobless rate in certain parts of the south skyrocketing, you'd think this would be an active hunting ground for employers in need of people. You don't think the many 25-35 year old university educated people living with their parents wouldn't jump at a chance of a decently paid job in Norway (or anywhere else for that matter)? It's like a fat man complaining how everyone is making him fat and nobody is fixing it for him. The only real barrier is mentality.

The point about language is fair; it is a concern. But if you're a startup with any sort of vision that extends beyond the narrow world view that I've spent so many words describing, guess what the language of your business is going to be? Surprise, it's English! The company founders speak it, their customers speak it and the excellent but unemployed programmer living with his parents in Bologna speaks it.

The thing is, Norway's oil and gas industry vacuums the labor market for both national and foreign workers. The oil service companies have enough trouble attracting skilled foreign workers with salaries above 100,000 USD a year. I don't think it would be very easy for a random startup to attract good foreign talent when competing with this.

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