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And simultaneously the US mines Europe for tech and science talent. 15.000 Germans work in Silicon Valley. Imagine the boost they would give Germany if they ret

And simultaneously the US mines Europe for tech and science talent. 15.000 Germans work in Silicon Valley. Imagine the boost they would give Germany if they returned or stayed home. It could result in 3000 highly qualified persons for each of the 5 biggest cities in Germany. It's a well known problem for Europe: > Studies of the best physicists in the world show that the Europeans working in North America are some of the most renowned in their fields. In 2014, an expert panel warned German Chancellor Angela Merkel that the country was losing its best scientists, and a recent report from the Institut Montaigne, a French think tank, argues, “The academics who leave France for the United States are the best, the most prolific and the best integrated on an international scale.” Source: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/europe/2016-01-05/europes-lost-generation https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/europe/2016-01-05/eu...

gaius 8y ago
It's a well known problem for Europe No, it’s a meta-problem. The real problem is the structural underpaying of STEM workers in Europe. I mean we can go down the path of “sacrifice your own interests for the good of your country” but no one, particularly Germany wants that. So pay is the only lever. And every business manager actually knows this.
- titanix2 8y ago
  It’s not only the pay by the way. I study and worked a bit abroad and the difference with my country’s labs are noticeable: there is way less battleling with accounting do get things done abroad. In France you need ton of papers to get your money back for professional spending and if you got it at all it comes months after the fact. I did some work for a professor there and it take a year to get the money in my pocket. I also worked for someone in Japan and I had my money two weeks after and in one case on the spot. So it makes a huge difference when working on any project that need a bit of money. Imagine having to wait a year to get a domain paid by the university or having to send a student take a whiteboard marker from another room at the beginning of each class because there are not enough for every room. That’s how shitty it is working in public research in France.
- afsina 8y ago
  So it is not really a "problem" for workers after all.
  - icebraining 8y ago
    It is. Having to choose between a competitive salary or leaving your country sucks.
    - toomanybeersies 8y ago
      Are wages in Germany not competitive? Are software engineers in Germany going hungry because they don't get paid enough? If people want to be greedy and run to the country where they get paid the most that's their prerogative, but they aren't starving back home. I left my home country in search of riches, but that was a choice. It's not like I wasn't living a comfortable life back in the motherland. I don't think that (employed) software engineers anywhere in the world are going hungry.
      - zxcmx 8y ago
        I didn’t go hungry but I didn’t feel like I was getting ahead. I felt like assets and capital were getting returns, like my cost of living was going up but my wages weren’t. I left (not Germany and not to the U.S). People already well off were fine but people who had to work for a living were not being rewarded. There are many reasons not to leave a place (family and security paramount) but if multinational companies are perfectly happy to move jobs around I think workers should feel equally free to vote with their feet in the much more limited way we are able.
      - icebraining 8y ago
        Yes, obviously they aren't competitive. And the word "problem" had no requirement for starving last I checked.
      - gaius 8y ago
        If people want to be greedy Why are engineers “greedy” for wanting a fair wage but European managers not “greedy” for underpaying Workers and keeping the value produced for themselves?
- toomanybeersies 8y ago
  Is it a structural underpayment of tech workers in Europe, or a structural overpayment in the USA? Software engineers in the USA are paid an abnormally high amount compared to similarly qualified professionals in different fields. The median wage for a software engineer in the USA is about $20k higher than that of a mechanical engineer, despite having the same level of qualification and a similar qualification (in my opinion, mechanical engineering actually is a lot harder than software). If you're a software engineer in Western or Northern Europe, it's not like you're hard done by and struggle to make ends meet. You make a perfectly acceptable wage, similar to any other professional. You also get the benefit of superior social services, more time off, and job security, which are certainly not to be sniffed at. One of my friends was offered a year of salary to leave her job (not in tech) because they couldn't make her redundant. I know of plenty of Europeans who have been able to take anywhere from 6 to 18 months off work for a sabbatical/backpacking trip around the world, knowing that their job will be waiting for them when they come back. Income disparity is just a lot lower in Europe than in the USA. German mechanical engineers make similar wages to software engineers. German software engineers make roughly twice the median income, compared to 3 times the median for the USA. In Australia, software engineers only make roughly 1.5x the median income, as Australia is a high wage economy.
  - baybal2 8y ago
    I totally agree with you. I myself made my entry into "big tech" with a web dev gig at $84k. At the time I was just another jQuery monkey whose only sellable skill was making mind bending (and CPU melting) javascript animations which were proudly called "web 2.0" At the same time, I had an alternative "entry level" embedded developer gig at $50k and $65k after 1 year. Thank god I went for a hipsterized web dev position. It was like gliding in butter for a year. Only later, I finally managed to get things straight and come into engineering consulting on my own terms.
  - adventured 8y ago
    The reason software engineers are so valuable in the US, is because the homogenous US market enables a massive, rapid catapult scaling into the rest of the global economy. Europe has nothing even remotely like that to offer. It's why the US has over 100 tech companies worth $10b+, and Europe has so few. The US market alone would be more than considerable, it's far easier to scale into/across that one $20.5 trillion market (~$22.3t with Canada), than it is to scale across all of Europe in a comparable fashion. US software engineers are worth so much, because of that concept. They're underpaid if anything.
walshemj 8y ago
But European companies regularly play the national interest card and block foreign takeovers. France famously used that with Dannone a yogurt maker to block a take over :-)
tw1010 8y ago
To Americans reading the parent comment: don't get too full of yourselves, there are smart people in abundance in Europe, no cry fest necessary ;)

gaius 8y ago

It's a well known problem for Europe No, it’s a meta-problem. The real problem is the structural underpaying of STEM workers in Europe. I mean we can go down the path of “sacrifice your own interests for the good of your country” but no one, particularly Germany wants that. So pay is the only lever. And every business manager actually knows this.

