11 ms·

Running an English speaking company in Europe

53 points by bjansn 13y ago

bowlofpetunias 13y ago
This is pretty much standard for most tech startups in Amsterdam, and I suspect several other European cities. The main reason isn't the ambition to expand internationally, but staffing. However, I've also encountered a lot of resistance, especially outside such international cities. Some people fundamentally dislike the idea of having to speak English if working for or partnering with a local company. It's also heavily associated with pretentiousness.
- namenotrequired 13y ago
  Yep, just yesterday I had an interview at an Amsterdam startup, everything in Dutch. Right afterwards I was introduced to the team, and suddenly everything was in English. I was a bit surprised and unprepared but I don't mind, some other employees and interns are from other countries and I actually love working in English (I do at my current, remote job too).
  - wouterinho 13y ago
    As a company you're constraining yourself so much by requiring Dutch if you want to hire good people. I know many companies that still do so. Better for the rest of us! One thing I noticed: Dutch people can switch pretty well during "work" discussions, but during lunch or social events, the switch is harder and you have to remind people to speak English.
- msantos 13y ago
  > It's also heavily associated with pretentiousness. I have also noticed that in Brazil, over a decade ago, in a local company that was trying its luck in the US market. Eventually it failed, for many reasons but mostly because some of the staff wasn't fluent enough in English while others were. Internal bickering ensued, until the company went bust. The management was only focused on the US expansion and failed to address internal disputes.
- mgl 13y ago
  Yes, I think so too. At http://codedose.com http://codedose.com we document projects, write comments to our source code and communicate with our clients in English only, not because most of them are from Western Europe and US but it's just more convenient and natural than coming up with wicked translations. A singleton is a singleton, right? ;)
seivan 13y ago
I wish more companies did this. Especially in Sweden, at least would lessen the burden for my partner to get a job. Speaks Mandarin and English fluently. Even jobs that could be done in English requires Swedish.
- kfk 13y ago
  Unfortunately this is a problem in many EU countries. Most of the job descriptions require perfect English + the local language (whatever that is). In the worst case the local language is not mentioned, but then they fire your CV too fast not to suspect language had something to do with it. It's a real hassle, especially when you don't become "loyal" to any EU country in particular, thus it makes no sense to learn its local language as there are way too many languages around, me the last 4 years: I lived in Denmark (Danish), Germany (German), now I live in Belgium (Dutch AND French). The whole situation creates "sticky" jobs, where people end up stuck in 1 country, sometimes a very small country, and they can't really embrace the full power of a unionized economic area. I mean, only for this US is so much better than EU, 300ML people all speaking the same language...
  - w1ntermute 13y ago
    > 300ML people all speaking the same language... Not to mention the culture. The cultural difference between Washington state and Mississippi (for example) is much smaller than the difference between Germany and France.
  - Brakenshire 13y ago
    > The whole situation creates "sticky" jobs, where people end up stuck in 1 country, sometimes a very small country, and they can't really embrace the full power of a unionized economic area. I understand your frustration, but the purpose of the policy is precisely to create 'sticky jobs', and this is really the only way things can work unless countries like Denmark and the Netherlands wish over time to lose their languages, and become more or less undifferentiated provinces of Europe. Labour market mobility is important, but it is not the sine qua non of modern Europe. Small countries accept immigration on the basis that the immigrants will over time learn the language and adjust to the culture, it's impossible for them to maintain the integrity of their state if a major percentage of the population are transitory.
johngrefe 13y ago
Starting an international SaaS company is a beast of an undertaking, kudos.
- JanezStupar 13y ago
  What other options are there? I am not being snarky. In my head any and all SaaS plays are inherently international. Perhaps that's because I am Slovenian and any endeavour that is not international by default is doomed from the get go. I could not imagine a SaaS story that is viable in mid to long term without inherent internationalization. Except perhaps US based companies, however there WILL be trouble as soon as you try to enter European market if you assume that US is the world.
  - bjansn 13y ago
    I think it depends on the market and country you're in. If you're in the right vertical or solve a very difficult problem you might earn enough to not go international.
    - nraynaud 13y ago
      you might get vulnerable to the big american player coming after a few years. In many markets, after a few years you have to enter the size battle.
  - michokest 13y ago
    Many friends of mine have local companies, targeting only the Spanish market. It works well for them, but we have different goals. They want to be local leaders (easier acquisition, lower marketing costs), we want to build a leader in our category (higher investment in development and marketing)
    - JanezStupar 13y ago
      But this is the difference. I would rather be a small fish in a big pond than a big fish in a small pond. Especially if the first is many times bigger than the second one could ever be.
