I'm a former s.f. resident that has been living in Switzerland the last 7 years. My observation is that the engineering talent in Europe is very good. My opinio

I'm a former s.f. resident that has been living in Switzerland the last 7 years. My observation is that the engineering talent in Europe is very good. My opinion is that it is significantly better than in the u.s. With the developers more often formally trained as engineers and a more serious attitude overall (of course there are exceptions in both directions). What Europe is missing is a strong vc industry and a better startup culture. Here in Switzerland there are of course vcs but most funding for startups comes from angel investors. And there is no incentive for working in a startup as they almost never offer options/ownership in the company. And so you get people developers in startups that are doing it for the experience and so at the low tier of programmers here. If there was a stronger and more experienced vc culture I would think that they would improve startups by making them more like in the u.s. with options, stock grants, etc.