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> In Europe it is common for multiple months of high pitch negotiations between "wanting to lay off" and layoffs. Usually without any riots or panic. I'm kind
by dvt 4y ago
> In Europe it is common for multiple months of high pitch negotiations between "wanting to lay off" and layoffs. Usually without any riots or panic.
I'm kind of tired of seeing this "well actually, in Europe..." -- there's a reason there's zero major tech innovation happening in Europe. There's a reason Google/FB/Netflix/etc. and 99% of other major software unicorns (save Spotify and handful of others) are from the US. To be successful as a company, you need to be nimble, not burn your runway with bureaucracy.
Working for a startup is a risk and money, for the time being, is very tight.
- LambdaComplex 4y agoSo being successful as a company requires having the right/ability to screw over your employees at the drop of a hat?
- etchalon 4y ago"Zero major tech innovation happening in Europe so long as you exclude every tech innovator in Europe." https://www.failory.com/startups/european-unicorns https://www.failory.com/startups/european-unicorns
- humanwhosits 4y agoI looked at the list, it might be my US-centric bias but I'd only heard of 2 in that list before and they weren't big
- etchalon 4y ago"might be"
- OskarS 4y agoEver heard of fucking Spotify?
- scarface74 4y agoYou mean the low margin unprofitable company that is at the mercy of the record labels and their “product” is the equivalent of a minor division for Google, Amazon and Apple?
- abdabab 4y agoTheir product is still better designed than the ones came out of Google, Amazon and Apple.
- scarface74 4y agoMaybe so. But isn’t it a Pyrrhic victory for a for profit company to have a better designed product that is still losing money? That’s not exactly a definition of a “successful company”
- jermaustin1 4y agoI don't know what you mean by "weren't big" - $1B is the absolute smallest you can be to be a unicorn.
- zimbu668 4y ago#1 is Klarna, the company that will let you finance a pizza over the next 4 months. Not sure I'd be trumpeting that as innovative.
- CBarkleyU 4y agoI wasn't aware that Unity was a startup. Mighty long runway, those 17 years. When is Unity going to take off?
- l30n4da5 4y agoif you can't afford the bureaucracy of employees, then maybe you shouldn't be hiring.
- sgift 4y ago> there's a reason there's zero major tech innovation happening in Europe. Thanks for telling us you know nothing about Europe.
- lkramer 4y agoUnity was started in Europe. It moved to the US when it stopped being a startup. I think there is plenty of innovation in Europe. But you are right, there is something that makes it easier to go from small/medium to big/huge that is easier in the US, and laxer labour laws is probably part of the story.
- BlargMcLarg 4y ago>not burn your runway with bureaucracy You going to tell us the US tech market is not boggled down by bureaucracy? Surely you jest. Do you need a reminder who sets the trend for the remainder of the market?
- andyjohnson0 4y agoIts not about bureaucracy, its about there being a different social contract in Europe compared to the US And as for unicorns, we may have few of them but we have many, many profitable and innovative companies that stick around for the long term.
- hinkley 4y agoSo we’re going to gloss over the near total lack of innovation? You guys innovate in design, cars and nuclear physics (colliders to power plants), and that’s about it. You don’t think any of that has to do with the employment contract?
- BlargMcLarg 4y agoWay to undersell Europe. Yes, we're a bit lower on global tech innovation. Much of our tech innovation is region specific, which should make it obvious why one, the US won't see much of it, and two, the markets aren't there for VCs to just throw money at it. There are legal and social reasons why they don't target the global market more, too. >You don’t think any of that has to do with the employment contract? The Netherlands has a legal notice period of 1 month baseline. Despite that, many companies opt for a longer employee notice period, which then requires them to double that amount from their side. Doesn't sound like the employment contract is at fault here as much as the risk-averse culture, when nothing is keeping these companies from keeping the notice period shorter. Surely, a talented developer does not have to worry about finding a new job so much it requires more than a month. God forbid I mention Japan, which despite still using fax machines and having similar structures, still produces plenty of global products. Unless your idea of tech is "just software". It's not as simple as you try to imply. Spend a bit more time doing research between what is legally required, what employers offer and what developers realistically need.
- hinkley 4y agoI'm mostly playing devil's advocate. dvt asked a question, and andyjohnson0 deflected by arguing about a sentence fragment. What's the layoff policy in Japan? I would say it used to be 'never' and that hasn't been the case for some time, but a lot of the innovation ramp for them occurred before the 90's recession that started breaking the social contracts, so that isn't really a point in dvt's favor. Culture definitely plays a role here, as does need (see also the Netherlands who send consultants worldwide to talk about water management). People like to talk about how different Scandinavian culture is from American culture, but from what I know of Japanese culture, it's at least as far away from say Norway as Norway is away from America. So if dvt thinks that Europe is missing some secret sauce and not just American Exceptionalism, I would say that Japan has substituted a different sauce to good effect.
- sfo_suger_daddy 4y agoThe US really only dominates in a specific flavor of consumer technology, I doubt that will last much longer anyway