fcatalan 13y ago
It might be a problem to keep your best developers working in Barcelona on Spanish level salaries if they are good, young and fluent in English. It's not just the absolute salary numbers: the relative purchasing power of even decent Spanish salaries is pitiful. I only stay here because I'm not so young anymore and have a family, but otherwise I would move somewhere that might be twice as expensive but pay more like 3x.
- radio4fan 13y ago
  On the other hand, Barcelona is a great place for young people to live. I know plenty of people here in Barcelona who could earn much more in their home countries, but choose to live in Barcelona for the better quality of life. A web developer would probably earn twice as much in London (where I'm from) than here in Barcelona, but they would have to spend all the increase on rent to rent a nice apartment. Forget buying in London on a junior- to mid-level salary, but here you could buy a nice apartment in a nice part of the city. Not to mention the weather, scenery, beach, cheaper restaurants and bars (with better opening hours), lack of violence, and sheer excitement of being in a foreign country.
nraynaud 13y ago
I hate this configuration where development is in one place and suits in the other, moreover when one is way more expensive than the other (often with the suits in the more expensive). I leads to incredible culture divisions. I'm still struggling for solutions, because having the sales next to the customers HQ makes sense somehow.
- bjansn 13y ago
  One of the points in the article is that having your team across timezones, all speaking the same language makes it possible to collaborate when in different locations. Why would it matter which employee is more expensive than the other, in the end it's about the results. Running Marketing and Sales in Barcelona might make it harder to find the clients they have today.
  - michokest 13y ago
    OP here. Ditto to that, we like our culture in Barcelona and didn't want to replace it. We don't see it as a matter of cost, but a matter of possibility. Since we didn't have a solid marketing or sales team, we decided to land it where our main market is. It just made sense.
  - nraynaud 13y ago
    Social status, I could see that with teams in the capital and development teams in smaller cities. Also it's difficult when the customers are big companies, they tend to culturally suck the sales in corporate thinking where the product team try to get an underdog, get-shit-done, we'll-fuck-your-bureaucracy-for-your-own-good attitude.
msantos 13y ago
I love this idea and I truly hope that more companies see that as a feasible option. More so, because I've been contemplating the idea of leaving London for Croatia for some time, but Croatian is an incredibly hard language to learn. On a second thought, it's also fair to say that the idea is all well and good, but all you need is a disgruntled employee to ruin it to everybody else. But then, I guess it's all up to what type of people you hire in the first place, and how the company shows those new-hires what kind of culture is expected from them. There are few rulings in the UK, based on EU's laws, supporting employees speaking they own language even when the nature of the business require them to speak English. The most recent case I recall of, is that of a Polish nurse/nanny/babysitter who would speak Polish to Polish-parents and Polish co-workers. But her managers required there to stick to English at all times, even when approached by Polish speaking parents and co-workers. She sued and won.
- mark_sz 13y ago
  Well, I don't think you've told entire story. She was speaking at her lunch time in polish and her manager said that this is not allowed. http://witnesshr.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/polish-worker-sacked-for-speaking-her.html http://witnesshr.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/polish-worker-sacked... (Btw, a lot of polish and spanish developers arrived to the UK in recent months)
  - msantos 13y ago
    By no means it was my intention to make one side or the other look bad. I'm sorry if it came across that way. I was just trying to make it short, since that is a side story and therefore it's likely to be irrelevant to the OP. But since you pointed out one of the many articles surrounding that particular case, fyi that article is also incomplete. Google a bit and you'll find some extractions of the court case. The speaking-during-break was the pinacle of the story, which had started months before when her boss told her to speak only English even when the clients (parents) started a conversation with her in their shared/common language.
  - msantos 13y ago
    BTW my mention refers to a case in the UK not in Norway.
andrem 13y ago
This is a similar route my company has taken. We are based in Madrid and are just about to break out of Spain in terms of customer base. We are more a traditional company competing in an existing industry hence Silicon Valley is not a location we compete with in terms of culture or product design. What has been a big challenge for us after switching to English has really been acquiring local talent that is already here or willing to move here, can speak English well and also have great coding skills (in C# .Net if you want to know) We have been successful in recruiting people in rural Spain and across Europe but it seems that all the English talent in MAdrid already is quite comfortable in their jobs. So in summary - I think if you are in non-english Europe and do the switch, be prepared to diversify your operations and look at remote workers or branch offices away from your HQ. YMMV of course.

