8 ms·

And this is why major software companies are actually American. Most European software companies are terrible places, where "coding" people are considered as th

by xroche 11y ago

And this is why major software companies are actually American. Most European software companies are terrible places, where "coding" people are considered as the lowest class. I don't want to generalize, there are incredible startups and small companies out there, but hey, no European Google or Facebook. And strangely enough, "managers" who used to be good in their 20's and who have been only producing powerpoint-esque bullshit for the last 15 years are not very valuable assets, despite being overpaid, resulting in poor quality products.

thefreeman 11y ago
That seems like quite a vast over simplification. Silicon Valley being in the US probably has a lot to do with it as well.
pif 11y ago
I always find it funny when I read statements about Europe as if there existed something like a European culture. Europe is not a nation, and European nations do not share the same culture. Sure, several values are shared, but the differences can be great. PS: calling the USA America, that makes me smile, too!
- strictnein 11y ago
  America is an equally valid name for either the USA or the Americas. Citizens of the USA are Americans. We're happy this bit of reality made you smile.
  - Turing_Machine 11y ago
    United States of America -> America United States of Mexico -> Mexico Dominion of Canada -> Canada (I think they dropped "Dominion of" some time ago, though) Kingdom of the Netherlands -> Netherlands Federal Republic of Germany -> Germany It's a fairly common abbreviation style, and USA is the only country that has "America" in its name. If the OP thinks that the USA is any more of a monoculture than Europe is, perhaps he should spend some time in Manhattan followed by some time in Luckenbach, Texas. :-)
    - pif 11y ago
      > If the OP thinks that the USA is any more of a monoculture than Europe is, perhaps he should spend some time in Manhattan followed by some time in Luckenbach, Texas. :-) I don't have enough information to comment on your example, but I suppose that in every small village on Earth you'll always find the progressive and the conservative guy, and you'll always find a different environment in a big city than in the countryside. My comment was more to point out that in Europe each people still has his uniqueness. You know how Swiss people are proud of their neutrality, Finnish school system is (one of) the best in the world, Englishmen love their queen, Greeks invented democracy and Italians are immune to Stendhal Syndrome? Well, none of those sentence makes any sense if you substitute the national adjective with "European". Europe being not a nation is not only a matter of traditions, but of everyday life as well. We don't share a television system, which would be anyway complicated by the multitude of languages. We don't follow political debates in other countries, and newspapers will report about foreign election only for a handful of states or when an extremist party wins. We have the football European Champions League final, but it's nowhere like what I heard about the Super Bowl, with stars and celebrities, because we don't share stars and celebrities. Maybe this is just a case of "far away, thus homogeneous". For example, some time ago I was talking about south-Asian cuisine, when suddenly I found myself wondering how I could talk about a south-Asian cuisine. Does a south-Asian cuisine even exist? What would I do if I traveled to China and entered a "European" restaurant serving both pizza and haggis? I'd run away while screaming!
      - strictnein 11y ago
        Everything you said about the uniqueness of European countries applies to the uniqueness of American states or regions, so I'd say it's case of "far away, thus homogeneous".
- jganetsk 11y ago
  Being lectured by Europeans that "calling the USA America" is somehow "funny" is in itself funny. It is a common refrain that perhaps demonstrates a lack of knowledge of idiomatic English. It certainly is a case of haphazardly leaping to the conclusion that Americans are arrogant. The poster did not use the word "America" but "American". That is simply the correct demonym for the USA in the English language, and is used internationally. Alternatives have been proposed, like "US-American", but they have never caught on and have always been completely unidiomatic. Other languages do make this distinction, like "estadounidense" in Spanish. Perhaps usage of the term "americano" in Spanish could trigger your smirk of superiority, but not that of the English term "American". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_for_United_States_citizens#Alternative_terms http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_for_United_States_citizen...
