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In France I can have a beginner engineer with diploma from a good school at 38k€ (52k€ total cost) or a senior for 70k€ (105k€). But we had Mistral and it’s so

In France I can have a beginner engineer with diploma from a good school at 38k€ (52k€ total cost) or a senior for 70k€ (105k€). But we had Mistral and it’s so bad in the market that Macron asked for 109b€ additional investment to be able to keep France competitive. We also had Daily Motion but it was also second to market, like 0,5% of Youtube size. So yeah labour protection laws give you very cheap engineers with 35hrs per week and 7 weeks of holidays per year. Good luck competing!

mirekrusin 2y ago
Exactly France is good example what not to do.
rednafi 2y ago
You can’t win every war. Germany is a bit better, but not by a large margin. Wages are higher than in France, but so is the cost of living. That said, Europe isn’t struggling because of labor protection rules but because of its culture. There are 69 countries with 69 different languages, and each of them wants high-paid foreigners to learn their language. I saw the same thing in France, Germany, and Finland. Why on earth would I care about German or French when I speak and write native-level English? Another issue is the vacation culture. Three weeks of vacation is incredibly generous, but people here get even more. I’m switching teams because my current one can’t ship anything—different people are on exceedingly long vacations at different times, and there’s no coordination. Europe is poorer and full of red tape. The fragmentation of languages and regulations doesn’t help. It’s a massive continent, yet the only real tech hubs are in Munich, Berlin, Amsterdam, and London. The rest are just running underpaying sweatshops.
btreecat 2y ago
> So yeah labour protection laws give you very cheap engineers with 35hrs per week and 7 weeks of holidays per year. In the US salaries have to be inflated in order to cover the lack of transportation, healthcare, and social services. To claim that all (or even most) issues with wages can be solved with less regulation and enforcement to prevent fraud and abuse doesn't carry water.
LunaSea 2y ago
And ChatGPT's billion dollar LLM was beat by a few Chinese engineers and $5M.

mirekrusin 2y ago

Exactly France is good example what not to do.

rednafi 2y ago

You can’t win every war. Germany is a bit better, but not by a large margin. Wages are higher than in France, but so is the cost of living. That said, Europe isn’t struggling because of labor protection rules but because of its culture. There are 69 countries with 69 different languages, and each of them wants high-paid foreigners to learn their language. I saw the same thing in France, Germany, and Finland. Why on earth would I care about German or French when I speak and write native-level English? Another issue is the vacation culture. Three weeks of vacation is incredibly generous, but people here get even more. I’m switching teams because my current one can’t ship anything—different people are on exceedingly long vacations at different times, and there’s no coordination. Europe is poorer and full of red tape. The fragmentation of languages and regulations doesn’t help. It’s a massive continent, yet the only real tech hubs are in Munich, Berlin, Amsterdam, and London. The rest are just running underpaying sweatshops.

btreecat 2y ago

> So yeah labour protection laws give you very cheap engineers with 35hrs per week and 7 weeks of holidays per year. In the US salaries have to be inflated in order to cover the lack of transportation, healthcare, and social services. To claim that all (or even most) issues with wages can be solved with less regulation and enforcement to prevent fraud and abuse doesn't carry water.

LunaSea 2y ago

And ChatGPT's billion dollar LLM was beat by a few Chinese engineers and $5M.