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As a founder in Berlin, I get excited when my city does stuff like this and is well represented in the maker community. Germany has a long way to go to really c

• lippihom 2y ago
  Also a founder in Berlin from the west coast. Agree with everything you wrote. Tower.dev looks cool btw.
• trueismywork 2y ago
  We will see. To say that EU doesn't have systemically huge problems to innovation is delusional though. And I'm pretty sure those problems cannot be fixed by just announcing new things. The announcement looks like a. Lot of fluff and pomp
  • simianparrot 2y ago
    Which is exactly the problem with most of Europe -- a lot of talk, but little action, not out of a lack of motivation but because of the amount of heavy-handed bureaucracy, taxation, and anti-startup culture. That last one might sound odd when many countries, including mine, has a lot of startup schemes -- from tax cuts to innovation funding etc. But all of that is so bureaucratic and slow and complicated that it's only by accident that it helps anyone. "I'll believe it when I see it happen" is my approach to anything Europe, because I've lived within it for nearly forty years now. And I'm wise from experience. I've seen this before. Same song, worse bureaucracy, different faces (politicians).
• roenxi 2y ago
  > They talk shit about EU innovation and talk up their own dominance, but the tides are turning and the EU is motivated. I'm waiting for the day when a country stands up and says their strategy is to be unmotivated and commit to outdated approaches. Most of them seem to have huge crowds of motivated and capable people who are then swatted down by the local court system because success makes the powers that be uncomfortable. I'd feel more optimistic if you had a specific mistake that Europe was going to stop making. Maybe adjustments to tax laws. Motivation doesn't cut it against people like the Americans or the Chinese, there needs to be actual actions taken beyond makerspaces. Germany seems to have purposefully triggered a domestic energy crisis, that balances out a lot of makerspaces.
  • microtonal 2y ago
    I'd feel more optimistic if you had a specific mistake that Europe was going to stop making. Maybe adjustments to tax laws. Motivation doesn't cut it against people like the Americans or the Chinese, there needs to be actual actions taken beyond makerspaces. This whole Europe bashing is becoming a tiring trope. Europe has a lot of successful companies, including in computing (ASML, ASM, ARM, NXP, STM, etc.). What we don't have are hyper-growth companies that mostly profit from vacuuming up your data and selling you ads. Good riddance. Yes, Europe would be nothing without the US. But the same is true the other way around as well, a few decades of globalism has distributed the production chains across countries. At any rate, back to the GP's comment. I do see a lot of optimism and the EU is going to invest a lot in defense, chips, and AI. There will be plenty of money floating around. Germany seems to have purposefully triggered a domestic energy crisis Well, not purposefully. But certainly ill-considered. At any rate, the EU is on the renewable energy track, we'll get there, and it will give us energy independence. Which is better than going a few decades back in time and 'drill drill drill baby'.
    • roenxi 2y ago
      I just want to point out that this is very much what I expect from Europeans. Motivated, optimistic but explicitly rejecting large profitable companies and cheap energy. The immediate plan is to invest in the military which, notably, generally has negative returns on investment. > Europe has a lot of successful companies, including in computing (ASML... visualcapitalist has a wonderful chart I thought of when I saw that: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/semiconductor-production-by-country-or-region-1990-2032f/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/semiconductor-production-by...
      • arsenico 2y ago
        The chart is interesting, but misses on an important thing: semiconductor production on it's own is complicated, but producing equipment for semiconductor production is the whole new level, that's why ASML.
    • FirmwareBurner 2y ago
• FirmwareBurner 2y ago
  >but the tides are turning and the EU is motivated In what way are the tides turning? We've been reading news articles on how Berlin is Europe's silicon valley for the past 10+ years but I don't see much VC or interesting tech giants coming out of there, or high paying job there. The only thing they seem to have copied form SV is impossible to find housing for outsiders, though I think it's easier to move to SV than Berlin now. Tides turning and motivation aren't enough. You need venture capital, and EU has none. At this point, every EU city that has some web dev body shops and one built a food delivery app then calls itself the SV of Europe to the point it's become a meme. SV is more than overhyped VC funded apps though, you have Berkeley and Stanford next door, the biggest defense contractors outside, with all the gray-beards of 3D graphics there, all the gray-beards of silicone and RF there, of CPU design, of kernel development, etc. You can't replicate this highly experienced melting pot of CS and HW expertise anywhere else by throwing some VC money in a hippie city that has a technical university.
  • mytailorisrich 2y ago
    Well in terms of amount of VC capital invested the UK is head and shoulder ahead of Germany and France... So "Berlin is Europe's silicon valley" is largely wishful thinking or a sales pitch. Those "makerspaces" are, IMHO, totally irrelevant. Ease of access to capital, of setting up a company, of structuring it, of doing business, taxes, are what makes the difference and most EU countries rank consistently lower than the UK on any of those aspects.
