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Calviño is the wrong choice to lead this. Why not tap a few people from Mistral if they care about AI? Spotify if they care about more generic tech? Funding wi

Calviño is the wrong choice to lead this. Why not tap a few people from Mistral if they care about AI? Spotify if they care about more generic tech? Funding will not fix the fact that euro salaries are not even remotely competitive especially after tax. Maybe it’s better to be poor in europe than America but MLEs at large AI labs and bigtech SWEs are definitively not. Plus, capital is somehow still more risk-averse in the EU despite the ECB's policy rate consistently running >200bps lower than fed funds. And of course the process of getting funds from the EIB remains agonizing even with this change.

JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> Calviño is the wrong choice to lead this Will Calviño be picking and choosing the grantees?
- landl0rd 1y ago
  This isn't the point. More knowledgeable people at lower levels can help. But when leadership lacks domain expertise it's very hard to know what to do or not do, what will help and won't. She could be smart and lean heavily on industry experts but that still makes her the wrong choice to lead it when one of them could have done so better. This is the equivalent of private equity installing someone who knows nothing but MBA material at a biotech company or a ML research company or anything else where domain expertise can actually help. The EU is actually better at bringing in bits of "technocracy" to let industry experts lend their expertise. I don't know why they are doing that here. I think it's the wrong call.
  - amarcheschi 1y ago
    Elon Musk lacks domain expertise given how he asked to rewrite Twitter stack to the devs after it was bought If you're talking about the domain of startups and companies themselves though, I'll give you that
    - robertlagrant 1y ago
      > Elon Musk lacks domain enterprise What does this mean? I can't parse it.
      - amarcheschi 1y ago
        Sorry, I meant expertise not enterprise
        robertlagrant 1y ago
        Ah, okay. I still don't quite know what it means. He clearly has something, as he's launched/run various successful and wildly innovative companies. I think that's different to someone allocating public funds well. In my very limited experience of that in the UK, the people involved were completely unaware of what to do, and were convinced by salespeople and partisan semi-internal contractors with a bias. If Elon Musk wants to risk his own money on an internal decision at Twitter, so be it. That's a lot better than risking somebody else's money forcibly extracted from their pockets.
        amarcheschi 1y ago
        Knowledge of the domain he launches company of. I'll give him that he's great at launching and probably managing companies, he's still not an expert in the technical side of the field his companies operate in I answered because the guy above me complained about lack of domain expertise
        robertlagrant 1y ago
        Ah yes I understand. I think for me the difference isn't just domain expertise, although it is a little bit. It's more whose money you're risking. If investors want to give Elon Musk some of their money to try something, I don't care, as it's not my money to lose.
    - meekaaku 1y ago
9283409232 1y ago
You don't see why it might not be a good idea to give leaders in for-profit companies like Mistral or Spotify the keys to billions of dollars in funding?
- logicchains 1y ago
  It's a much better idea to give it to people who actually have experience turning financial investment into a valuable technological product than giving it to bureaucrats with no such experience.
Fraterkes 1y ago
I hear these salary comparisons a lot, but when I was studying at the most popular Dutch technical university none of the future SWEs I talked to where even considering moving to the US (this was back when there was an excess of swe jobs everywhere). There's not much of a braindrain of engineers as far as I can tell, European engineers are not vastly less impressive than their American counterparts, and the people running succesfull startups in the US do not posess any particular brilliance. All of which is to say, I don't think lack of Software Engineering talent is the problem.
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago
  >There's not much of a braindrain of engineers as far as I can tell Not in your bubble: top university in the tax heaven EU country with some of the most US companies. Of course those grads can just stay and get FANG jobs there but not everyone comes from the NL. >the people running succesfull startups in the US do not posess any particular brilliance Their advantage is easier access to more capital than those in the EU. Capital helps with success even more than skills. Hence why the US has more big successful companies than Europe.
  - ivan_gammel 1y ago
    Big successful companies in USA aren’t big just because of better access to capital. It’s easier to create a monopoly there without major consequences for the business. Europe has no interest in having such businesses, as was demonstrated by DMA.
    - FirmwareBurner 1y ago
      > Europe has no interest in having such businesses That's objectively false. EU would love to have its own monopolistic companies in the tech sector the same way it has in other sectors. It's only against them because it has none. > as was demonstrated by DMA Europe's DMA is orthogonal to its wishes of having monopolistic companies as all of those companies are American not European.
mbs159 1y ago
The cost of living is smaller in most countries in the EU, though. Also, most get free healthcare and free higher education, so it evens out considering these benefits

