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Having worked in both US and Europe I think this is very much less about average engineer and much more about engineering management and product management. The

Having worked in both US and Europe I think this is very much less about average engineer and much more about engineering management and product management. There are many excellent software engineers in Europe already, and they are generally OK being paid much less than in the US. But the strategy, ambition, and execution discipline imparted by management are not there, so folks end up being underutilized there. The average engineer - even at a FAANG - often gets lionized but really isn't that amazing IMO.

nemo44x 4y ago
Yes, in the industry Euro engineers are considered to be generally high quality and underpaid. A good value. The danger being there are awful ones too that are hard to fire. In my experience Euro devs are really good though if you interview well. Individual contributors from Europe are generally a great value. Euro managers however are generally thought to be of extremely low quality and unreliable as well as 20-30 years dated in terms of running an org. Except at the top, never rely on senior or middle management in Euro to be much more than followers. Never let them run an org unless you really know them as their management techniques do not apply to modern software companies. Managers from Europe are generally of poor quality.
- spaniard89277 4y ago
  Sad to hear. What differences did you notice?
  - nemo44x 4y ago
    You see it everywhere but in general I see a lot of superficiality in Euro managers. They love to have direct reports, but because they need them but because it makes them feel more official. This is more frequent in Euro in my experience. You don't see outside the box thinking as much. Very vanilla approaches to things that are generally dated approaches. A culture that lacks innovation. You see a bit of gaming the system to meet KPI goals. Things that are probably not useful to the company but help them hit a defined goal. Just not very aggressive in their approach to the business. A very conservative business culture that doesn't really understand scale and is obsessed with throwing lots of bodies at a problem rather than finding novel and innovative approaches. Insistence that "this won't work here" when that's just not generally true. It's that they don't understand why the approach works and are stuck in older approaches to things that are not relevant to todays business world. Secretive and inward looking.
suction 4y ago
From my limited experience, I think in bigger European companies (not 10-20 people tech startups) you will have people with little to no technical background doing the domain research and the managing of engineers. I've worked in a French company which calls itself a "tech" company, but upper and middle management was purely people with a controlling, legal, or MBA background. The engineers working there were great, but criminally underused, because you had only MBAs in product owner roles who spent their time dreaming up products or features with absolutely no idea of feasibility. Like the time one of them presented their idea that the company should "create something like Facebook" to make customers stay on the company website longer. Or the constant requests why the engineers wouldn't consider using "AI" in the company's React Native reporting app. They were probably trying their best, but the problem was the company's culture of engineers being merely tools to execute the ideas of non-tech people. When we asked for POs or managers with an engineering background, the reply was always along the lines of "they don't know the business, so they don't understand our customer's needs". Accordingly, it always took months even for very small features or changes to make it past the "agreeing on the requirements" phase, because there was no tech person high up enough in the hierarchy to tell the dreamers straight away that they're living in a phantasy world. I wonder if car makers have similar problems, i.e. old school car industry guys trying to manage software engineers.
- RichardCA 4y ago
  > "create something like Facebook" There's nothing inherently wrong with adding social media features to your customer portal, as long as you understand people will use it to vent their complaints, and you will have to spend money on moderation to keep it from turning into a cesspool. I still remember when Netflix turned off all their social integration, especially the ability to leave movie reviews and get kudos via upvotes. I spent a non-trivial amount of time engaging with that feature. But I'm sure someone finally pointed out that this sort of engagement wasn't driving any revenue.
  - suction 4y ago
    I agree with you, if a company has a big enough name and user base, social-network-like features can add to the UX. What our managers were seriously pondering was to create an actual competitor to Facebook that would draw their user base to our website, a company with around 10.000 b2b customers (if even) which had nothing to sell in the b2c channel.

nemo44x 4y ago

Yes, in the industry Euro engineers are considered to be generally high quality and underpaid. A good value. The danger being there are awful ones too that are hard to fire. In my experience Euro devs are really good though if you interview well. Individual contributors from Europe are generally a great value. Euro managers however are generally thought to be of extremely low quality and unreliable as well as 20-30 years dated in terms of running an org. Except at the top, never rely on senior or middle management in Euro to be much more than followers. Never let them run an org unless you really know them as their management techniques do not apply to modern software companies. Managers from Europe are generally of poor quality.

spaniard89277 4y ago
Sad to hear. What differences did you notice?
- nemo44x 4y ago
  You see it everywhere but in general I see a lot of superficiality in Euro managers. They love to have direct reports, but because they need them but because it makes them feel more official. This is more frequent in Euro in my experience. You don't see outside the box thinking as much. Very vanilla approaches to things that are generally dated approaches. A culture that lacks innovation. You see a bit of gaming the system to meet KPI goals. Things that are probably not useful to the company but help them hit a defined goal. Just not very aggressive in their approach to the business. A very conservative business culture that doesn't really understand scale and is obsessed with throwing lots of bodies at a problem rather than finding novel and innovative approaches. Insistence that "this won't work here" when that's just not generally true. It's that they don't understand why the approach works and are stuck in older approaches to things that are not relevant to todays business world. Secretive and inward looking.

suction 4y ago

From my limited experience, I think in bigger European companies (not 10-20 people tech startups) you will have people with little to no technical background doing the domain research and the managing of engineers. I've worked in a French company which calls itself a "tech" company, but upper and middle management was purely people with a controlling, legal, or MBA background. The engineers working there were great, but criminally underused, because you had only MBAs in product owner roles who spent their time dreaming up products or features with absolutely no idea of feasibility. Like the time one of them presented their idea that the company should "create something like Facebook" to make customers stay on the company website longer. Or the constant requests why the engineers wouldn't consider using "AI" in the company's React Native reporting app. They were probably trying their best, but the problem was the company's culture of engineers being merely tools to execute the ideas of non-tech people. When we asked for POs or managers with an engineering background, the reply was always along the lines of "they don't know the business, so they don't understand our customer's needs". Accordingly, it always took months even for very small features or changes to make it past the "agreeing on the requirements" phase, because there was no tech person high up enough in the hierarchy to tell the dreamers straight away that they're living in a phantasy world. I wonder if car makers have similar problems, i.e. old school car industry guys trying to manage software engineers.

RichardCA 4y ago
> "create something like Facebook" There's nothing inherently wrong with adding social media features to your customer portal, as long as you understand people will use it to vent their complaints, and you will have to spend money on moderation to keep it from turning into a cesspool. I still remember when Netflix turned off all their social integration, especially the ability to leave movie reviews and get kudos via upvotes. I spent a non-trivial amount of time engaging with that feature. But I'm sure someone finally pointed out that this sort of engagement wasn't driving any revenue.
- suction 4y ago
  I agree with you, if a company has a big enough name and user base, social-network-like features can add to the UX. What our managers were seriously pondering was to create an actual competitor to Facebook that would draw their user base to our website, a company with around 10.000 b2b customers (if even) which had nothing to sell in the b2c channel.