So why does Europe have such hard time popping new software ventures like the US? Is it market fragmentation? Languages? Is it capital allocation related problems?
I feel that the ability to bootstrap projects in all the large EU countries is way harder than the US, or smaller euro ones (like the Netherlands or Estonia).
In Spain for example, the cost of something similar of an LLC is way higher than in the US, not to mention that you have to pay almost 400€/month (at minimum) just for owning the company as Social Security fee, even if I'm also working for someone else paying my social security through my salary.
It's a huge burden if you're in my situation, which is having an average salary, not a lot of savings and you don't have a family that bails you out.
If language were a major barrier; then, how does one explain the US doing well in the EU?
I get that home markets may not be big and provide a springboard perhaps to other markets but even the big countries there don’t seem to dominate the small countries in terms of Software.
One good entrepreneur said that focusing first on 2 markets would be ideal when starting out. They went for 5 markets and said it was too much hassle. In the end focused on US/Polish market.
IMO language is big barrier as just testing different text in UI is a lot of hassle when starting out - not to mentions laws, cultures difference, dealing with business partners etc. is much harder due to that.
IMO common law/company to easily hire people across EU would help.
Yeah, I don't think language is really the issue. I mean, it can be a barrier, but I doubt it's the most important one. I think access to money is #1. The US, especially Silicon Valley, has a culture of taking risks, of venture capital, and it has a culture of bringing people together in order to get that money in the hands of startups. Europe tends to be more risk-averse. We want to invest, but only once it's clear it's going to be a success. People are much less eager to take risks with their money, and entrepreneurs are less eager to risk bankruptcy.
> If language were a major barrier; then, how does one explain the US doing well in the EU?
Hypothesis: A lot of people read English well enough to use apps and websites even before automatic translation was built into e.g. Chrome and Safari; but translation into your mother tongue is much easier than transition into a second language.
I think this has been debunked? Just look at Sweden as an counter example or Israel.
I believe it’s just the lack of massive capital and the power law of VC investments. Start 1000s companies with smart people and a tiny fraction will get insanely big.
If Sweden and Israel are good counter examples, maybe there's something to that language barrier after all; Sweden and Israel are both countries with an excellent command of English.
Hiring SE in Sweden takes minimum 6 months. Take into account a Union to deal with. It's probably too complex for some startups. Does it make Sweden a good example for starting a company or bad one?
On the other hand, people in Sweden are positive about hiring (and sometimes being hired as a) freelancer. But that's not a company, right?
This is probably true, because I know many Europeans that come to America and start their startups. So it may not be that there are few European startups, just few startups targeting that market.
Israel is economically very tightly integrated with the US, they have the oldest Free Trade Agreement with them (1985). One third of their exports go to the US and having such an old FTA means it has become very cheap for companies to setup branches overseas.
>So why does Europe have such hard time popping new software ventures like the US?
The US has a very mature and developed tech VC scene. Where's Europes isn't as mature. Also clustering is a thing -- why didn't Silicon Valley happen in New York either -- many of the conditions were there just like California but it didn't materialize and Europe was simply a mess in the aftermath of WWII there weren't going to be many tech revolutions taking place there.
In fact ironically enough there was such a congregation of talent in Berlin in the 1930s that some have predicted a second "Renaissance" was inevitable were it not for WWII.
You can look at the two world wars as an elaborate suicide attempt of Europe which resulted in handing over the world to the US.
It's quite depressing really.
I can only speak for myself, but I find the amount of legal red tape you need to deal with incredibly discouraging.
I'll much rather build and run software for free in my spare time than start a business since the latter would mean having to spend dozens of hours every week dealing with all manner of bureaucracy.
I have the capacity and funds to start a business, but I just don't think it's worth the hassle.
I have a hard time to see how Europe would be any more bureaucratic then the US. Working for a European company that do business with American companies every now and then I can say that the contracts lengths and the legal staffing is a factor of ten higher every time we try to deal with an American customer. Heck involving lawyers just to sign standard contracts is not even something we have to do with European customers generally.
That's not a good example at all. You have to compare starting a company in the US (as a US citizen) vs starting a company in the EU (as an European).
Doing international business is always difficult and the additional hassle when you deal with American customers says absolutely nothing about the overhead of starting a domestic company.
In NL, a single example would be the urencriterium (hours criterion). Ill simplify it a bit but it involves 2 criteria:
1) You spend at least 1225 hours on your business.
2) If you've been an entrepreneur for the last 5 years you must spend more time on your business than your job.
If you meet it you get various tax discounts that I wont attempt to describe here. (or pay extra if you don't, depends how you look at it)
Thus the reality is that you run from left to right with your attention chopped up over 1000 things simultaneously while in theory you have to write down all time spend on each business related activity. Almost everything counts as long as you document it. If the description is to generic it is rejected.
Of course there are exceptions too! In the [corona] period 1 January 2021 tot 1 Juli 2021, if you were unable to do work, you may count 24 hours per week. It might be attractive to write things down anyway as it might add up to more than 24.
Now [say] some former employer asks you to do some work for a few months. He wants to pay you a salary as usual but you prefer freelance while the work is unrelated to your company. Do you start an extra company for it???? Will you fail to make enough hours cleaning your office and organizing your desktop??? How much will it cost you if you don't reach the magic 1225 number???
Or say the business is a moderate success, some money comes in, you might be able to survive, the feature set is complete and you ran out of bugs to fix. How spend your time now? You want to get a job but if you spend more time doing that it costs money.
In the US, everyone is used to the legalism and you just fire over mostly standard units that get modified in known ways. i.e. you know where your levers are. Vendor contracts are easy to read because they're mostly standard.
In the EU, there's a lot of this "what the regulator currently will accept". By the letter of the law, in the worst case, our business in the EU could not have existed. But it did exist and thrive.
The standardization in the US makes it easy. But if I ever have to figure out something for Germany again, I'll slit my throat and feed lizards with my blood first.
For many, Big Government is probably a big part of it here in Belgium. The public sector is so big that many software engineers can spend their entire career as overpaid government contractors.
Military-industrial contracting in the United States seems to suck up a vast amount of developer talent, and that's all public spending. I'm not sure how you're distinguishing developers working in the fields of public health care, public education, public infrastructure etc. from those working under the secrecy umbrella of the military-industrial contracting system in this argument?
The amount spent does not say anything about efficiency if you don't consider what is provided with that money. Lack of free healthcare and education are some of the biggest complaints about the US after all.
Europe is also doing pretty well in several fields and you don't explain at all how tech in particular is affected by public spending.