53 points by bjansn 13y ago

This is pretty much standard for most tech startups in Amsterdam, and I suspect several other European cities. The main reason isn't the ambition to expand internationally, but staffing. However, I've also encountered a lot of resistance, especially outside such international cities. Some people fundamentally dislike the idea of having to speak English if working for or partnering with a local company. It's also heavily associated with pretentiousness.

namenotrequired 13y ago
Yep, just yesterday I had an interview at an Amsterdam startup, everything in Dutch. Right afterwards I was introduced to the team, and suddenly everything was in English. I was a bit surprised and unprepared but I don't mind, some other employees and interns are from other countries and I actually love working in English (I do at my current, remote job too).
- wouterinho 13y ago
  As a company you're constraining yourself so much by requiring Dutch if you want to hire good people. I know many companies that still do so. Better for the rest of us! One thing I noticed: Dutch people can switch pretty well during "work" discussions, but during lunch or social events, the switch is harder and you have to remind people to speak English.
msantos 13y ago
> It's also heavily associated with pretentiousness. I have also noticed that in Brazil, over a decade ago, in a local company that was trying its luck in the US market. Eventually it failed, for many reasons but mostly because some of the staff wasn't fluent enough in English while others were. Internal bickering ensued, until the company went bust. The management was only focused on the US expansion and failed to address internal disputes.
mgl 13y ago
Yes, I think so too. At http://codedose.com http://codedose.com we document projects, write comments to our source code and communicate with our clients in English only, not because most of them are from Western Europe and US but it's just more convenient and natural than coming up with wicked translations. A singleton is a singleton, right? ;)

seivan 13y ago

I wish more companies did this. Especially in Sweden, at least would lessen the burden for my partner to get a job. Speaks Mandarin and English fluently. Even jobs that could be done in English requires Swedish.

kfk 13y ago
Unfortunately this is a problem in many EU countries. Most of the job descriptions require perfect English + the local language (whatever that is). In the worst case the local language is not mentioned, but then they fire your CV too fast not to suspect language had something to do with it. It's a real hassle, especially when you don't become "loyal" to any EU country in particular, thus it makes no sense to learn its local language as there are way too many languages around, me the last 4 years: I lived in Denmark (Danish), Germany (German), now I live in Belgium (Dutch AND French). The whole situation creates "sticky" jobs, where people end up stuck in 1 country, sometimes a very small country, and they can't really embrace the full power of a unionized economic area. I mean, only for this US is so much better than EU, 300ML people all speaking the same language...
- w1ntermute 13y ago
  > 300ML people all speaking the same language... Not to mention the culture. The cultural difference between Washington state and Mississippi (for example) is much smaller than the difference between Germany and France.
- Brakenshire 13y ago
  > The whole situation creates "sticky" jobs, where people end up stuck in 1 country, sometimes a very small country, and they can't really embrace the full power of a unionized economic area. I understand your frustration, but the purpose of the policy is precisely to create 'sticky jobs', and this is really the only way things can work unless countries like Denmark and the Netherlands wish over time to lose their languages, and become more or less undifferentiated provinces of Europe. Labour market mobility is important, but it is not the sine qua non of modern Europe. Small countries accept immigration on the basis that the immigrants will over time learn the language and adjust to the culture, it's impossible for them to maintain the integrity of their state if a major percentage of the population are transitory.

johngrefe 13y ago

Starting an international SaaS company is a beast of an undertaking, kudos.

JanezStupar 13y ago
What other options are there? I am not being snarky. In my head any and all SaaS plays are inherently international. Perhaps that's because I am Slovenian and any endeavour that is not international by default is doomed from the get go. I could not imagine a SaaS story that is viable in mid to long term without inherent internationalization. Except perhaps US based companies, however there WILL be trouble as soon as you try to enter European market if you assume that US is the world.
- bjansn 13y ago
  I think it depends on the market and country you're in. If you're in the right vertical or solve a very difficult problem you might earn enough to not go international.
  - nraynaud 13y ago
    you might get vulnerable to the big american player coming after a few years. In many markets, after a few years you have to enter the size battle.
- michokest 13y ago
  Many friends of mine have local companies, targeting only the Spanish market. It works well for them, but we have different goals. They want to be local leaders (easier acquisition, lower marketing costs), we want to build a leader in our category (higher investment in development and marketing)
  - JanezStupar 13y ago
    But this is the difference. I would rather be a small fish in a big pond than a big fish in a small pond. Especially if the first is many times bigger than the second one could ever be.

