6 ms·

(cough cringe PR cough) You could create similar optimistic charts for US, China, India, etc. The EU ( 550 million ) tech industry is dwarfed by the US ( 350

(cough cringe PR cough) You could create similar optimistic charts for US, China, India, etc. The EU ( 550 million ) tech industry is dwarfed by the US ( 350 million ) Looking from a higher abstract plane, EU produces the least new entrepreneurs and innovative companies compared to the beast that is US and Asia. The EU also has the most unstable political and financial system globally with entire countries on the verge of defaulting on their sovereign debt. The reason why every European developer migrates to London is to escape the craziness of the continent. Every European developer's final 'dream' is to work in the US tech industry - London is the second best thing to reach. (.. Money Talks .. ) You can see how much value that tech is given in europe by just looking at the salaries in europe vs N.A - so much for valuing hard tech. Seeing that both the US and Europe have similar numbers of developers (~ 3 mil) - how is european tech industry 1/8 the size of the US ?? Oversupply of developers due to better engineering school ? ( my sides ) More like MBAs from Cambridge are not as smart as their counterparts graduating from Sloan in creating value out of tech. -- Not an American --- Direct experience with London and Berlin tech scene ---

jfaucett 10y ago
Completely agree. I live in Europe, am a part of the tech scene, and am sitting in the contitental craziness you speak of in Germany. This report is largely nonsense. It talks about "top research institutions" are in Europe, neglecting the #1,#2,#4,#5, and #6 in the world are in the USA. [1] Honestly, I have no idea why an investor would want to try to tackle this nightmare of 30+ target markets, especially when you have huge homogeneous markets in the USA and Asia. 1. http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/university-subject-rankings/2016/computer-science-information-systems http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/universit...
- tormeh 10y ago
  >Honestly, I have no idea why an investor would want to try to tackle this nightmare of 30+ target markets, especially when you have huge homogeneous markets in the USA and Asia. One would hope they would have the sense to go global. You have to to survive in most software. Where the HQ of the company is doesn't matter. I always cringe when I hear software execs talk of being a leader in their home country. Well, some company who actually went global and therefore have a lot less development cost per user will eat any local leader for breakfast. Companies that care about their home markets are dead men walking.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >I always cringe when I hear software execs talk of being a leader in their home country. Yeah, because making millions (or billions) in one's home country is cringe-worthy.
    - tormeh 10y ago
      It's OK, if you look at it as a cow to be milked until a multinational drives you out of business. From a business perspective there's nothing necessarily wrong with milking a cow until it runs dry, but you should have made a conscious decision to do it. The execs I'm talking about haven't.
      - coldtea 10y ago
        >It's OK, if you look at it as a cow to be milked until a multinational drives you out of business. That's not a given. There are tons of entrenched companies, from web services to local restaurants, than no multinational managed to drive out of business. In many cases the multinational had to work with them or buy them to gain a serious share into a particular country.
- kuschku 10y ago
  > It talks about "top research institutions" are in Europe, neglecting the #1,#2,#4,#5, and #6 in the world are in the USA. [1] If you don't count any German research institutions, and only count those releasing their results in US magazines. Sure. If I don't count for-profit universities, and only those releasing their results in Esperanto, I can also top my own ranking. Those rankings completely ignore that in Europe, research doesn't happen at universities - but at research groups where multiple universities come together. Think of the Max Planck Society (Wendelstein 7-X Fusion Experiment), or the Fraunhofer Society (they brought you mp3), or the Helmholtz Society (globally leading in Marine Research). But all that is disqualified from the rankings.
  - LeanderK 10y ago
    while i think you're right, but these things are not always visible to an developer/foreigner. Fraunhofer is not as visible as they should, because they are conduction a lot of commercial research in joint ventures with local businesses and are not specialising into research areas where they are most visible. I recently read an interview with the director of an ivy-league university where he stated that they only finance research team that have an realistic shot at being leading, outstanding and visible in the research world. If you compare that to germany where you might end up in one of the countless mechanical engineering research groups it's way harder to be outstanding, just because it's more crowded. But that's not what the Fraunhofer Society is about, it's doing very practical research, mostly driven by local businesses and their needs.
    - kuschku 10y ago
      Indeed. That's an issue Germany seems to have repeatedly recently: While the US went full on into marketing, we've never done that - and that's exactly what's missing, not the research, but the marketing and propaganda of being the #1. If we actually want that, though, is another question.