Public spending is not the biggest issue. The problem is that having lots of government employees in cushy jobs starves the labor market of talent. Why take on a risky job at a flimsy startup when you can have a nearly guaranteed income till retirement in a 9-5 job?
I might take a risky job if the upside justifies the risk. But even in the US, the amount of stock options granted to employees (apart from the very earliest ones) will only result in a big pay-offs for the most successful of startups, and even then requires a lot of risk and/or sticking it out. EU startup culture appears less generous with equity and growth potential but doesn't make up for it with higher salaries.
We have those in the US too, it's called the "defense" industry. Our permanent wartime economy isn't for the good of most Americans or our talent pool—free education and healthcare (the largest discrepancy in public funding between the US and EU) would increase available talent but is considered authoritarian despotic socialism/communism within the American Overton Window.
Why take on a risky career path like being a doctor if best case you're half a million in debt and that's assuming you don't get weeded out at any point? It's no surprise we have shortages of engineers, doctors, nurses, teachers, etc.
Even a bachelor's degree is on average 32k for in-state at public colleges assuming you graduate in 4 years. Contrast that with my German peers who didn't pay anything and yeah, maybe I wouldn't have been a software engineer if everything else wasn't so volatile. I certainly don't feel as essential as doctors or nurses, especially now.
Sure it's cheaper to start a LLC in the US and you can hire/fire on a whim practically, but 63% of Americans don't have enough savings to cover a $500 emergency. Doesn't exactly leave a lot of wiggle room unless your parents have a basement for your MVP and some seed money.
Well, you will pay these 20k only the 40-ish years you'll work, while you'll pay your US health care insurance until you die. The average American pays more for healthcare over their live than the average European, and the outcomes are objectively worse.
Also, EU governments provide retirement benefits while the US's doesn't. This is the main expenditure for these governments.
Not saying that your argument has not some truth in it, but it's definitively wrong in the case of healthcare.
It's not in the top 5 by number of patients treated.
Anecdotally I met people who went to Germany, Israel, India and Thailand for treatment, I never heard of anyone even discussing going to the US. The visas alone are a nightmare.
I see someone shifting the goalposts here, first we were saying that US healthcare is not worse in any metric, then we started measuring it's success by medical tourism, now are down to some special rare diseases.
Let's come back to where we were before, measures per unit of money spent, US healthcare delivers worse outcomes that any other developed nation. Measured in average health of its citizen, the outcomes aren't great. Life expectancy, and other metrics aren't particularly amazing.
> to the point that the U.S. is a huge medical tourism destination.
Of course, if you have the money to fly to the US, stay in the US and pay out-of-pocket for a medical procedure in the US, then yes, the US is a good destination. Which translates into: if you're rich, medicine in the US is great.
However, not all of us are rich. And definitely not all Americans are rich.
>Americans cite cost savings as the most common reason to go abroad for health treatment, as medical procedures in foreign hospitals can cost thousands of dollars less than in the United States. This is especially true for those without health insurance—for an uninsured person, a knee replacement can cost
$30,000 in the United States, compared to $12,000 in India. Many health travelers also go abroad for elective procedures such as cosmetic surgery that regular policies may not cover.
In other words, they largely go outside the US to save money on either cosmetic or routine procedures that, for one reason or other, US insurance won't cover.[1] Not same thing as the earlier discussion of rare or difficult conditions.
[1] Or they've chosen to not get health insurance. Post-Obamacare, this means that they are willingly paying the tax penalty for not having insurance. 91% of Americans have health insurance.
> Not same thing as the earlier discussion of rare or difficult conditions.
There was no earlier discussion of "rare or difficult conditions".
> 91% of Americans have health insurance.
That health insurance is often tied to the employer and wildly varies in what it offers. And you have to fight insurance tooth and nail to get what you need. Even on a good insurance.
In 2020, 8.6 percent of people, or 28.0 million, did not have health insurance at any point during the year.
The percentage of people with health insurance coverage for all or part of 2020 was 91.4.
More children under the age of 19 in poverty were uninsured in 2020 than in 2018. Uninsured rates for children under the age of 19 in poverty rose 1.6 percentage points to 9.3 percent.
--- end quote ---
I can't imagine a European saying "yeah, we have 28 million uninsured, many of them kids, it's their own fault".
> You did not believe the 91% figure I provided, so frantically looked for evidence to support your presupposition that only the top 1%
Stop inventing arguments for other people, and then bravely fighting these arguments.
> found that the 91% figure is indeed accurate, so could only come up with the above as riposte.
Yes. It's a valid riposte: I cannot imagine a European proudly "debunking" something by saying "yeah, we have 28 million people uninsured, it's their own fault"
> The US mixed system of public and private healthcare coverage is quite similar to the system used in Germany, Switzerland, and other countries
It's not.
> Before Obamacare, about 85% of Americans had health insurance.
Before, during, and after Obamacare 100% Europeans (well, not entirely true [1]) have insurance
> or a German who changes jobs and neglects to transfer coverage to a provider that serves his new industry.
Your medical insurance is not tied to your job in Germany (or anywhere in Europe).
> Yes, 85%. Again, contrary to what Reddit told you.
You keep inventing arguments for your opponent and bravely debunking them. The only numbers I provided are taken directly from US Census.
[1] some (8 in 2016, 4 in 2020) countries in the EU have lower insurance rates. However:
- these countries keep increasing coverage or implementing reforms to bring universal healthcare (Cyprus an Ireland)
- even "uninsured" still have free access to emergency care and care during pregnancy (e.g. Romania)
>Yes. It's a valid riposte: I cannot imagine a European proudly "debunking" something by saying "yeah, we have 28 million people uninsured, it's their own fault"
The US is a country of 330 million. I can say that out of 80 million Germans at least 2-3 million (3%) are without health insurance. Is that something to be "proud" of? Or, as I said, are such gaps inevitable in any health-insurance system that a) requires some sort of membership (i.e., almost all developed countries outside the UK NHS), plus b) the US's unique situation of another 3-4% without health insurance inherent from having 10 million illegal aliens within its borders?
>> The US mixed system of public and private healthcare coverage is quite similar to the system used in Germany, Switzerland, and other countries
>It's not.
In what way are the systems greatly different? In both the US and Germany/Switzerland/etc., people obtain insurance from either a variety of private sources (in the US, nonprofit or for-profit) or public (in the US, Medicare, Medicaid, military Tricare, Indian Health Service). Post-Obamacare, the US also mandates that those without insurance obtain it from some source, whether public or private.
