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Why does the US dominate digital products? 1. Enormous internal market 2. Extremely wealthy 3. Well-developed capital markets for investment So it's an enor

by jmfldn 5y ago

Why does the US dominate digital products? 1. Enormous internal market 2. Extremely wealthy 3. Well-developed capital markets for investment So it's an enormous, wealthy country where there is lots of investment. Obviously there are other factors but these seem blindingly obvious as starting points. I find the UK's inability to compete with the US web giants depressing. I don't like the idea of relying on a few American companies for search, cloud infra and so on. I'd love to see us build a British Google for example. I don't like the guy at all, but I agree with Dominic Cummings that we should focus our efforts on something like this. I'm not arguing for web service nationalism but, for economic and security reasons, way more nation states should be looking to encourage the building of their own web backbone companies. It would also be good for general Internet resiliency to not have so few companies and single points of failure.

rjakobsson 5y ago
Great points, I agree but would like to add: 4. Common language
Hakashiro 5y ago
I just recently saw someone posting on LinkedIn that 500k for a Senior Engineer role was too low. Half a fucking million. All good European engineers are leaving to USA. And I would too.
- jmfldn 5y ago
  I guess this is a Silicon Valley megacorp right? Who could afford those wages?! Over here in the UK, if you're absolutely shit hot, principal engineer type material, I guess £150k + is common. Maybe more if you're a true elite engineer, but US wages are surreal. As others point out though, we get a lot of great public services, state pensions and so on. All a tradeoff.
  - nostrebored 5y ago
    In what world are you valuing good public services at like 200k a year? Regardless, even in Australia wages for tech workers are higher than most of Europe. Europeans are truly in denial about what they’re getting. Nationalism is a great blindfold.
    - jmfldn 5y ago
      I'm not valuing it at 200k. You're basing that number on some extreme outlier 500k wage that was plucked out of the air. Hardly the norm in the US. Fwiw, I'll grant that the US is ahead in big tech but I'd never move there. The quality of life is pretty poor compared to wealthy European countries. I've spent a lot of time there and I'm sorry to say, you seem a bit delusional to us over here. Life is hard in the US to many people here and kind of uncivilised in terms of social safety nets, inequality and any number of other metrics.
      - nostrebored 5y ago
        500k is not an extreme outlier wage. My wife and I both work in tech, outside of SF. We make around a 200k premium each to not work in Europe. You can look at ‘any number of other metrics’, but one of them isn’t going to be culture. European culture is dead and ossified.
        newaccount74 5y ago
        The biggest metric for me is social security. I don't need to worry about my family in Europe. No matter what health problems they have, they will be taken care of in a good public hospital and it won't cost them a thing. When my kids are old enough to go to university, they won't have to take out a loan to pay for courses. If they drop out of college, they'll still be able to get a decent job that pays a living wage. They'll have access to affordable child care for their children, and they won't need a 200.000€ job just so they can afford living close to their job. I don't have to be afraid of getting mugged or shot on the street if I go to the wrong part of town because we have much lower crime rates because our social security system helps people who run into hardship instead of punishing them.
- bitcharmer 5y ago
  I will take my 250k in London vs 450k in New York any time. USA is just a third world country with a Gucci belt. My family's value system is completely incompatible with how America operates and what drives people and organisations. I have many senior dev friends who think the same.
  - _Wintermute 5y ago
    250k in London is an extreme outlier, I can only guess you work in finance? Most adverts I see are offering 50-80k.
    - betaby 5y ago
      450k for NYC would be outlier as well
    - bitcharmer 5y ago
      Yes, I do ultra low latency stuff for market makers (typically big investment banks)
  - onorrhoea 5y ago
ColinHayhurst 5y ago
> I'd love to see us build a British Google for example. There is one, and with users globally: https://blog.mojeek.com/2021/05/no-tracking-search-how-does-it-work.html https://blog.mojeek.com/2021/05/no-tracking-search-how-does-... Self-disclosure: CEO
stjohnswarts 5y ago
If you compare US States to European nations it's easy to see that despite political polarization businesses in the states are extremely interactive and it makes easy for huge corps to grow throughout the USA.
wiether 5y ago
> I'd love to see us build a British Google for example. Here in France we have (had ?) Qwant[1] that never really worked because at first it was about having a search engine at the level of Google, then being user privacy focused (like DDG), then being focused on kids, then on music, then... But from the beginning it was failing because they were just providing a proxy for Bing's results. They were not even providing a sanitized version of those results. It was Bing's results with a different UI. And then, because they needed money, they focused on some topics (like the kids, which provided them public money) or music (income from partners companies). Also there was a lot of political/bureaucratic crap involved within the direction. So it looks like the issue is that it was people with money that said "we are going to be the French Google". But they hadn't enough money to do so and being "the French Google" is not enough. If we look at DDG, first it was a bad search engine but they focused on their promise about user privacy. And then they improved their search engine from there. Now they are a credible alternative to Google because they have something that Google don't, while on the core feature (search engine) they are almost the same. If you want to compete, you have to offer something different while providing the same core features. I think ProtonMail (Switzerland) is a good example. At the moment they don't provide a webmail as good as Gmail, but they provide great email service while focusing on user privacy. They are trying to compete against Google on email like DDG dig on search engine. And that's why it's more and more popular. So there's probably a mindset issue : don't compete for the sake of competing. Offer something different and then try to reach the competitors level on the core feature. You can't beat a multi-billion giant at its own game. [1] : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwant
- _Wintermute 5y ago
  Qwant seems like its entire purpose is to siphon money from the French government by tapping into their anti-US tech hysteria.