- cyberpunk 10y ago
  Hmm. I'd really like to hear more about how you see things if you've got the time.. I'm about to exit london for .de simply because of quality of life concerns; the 1000ft view I'm holding though is I'm pretty sure I'll be able to build a crew there which will have fun working on difficult problems, and hopefully even find a reasonable amount of 'stuff' to do (surely with internet access and some good staff picks that could be applied almost anywhere in the world?) -- while you're probably right in that the vast floods of VC cash won't be so available there (I don't think the situ in london is much diff anyway) or that things are more complex w/r/t markets; I'm not sure that I really care too much about "30+" target markets when we're talking B2B hardcore geekery stuff. We make an API to solve -some-random-hackernews_capable_consumer-problem- then I'm not sure having a few diff VAT rules around .eu is anything more than some extra time billed by my accountant.. What I'm more concerned about is the work/company culture differences there which will probably at a minimum will prevent me whoring myself out for some quick cash to fund my devs, should things get tight, and at a max make it much harder to sell to Gmbh's there... Are you in Germany? Ever worked with a German company or tried to integrate your product with theirs? The vogons have a quicker moving bureaucracy, I was really shocked. The crazy adherence to working hours, clocking in/out for breaks and such even for senior technical staff creates a really strange dynamic especially if you're used to letting your teams do whatever the hell they want as long as you're delivering. This kind of free attitude to work seems largely to only exist in London, at least to me -- and once you've walked on the wild side it's hard to accept a master.. shrug Germany may have excellent technical prowess in manufacturing and such; from our side of the perspective though, so far to me at de $bigcorp it seems like SAP, 2 week change windows, hour long discussions on what FTP client the customer uses, J2EE, Oracle, monitored lunch breaks and some very overqualified staff (call me 'dr') who aren't even interesting in moving faster... I guess there are a lot of startups there which follow a model more like what we're used to, but after so long you're not going to be able to avoid working with the vogons if you're selling them software they want to integrate with.. I'm not sure the majority view of big german businesses really even understood what agile was pushing for.. Hopefully I'm wrong, I'll find out soon anyhow, but things seem really fucking backwards compared to how we've been living even in the relative backwater that's London.... What's your view?
  - exceptione 10y ago
tormeh 10y ago
I agree with the broad strokes of your comment, but I have some nitpicks. I think it's culture that's holding the European tech sector back. Investors in Europe are generally very risk-averse and anything that's less than 100 years old isn't really taken seriously. It's fascinating to see how the more neophile countries pull ahead of the rest; how much financial conservatism holds the economy back. When Germans invest, they think mostly of dividends, not growth. And Germany is reasonably sane. Many countries (Italy, Spain) don't have functioning stock markets at all. >(cough cringe PR cough) I so agree. This is a VC blowing its own horn and disguising it as information. Painful. >the craziness of the continent Britain isn't especially rich by European standards (poorer than Germany). London is a deviation. People are flocking to London, not away from the continent. Britain is pretty average in the European silliness contest. We're talking about a country that doesn't have a written constitution or equivalent thereof.
- LeanderK 10y ago
  i can only comment on the german economy, but i think it's not always comparable. It's true that germany is not producing the same number and caliber of startups as silicon valley, but it's very good at supporting medium sized, specialised business in the long term (from enabling them to conduct cutting edge research though heavily distributed government research institutions to a high number of organisations that help them tackle foreign markets and opportunities). If you're not into these things it's challenging, but as a student i see the different paths and institutions helping the more german subjects like chemistry or building engineer.
- cplanas 10y ago
  > Many countries (Italy, Spain) don't have functioning stock markets at all. Is there some kind of irony in this comment that I am not getting? I mean, both countries have fully functioning stock markets. The main index for the Spanish stock market is IBEX35 and the Italian is the FTSE MIB.
  - tormeh 10y ago
    They have stock exchanges, but ordinary companies don't list there. It's mostly just big banks and similar.
izacus 10y ago
> The reason why every European developer migrates to London is to escape the craziness of the continent. Uhh.. what? O.o In 2016?
hocuspocus 10y ago
> The reason why every European developer migrates to London is to escape the craziness of the continent. > Every European developer's final 'dream' is to work in the US tech industry - London is the second best thing to reach. Sorry but no. I think you're delusional about tech salaries in London. And if you want to sell your soul to the finance industry, there are other places where developers make good money, without the need to live in an overcrowded city.
- cyberpunk 10y ago