Now, you may quibble and say that the hundreds of German sickness funds are not really "private" because they are nonprofit, but they are independent from the government like their US counterparts, both nonprofit (example: Kaiser) and profit (example: Aetna). Both countries' systems differ from, say, the UK NHS (which handles both payment and delivery), the Canadian single-payer system (which handles payment, with no alternative allowed by law), or the Australian system (single-payer, but with a heavy emphasis on encouraging people to move to private plans).
>Your medical insurance is not tied to your job in Germany (or anywhere in Europe).
I didn't say that insurance in Germany is tied to one's job. However, German coverage offerings, providers, and types of providers (public or private) differ depending on whether one is an ordinary private-sector employee, a government employee, or student. Also, German employers pay for part of employees' premiums, as in the US.
>- even "uninsured" still have free access to emergency care and care during pregnancy (e.g. Romania)
This is true as well in the US; the EMTALA law prohibits turning away anyone from hospitals regardless of ability to pay.
- German public insurance is priced according to income, not health condition. Preconditions aren't a thing°
- You know that the treatment is covered before it begins. There are no surprise costs. There are rarely any costs at all, except for a 5-10€ deductible that cannot go above a certain monthly amount.
- It covers your dependents for free.
- It covers students for very cheap.
- It covers you in all of the EU, by law. This includes internships abroad.
Basically, you can trust your insurance to fully cover all necessary care, with no exceptions.
Re-read what you replied to: they were talking about "the average American", not the richest ones.
The total societal outcome -- spending vs outcome -- and therefore the average outcome too, for the USA as compared to most other developed countries... Pretty much sucks.
The US government provides extensive retirement benefits similar to the EU in both type and dollar value. These are some of the biggest spending line items in the US budget: Social Security, Medicare, etc.
My US government provided pension will be something like $3500/month when I reach retirement age. This is in addition to any personal retirement savings.
20k of GDP per capita means in any year of your life, even after 65.
People migrate to the US before the EU. Besides, US lifestyle (also a high tax country btw) is not the only possible alternative to european style quasi socialism (56% on the way there)
The EU is not anymore quasi socialist than the US.
Incidentally I'd say most western countries are way too close to socialism, I'd rather see more private entities taking over security, healthcare and law making.
It's just that there is no money, so private EU companies suck so there is no money.
The lack of strong companies doesn't imply socialism. Most people in Europe has most of their trade interactions with other individuals and private businesses.
Society and the world at large doesn't revolve around individuals. Despite not having had any major health expenditures myself (for now), I have absolutely no problem with supporting a system that allows for those less fortunate to not have to worry about it, among other things. Frankly, anything else is simply barbaric.
The majority (or easily over 80%) of the EU's high taxation incomes are not being spent solely to support the people who can't afford their own healthcare or on those who are truly in need of that money, so that argument is pointless.
Unless you are a millionaire you can't live well in EU. If you are just a regular tech worker advancing in your career can actually reduce your salary because of the tax brackets.
British limited companies are probably among the simplest and cheapest to incorporate and manage in the world but, well, the UK is no longer in the EU...
I have never understood why countries slap so much red tape and so many fees on this. The UK has got it right, IMHO: make it as cheap and simple as possible, there are only upsides [Edit: for society/the state] to people starting up a business.
>there are only upsides to people starting up a business.
that is not true at all. The majority of business ventures fail and a lot of small businesses aren't productive, and at the end of the day someone needs to pick the tab up. Even Thiel used to say, don't start a business until you have a very good reason to.
What you actually want is to incentivize the kind of people to start a business who have a high chance of driving innovation and bringing about large, productive firms, you don't really want an army of self-employed people with low capital formation in a developed country.
I meant that there are only upsides for society and the state. Sure the people and investors who start a business take a risk, but the state does not: If the new business fails the state loses nothing, if the new business succeeds then wealth and taxes are produced. So make it as simple and cheap as possible to incorporate and to run a business and reap the benefits later.
the state takes a pretty big amount of risk and costs. Who pays healthcare, who pays maternity leave and social security in a fast and loose labor market like that? The answer in the US often is, nobody or the federal government.
In a country like Germany, France or in Scandinavia running a business is harder because there's an expectation that businesses can take care of their workers. A lot of red tape exists to make sure that a business can shoulder these things. In fact in Scandinavia eliminating unproductive firms through measures like wage compression was deliberately part of their social model to drive concentration and creation of productive firms.
There really are a lot of implications to creating the sort of environment that the US or to a lesser extent the UK has, and it doesn't work well with the economic model of most of Europe.
> Who pays healthcare, who pays maternity leave and social security in a fast and loose labor market like that?
Are you from Scandinavia? Because the state pays these things (except maternity leave) in Denmark, whether you're in a job or not, so no there really isn't a risk to the state. The only thing the business is paying for is your salary, pension (if they offer it) and other "bonuses" (if they offer them).
My wife is (and owned a business). As far as I'm aware that information is not correct. If I remember correctly in Denmark you have to pay mandatory social security (ATP), industry injuries insurance, a sort of vocational and training fee (AUB it's called I think), another labour market insurance thing with a triple letter name, and there might be another one if you have foreign workers. Denmark may still have lower labor related costs than the rests of Scandinavia and a somewhat more flexible system but it still has some of the highest labor costs in Europe and employers take a good amount of responsibility, and that's a vital part of the system. (and to note we never thought of it negatively).
> In a country like Germany, France or in Scandinavia running a business is harder because there's an expectation that businesses can take care of their workers. A lot of red tape exists to make sure that a business can shoulder these things.
That's not true. Red tape is red tape, it serves no other purpose that perpetuating itself (and since we're on this topic there is much less red tape in the UK than in France or Germany.
If you're a business an hire someone then you have to pay their salary and any taxes to finance healthcare and other benefits. OK. There is no need for red tape for this or to make it difficult upfront to incorporate a company, just make it clear and simple to know what to pay and how to pay it when or if you hire someone.
This has been discussed before. Although the EU is a marketplace of 27 countries, it is not a digitally homogeneous marketplace. Adoption and acceptance of digital tools varies by country. Language is also important - the tech giants localise their apps and tools. But many software companies in larger European countries (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK etc) concentrate on their home country first before they focus on international reach. That makes sense. However, in smaller countries, where the software market is also smaller, software companies have a more international outlook (i.e. eyeing the US market).
Even when there are local apps available, many small businesses (and larger ones) will stick with services from big, well-known tech companies. Why? I guess because of inertia, or simply because those products feel safe and familiar.