  - steven2012 11y ago
    I'm in my 40s and I've yet to hear "America" being used for anything other than the U.S. "The Americas" to me is more about North/South America.
    - jganetsk 11y ago
      Your life experiences matter not to the European superiority complex. It has been decided a priori that this behavior is wrong. Being 400 years old instead of just 40 would serve only to increase the magnitude of your wrongness tenfold.
      - pif 11y ago
        Hello, "European superiority complex", really? Please, come on! First of all, superior wrt to whom? And, especially, you use again "European" after my comments about the lack of a European culture? Oh dear, we're entering an infinite loop :-)
    - classicsnoot 11y ago
      Then you have not traveled to central america. When I first went down, I'd always introduce myself as an American. I would get amused incredulity in return. They see themselves as Americans, and rightly so. The misguided superiority complex we seem to maintain up here is petty, and your comment drips of it. Let's say you were 80, and your second 40 years mirrored your first forty. How many individuals would you guess you spoke with? The population of the Americas combined is ~1 billions (2008)[google search].
balabaster 11y ago
Having been monitoring the software development market in Europe for quite some time (being European and always wondering what it would be like to come home and continue my development career) it astounds me why anyone would pursue development there given the advertised salaries for developers. With the high cost of living and the ridiculously low (comparatively speaking) salaries, it's a wonder any software developer would even take an interview - especially given that software developers can make 3-4 times more in other markets with comparatively lower costs of living. The only market that appears to differ from this (based on advertised salaries) is the banking/finance sector. But despite the fact that they're not doing anything that the rest of the technology sector are doing (from a technology perspective), their incestuous hiring practices make it all but impossible to get in unless you know the right person or already specifically have banking/finance experience. So you could have 25 years of extremely relevant experience from other fields spread across various startups, small businesses and huge multibillion dollar corporations, have in depth experience writing platforms and APIs for leading corporations with highly scalable web facing platforms with all the latest technologies, have spent 5 years at some point in your past cobbling together antiquated technologies such as Access databases and Excel spreadsheets, just as many of these companies still are, but unless you've specifically got experience in the financial sector, they're not interested... despite their common claim that it's really hard to find good developers. It's not hard to find good developers if you take your blinkers off and ask yourself what is it you're doing that's so special that you can't hire someone with all the right personality traits and technological experience but because of some arbitrary bias that they don't specifically have experience in your sector, they're unsuitable. So that's my two biggest gripes about hiring practices - one specifically pertaining to hiring software developers in Europe, but the other equally applies in North America too. Agism isn't nearly as evident as cronyism and incest.
- _delirium 11y ago
  In Denmark, the usual reason people work here despite higher salaries elsewhere is that many people just strongly prefer to live in Denmark (or if not in Denmark, at least in the Nordic region), for a mixture of cultural and quality-of-life reasons. The specific reasons vary based on the person, but some include: this is where your family/friends already are, prefer the urban layout of the cities (transit, biking, safety, etc.), prefer the working conditions (hours, vacation policies), prefer the social support, especially for families (subsidized childcare, parental-leave policies, no university tuition), etc. That and reasons like people wanting to raise their kids as Danes, which is harder to do if they grow up elsewhere. It's very common for people to work abroad for a bit in their 20s, though, as a kind of seeing-the-world thing that combines work and tourism, and then return later.