fcatalan 13y ago

It might be a problem to keep your best developers working in Barcelona on Spanish level salaries if they are good, young and fluent in English. It's not just the absolute salary numbers: the relative purchasing power of even decent Spanish salaries is pitiful. I only stay here because I'm not so young anymore and have a family, but otherwise I would move somewhere that might be twice as expensive but pay more like 3x.

radio4fan 13y ago
On the other hand, Barcelona is a great place for young people to live. I know plenty of people here in Barcelona who could earn much more in their home countries, but choose to live in Barcelona for the better quality of life. A web developer would probably earn twice as much in London (where I'm from) than here in Barcelona, but they would have to spend all the increase on rent to rent a nice apartment. Forget buying in London on a junior- to mid-level salary, but here you could buy a nice apartment in a nice part of the city. Not to mention the weather, scenery, beach, cheaper restaurants and bars (with better opening hours), lack of violence, and sheer excitement of being in a foreign country.

nraynaud 13y ago

I hate this configuration where development is in one place and suits in the other, moreover when one is way more expensive than the other (often with the suits in the more expensive). I leads to incredible culture divisions. I'm still struggling for solutions, because having the sales next to the customers HQ makes sense somehow.

bjansn 13y ago
One of the points in the article is that having your team across timezones, all speaking the same language makes it possible to collaborate when in different locations. Why would it matter which employee is more expensive than the other, in the end it's about the results. Running Marketing and Sales in Barcelona might make it harder to find the clients they have today.
- michokest 13y ago
  OP here. Ditto to that, we like our culture in Barcelona and didn't want to replace it. We don't see it as a matter of cost, but a matter of possibility. Since we didn't have a solid marketing or sales team, we decided to land it where our main market is. It just made sense.
- nraynaud 13y ago
  Social status, I could see that with teams in the capital and development teams in smaller cities. Also it's difficult when the customers are big companies, they tend to culturally suck the sales in corporate thinking where the product team try to get an underdog, get-shit-done, we'll-fuck-your-bureaucracy-for-your-own-good attitude.

msantos 13y ago

I love this idea and I truly hope that more companies see that as a feasible option. More so, because I've been contemplating the idea of leaving London for Croatia for some time, but Croatian is an incredibly hard language to learn. On a second thought, it's also fair to say that the idea is all well and good, but all you need is a disgruntled employee to ruin it to everybody else. But then, I guess it's all up to what type of people you hire in the first place, and how the company shows those new-hires what kind of culture is expected from them. There are few rulings in the UK, based on EU's laws, supporting employees speaking they own language even when the nature of the business require them to speak English. The most recent case I recall of, is that of a Polish nurse/nanny/babysitter who would speak Polish to Polish-parents and Polish co-workers. But her managers required there to stick to English at all times, even when approached by Polish speaking parents and co-workers. She sued and won.

mark_sz 13y ago
Well, I don't think you've told entire story. She was speaking at her lunch time in polish and her manager said that this is not allowed. http://witnesshr.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/polish-worker-sacked-for-speaking-her.html http://witnesshr.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/polish-worker-sacked... (Btw, a lot of polish and spanish developers arrived to the UK in recent months)
- msantos 13y ago
  By no means it was my intention to make one side or the other look bad. I'm sorry if it came across that way. I was just trying to make it short, since that is a side story and therefore it's likely to be irrelevant to the OP. But since you pointed out one of the many articles surrounding that particular case, fyi that article is also incomplete. Google a bit and you'll find some extractions of the court case. The speaking-during-break was the pinacle of the story, which had started months before when her boss told her to speak only English even when the clients (parents) started a conversation with her in their shared/common language.
- msantos 13y ago
  BTW my mention refers to a case in the UK not in Norway.

andrem 13y ago

This is a similar route my company has taken. We are based in Madrid and are just about to break out of Spain in terms of customer base. We are more a traditional company competing in an existing industry hence Silicon Valley is not a location we compete with in terms of culture or product design. What has been a big challenge for us after switching to English has really been acquiring local talent that is already here or willing to move here, can speak English well and also have great coding skills (in C# .Net if you want to know) We have been successful in recruiting people in rural Spain and across Europe but it seems that all the English talent in MAdrid already is quite comfortable in their jobs. So in summary - I think if you are in non-english Europe and do the switch, be prepared to diversify your operations and look at remote workers or branch offices away from your HQ. YMMV of course.