Where are the pan-European equivalents to eBay, Etsy, KickStarter, AirBnB, Shopify, AbeBooks, etc? Europeans use these services entensively. You'll probably find local equilavents in each European country, but they are not pan-European or global in scope.
if anything the opposite should be true: A small homogeneous market with a language barrier is a great testing ground where a new product can grow and then become global. Facebook started in harvard, and some EU fintech startups are doing well in Sweden, i hear.
Global expansion is not an issue; every american company can easily reach the whole of EU. And there are many many european startups whose main market is america. Unless you mean that, products are so tailored to their home market that they don't have global appeal.
> So why does Europe have such hard time popping new software ventures like the US?
Because people in Europe still largely believe that a business should be an actual business. You know, operating and bringing profit.
Unlike the US where nearly every single "unicorn" can lose billions of dollars a year for over a decade, never see a profit, and still be lauded as a successful business.
I can feel it myself. I am very reluctant to create a money losing business. It is a deep-seated fear (I'm creating a new business at the moment). Where I got this from, parents, culture, common sense, whatever, doesn't really matter. I would not personally feel successful if I had created Uber, I'd just feel stressed and kind of a fraud. End of story.
So for my new business I'm not getting VC funding even though I know some VCs and they made it clear I could get money from them. I want to build a real business that is actually sustainable on its own terms. This will inevitably limit my reach and likely means I won't create a "tech company", but I've made my peace with that.
The question is what happens if/when it stops being sustainable. It's not so easy to adjust from those sorts of salaries downwards. The endless flow of VC money into absurd startups with no business plan worth a damn is caused by groupthink and extremely bad monetary policy by supposedly "independent" central banks. They aren't really independent of course, they're creatures of government and politicians can reign them in any time they want.
Why would they do so? Inflation. Bubbles. The sort of problems that have occurred repeatedly throughout history. And what happens when they respond by raising interest rates and ceasing to buy up all the low risk debt instruments? Well, suddenly boring but profitable businesses become useful to invest in again because they pay out dividends and the like. That in turn leads to a sucking sound as money flows out of the venture and equity markets, which makes it harder for those businesses to buy up all the talent, trashes the returns offered by VC funds and makes "sell $1 for $0.90" type business models unsustainable.
Fundamentally, the salaries we earn now from US firms may not be reflective of the value we're actually creating. They may be partially an artifact of money printing. Of course, the Eurozone prints money up the wazoo too so I'm not saying that in relative terms EU/US programmer salaries will get closer just that the very high salaries and proliferation of zombie fake businesses may go away.
> Of course, the Eurozone prints money up the wazoo too
I disagree that the ECB prints as much money as you say. Sure we have had ridiculous amounts of "quantitative easing", but this has been nowhere near as bad as it has been in the US. The frugal EU countries (Germany, Netherlands, Austria, etc.) always keep a leash on the ECB.
I don’t understand - what do you think is the problem with this? What exactly is wrong there?
They aren’t spending your money, or tax payer money. They’re doing nothing but pumping money into workers’ hands and the economy, creating thousands of skilled jobs. It’s currently a massive wealth-redistribution system.
Why are you sarcastically turning your nose up at it, based on some accounting metric, that doesn’t even involve or effect you? Why don’t we want this in Europe?
> They’re doing nothing but pumping money into workers’ hands and the economy
They are not really pumping that money into workers and economy given how they don't want to spend any money on drivers.
> Why are you sarcastically turning your nose up at it, based on some accounting metric
It's not "some accounting metric". The measure of a successful business is whether it can support itself. And not if it can siphon unlimited investor money for a decade.
> Why don’t we want this in Europe?
Because those 20 billion dollars are better spent on actual businesses.
> They are not really pumping that money into workers and economy
Uber pays thousands of engineers hundreds of thousands of dollars. They all live and spend in their local communities.
> The measure of a successful business is whether it can support itself.
Well this is the major difference - in the US they’re happy to invest and work for the long term, not short-term profits.
> Because those 20 billion dollars are better spent on actual businesses.
Why do you care or have an opinion on where someone else invests their money?
I’ve had to work my whole career for North American companies because European ones can’t even begin to compete. It’s madness to say Europe is better off with our bargain basement tech sector.
> Uber pays thousands of engineers hundreds of thousands of dollars.
It's not even close to "thousands of engineers". It's ~23k employees, not engineers.
The absolute vast majority of its employees are not engineers. And their salaries are of course laughable. It's barely median U.S. salary for employees, and below median for drivers [1]
So much for "investing in economy", "pumping money into workers’ hands" and other bullshit. It's a yet another unbelievably unprofitable American "unicorn" driving wages down and passing all costs onto its employees.
> Well this is the major difference - in the US they’re happy to invest and work for the long term, not short-term profits.
10 years and loss of 20 billion dollars is not "working for the long term".
> Why do you care or have an opinion on where someone else invests their money?
Ah yes. I'm not allowed to have an opinion. It's not as good of an argument as you think it is
> I’ve had to work my whole career for North American companies
Good for you. It's still not as good as argument as you think it is.
Is that the only thing you can find to respond to? They raised a perfectly valid point about how Uber is not at all profitable but you did not respond to it at all
Per levels.fyi, Uber pays senior engineers in the Netherlands ~180k/year. That's a difference of ~2x compared to the US, and is pretty much top-of-market for the region. If by "local market rates" you mean "slightly more than the best-paying native tech companies", then sure.
Someone else already said acquisitions but the other half of the answer is finance. The US has the most rich and ruthless financial system in the world, with gigantic flows with comparatively little oversight. There's simply enough built up to finance eternal unicorns.
You're oddly being downvoted for that. Not being paid nearly as highly in tech in general, detracts from how much money is in the ecosystem for doing start-ups.
If you can sock back a retirement working for big tech for 10-12 years (counting equity), it frees you up massively to do whatever you like, whether funding as an angel, or self-funding your own start-ups. It's not uncommon for people you know in tech in Silicon Valley to pitch in on early small funding rounds if you've started something new and are rounding up some early funds. Multiply that wide process by the scale of the US tech industry - at the small and large ends - and all the wealth that has been created in it over the past 30 years.
1.3 million software developers with a median salary of $110,000 is a lot of money just from the software developer worker bees every year (save N% per year of that pile, now it's available for investment in one form or another; and that's ignoring the equity value they're yielding).
Europeans are a lot worse at capitalism, in general, than Americans. Partly because we're not required to be. Western Europeans are more or less born into a massive insurance scheme that will bail you out whenever the going gets tough. This is mostly good, IMO, but not without cost.
The reason is that EU is an open economy that is not even TRYING to become independent.