  Contract rates in London are really rather good, at least in my particular little world (ops/"devops")... Really, we're talking minimum 500gbp/day and there is so much work you can quit a contract and have another within hours....
  - lispm 10y ago
    that does seem to be rather low for an expensive city and a falling currency.
    - cyberpunk 10y ago
      That's an avg of 10k a month, then add 6% on that if you're on flat rate vat scheme. Take off 20% if you don't have a ninja accountant and with the (now sadly, over) dividend rules and such you're still looking at a pretty healthy 8-9k take home a month.. Even in london where a 2 bed 30 mins from the center is about 2k/month that's not exactly hard living is it?
      - lispm 10y ago
        As I said 500gbp/day is not much. I see a lot of IT people earning this is Germany, especially in the Devops field. With something like that you would get an average qualified person hired in, say, Munich.
        passiveincomelg 10y ago
jmeister 10y ago
Honestly I don't see this as a bad thing. It would be a tragedy if every country turned into a cut-throat capitalist place like the US. In fact I'd go further and say it would be better if the US is like NYC of the world - a place where hyper ambitious people live for varying periods of time. Leave the rest of the world to preserve culture, produce human capital etc. and in return reap benefit from tech progress in the US.
ForHackernews 10y ago
As an American who recently moved to London, I agree with this. The salaries here are shockingly lower, especially considering how expensive London cost of living is. I wound up just working remotely for a SF firm, which I realize is a luxury thanks to my US passport.
- cyberpunk 10y ago
  Out of curiosity what area are you working in and if you're willing to share, what sort of numbers are we talking about? London salaries have always been rather good in my view (if we ignore the shocking cost of living here) and although the higher remittances tend to based on experience here vs having a good degree, I'm not sure for me at least I could make more money anywhere else outside of the arab countries.
  - ForHackernews 10y ago
    I'm a backend web developer (Django, Postgres, Redis) and I get paid right around 100k USD (plus some extra money in bonus and pension contributions). My understanding is that this is actually on the low end for SF/Silicon Valley. I've interviewed for some UK jobs, and the best I've been offered was 60,000 GBP (which equates to about 75k USD at current exchange rates). I routinely see job postings requiring quite a bit of experience and expertise, and offering salaries in the 40-50k GBP range. Honestly, I don't understand it. It seems like London tech firms are competing in the same market (in some cases, they literally are satellite offices of the same companies) as the US firms, so how do they get away with offering so much less money?
  - ForHackernews 10y ago
    Also: http://www.itworld.com/article/2947616/careers/developers-make-a-lot-more-in-the-us-than-in-the-uk.html http://www.itworld.com/article/2947616/careers/developers-ma...
glenndebacker 10y ago
"Every European developer's final 'dream' is to work in the US tech industry - London is the second best thing to reach." Maybe in the pre-Brexit or pre-Trump era but today... . I turned down a London offer because of the uncertainty Brexit brings and I'm certainly not alone. It's not that Great Brittain or the US is that political stable with al that happende the last couple or months.
- kriro 10y ago
  To be fair, Europe isn't much stabler imo. AFD in Germany in the 15-20% range, Le Pen might win in France etc.
  - lispm 10y ago
    That does not matter much in Germany, where the political system is very different from the UK and the US. Germany has proportional representation, which does not produce the two party system of the US. The conservative parties CDU/CSU are totally sane compared to large parts of the UK tories or the republicans in the US.
  - cplanas 10y ago
    Europe is much, much stabler, at least right now. I follow the political polls in Europe and what you say is... mostly not true. > AFD in Germany in the 15-20% range According Wikipedia, no poll ever has given AFD more than a 15%, with the vast majority giving it around a 12.5% (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_German_federal_election,_2017 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_German...). Even if AfD would get to 20% (which it's very far away from their predicted results) it's very unlikely they would get to the government. > Le Pen might win in France She might, but right now is very unlikely, much more than a Trump victory or Brexit. The problem is that she is losing in the polls by... a lot. For the French presidential election, all polls predict Fillon v. Le Pen. The only two polls conducted since Fillon was chosen candidate give him +34 and +42 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_French_presidential_election,_2017 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_French...). 42 points was the distance between President-elect Trump and Johnson, the Libertarian candidate, in the last election. I'm not saying it's impossible. Just very unlikely. The errors in the polling for the US Presidential Election and the Brexit referendum were much smaller.
kriro 10y ago
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the supposed quality difference of MBAs is mostly unrelated to tech startups.
collyw 10y ago
I have been actively avoiding London for years as I dislike the place. Likewise with the States.
ionised 10y ago
> Every European developer's final 'dream' is to work in the US tech industry Not me. I have no interest in living and working in the US.