  • grumpy-de-sre 2y ago
    I think the biggest challenge in Berlin/Germany is that very little of the capital that has been poured into the startup sector has made it's way back to the the engineers. Part of this is due to severe restrictions on employee share schemes (changed recently), low employee turnover (3-6 month notice periods), enforceable non-competes, and heavy tax burdens on income. As a result you see a surprisingly low amount of engineer led/founded companies. Germany has genuinely innovative companies though, but they don't look anything like SV, eg. Trumpf, Zeiss, etc.
  • WinstonSmith84 2y ago
• happyweasel 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • wiz21c 2y ago
    I certainly consider myself European. And I don't need the concept of "united states of Europe" to feel that way. That's irrelevant.
  • astonex 2y ago
    The President of the European Commission?
  • doener 2y ago
    Trump changed something here. Yes, there is not a United States of Europe. But there is Macron, there is a strong alliance of an European idea around France, Germany, Netherlands, Denmark many more and even Poland again. Hungary is right now the only EU example where not a majority is sharing these "European" values. I think the alliance between France and Germany is as strong as never before. I think Most Germans want Macron to take the European lead right now (as we only have weak Merz to offer). Trump is like a catalyst for European unification. PS: I‘m German.
  • self_awareness 2y ago
    You confuse Europe and the EU. It's not the same thing. > "Who do I call if I want to speak to Europe?" What a silly question. "Who do I call if I want to speak to Earth? There's no such person? Therefore there is no such thing as Earth." > So what is an "European" ?? Same thing as African, Asian, American.
  • ABS 2y ago
    start by learning the difference between Europe and the EU, then decide what you want to discuss. With those two things together you can find the relevant official's office to call. Or do you go straight to POTUS if you want to "speak to the USA"? (also note I wrote USA and not "America")
  • palata 2y ago
    It takes an American to speak like that (noting that for some reason, "an American" refers to someone in the US, which may explain why they don't understand the idea). Do you need "United States of Asia" to be "an Asian"?
• tonyhart7 2y ago
  "but the tides are turning and the EU is motivated" well EU didnt even have their own tech giant, most top 10 largest tech company is from US. also china catching up fast this is down to a culture tbh, most german firm that I been work so far is very meticulous about their work and its great but sometimes tech is changing fast and you must make compromise
  • balamatom 2y ago
    >well EU didnt even have their own tech giant One word: WireCard.
  • elric 2y ago
    Your statement is factually incorrect, there are quite a few EU tech giants. But more to the point: in what universe is having a tech giant a requirement for anything? If anything, big pseudo-monopolies seem like an antipattern.
    • tonyhart7 2y ago
      I literally skimmed through fortune 500 and it dominated by US, China and the rest
  • RamblingCTO 2y ago
    have you ever heard of SAP, spotify, ASML (for what it's worth)?
    • tonyhart7 2y ago
      ASML literally uses US technology and US always have better alternative
      • RamblingCTO 2y ago
        So what's the alternative to ASML in the US that's on par with their tech? lol ...
• palata 2y ago
  > They talk shit about EU innovation and talk up their own dominance We should make a list of EU innovations that just got acquired by US companies, who conveniently forget. Ever heard of Google Maps?
  • amadeuspagel 2y ago
    That's how buying works. You can conveniently forget who you bought it from, because it's yours now. Google Maps was bought from an australian company BTW.
    • palata 2y ago
      > That's how buying works. You can conveniently forget who you bought it Sure. But when you buy an innovation, you can't suddenly claim that you invented it. > Google Maps was bought from an australian company BTW https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/science/google-maps-a-swiss-story-cartography-expertise-long-tradition/75766738 https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/science/google-maps-a-swiss-sto...
      • dagw 2y ago
        You're both right ;) Google maps was indeed bought from an Australian company. Or to be more specific, Google bought a company that had a desktop mapping application that they were in the process of porting to the web, the web version was completed after the acquisition, and that was the original Google Maps. The Swiss company in your link was working on a similar project at the same time and got acquired by Google a couple of years later. The Swiss company was in many ways ahead of Google maps at the time and added a lot new technology and features to Google maps, and can to a great extent probably be considered the basis for the success of Google maps, but Google Maps existed before that acquisition.
        • palata 2y ago
          Interesting! So that's twice non-US innovation ;-).