China knew that America will try to crush them. It's a real, literal, life or death situation for them to come up with a Chinese Google. They have pumped trillions into the tech industry over decades.
Ok I perhaps misspoke because we would want them, if they came without costs.
And by cost I mean law and regulatory environment necessary for such companies.
In EU generally speaking law is in favor of the people (individuals) a lot more than in USA (there are huge exceptions to this like defamations (or anything to do with banks), but I still believe its true.).
There are stories about EU fining USA corporations and how that is unfair.
But they fine local ones as well, so breaking things (as in breaking/ignoring law ) and moving fast ends up with law breaking you long before you are successful enough that you can shrug it off.
It's not hard to start business in EU, but it's hard to get hokey stick growth. There are plenty of small to mid level companies in EU that pay well to founders and it's employers.
But if you are trying to get hokey stick growth, EU is not optimal, so why even bother starting there since you can go straight to USA most of the time ?
And honestly speaking if we would have to import American style laws/ regulatory environment in order to get them here, I would rather choose not to have them
This isn’t really a plausible root cause. These companies in the U.S. that are supposedly acquiring everyone (and they aren’t: there are record numbers of unacquired unicorns and IPOs recently) were small once too. That just begs the question: How did the U.S. get all the large acquirers in the first place?
because the internet got big in the U.S first and thus there were more companies being started over there and some of the companies started over there ended up the big ones?
in short, because time exists and effects all else in our reality.
I've talked to entrepreneurs about this over the years and even met a professor whose entire field of study (at that time) was why Europe/rest of world doesn't produce tech firms at the same rate as the USA. He had two explanations that seemed plausible:
1. The USA has a culture of granting equity to early employees. Equity grants are highly motivating. Such grants are expected and standardized. Rest of the world doesn't. Even as late as 2006, the Zürich tax authorities were needing extra time and special procedures to figure out what to do about Googler's equity and stock grants because a US firm setting up shop there was the first time they'd had to deal with this kind of compensation structure.
Evidence: one of the very few tech firms to get big in Europe (ARM) did grant equity to early employees.
2. USA is a large internal free market and this is a big deal.
ARM is a descendent of a computer company called Acorn. In the 1980s the UK was able to hold its own against US tech companies, in fact, Acorn RISC machines were in some ways technologically quite superior to the the US machines. I remember when I was a little kid, the teachers were constantly asking me to fix the school computers in various ways. The Acorn machines simply did not break, ever (well, maybe there were occasional issues with the printers). They were also easy to use and had a consistent UI, some great apps. Feeling kinda nostalgic to remember them really. The IBM PCs were just broken dreck that the schools put up with because they got them cheap via some subsidized scheme and had some unique apps, and Macs were nowhere to be seen.
Within a decade that situation had reversed and the Acorns were being pulled out. Why? Well, Acorn hit financial problems, partly because they were unable to sell into Europe due to bureaucracy and paperwork, and partly due to a failed attempt to expand into the USA, stymied partly by the same problems. The US firms didn't face this problem because of the ease of interstate commerce, so they were able to get big enough quickly enough that they could invest more into their tech and also hire the big legal/logistics teams necessary to move into foreign markets. The complexity of this is a large fixed cost, but the size you can get to before you have to tackle it isn't.
So, Acorn died off and ARM ended up taking on the low end microcontroller market. ARM grew quietly, getting big enough in a boring market that it could sell and hire internationally, and then the smartphone revolution hit and it grew very quickly. Why was it able to grow so quickly? Partly because by then it'd reached a size where it could do things like ... hire chip design teams in the USA. The UK is a country with 1/5th the population, after all.
It's capital. We simply don't have it, or it's not allocated to tech.
All these silly fees you mention are marginal. It would actually be much cheaper to hire devs from Europe, so cost is not the issue at all. It is simply a lack of capital altogether. Nor is there the risk taking that is required.
Cost of incorporating; cost of hiring and firing (this is a big one); and fragmented market in terms of policy, culture and language. Capital availability, until recently, but I don't think that's an issue anymore.
The costs you list are dwarfed if a company scales to any reasonable size and by that point they have enough of a team to consider moving elsewhere in the EU to better manage them. In fact, moving to the US might open up as an opportunity which some people take.
The biggest problem is funding due to the risk aversion of EU institutions and limited alternative sources. You have to be incredibly qualified to acquire the funding need to drive a startup forward in the way that happens in the US. This ranges from the small angel investors through to the first series of VC funding.
In the EU, if you are a business like a biotech or pharma you may be able to navigate this because those are well trodden paths with high risk adversity baked in. A software company has many unknowns, so you encounter problems with expectations. You can't fail in the EU because you only have one shot and won't get back again with another company/idea. In reality, it's very likely you'll stumble a lot initially and won't have the leeway that you have in the US. If you compared bankruptcy on both sides of the Atlantic you'd notice similar patterns.
I can understand having setup a company inside an EU country, but the lesson I got as a developer is that I need to think bigger if you want to have a sustainable business. You can build and validate startup ideas very cheaply by either using budget hosting, or trials of cloud products. EU companies often have to go down the path of consulting part-time, or building the product for one customer who covers most costs with the goal of extracting V2 as a general product.
Developers can have a very idea idea of cost management and what is valuable. They may be either blowing their employer's money on inefficient AWS solutions, or they are building their own k8s cluster on cheap VPSes because they felt that the managed solutions were expensive. It's an easy trap to fall into. You need to have a balance that is sustainable and productive. It was much easier to understand the whole space when we were building on LAMP or Ruby-on-Rails than it is now.
It's best to have a partner who is very business-savvy to help with navigating these options. If you only look at it from the tech perspective you'll fail quickly.
I would turn that question around. How have the US become this hub for tech-companies? Probably culture and momentum. The same reason a small country like Sweden managed to become the third-largest music exporter in the world.
And also European companies are moving to the US to start and/or grow their businesses there. Why is Spotify even listed on the NY stock exchange?
Another thing - most european companies will reduce your salary and treat you as a slave if you are working as a contractor outside the EU (since no one can punish them that way).
I can confirm that an ex FB guy who went full-remote digital nomad style earlier this year and wanted to move as a senior developer for a French startup simply because he loves their idea (and it'd be easier for him due to timezones while he stays in Thailand/Cambodia) and guess what they did? They offered him less than half as compared to an actual junior position, even though they received milkions in funding, and the reason? He lives in a "cheap" place therefore he doesn't need a high salary anymore, who cares of his expertise, it's not going to be "fair" towards the other workers in the company.