jfaucett 10y ago

Completely agree. I live in Europe, am a part of the tech scene, and am sitting in the contitental craziness you speak of in Germany. This report is largely nonsense. It talks about "top research institutions" are in Europe, neglecting the #1,#2,#4,#5, and #6 in the world are in the USA. [1] Honestly, I have no idea why an investor would want to try to tackle this nightmare of 30+ target markets, especially when you have huge homogeneous markets in the USA and Asia. 1. http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/university-subject-rankings/2016/computer-science-information-systems http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/universit...

tormeh 10y ago
>Honestly, I have no idea why an investor would want to try to tackle this nightmare of 30+ target markets, especially when you have huge homogeneous markets in the USA and Asia. One would hope they would have the sense to go global. You have to to survive in most software. Where the HQ of the company is doesn't matter. I always cringe when I hear software execs talk of being a leader in their home country. Well, some company who actually went global and therefore have a lot less development cost per user will eat any local leader for breakfast. Companies that care about their home markets are dead men walking.
- coldtea 10y ago
  >I always cringe when I hear software execs talk of being a leader in their home country. Yeah, because making millions (or billions) in one's home country is cringe-worthy.
  - tormeh 10y ago
    It's OK, if you look at it as a cow to be milked until a multinational drives you out of business. From a business perspective there's nothing necessarily wrong with milking a cow until it runs dry, but you should have made a conscious decision to do it. The execs I'm talking about haven't.
    - coldtea 10y ago
      >It's OK, if you look at it as a cow to be milked until a multinational drives you out of business. That's not a given. There are tons of entrenched companies, from web services to local restaurants, than no multinational managed to drive out of business. In many cases the multinational had to work with them or buy them to gain a serious share into a particular country.
kuschku 10y ago
> It talks about "top research institutions" are in Europe, neglecting the #1,#2,#4,#5, and #6 in the world are in the USA. [1] If you don't count any German research institutions, and only count those releasing their results in US magazines. Sure. If I don't count for-profit universities, and only those releasing their results in Esperanto, I can also top my own ranking. Those rankings completely ignore that in Europe, research doesn't happen at universities - but at research groups where multiple universities come together. Think of the Max Planck Society (Wendelstein 7-X Fusion Experiment), or the Fraunhofer Society (they brought you mp3), or the Helmholtz Society (globally leading in Marine Research). But all that is disqualified from the rankings.
- LeanderK 10y ago
  while i think you're right, but these things are not always visible to an developer/foreigner. Fraunhofer is not as visible as they should, because they are conduction a lot of commercial research in joint ventures with local businesses and are not specialising into research areas where they are most visible. I recently read an interview with the director of an ivy-league university where he stated that they only finance research team that have an realistic shot at being leading, outstanding and visible in the research world. If you compare that to germany where you might end up in one of the countless mechanical engineering research groups it's way harder to be outstanding, just because it's more crowded. But that's not what the Fraunhofer Society is about, it's doing very practical research, mostly driven by local businesses and their needs.
  - kuschku 10y ago
    Indeed. That's an issue Germany seems to have repeatedly recently: While the US went full on into marketing, we've never done that - and that's exactly what's missing, not the research, but the marketing and propaganda of being the #1. If we actually want that, though, is another question.
cyberpunk 10y ago
Hmm. I'd really like to hear more about how you see things if you've got the time.. I'm about to exit london for .de simply because of quality of life concerns; the 1000ft view I'm holding though is I'm pretty sure I'll be able to build a crew there which will have fun working on difficult problems, and hopefully even find a reasonable amount of 'stuff' to do (surely with internet access and some good staff picks that could be applied almost anywhere in the world?) -- while you're probably right in that the vast floods of VC cash won't be so available there (I don't think the situ in london is much diff anyway) or that things are more complex w/r/t markets; I'm not sure that I really care too much about "30+" target markets when we're talking B2B hardcore geekery stuff. We make an API to solve -some-random-hackernews_capable_consumer-problem- then I'm not sure having a few diff VAT rules around .eu is anything more than some extra time billed by my accountant.. What I'm more concerned about is the work/company culture differences there which will probably at a minimum will prevent me whoring myself out for some quick cash to fund my devs, should things get tight, and at a max make it much harder to sell to Gmbh's there... Are you in Germany? Ever worked with a German company or tried to integrate your product with theirs? The vogons have a quicker moving bureaucracy, I was really shocked. The crazy adherence to working hours, clocking in/out for breaks and such even for senior technical staff creates a really strange dynamic especially if you're used to letting your teams do whatever the hell they want as long as you're delivering. This kind of free attitude to work seems largely to only exist in London, at least to me -- and once you've walked on the wild side it's hard to accept a master.. shrug Germany may have excellent technical prowess in manufacturing and such; from our side of the perspective though, so far to me at de $bigcorp it seems like SAP, 2 week change windows, hour long discussions on what FTP client the customer uses, J2EE, Oracle, monitored lunch breaks and some very overqualified staff (call me 'dr') who aren't even interesting in moving faster... I guess there are a lot of startups there which follow a model more like what we're used to, but after so long you're not going to be able to avoid working with the vogons if you're selling them software they want to integrate with.. I'm not sure the majority view of big german businesses really even understood what agile was pushing for.. Hopefully I'm wrong, I'll find out soon anyhow, but things seem really fucking backwards compared to how we've been living even in the relative backwater that's London.... What's your view?
- exceptione 10y ago

