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The elephant in the room here is pay. You can’t expect people to bend over backwards for 70k/yr. Start paying 2-300k in Europe and watch shit being built.
by redrove 2y ago
The elephant in the room here is pay. You can’t expect people to bend over backwards for 70k/yr.
Start paying 2-300k in Europe and watch shit being built.
- yieldcrv 2y agoThe cultures across Europe are anti growth and anti speculation That facilitate it for other people, but not enough interest culture wide It’s kind of interesting “why don’t we just make the same amount quarter after quarter” like, wow who knew you could do that? But speculation drives innovation. Permission to fail results in faster selective pressures.
- simonask 2y agoPerhaps you mean "investment" rather than "speculation"? All mainstream European politicians are in favor of more growth, more investment, more industry, more jobs, and so on, across the continent. The parties who are about "de-growth" are marginal, even as the climate crisis is on full steam. The actual problem is lack of pro-risk capital. Almost all of Europe's capital is concentrated in 1) conservative industry giants, and 2) huge conservative pension funds. Basically all capital in Europe, public as well as private, is risk averse. There are very few actual "VC"s. I'm not sure that's unambiguously a bad thing, but it is the difference.
- yieldcrv 2y agoNo I didn’t mean investment, I meant speculation. Because I was talking about individuals and risk capital. We are talking about the same things. Speculation drives innovation
- simonask 2y agoAre you saying that people innovate because they want to attract investment? Perhaps. Most of the time I’ve seen people innovate because they had the combination of passion and time to focus on doing something useful.
- redrove 2y agoWell, I'm of the opinion that one of the other blockers of major EU growth is the lack of a singular financial market; instead of one market like the USA, we have 27 markets. Twenty seven different sets regulations that all need to go out the window; exchanges in the double digits, most of which should shut down. This balkanization will never lead to a growth-oriented modern financial system. Europe needs to centralize capital.
- CorrectHorseBat 2y agoWhy would people need to bend over backwards to build good things?
- redrove 2y agoBecause anyone that ever built anything worthwhile in this field knows you have to give it your all, when starting out especially. Nobody gives their all for 5k/mo.
- ithkuil 2y agoEspecially if more than half of that goes into taxes
- redrove 2y agoOh, absolutely.
- lifestyleguru 2y agoHey, but in return you receive government tokens which will pay back in worse times... if you satisfy a lot of conditions, and wait in many queues, and send many letters.
- ithkuil 2y agoyeah nothing wrong about taxes. But you have to qualify when one discusses whether 5k eu month is a good pay or not.
- ta1243 2y ago$200k is €180k, in Germany you'd take home 57% or $112k. In California you'd take home $134k Not sure of the relative costs of housing in San Francisco vs Berlin, but it doesn't feel like a massive difference. Personally I'd rather live in Berlin on €112k net than San Francisco on $134k net
- CorrectHorseBat 2y ago
- apexalpha 2y agoI don't know why they don't just hire the people who built Azure / AWS / GCP etc... If you offer these people a good salary, tax cut and a EU passport after 4 years I suspect many will be open to move to London / Paris / Amsterdam for a few years. Subsidise the high speed train between all these cities for 5 years, offer crosscountry startup cash and investment and you might just end up with a functioning IT sector in Europe. The triangle London / Paris / Randstad really isn't much further apart than many Sillicon Valley HQs.
- redrove 2y agoThe assumption that those are the only people that are able to build something like that is simply false. There's plenty of talent around, it just needs capital.
- apexalpha 2y agoWhy reinvent the wheel? When US companies chase a competitor they always just poach people directly. No one is saying those are the only people who could do it. But they have experience and hiring the senior people directly would greatly speed up the process in Europe I think.
- redrove 2y agoFWIW I've recently seen this exact thing play out, I can't really go into the nitty gritty but someone who had VP/Director positions in well known US public companies was brought in on a big project that's local to Europe and he's failing spectacularly. So your theory might not work as well in practice, just my 2c from what I've seen in the real world.
- apexalpha 2y agoYes well, perhaps. But this kind of defeatism has never brought anyone to victory.
- 2y ago
- rcarmo 2y agoThis. As someone who works for a US company from Europe, there are no financial alternatives. I need to get my kids through college.
- omnimus 2y agoI wonder how other europeans get their kids through collage? Hmm maybe because its super cheap compared to US? Please do work for US company from Europe thats great. Just lets not put it on college and your kids.
- pm3003 2y agoThey just glue them together I guess.
- poisonborz 2y agoWhich EU country has comparable tuition fees to the US? Do yor kids go to some UK private university?
- menaerus 2y agoWho's in the better position? Me completing a Masters degree in the EU, spending anywhere between 10k and 20k EUR, and landing a job that pays 30k EUR/year and living a pipe dream of getting myself salaried with 100k EUR, and only perhaps after 10-15 years of continous effort (and luck). Or is it someone in the States who needs to spend as much as 5x more for the same level of degree (but not education and opportunities!) - but in the very first year of employment gets 100k per year and has a vast more opportunities to build their careers up?
- apexalpha 2y agoMy perspective: I'm an (Technical) Information Security Officer in the Netherlands and I'm at €120k if I include pension contributions (Which Dutch people almost never include in their 'gross' salary). And this is with all the employee protections you get when being salaried in the Netherlands. If you elect to go for a more American style contract with your employer where you have little to no protection you can easily make €200k or more. Two of my colleagues get €20k a month. Downside is that they're the first to go since they're more expensive and the company can just let you go for whatever reason they want essentially any time your contract is up for renewal. These are called 'independent contractors' in my country but essentially they are just employed 'at will' as Americans call it. I feel like most people online that complain about €30k salaries in Europe (which is minimum wage here by the way) are just parroting online meme talking points.
- poisonborz 2y agoThis misunderstanding about EU/US salaries is so baffling to me, how this opinion can come up still in every EU conversation. Do people really just look at $$$ without a second of thought of how governments/taxation works and what they get for that salary/taxes?
- menaerus 2y agoThere are 44 countries in Europe. What makes you think that your experience of getting the most of your government/taxation whatever you want to call it matches the experience of any other European country government/system?
- poisonborz 2y agoIf you do a comparison of EU/US I guess everyone naturally thinks of something like San Francisco/Berlin and not Bucharest. The base logic does match though. The execution is very country-dependent.
- menaerus 2y agoThen please correct your comment into Berlin/SF rather than EU/US. Otherwise it sounds like you're talking uninformed nonsense.
- terhechte 2y agoPeople end up thinking this, but they're just looking at tech roles. However, the difference becomes clear when you compare other jobs. In tech, the US pays way more than Europe, for other jobs, they don't. Take teachers, for example: - Median Salary in USA: $~58k [1] - Median Salary in Berlin: 35k EUR [2] So while there is a difference, it is by far not as huge a gap as in tech where Europe pays ~60-70k (very and some countries, e.g. Spain or Portugal way less) and in the US 200k-300k are not unusual. The difference is that US companies understand the huge value creation potential of tech jobs (especially over the past 2 decades) whereas most european companies think value creation comes from having middle aged balding managers. [1]: https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/public-school-teacher-salary/oh https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/public-scho... [2]: https://worldsalaries.com/average-teacher-salary-in-berlin/germany/ https://worldsalaries.com/average-teacher-salary-in-berlin/g...
- odiroot 2y agoTouché. This is usually the problem with the "lack of skilled workforce" on the old continent.
- olavgg 2y agoI agree with this. It doesn't make sense to have these low salaries. You want the best people that make a difference, business is like sport. Your team competes with other teams. You can't expect to get Lionel Messi on your team with just €70k, but for €200k you get hell of a bargain.