I'd guess that the biggest factor is their Venture Capital firms are way more risk averse. The US in general has a more entrepreneurial culture, and therefore a bigger risk appetite.
Language is a big barrier.
With my first startup waiterio.com we had to build a lot of custom tools to narrow the linguistic gap.
I'm turning one of the tools into a public SaaS:
https://www.polyblog.io helps you build multi-language blogs.
> So why does Europe have such hard time popping new software ventures
So what makes you think that "popping new software ventures" is a good thing for society? Isn't there enough software already? The problem is the mediocre quality of it, and decline (hello Adobe). Popping new software ventures is hardly a solution.
This is not even debateable. Software is eating the world and there's still a lot to eat. Europe won't be selling leather bags for much longer. The fact that it excluded itself from the future of the internet is a crime for the future generations.
New ventures is a solution for decline of old ones. The circle of life... It's a necessity, in fact. Cells need to divide and renew, organisms need to reproduce. Companies are the same.
You could look into Estonian e-residency for setting up a company outside of Spain. You’re usually still taxable in your country of residence within the EU, so it’s not a tax avoidance scheme, but it might change your personal insurance status? Just an idea, those 400€ sound awful…
It is beyond insanity. And should you succeed in France/Belgium/Spain you'd be seen as the evil capitalist responsible for all that is wrong in the EU.
The whole mentality is rotten.
The EU has one big software company and it's... SAP. SAP is a drop in the bucket compared to the big US or Chinese tech firms (I don't think SAP is worth even 1/10th of any GNAFAM). But there's worse: I think SAP's market cap is worth basically as much as the next 50 or next 100 (or maybe basically all the others) EU software companies. Something crazy like that.
So one successful software company (thankfully we have Germany in the EU and SAP if, of course, German).
It's a failure whose level of failure cannot be understated.
So it's an enormous, wealthy country where there is lots of investment. Obviously there are other factors but these seem blindingly obvious as starting points.
I find the UK's inability to compete with the US web giants depressing. I don't like the idea of relying on a few American companies for search, cloud infra and so on. I'd love to see us build a British Google for example. I don't like the guy at all, but I agree with Dominic Cummings that we should focus our efforts on something like this.
I'm not arguing for web service nationalism but, for economic and security reasons, way more nation states should be looking to encourage the building of their own web backbone companies. It would also be good for general Internet resiliency to not have so few companies and single points of failure.
> I'd love to see us build a British Google for example.
Here in France we have (had ?) Qwant[1] that never really worked because at first it was about having a search engine at the level of Google, then being user privacy focused (like DDG), then being focused on kids, then on music, then...
But from the beginning it was failing because they were just providing a proxy for Bing's results. They were not even providing a sanitized version of those results. It was Bing's results with a different UI.
And then, because they needed money, they focused on some topics (like the kids, which provided them public money) or music (income from partners companies).
Also there was a lot of political/bureaucratic crap involved within the direction.
So it looks like the issue is that it was people with money that said "we are going to be the French Google". But they hadn't enough money to do so and being "the French Google" is not enough.
If we look at DDG, first it was a bad search engine but they focused on their promise about user privacy. And then they improved their search engine from there. Now they are a credible alternative to Google because they have something that Google don't, while on the core feature (search engine) they are almost the same. If you want to compete, you have to offer something different while providing the same core features.
I think ProtonMail (Switzerland) is a good example. At the moment they don't provide a webmail as good as Gmail, but they provide great email service while focusing on user privacy. They are trying to compete against Google on email like DDG dig on search engine. And that's why it's more and more popular.
So there's probably a mindset issue : don't compete for the sake of competing. Offer something different and then try to reach the competitors level on the core feature. You can't beat a multi-billion giant at its own game.
I will take my 250k in London vs 450k in New York any time.
USA is just a third world country with a Gucci belt.
My family's value system is completely incompatible with how America operates and what drives people and organisations.
I have many senior dev friends who think the same.
I guess this is a Silicon Valley megacorp right? Who could afford those wages?! Over here in the UK, if you're absolutely shit hot, principal engineer type material, I guess £150k + is common. Maybe more if you're a true elite engineer, but US wages are surreal. As others point out though, we get a lot of great public services, state pensions and so on. All a tradeoff.
I'm not valuing it at 200k. You're basing that number on some extreme outlier 500k wage that was plucked out of the air. Hardly the norm in the US.
Fwiw, I'll grant that the US is ahead in big tech but I'd never move there. The quality of life is pretty poor compared to wealthy European countries. I've spent a lot of time there and I'm sorry to say, you seem a bit delusional to us over here. Life is hard in the US to many people here and kind of uncivilised in terms of social safety nets, inequality and any number of other metrics.
Even in California the median is around 120k. Well done for earning 500k but that is not a typical software engineer salary. Even at Google its under 300k, and FAANG-type companies are, by definition, outliers.
I don't need to worry about my family in Europe. No matter what health problems they have, they will be taken care of in a good public hospital and it won't cost them a thing.
When my kids are old enough to go to university, they won't have to take out a loan to pay for courses.
If they drop out of college, they'll still be able to get a decent job that pays a living wage.
They'll have access to affordable child care for their children, and they won't need a 200.000€ job just so they can afford living close to their job.
I don't have to be afraid of getting mugged or shot on the street if I go to the wrong part of town because we have much lower crime rates because our social security system helps people who run into hardship instead of punishing them.
If you compare US States to European nations it's easy to see that despite political polarization businesses in the states are extremely interactive and it makes easy for huge corps to grow throughout the USA.
Not sure if it's listed or not but one I'm pretty happy with is smallPDF based in Switzerland.
https://smallpdf.com/
I got pissed off when I wanted to rotate a PDF 90 degrees on my dad's computer and adobe wanted to charge for it, then I found that smallPDF could do that and a whole lot more like edits and signature collections. I ended up subscribing him but the free tier already does several things that adobe would charge you for so I encourage anyone to use this service.
I am continually frustrated at just how difficult of a problem simple PDF operations are on Windows PCs. Even looking for alternative PDF readers is a complex and confusing task. And, every top result wants to either charge or require an account to use it. The FOSS tools aren't great either. Why can't Microsoft make a product like Preview for Mac which allows for such things?!?
Shameless plug: I built https://simplePDF.eu as I was similarly frustrated by the lack of a good PDF editor when filling French paperwork.
Checkboxes for example did not seem to be available in any of the tools I found.