tormeh 10y ago

I agree with the broad strokes of your comment, but I have some nitpicks. I think it's culture that's holding the European tech sector back. Investors in Europe are generally very risk-averse and anything that's less than 100 years old isn't really taken seriously. It's fascinating to see how the more neophile countries pull ahead of the rest; how much financial conservatism holds the economy back. When Germans invest, they think mostly of dividends, not growth. And Germany is reasonably sane. Many countries (Italy, Spain) don't have functioning stock markets at all. >(cough cringe PR cough) I so agree. This is a VC blowing its own horn and disguising it as information. Painful. >the craziness of the continent Britain isn't especially rich by European standards (poorer than Germany). London is a deviation. People are flocking to London, not away from the continent. Britain is pretty average in the European silliness contest. We're talking about a country that doesn't have a written constitution or equivalent thereof.

LeanderK 10y ago
i can only comment on the german economy, but i think it's not always comparable. It's true that germany is not producing the same number and caliber of startups as silicon valley, but it's very good at supporting medium sized, specialised business in the long term (from enabling them to conduct cutting edge research though heavily distributed government research institutions to a high number of organisations that help them tackle foreign markets and opportunities). If you're not into these things it's challenging, but as a student i see the different paths and institutions helping the more german subjects like chemistry or building engineer.
cplanas 10y ago
> Many countries (Italy, Spain) don't have functioning stock markets at all. Is there some kind of irony in this comment that I am not getting? I mean, both countries have fully functioning stock markets. The main index for the Spanish stock market is IBEX35 and the Italian is the FTSE MIB.
- tormeh 10y ago
  They have stock exchanges, but ordinary companies don't list there. It's mostly just big banks and similar.

izacus 10y ago

> The reason why every European developer migrates to London is to escape the craziness of the continent. Uhh.. what? O.o In 2016?

hocuspocus 10y ago

> The reason why every European developer migrates to London is to escape the craziness of the continent. > Every European developer's final 'dream' is to work in the US tech industry - London is the second best thing to reach. Sorry but no. I think you're delusional about tech salaries in London. And if you want to sell your soul to the finance industry, there are other places where developers make good money, without the need to live in an overcrowded city.