by xroche 11y ago

thefreeman 11y ago

That seems like quite a vast over simplification. Silicon Valley being in the US probably has a lot to do with it as well.

pif 11y ago

I always find it funny when I read statements about Europe as if there existed something like a European culture. Europe is not a nation, and European nations do not share the same culture. Sure, several values are shared, but the differences can be great. PS: calling the USA America, that makes me smile, too!

strictnein 11y ago
America is an equally valid name for either the USA or the Americas. Citizens of the USA are Americans. We're happy this bit of reality made you smile.
- Turing_Machine 11y ago
  United States of America -> America United States of Mexico -> Mexico Dominion of Canada -> Canada (I think they dropped "Dominion of" some time ago, though) Kingdom of the Netherlands -> Netherlands Federal Republic of Germany -> Germany It's a fairly common abbreviation style, and USA is the only country that has "America" in its name. If the OP thinks that the USA is any more of a monoculture than Europe is, perhaps he should spend some time in Manhattan followed by some time in Luckenbach, Texas. :-)
  - pif 11y ago
    > If the OP thinks that the USA is any more of a monoculture than Europe is, perhaps he should spend some time in Manhattan followed by some time in Luckenbach, Texas. :-) I don't have enough information to comment on your example, but I suppose that in every small village on Earth you'll always find the progressive and the conservative guy, and you'll always find a different environment in a big city than in the countryside. My comment was more to point out that in Europe each people still has his uniqueness. You know how Swiss people are proud of their neutrality, Finnish school system is (one of) the best in the world, Englishmen love their queen, Greeks invented democracy and Italians are immune to Stendhal Syndrome? Well, none of those sentence makes any sense if you substitute the national adjective with "European". Europe being not a nation is not only a matter of traditions, but of everyday life as well. We don't share a television system, which would be anyway complicated by the multitude of languages. We don't follow political debates in other countries, and newspapers will report about foreign election only for a handful of states or when an extremist party wins. We have the football European Champions League final, but it's nowhere like what I heard about the Super Bowl, with stars and celebrities, because we don't share stars and celebrities. Maybe this is just a case of "far away, thus homogeneous". For example, some time ago I was talking about south-Asian cuisine, when suddenly I found myself wondering how I could talk about a south-Asian cuisine. Does a south-Asian cuisine even exist? What would I do if I traveled to China and entered a "European" restaurant serving both pizza and haggis? I'd run away while screaming!
    - strictnein 11y ago
      Everything you said about the uniqueness of European countries applies to the uniqueness of American states or regions, so I'd say it's case of "far away, thus homogeneous".
jganetsk 11y ago
Being lectured by Europeans that "calling the USA America" is somehow "funny" is in itself funny. It is a common refrain that perhaps demonstrates a lack of knowledge of idiomatic English. It certainly is a case of haphazardly leaping to the conclusion that Americans are arrogant. The poster did not use the word "America" but "American". That is simply the correct demonym for the USA in the English language, and is used internationally. Alternatives have been proposed, like "US-American", but they have never caught on and have always been completely unidiomatic. Other languages do make this distinction, like "estadounidense" in Spanish. Perhaps usage of the term "americano" in Spanish could trigger your smirk of superiority, but not that of the English term "American". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_for_United_States_citizens#Alternative_terms http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_for_United_States_citizen...
- steven2012 11y ago
  I'm in my 40s and I've yet to hear "America" being used for anything other than the U.S. "The Americas" to me is more about North/South America.
  - jganetsk 11y ago
    Your life experiences matter not to the European superiority complex. It has been decided a priori that this behavior is wrong. Being 400 years old instead of just 40 would serve only to increase the magnitude of your wrongness tenfold.
    - pif 11y ago
      Hello, "European superiority complex", really? Please, come on! First of all, superior wrt to whom? And, especially, you use again "European" after my comments about the lack of a European culture? Oh dear, we're entering an infinite loop :-)
  - classicsnoot 11y ago
    Then you have not traveled to central america. When I first went down, I'd always introduce myself as an American. I would get amused incredulity in return. They see themselves as Americans, and rightly so. The misguided superiority complex we seem to maintain up here is petty, and your comment drips of it. Let's say you were 80, and your second 40 years mirrored your first forty. How many individuals would you guess you spoke with? The population of the Americas combined is ~1 billions (2008)[google search].

balabaster 11y ago

Having been monitoring the software development market in Europe for quite some time (being European and always wondering what it would be like to come home and continue my development career) it astounds me why anyone would pursue development there given the advertised salaries for developers. With the high cost of living and the ridiculously low (comparatively speaking) salaries, it's a wonder any software developer would even take an interview - especially given that software developers can make 3-4 times more in other markets with comparatively lower costs of living. The only market that appears to differ from this (based on advertised salaries) is the banking/finance sector. But despite the fact that they're not doing anything that the rest of the technology sector are doing (from a technology perspective), their incestuous hiring practices make it all but impossible to get in unless you know the right person or already specifically have banking/finance experience. So you could have 25 years of extremely relevant experience from other fields spread across various startups, small businesses and huge multibillion dollar corporations, have in depth experience writing platforms and APIs for leading corporations with highly scalable web facing platforms with all the latest technologies, have spent 5 years at some point in your past cobbling together antiquated technologies such as Access databases and Excel spreadsheets, just as many of these companies still are, but unless you've specifically got experience in the financial sector, they're not interested... despite their common claim that it's really hard to find good developers. It's not hard to find good developers if you take your blinkers off and ask yourself what is it you're doing that's so special that you can't hire someone with all the right personality traits and technological experience but because of some arbitrary bias that they don't specifically have experience in your sector, they're unsuitable. So that's my two biggest gripes about hiring practices - one specifically pertaining to hiring software developers in Europe, but the other equally applies in North America too. Agism isn't nearly as evident as cronyism and incest.

_delirium 11y ago
In Denmark, the usual reason people work here despite higher salaries elsewhere is that many people just strongly prefer to live in Denmark (or if not in Denmark, at least in the Nordic region), for a mixture of cultural and quality-of-life reasons. The specific reasons vary based on the person, but some include: this is where your family/friends already are, prefer the urban layout of the cities (transit, biking, safety, etc.), prefer the working conditions (hours, vacation policies), prefer the social support, especially for families (subsidized childcare, parental-leave policies, no university tuition), etc. That and reasons like people wanting to raise their kids as Danes, which is harder to do if they grow up elsewhere. It's very common for people to work abroad for a bit in their 20s, though, as a kind of seeing-the-world thing that combines work and tourism, and then return later.