I also figured that if I had to spend the time to position the fields, someone else shouldn’t spend that time too: crowd-edited PDF if you will (the document never sees my server)
Basic PDF manipulation has been a constant thorn ever since I started using a computer. I still don't have a single source for it, either. Definitely looking into smallPDF
NAPS2 is primarily a scanner app, but it can also import existing PDF files, following which you can re-arrange and manipulate pages: https://github.com/cyanfish/naps2
But it's not. PDF Exchange has a free version and does this for free. There are other software available to do it as well as websites. It's not hard to find for anyone that knows how to type in a few words to google. Sumatra is also a great little pdf viewer (also some simple edits like rotation) for windows.
If you google "PDF Editor", PDF Exchange is not on the first three pages of results. Instead, you get the official Adobe product and other products that are all either paid or freemium. Given that it doesn't appear on the first page, how likely do you think it is the average person will discover PDF Exchange and avoid the hassle?
>"It's not hard to find for anyone that knows how to type in a few words to google."
I find this to be pretty dismissive and insulting.
Edit: Lo and behold, PDF-XChange Editor is also a product they are charging for. It is $46.50 for a single license, and there is also a PRO version which costs more. So again, it looks like we haven't solved the "free, simple PDF editor with no upcharge like what Apple provides with Preview" problem.
pdf90 (and 180 and 270) is available on just about any Linux distro. It's a single command. Not quite the same as smallpdf, but if all you're after is rotating ...
This list is just sad. I was thinking about what else could I say, but it's just sad. There's no area listed with an European solution that's comfortably in the top 3 in the world in its field. Maybe it is because this list is deliberately listing areas where the alternatives are less known (someone in another thread brings up SAP as an example).
I would consider DeepL to be comfortably the best translation service for the 24 languages they support. Their decision to support a lot of the less spoken languages in the EU (which have quite terrible support in Google Translate) has made the internet much more accessible for older people in my country who generally can't read English.
Yes, Europe has some tech areas where it is number one. Gambling is one I can think of. All the major sportsbooks, casino sites, poker sites and gambling backend companies are European. Also in porn many top sites are European. Onlyfans, Xvideos, Xnxx, LiveJasmin are all European. The Pornhub network was also started in Europe then sold to a Canadian. Also all major pirate sites and apps are European
Gonna get some hate of course but where’s SAP here? SaaS, private cloud in Rot, BW, Germany, and stringent data privacy as it’s a German company. Executes entirely under GDPR, ticks every of the boxes.
Europe’s biggest software company, never mentioned…
SAP is like Salesforce or SoftBank, in that nobody can figure out what they make or do, but the suits keep shoveling boxcars full of money at them for some reason.
Because SAP isn't an "alternative" it's the dominant player of it's own field. What alternative does the US have to SAP might be another perspective worth examining?
Weird that no service provided by seznam.cz is listed (I would expect at least their maps or email to be mentioned, while the search engine is tailored to czech language only so listing it would be less useful to most people outside of Czechia).
Exactly. Mapy.cz is a brilliant service with a ton of its own technology.
So does Seznam.cz search engine, which, I believe, has it's own crawler and rankings.
Email.cz is used by the most of Czech citizens. When someone asks you for an email address, it's common to reply with the username alone and just confirm it's hosted on Seznam.
mapy.cz is miles better in terms of hiking maps, sattelite/plane maps and regular maps compared to Googe Maps - at least in Czech Republic and Slovakia. And their apps have offline mode.
These listings seem limited from a cursory glance. And what does European mean?
If a German company hosts everything on Google or AWS is it still considered European? Or if a Romanian company moves HQ to New York and still does development mainly in Romania like UI Path?
Or what if you are an American company with all or most of your dev team in say Sweden or Hungary? Does that make you European?
And if you are say a non-European company but meet all the European data protection and compliance requirements and the European counterparts do not?
In this context "European Union" and the company is registered primarily in the EU and where the vast lionshare of profits are declared. The companies mentioned do appear tastefully (or limited in your words) curated are definitely EU based and lends some credence to the overall claim and purpose of page. I'm not seeing controversial 'European' companies that are actually American like Stripe. (Sometimes people claim Stripe to be Irish) -- Adyen is definitely Dutch for example and Mullvad is Swedish.
I'm not seeing anything with a Union Jack on the page and the UK would normally have some entries here. Switzerland and Norway are part of the EU institutions like Schengen and the EEA -- just not full members. So the author of the page does appear to have very good working definition of 'European' but it's not clear what exactly that is -- it's not in the terms page for instance.
I think the idea is companies that do not have a conflict of interest with the US. Although Microsoft claims their data in European data centers can not be given to the US government the US government doesn't see it that way and there are court cases being fought over this.
It's that why they don't operate the one of the Azure datacenters in Germany? It's managed by Deutsche Telekom and Microsoft doesn't have access.
Edit: They may have changed that, it's a Deutsche Telekom company that managed the physical access, that seems a little pointless, if everything is available via the internet.
I don't know, but it could be one of these older deals in which local companies could operate some kind of Azure datacenters. We had one like this in Norway with Evry before it stopped and got replaced by two Azure datacenters operated by Microsoft.
Good questions ... e.g. look where the founders of Elastic come from (Israel & Netherlands & Germany) and they initially incorporated in the Netherlands: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elastic_NV
Yes it probably means european as in the legal sense (where it's registered).
As for the last question, that doesn't mean you're an european alternative, you just do what you mentioned: either don't violate or are compliant with the EU policies.The website is probably meant for people who want to use services from inside the EU.
However, this needs to be reminded: if the EU wants to keep this dream of promoting tech development, it needs to look itself in the mirror when it comes to supporting/not supressing entrepreneurs with shitty legislation. They won't do it obviously, but the discussion needs to keep happening. Right now you still have the vast majority of old "boomers" that don't understand the way in which the whole pipeline works, the second biggest group is right out activists who frankly exaggerate when talking about technology(and it mostly has nothing to do with tech regulation/support but forcing tech into their own ideology) and the third group is probably the least popular one, with sensible people who understand you cannot regulate because that suppresses development, but at the same time recognize values and rights needs to be adapted to this medium, while being individual-focused.
I just clicked on the first one I liked (grape - in telecommunications), and it was just closed down due to insolvency. It mentions it had 500,000 users, which baffled me that they couldn't find investment for such an obviously liked and used product. EU startup landscape looks a bit depressing honestly.
Sorry, but that's not a reason for me to buy something. I prefer solutions that perform good over something whose only merit is that it has been made by my neighbor.
Instead of trying to guilt-trip people into buying why not come up with products that can compete in the global market? There's a few - I mean I'm a Spotify customer. But most EU tech is just garbage.
"I prefer solutions that perform good over something whose only merit is that it has been made by my neighbor."
