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Good observations! You forgot one major thing. This goes for all of Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. The winter is horribly dark and boring. (Unless you're
by unixhero 8y ago
Good observations! You forgot one major thing. This goes for all of Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. The winter is horribly dark and boring. (Unless you're super rich). Therefore most turn inwards, staying indoors, thinking deeply at problems, spending endless afternoons and nights on things. Be it software development, game development, car tuning, car engine work, engineering, knitting or just reading loads of books.
I found this to be almost impossible to achieve when I moved from Norway to Australia. There I was outside hanging out with friends or just doing stuff on the beach or whatever. The deep focus was harder to achieve. Quality of life was insanely better there, yet somehow I missed the possibility to sit down and be productive in some narrow topic.
- fredsir 8y ago> Quality of life was insanely better there, > yet somehow I missed the possibility to sit down and be productive in some narrow topic. Do you mean that you preferred the life you led in Australia to the one in Norway? If not, how do you mean that quality of life was insanely better?
- reitanqild 8y ago>> I found this to be almost impossible to achieve when I moved from Norway to Australia. > Do you mean that you preferred the life you led in Australia to the one in Denmark? Calling a Norwegian a Dane is about as popular as saying a Canadian is from USA or calling an American British I guess ;-)
- fredsir 8y agoAh, a simple mistake :)
- reitanqild 8y agoThat's what I guessed :-) (Seems I've offended someone else though, but I have no idea why.)
- coldtea 8y agoWhy wouldn't they prefer it?
- fredsir 8y agoI never implied they didn't prefer it, so I wonder why you seem to think so.
- coldtea 8y agoWell, he literally called it "insanely better", and you felt the need to double-check whether they do prefer it. That's enough implying in my books. (Besides, if we're to play this game, I never said that _you_ "implied they didn't prefer it". I just asked, "why wouldn't they prefer it").
- Kiro 8y agoNothing beats sitting in front of a computer in the dark.
- vinceguidry 8y agoI can't stand it. Feels like staring at a light bulb. The only thing that makes it passable for me is Night Mode in F.lux on OSX. Nothing else works. I keep a Mid-2012 MacBook Pro around just so I can have a computer I can actually use in a dark room. Even then it's not ideal. The lowest brightness setting still isn't low enough. In my twenties I could happily destroy my circadian rhythm and sit in front of a screen til 4-5 in the morning. At 35 that shit's gotten real old.
- ck425 8y agoHmmm interesting observation about the long dark winters. Edinburgh similarly has a disproportionately successful tech industry (it's the same latitude as Moscow) and Estonia has also done very well in tech (for many other reasons but that might be a contributing factor).
- elorant 8y agoIsrael doesn't have long dark winters and yet they're the pioneers of innovation and start-up culture.
- ynv 8y agoWell, their summers are kinda long and hot.
- batty_alex 8y agoAs someone who has worked with teams from Israel, I'd like to hear more about this if you have good sources. In my experience, it's been the opposite. They like to play office politics, focus on keeping work off their plate, and they're not really team players. I may just have a bad sample of Israel tech workers, though.
- Zanni 8y agoStart-up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle makes a good case. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Start-up_Nation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Start-up_Nation
- elorant 8y agoI didn't comment on how good or bad they're to work with but on the assumption that weather conditions can affect productivity.
- fit2rule 8y agoI have also experienced this - in addition, rampant nationalism is an issue when dealing with Israeli companies, in my experience (5 different customers, similar problems..) Where I think Israeli tech startups get most of their mojo, is desperation. Their culture involves so much struggle and effort .. and I think the reaction to it at a personal level, results in the laziness, non-team-playing, political problems.
- AsyncAwait 8y agoJust because something is a factor doesn't mean there can't be other factors that lead to a similar outcome.
- flexie 8y agoWinter is not horribly dark and boring in Scandinavia unless you are super rich. It’s equally dark and boring for everyone. And virtually everybody in Scandinavia can afford to travel south to sunnier places for a few weeks, if that’s what they want. I’d say proficiency in English and quite wealthy populations is what matters.
- Tongueincheek 8y agoThat's not true. The super rich are taking luxury vacations and spa trips.
- qkls 8y agoFinnish travel agencies offer a week long trip to Canary islands for €500, you don't need to be rich to save for that once a year. Most cities have spas too.
- foepys 8y agoI believe to have read somewhere that this is also the reason why so many Russians (and people born in the USSR) are great mathematicians and chess players. Math and Chess are both indoor activities and also absolutely unpolitical, which is a huge plus in an authoritarian regime.
- icelancer 8y ago>>Math and Chess are both indoor activities and also absolutely unpolitical, which is a huge plus in an authoritarian regime. The history of chess is definitely very political, especially inside the Soviet Union. It was seen as the proxy for intelligence, and if Soviet players were better than Americans, it was their way of demonstrating superiority in yet another domain.
- meowface 8y agoTrue, but ultra-authoritarian regimes will politicize almost everything imaginable.
- vackosar 8y agoI read somewhere that it was only way to distinguish themselfs and to travel.
- CM30 8y ago> Good observations! You forgot one major thing. This goes for all of Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. The winter is horribly dark and boring. (Unless you're super rich). Therefore most turn inwards, staying indoors, thinking deeply at problems, spending endless afternoons and nights on things. Be it software development, game development, car tuning, car engine work, engineering, knitting or just reading loads of books. Wonder if that's also a factor in the prevalence of tech/programmers/hackers in Russia. Don't think there's a startup scene there, but there definitely seems to be more technology experts coming from the area in general.
