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Comment by gii2 | Hacker News Reader

I couldn't agree more with jmnicolas - the situation is pretty similar in France, Switzerland, Belgium and Austria. There is some "hope" in UK and Germany, where they really expect to have something done.

There was a guy (can't remember his name) who said that US is the only place where you can put US guys, Mexican, Chinese and ... (whoever) and make them work together. In Europe this is not the case, probably because of historical reasons and as a result of the last 30 years of immigration policy (especially the french-speaking countries).

My other theory is that Europe is left behind US in the technical area. If something is top-notch in USA, it will "come" in mainland Europe in 10 or more years. For e.g. now the MBA is hot trend.

Disclaimer: I've been working remotely for the last 4 years.

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>There was a guy (can't remember his name) who said that US is the only place where you can put US guys, Mexican, Chinese and ... (whoever) and make them work together.

As someone working in a company in London with about 25 engineers from 15 different countries I have to disagree with this statement.

Same here; second company in the UK (not exactly London though) and did work with people from several different countries in my team.

Yet according to some (and it is open to interpretation) the UK has a lower productivity than France, by a pretty huge margin. It seems that the UK, while it might expect to have something done, by comparison actually gets a lot less done.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/feb/20/britain-prod...

There's UK, and then there's London. Could easily be a different country.

> My other theory is that Europe is left behind US in the technical area. If something is top-notch in USA, it will "come" in mainland Europe in 10 or more years.

This is ridiculous. There are a ton of amazing engineers/designers/etc in Europe, who are just as able as their US counterparts and deliver work at the same quality level.

Plenty of them work remotely, either for EU or US companies.

That's correct. There are very skilled/talented individuals in EU, I have no doubts in that.

My point is that on company/organization level the EU companies are more ... how to say it... conservative and full of bureaucracy that their US counterparts. They pay for an employee and it they don't see him at his desk - there is a problem. The "communication" habits are also quite different IMHO.

probably because of historical reasons and as a result of the last 30 years of immigration policy (especially the french-speaking countries)

Could you elaborate on this one? I worked for an international company in France, and even though engineering was pretty diverse, most of the management was French.

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