by jmfldn 5y ago

rjakobsson 5y ago

Great points, I agree but would like to add: 4. Common language

Hakashiro 5y ago

I just recently saw someone posting on LinkedIn that 500k for a Senior Engineer role was too low. Half a fucking million. All good European engineers are leaving to USA. And I would too.

jmfldn 5y ago
I guess this is a Silicon Valley megacorp right? Who could afford those wages?! Over here in the UK, if you're absolutely shit hot, principal engineer type material, I guess £150k + is common. Maybe more if you're a true elite engineer, but US wages are surreal. As others point out though, we get a lot of great public services, state pensions and so on. All a tradeoff.
- nostrebored 5y ago
  In what world are you valuing good public services at like 200k a year? Regardless, even in Australia wages for tech workers are higher than most of Europe. Europeans are truly in denial about what they’re getting. Nationalism is a great blindfold.
  - jmfldn 5y ago
    I'm not valuing it at 200k. You're basing that number on some extreme outlier 500k wage that was plucked out of the air. Hardly the norm in the US. Fwiw, I'll grant that the US is ahead in big tech but I'd never move there. The quality of life is pretty poor compared to wealthy European countries. I've spent a lot of time there and I'm sorry to say, you seem a bit delusional to us over here. Life is hard in the US to many people here and kind of uncivilised in terms of social safety nets, inequality and any number of other metrics.
    - nostrebored 5y ago
      500k is not an extreme outlier wage. My wife and I both work in tech, outside of SF. We make around a 200k premium each to not work in Europe. You can look at ‘any number of other metrics’, but one of them isn’t going to be culture. European culture is dead and ossified.
      - newaccount74 5y ago
        The biggest metric for me is social security. I don't need to worry about my family in Europe. No matter what health problems they have, they will be taken care of in a good public hospital and it won't cost them a thing. When my kids are old enough to go to university, they won't have to take out a loan to pay for courses. If they drop out of college, they'll still be able to get a decent job that pays a living wage. They'll have access to affordable child care for their children, and they won't need a 200.000€ job just so they can afford living close to their job. I don't have to be afraid of getting mugged or shot on the street if I go to the wrong part of town because we have much lower crime rates because our social security system helps people who run into hardship instead of punishing them.
bitcharmer 5y ago
I will take my 250k in London vs 450k in New York any time. USA is just a third world country with a Gucci belt. My family's value system is completely incompatible with how America operates and what drives people and organisations. I have many senior dev friends who think the same.
- _Wintermute 5y ago
  250k in London is an extreme outlier, I can only guess you work in finance? Most adverts I see are offering 50-80k.
  - betaby 5y ago
    450k for NYC would be outlier as well
  - bitcharmer 5y ago
    Yes, I do ultra low latency stuff for market makers (typically big investment banks)
- onorrhoea 5y ago

ColinHayhurst 5y ago

> I'd love to see us build a British Google for example. There is one, and with users globally: https://blog.mojeek.com/2021/05/no-tracking-search-how-does-it-work.html https://blog.mojeek.com/2021/05/no-tracking-search-how-does-... Self-disclosure: CEO

stjohnswarts 5y ago

If you compare US States to European nations it's easy to see that despite political polarization businesses in the states are extremely interactive and it makes easy for huge corps to grow throughout the USA.

wiether 5y ago

> I'd love to see us build a British Google for example. Here in France we have (had ?) Qwant[1] that never really worked because at first it was about having a search engine at the level of Google, then being user privacy focused (like DDG), then being focused on kids, then on music, then... But from the beginning it was failing because they were just providing a proxy for Bing's results. They were not even providing a sanitized version of those results. It was Bing's results with a different UI. And then, because they needed money, they focused on some topics (like the kids, which provided them public money) or music (income from partners companies). Also there was a lot of political/bureaucratic crap involved within the direction. So it looks like the issue is that it was people with money that said "we are going to be the French Google". But they hadn't enough money to do so and being "the French Google" is not enough. If we look at DDG, first it was a bad search engine but they focused on their promise about user privacy. And then they improved their search engine from there. Now they are a credible alternative to Google because they have something that Google don't, while on the core feature (search engine) they are almost the same. If you want to compete, you have to offer something different while providing the same core features. I think ProtonMail (Switzerland) is a good example. At the moment they don't provide a webmail as good as Gmail, but they provide great email service while focusing on user privacy. They are trying to compete against Google on email like DDG dig on search engine. And that's why it's more and more popular. So there's probably a mindset issue : don't compete for the sake of competing. Offer something different and then try to reach the competitors level on the core feature. You can't beat a multi-billion giant at its own game. [1] : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwant

_Wintermute 5y ago
Qwant seems like its entire purpose is to siphon money from the French government by tapping into their anti-US tech hysteria.