titanix2 8y ago
It’s not only the pay by the way. I study and worked a bit abroad and the difference with my country’s labs are noticeable: there is way less battleling with accounting do get things done abroad. In France you need ton of papers to get your money back for professional spending and if you got it at all it comes months after the fact. I did some work for a professor there and it take a year to get the money in my pocket. I also worked for someone in Japan and I had my money two weeks after and in one case on the spot. So it makes a huge difference when working on any project that need a bit of money. Imagine having to wait a year to get a domain paid by the university or having to send a student take a whiteboard marker from another room at the beginning of each class because there are not enough for every room. That’s how shitty it is working in public research in France.
afsina 8y ago
So it is not really a "problem" for workers after all.
- icebraining 8y ago
  It is. Having to choose between a competitive salary or leaving your country sucks.
  - toomanybeersies 8y ago
    Are wages in Germany not competitive? Are software engineers in Germany going hungry because they don't get paid enough? If people want to be greedy and run to the country where they get paid the most that's their prerogative, but they aren't starving back home. I left my home country in search of riches, but that was a choice. It's not like I wasn't living a comfortable life back in the motherland. I don't think that (employed) software engineers anywhere in the world are going hungry.
    - zxcmx 8y ago
      I didn’t go hungry but I didn’t feel like I was getting ahead. I felt like assets and capital were getting returns, like my cost of living was going up but my wages weren’t. I left (not Germany and not to the U.S). People already well off were fine but people who had to work for a living were not being rewarded. There are many reasons not to leave a place (family and security paramount) but if multinational companies are perfectly happy to move jobs around I think workers should feel equally free to vote with their feet in the much more limited way we are able.
    - icebraining 8y ago
      Yes, obviously they aren't competitive. And the word "problem" had no requirement for starving last I checked.
    - gaius 8y ago
      If people want to be greedy Why are engineers “greedy” for wanting a fair wage but European managers not “greedy” for underpaying Workers and keeping the value produced for themselves?
toomanybeersies 8y ago
Is it a structural underpayment of tech workers in Europe, or a structural overpayment in the USA? Software engineers in the USA are paid an abnormally high amount compared to similarly qualified professionals in different fields. The median wage for a software engineer in the USA is about $20k higher than that of a mechanical engineer, despite having the same level of qualification and a similar qualification (in my opinion, mechanical engineering actually is a lot harder than software). If you're a software engineer in Western or Northern Europe, it's not like you're hard done by and struggle to make ends meet. You make a perfectly acceptable wage, similar to any other professional. You also get the benefit of superior social services, more time off, and job security, which are certainly not to be sniffed at. One of my friends was offered a year of salary to leave her job (not in tech) because they couldn't make her redundant. I know of plenty of Europeans who have been able to take anywhere from 6 to 18 months off work for a sabbatical/backpacking trip around the world, knowing that their job will be waiting for them when they come back. Income disparity is just a lot lower in Europe than in the USA. German mechanical engineers make similar wages to software engineers. German software engineers make roughly twice the median income, compared to 3 times the median for the USA. In Australia, software engineers only make roughly 1.5x the median income, as Australia is a high wage economy.
- baybal2 8y ago
  I totally agree with you. I myself made my entry into "big tech" with a web dev gig at $84k. At the time I was just another jQuery monkey whose only sellable skill was making mind bending (and CPU melting) javascript animations which were proudly called "web 2.0" At the same time, I had an alternative "entry level" embedded developer gig at $50k and $65k after 1 year. Thank god I went for a hipsterized web dev position. It was like gliding in butter for a year. Only later, I finally managed to get things straight and come into engineering consulting on my own terms.
- adventured 8y ago
  The reason software engineers are so valuable in the US, is because the homogenous US market enables a massive, rapid catapult scaling into the rest of the global economy. Europe has nothing even remotely like that to offer. It's why the US has over 100 tech companies worth $10b+, and Europe has so few. The US market alone would be more than considerable, it's far easier to scale into/across that one $20.5 trillion market (~$22.3t with Canada), than it is to scale across all of Europe in a comparable fashion. US software engineers are worth so much, because of that concept. They're underpaid if anything.

walshemj 8y ago

But European companies regularly play the national interest card and block foreign takeovers. France famously used that with Dannone a yogurt maker to block a take over :-)

tw1010 8y ago

To Americans reading the parent comment: don't get too full of yourselves, there are smart people in abundance in Europe, no cry fest necessary ;)