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• shelled 2y ago
  I am writing a long post. I hope some people read it. A very distant relative of mine lives in Germany. He is from India (where I live). He met his German wise in Australia where she was working and they married and later they settled in Germany. He has been asking me to come to Germany for work and start exploring work there and I have always been hesitant about it. Lots of things come to mind - a lot of them are unfounded and/or are just the apprehension of the unknown I am guess. One of the fear is I do not want to settle in Germany. I want to live a decent healthy life and probably return back to India (I don't know after how long; I have a strong feeling/assumption that I will be lonely there and may not be able to connect and I am scared of it) so it seems that I will have no savings essentially when I come back as I have assumed based on stereotypical description or media portrayals fo salaries in Germany/EU. How is it for skilled foreigners in Germany as a job market currently? Esp. seeing EU is warming up to self sustenance/dependence etc. Are the jobs there? Are those foreigners welcome? This is a tricky question but is there a trend of preference of source geographies for those skilled jobs in Germany? Also, I am in software with 10+ years of experience and my last drawn salary in India was ~70K Euro (in INR) and 5% bonus and 25% startup stock which value at zero now and I was able to save a huge portion or % of it (I know I won't be able to save that % in EU). Are the salaries really bad? If I am not able to save 1500-2000 EU a month as a single person with no luxurious needs at all there, it may not make much sense for me if I plan to return to my home country eventually). I am kinda apprehensive about the resurgence of the so called "right" there (which is happening, no happened, in my home country as well but I am a native here :|) - how is that? From a distance everything looks very problematic and scary or rather "very risky". What I am stuck at is - I actually believe this is not something I can just play on "I won't know until I actually do that". I guess I am being too risk averse and maybe very narrow-minded or paranoid. I would love to hear this from the locals either native or the ones who are immigrants in tech there. PS. I apologise if anything sounds absurd or untoward. I do not mean to start an argument or something. I just want to hear about it. PPS. If a single person with no family falls sick in Germany and has sufficient money (not "rich" money) and health insurance, can they just be admitted in the hospital (assuming hospitalisation was needed and doctors okayed it) and that person be taken care of? Or will they demand a "caretaker" family or friend to be present in the hospital always (that's kind of a requirement here in India) and the person can trust the system to do that? (This is my ONE BIG fear of remaining in India, esp. in old age as someone with no immediate family at all - I know this is counter to what said that I might return if I immigrate).
• thenaturalist 2y ago
  As a German, I think the issues are much more high level and deeply, deeply rooted in society (culture and official administration) than most tech people realize. 1. Germany has built it's entire identity around a social contract similar to Japan that roughly goes like this: We will have a backbone of well paying industrial jobs (both white and blue collar) which we'll use to generate large trade surplusses by exporting physical goods gloablly to fund our internal high cost social security and healthcare systems. As the state, I prefer low worker mobility, cause that keeps unemployment and hence all costs to the state low. 2. Financial markets/ access to capital/ investments/ taxation work the same way: Allocate capital to physical goods manufacturers with high working capital requirements, long investment horizons, tax the shit out of labor vs. capital gains, make the already strong companies stronger instead of gambling on upstarts. 3. There are workers and there are capitalists and these two should not mix: Labor is taxed insanely high, stock options/ labor equity participation basically unheard of and nobody cares about that in the government. It's only relevant to a tiny fraction of the electorate. It's a non-issue for the federal government. 4. No incentive for "the winner takes all", all incentive on "stable, low fluctuation employment". It's a sh*tshow as clearly showing with the abysmal growth Germany has experienced over the past 5 years. It will 100% get worse before it gets better (if not for politics simply due to demographics, where a disproportionally large share of social welfare consumers will need to be supported by an ever-shrinking share of tax payers). There are already talks about further tax increases and as the demographics worsen, the state will come looking for new income sources. Guaranteed. Yes, quality of life is great for now (esp. in places like Berlin) and yes, there is an evergrowing tech eco-system, but this is in no way indicative of where Germany as a whole is going systematically.
  • FirmwareBurner 2y ago
    >Yes, quality of life is great (esp. in places like Berlin) How can quality of life be great when you can't find housing if you want to move there?
    • klausa 2y ago
      Because you find an apartment every couple of years, and enjoy the city the other 59 months of every 60. The apartment situation in Berlin is bad, but I think it’s a bit silly to say you can’t have high quality of life because of it.
• GardenLetter27 2y ago
  But the EU hasn't abolished or even reformed the AI act with the ridiculous FLOPs limit and bureaucracy that hurts innovation. Same for the Digital Services Act, Cybersecurity Act, GDPR, etc. - all just more make-work and bureaucracy, just look at all the tools around auto-generating cookie banners for websites, and auto-accepting / hiding them for users! Nevermind the crazy taxation issues, in Sweden I pay 56% income tax and 30% capital gains - that destroys a lot of motivation to innovate. You can work hard and risk a lot and the government just steals it from you anyway.
  • Ragnarork 2y ago
    If the presence of regulations and taxes destroys a portion of motivation to innovate, then that specific portion was likely harmful to society and I will not mourn that loss.
    • GardenLetter27 2y ago
      It's not just the motivation, but the ability to take a risk and have it be a viable and financially sustainable option. The more the government steals from you, the more sales you need early on to reach the same net income. This isn't rocket science - there's a reason Britain was home to the industrial revolution after the liberal reforms of the Glorious Revolution, and that the USA is today with their nation literally founded on those principles of free speech, liberty and free competition.
• noosphr 2y ago
  > but these are the right first steps. What are you talking about? The concept of a hacker space was exported to the US from the CCC which started in 1981 in _West Berlin_. That idea mutated a bunch of times to become more palatable to the main stream and ended up as the bloodless maker spaces you can find in universities today.
• deleted 2y ago
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