- philwelch 8y agoOne of the vanishingly few things the Soviets did right was to emphasize STEM education. This seems to have stuck in Russia. And I’ve heard the same was true across the eastern bloc.
- Bekwnn 8y agoAs an anecdote, a lot of programmers and heavy gamers I knew in high school lived on remote islands and took a water taxi over to ours for school. They couldn't do after school activities without sleeping over at someone's place. Their islands had even less to do on them than ours. Soft forms of isolation certainly seem to lead to solitary activities.
- mhjas 8y agoI don't think it is that relevant. You can be happy in Sweden and miserable in Malta. They funny thing is that people tend to say the same thing about SV, but because of the nice weather. Not to say that dark afternoon can't be special, but it is generally everything else (like having something relevant to work on) that makes it so. And that doesn't necessarily lose its value if it is sunny instead.
- mmirate 8y agoOn the other hand, here on the other side of the Atlantic ... Silicon Valley is not only at a temperate latitude but also downwind (jetstreamwise) of an ocean; placing it in the middle of one of our continent's few bastions of reliably non-shitty weather. And there isn't much tech-related stuff happening on the north coast of Alaska or the northern regions of Canada, either. So I daresay there's more to this than just the Arctic Circle.
- cryptozeus 8y agoThen how do you explain Silicon Valley? Outdoor life is great here. You have good point but may not be as important as you think.
- almost_usual 8y agoHow many engineers have you met that grew up in Silicon Valley?
- mapgrep 8y agoBecause when Silicon Valley established its dominance, access to computing resources, digital networks, tech talent, and venture capital were by far the crucial factors. All those things were much rarer back then, and startups more costly, especially to get off the ground. Given today’s low costs and ubiquitous computing and internet access — and the trends in this direction even 20 years ago - it makes sense other, softer factors can now come into play.
- seanmcdirmid 8y agoThe same is basically true with Seattle. Well, not so dark (the sun is out til 4:30), winters are quite mild, but wet enough to keep everyone focused.
- singularity2001 8y agothe most boring weather is reflected in the most boring software
- seanmcdirmid 8y agoSeattle's weather is hardly boring. And there is plenty of software going on here, is Facebook, Google, Apple, Unreal, Unity, Oculus, really that boring?
- _emacsomancer_ 8y agoit's always raining in windows?
- kazagistar 8y agoAlso a hypothesized reason for why canadians are unreasonably well represented in esports.
- iamwil 8y agoBut then if that's true, you wouldn't get lots of devs in the Bay Area California. Lots of great weather here.
- almost_usual 8y agoHow many devs have you met that grew up in the Bay Area?
- TheAceOfHearts 8y agoI know a handful. Is it really surprising?
- singularity2001 8y ago> Quality of life was insanely better there Just because of sun? Did you try UV?
- singularity2001 8y agoOne counterargument against that indoor scenario would be The Valley™. Unless you consider fog.
- jjeaff 8y agoThe other major thing (and I would argue more important than the others) is Sweden's wealth and social safety net. Wealth is one of the most important factors for someone to found a startup. You aren't going out and starting a company if you have to work 80 plus hours a week to live. Just look at the clueless opinions of so many tech founders about how "you shouldn't pay yourself a salary at first after you take investment money". Oh really? So we should just buy groceries and pay rent from the trust fund mommy and daddy gave us?
- hueving 8y agoThe point is that you shouldn't take a regular market salary. Software people can live on way less than what the market currently offers so if you pay yourself the competitive rate you're burning a lot of your runway pointlessly.
- robfitz 8y agoI agree with your first 2 paragraphs, but the third is being overly simplistic (or potentially just not understanding the trade-off at play). The scenario is that (roughly) 90% of the hypergrowth-style startups which raise a first round will fail to achieve enough momentum to successfully raise a second. And due to the business model choices they've committed to, failing to raise at that point is equivalent to going out of business. A first raise is often too small to be able to do everything they'd like, so they suggest decide that it's in their best interest (long term) to forgo a salary where possible, in order to buy a few extra months of progress before you're forced to start shopping for investment again. Of course, folks give advice based on their own experience, but it doesn't always generalise to folks in different situations, which is potentially why that would seem like silly advice in (what I assume is) your scenario. (minor edits toward the end for clarification)
- StanislavPetrov 8y agoYou are completely missing his third point. For people without wealth (or a social safety-net which provides you the resources you need to survive), it isn't optional to work for free. You have to eat and have a roof over your head, which means taking a salary if you are working full-time on your startup. Its not a strategic decision.
- golemiprague 8y agoI don't know, Israel has a pretty good start up scene for its size and it is sunnier than Australia
- bajsejohannes 8y agoThis is a plausible story, but that doesn't mean it's true. Anecdotally I felt more productive living in a warmer place than when living in Scandinavia. I think it completely depends on your situation and an actual study is needed to prove it one way or the other. I also recall Jared Diamond debunking this as a theory for why "the west" got ahead in his book Guns, Germs, and Steel.
- madcaptenor 8y agoDon't forget Iceland, with its "Christmas Book Flood" (https://www.npr.org/2012/12/25/167537939/literary-iceland-revels-in-its-annual-christmas-book-flood https://www.npr.org/2012/12/25/167537939/literary-iceland-re...). (disclaimer: I am an American and don't know what I'm talking about. I have visited Norway but it was summer.)