JumpCrisscross 1y ago

> Calviño is the wrong choice to lead this Will Calviño be picking and choosing the grantees?

landl0rd 1y ago
This isn't the point. More knowledgeable people at lower levels can help. But when leadership lacks domain expertise it's very hard to know what to do or not do, what will help and won't. She could be smart and lean heavily on industry experts but that still makes her the wrong choice to lead it when one of them could have done so better. This is the equivalent of private equity installing someone who knows nothing but MBA material at a biotech company or a ML research company or anything else where domain expertise can actually help. The EU is actually better at bringing in bits of "technocracy" to let industry experts lend their expertise. I don't know why they are doing that here. I think it's the wrong call.
- amarcheschi 1y ago
  Elon Musk lacks domain expertise given how he asked to rewrite Twitter stack to the devs after it was bought If you're talking about the domain of startups and companies themselves though, I'll give you that
  - robertlagrant 1y ago
    > Elon Musk lacks domain enterprise What does this mean? I can't parse it.
    - amarcheschi 1y ago
      Sorry, I meant expertise not enterprise
      - robertlagrant 1y ago
        Ah, okay. I still don't quite know what it means. He clearly has something, as he's launched/run various successful and wildly innovative companies. I think that's different to someone allocating public funds well. In my very limited experience of that in the UK, the people involved were completely unaware of what to do, and were convinced by salespeople and partisan semi-internal contractors with a bias. If Elon Musk wants to risk his own money on an internal decision at Twitter, so be it. That's a lot better than risking somebody else's money forcibly extracted from their pockets.
        amarcheschi 1y ago
        Knowledge of the domain he launches company of. I'll give him that he's great at launching and probably managing companies, he's still not an expert in the technical side of the field his companies operate in I answered because the guy above me complained about lack of domain expertise
        robertlagrant 1y ago
        Ah yes I understand. I think for me the difference isn't just domain expertise, although it is a little bit. It's more whose money you're risking. If investors want to give Elon Musk some of their money to try something, I don't care, as it's not my money to lose.
  - meekaaku 1y ago

9283409232 1y ago

You don't see why it might not be a good idea to give leaders in for-profit companies like Mistral or Spotify the keys to billions of dollars in funding?

logicchains 1y ago
It's a much better idea to give it to people who actually have experience turning financial investment into a valuable technological product than giving it to bureaucrats with no such experience.

Fraterkes 1y ago

I hear these salary comparisons a lot, but when I was studying at the most popular Dutch technical university none of the future SWEs I talked to where even considering moving to the US (this was back when there was an excess of swe jobs everywhere). There's not much of a braindrain of engineers as far as I can tell, European engineers are not vastly less impressive than their American counterparts, and the people running succesfull startups in the US do not posess any particular brilliance. All of which is to say, I don't think lack of Software Engineering talent is the problem.

FirmwareBurner 1y ago
>There's not much of a braindrain of engineers as far as I can tell Not in your bubble: top university in the tax heaven EU country with some of the most US companies. Of course those grads can just stay and get FANG jobs there but not everyone comes from the NL. >the people running succesfull startups in the US do not posess any particular brilliance Their advantage is easier access to more capital than those in the EU. Capital helps with success even more than skills. Hence why the US has more big successful companies than Europe.
- ivan_gammel 1y ago
  Big successful companies in USA aren’t big just because of better access to capital. It’s easier to create a monopoly there without major consequences for the business. Europe has no interest in having such businesses, as was demonstrated by DMA.
  - FirmwareBurner 1y ago
    > Europe has no interest in having such businesses That's objectively false. EU would love to have its own monopolistic companies in the tech sector the same way it has in other sectors. It's only against them because it has none. > as was demonstrated by DMA Europe's DMA is orthogonal to its wishes of having monopolistic companies as all of those companies are American not European.

mbs159 1y ago

The cost of living is smaller in most countries in the EU, though. Also, most get free healthcare and free higher education, so it evens out considering these benefits