cyberpunk 10y ago
Contract rates in London are really rather good, at least in my particular little world (ops/"devops")... Really, we're talking minimum 500gbp/day and there is so much work you can quit a contract and have another within hours....
- lispm 10y ago
  that does seem to be rather low for an expensive city and a falling currency.
  - cyberpunk 10y ago
    That's an avg of 10k a month, then add 6% on that if you're on flat rate vat scheme. Take off 20% if you don't have a ninja accountant and with the (now sadly, over) dividend rules and such you're still looking at a pretty healthy 8-9k take home a month.. Even in london where a 2 bed 30 mins from the center is about 2k/month that's not exactly hard living is it?
    - lispm 10y ago
      As I said 500gbp/day is not much. I see a lot of IT people earning this is Germany, especially in the Devops field. With something like that you would get an average qualified person hired in, say, Munich.
      - passiveincomelg 10y ago

jmeister 10y ago

Honestly I don't see this as a bad thing. It would be a tragedy if every country turned into a cut-throat capitalist place like the US. In fact I'd go further and say it would be better if the US is like NYC of the world - a place where hyper ambitious people live for varying periods of time. Leave the rest of the world to preserve culture, produce human capital etc. and in return reap benefit from tech progress in the US.

ForHackernews 10y ago

As an American who recently moved to London, I agree with this. The salaries here are shockingly lower, especially considering how expensive London cost of living is. I wound up just working remotely for a SF firm, which I realize is a luxury thanks to my US passport.

cyberpunk 10y ago
Out of curiosity what area are you working in and if you're willing to share, what sort of numbers are we talking about? London salaries have always been rather good in my view (if we ignore the shocking cost of living here) and although the higher remittances tend to based on experience here vs having a good degree, I'm not sure for me at least I could make more money anywhere else outside of the arab countries.
- ForHackernews 10y ago
  I'm a backend web developer (Django, Postgres, Redis) and I get paid right around 100k USD (plus some extra money in bonus and pension contributions). My understanding is that this is actually on the low end for SF/Silicon Valley. I've interviewed for some UK jobs, and the best I've been offered was 60,000 GBP (which equates to about 75k USD at current exchange rates). I routinely see job postings requiring quite a bit of experience and expertise, and offering salaries in the 40-50k GBP range. Honestly, I don't understand it. It seems like London tech firms are competing in the same market (in some cases, they literally are satellite offices of the same companies) as the US firms, so how do they get away with offering so much less money?
- ForHackernews 10y ago
  Also: http://www.itworld.com/article/2947616/careers/developers-make-a-lot-more-in-the-us-than-in-the-uk.html http://www.itworld.com/article/2947616/careers/developers-ma...

glenndebacker 10y ago

"Every European developer's final 'dream' is to work in the US tech industry - London is the second best thing to reach." Maybe in the pre-Brexit or pre-Trump era but today... . I turned down a London offer because of the uncertainty Brexit brings and I'm certainly not alone. It's not that Great Brittain or the US is that political stable with al that happende the last couple or months.

kriro 10y ago
To be fair, Europe isn't much stabler imo. AFD in Germany in the 15-20% range, Le Pen might win in France etc.
- lispm 10y ago
  That does not matter much in Germany, where the political system is very different from the UK and the US. Germany has proportional representation, which does not produce the two party system of the US. The conservative parties CDU/CSU are totally sane compared to large parts of the UK tories or the republicans in the US.
- cplanas 10y ago
  Europe is much, much stabler, at least right now. I follow the political polls in Europe and what you say is... mostly not true. > AFD in Germany in the 15-20% range According Wikipedia, no poll ever has given AFD more than a 15%, with the vast majority giving it around a 12.5% (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_German_federal_election,_2017 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_German...). Even if AfD would get to 20% (which it's very far away from their predicted results) it's very unlikely they would get to the government. > Le Pen might win in France She might, but right now is very unlikely, much more than a Trump victory or Brexit. The problem is that she is losing in the polls by... a lot. For the French presidential election, all polls predict Fillon v. Le Pen. The only two polls conducted since Fillon was chosen candidate give him +34 and +42 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_French_presidential_election,_2017 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_French...). 42 points was the distance between President-elect Trump and Johnson, the Libertarian candidate, in the last election. I'm not saying it's impossible. Just very unlikely. The errors in the polling for the US Presidential Election and the Brexit referendum were much smaller.

kriro 10y ago

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the supposed quality difference of MBAs is mostly unrelated to tech startups.

collyw 10y ago

I have been actively avoiding London for years as I dislike the place. Likewise with the States.

ionised 10y ago

> Every European developer's final 'dream' is to work in the US tech industry Not me. I have no interest in living and working in the US.