I prefer supporting competition in the market, because I know that as soon as monopoly gets established it starts abusing all marlet participants and acting like a little dictator. Of course it doesn't have to be local.
Also Skype was really good before Microsoft bought it, i have no idea what that department is smoking
And that's great! Lots of us consider more than just "this is a well oiled global machine". That's the beauty of diversity and markets that support a diversity of opinions. I love and use some of these companies because they are in the EU which I consider further up on the "freedom" and "responsible global player" scale than my home country of the USA.
I'm interested in products that are not made with slave labour or under dictator regimes.
I feel like the site is trying to imply this... but Europeans are actually really good at modern day slave labour.
Don‘t forget: Local business means local taxes. So by supporting local businesses near your place you might indirectly profit from better infrastructure, better school etc. (things which are paid by the government with these local taxes).
Switzerland is in some EU institutions like Schengen.
Thus EU membership has lots of asterixes and grey areas unlike the US which is a federacy the EU is a confederacy (Look at Brexit). Switzerland is somewhat unique in that it's both EU and not EU. Take the UK for instance -- their grey area is "Northern Ireland".
It's almost exactly the full EU freedom of movement. In theory Swiss have to provide priority to Swiss nationals but otherwise there are no restrictions.
It's quite off-puting branding, playing with the flag of a bureaucratic institution like the EU.
If it was about what Europeans create, I would be receptive. Instead, they are promoting whatever is in the European Commission agenda, which is radically different to what I need.
You're being confused by a nasty habit many loyalists to the EU institutions have, of conflating the EU (a political system) with Europe and Europeans (a continent and people).
A good rule of thumb is that if a British person says Europe or European they mean "the continent" and are including Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, Lichtenstein, Vatican City etc, but excluding the UK itself.
If a German/French/Spanish/Italian person says Europe or European, especially if they've been to university, they a very likely to mean the EU and only the EU. These people usually don't consider Switzerland or Britain to the "European" as a consequence.
People outside of Europe always mean the continent and population, including the UK, when they use these terms.
> If a German/French/Spanish/Italian person says Europe or European, especially if they've been to university, they a very likely to mean the EU and only the EU. These people usually don't consider Switzerland or Britain to the "European" as a consequence.
German, been to university. Same for my whole social system. That's absolutely BS what you're saying. Especially German speaking countries have a stronger bond than EU/Europe because of "DACH" and a shared culture (see the anthroposophy discussion recently).
This thread is literally an example of it: the title claims to be "European alternatives" but the author really means the EU. No British firms are listed.
I don’t know who runs this but it’s definitely incomplete. Too bad the “European alternative” to webchat doesn’t even work on mobile. Maybe that’s the reason why it’s so incomplete
I run the site and as many things in life this site is a work in progress. I got many suggestions for new services in the last days, so there will be many more services in the future.
If you have suggestions I'm sure you can email them, and they will welcome then. This is probably just someone's hobby page like those “Awesome _________” pages on GitHub.
I can see this list get more useful as the categories get more complete.
I do question the design of the logo which makes the site look like an official EU initiative, which it is not. At best it's unintentionally misleading and at worst it might not be entirely legal.
This list is trash. Why, for example, is Hetzner missing in the cloud computation section? Or SAP? I could understand that they didn't want to over-emphasize any country and give a fair selection, but many countries, especially Germany, has many more companies in any of these spaces.
Thanks for the constructive criticism! Hetzner is now listed. (https://european-alternatives.eu/product/hetzner) Since Hetzner mainly provides virtual servers, I have created a separate category for them. I just wrote down SAP, here I still have to think of a suitable category.
Whoops, so sorry! I thought this was an official thing. If it's a WIP, then not a problem. There is going to be a lot of stuff you can list, like email providers taking privacy into account like protonmail or posteo.
EU investors, banks are too conservative, they only invest small amount of money and they are not comfortable taking risks. US on the other hand has built a much high tolerance for taking risks. They are ok with taking risks and loosing big time.
The sad state of EU IT is also due to the fact that US companies are much, much better at marketing their solutions.
Often even the european media landscape is only mentioning US services in reviews and comparison. The fact that it needs a page like this says a lot about how bad marketing of these european companies even in their home market is.
D̶e̶u̶t̶s̶c̶h̶l̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶ EU Über Alles ? Digital nationalism?
I don't really get this fragmentation in a free world. Why should i use product that is less competitive just because companyX servers a located in a country that is theoretically more friendly? Even that is a big question.
If you live in Poland or any Eastern European EU member, in this case GB, US do more to protect you from absolutely real War risk.
Germany, France, Austria government is absolutely corrupted they lead to situation when Russia think it can claim rights on other sovereign countries. Half of eastern Europe felt left behind. Same with China relationship. How many people will lose their job because china is building their capital on not fairly regulated market, stolen Intellectual property. EU don't care. No real protection. They afraid tensions(polite form of saying corrupted) even when this tension means protect own citizen.
At the same time ex german counselor works at Gazprom to Lobby corrupt interests. He got an official title. Russia takes this money and execute, poison people, blow up military objects in European countries.
But EU built a nice website to support corrupted governments via taxes. Maybe first get some responsibility and do your job?
Who said the product is inferior? Have you checked any of these?
More discoverability of alternative offerings is always better, for both the customer and supplier, unless the supplier is a monopolist.
In my experience middle sized companies that still have to prove themselves and build good will offer (much) better servivce / product than mature corporations run by beancounters who are focused on "monetising" their userbase most effectively.
because that what market shows. One market has 0 regulations and it strives. Other with all regulations and theoretically bigger population by almost 50% still struggles to be at comparable size.
One pays up to $500k a mo for a dev position other pays pennies promising you some kind of pension.
Classical regulated vs free market
You are stating your personal opinion as fact. There are many and varied views on the EU among Europeans, from euroscepticism all the way up to and including eurofederalism.
> I dont want to move to another country in Europe and learn their language.
Uhm, generally curious is anything you mentioned sans the language barrier and the tribalism which might come with it in some places really be that different from the US?
You got local taxes, why would the success of a company in SV mean anything to an engineer in NY? People move around EU all the time, London, Stockholm and Berlin are full of engineers from all over the place. Just like in the US, people move where there are jobs to be had and they care about success of companies.
Are there places which are keen on keeping to themselves? Sure maybe, but they are not the majority? Really hard for me to see your point with such sweeping generalizations.
Because you cant get employed in Europe as full time employee due to different tax residency and location where the company is HQd.
Most FTE positions are either
- employed by local branch of the company (it is not the same)
- you have your own llc and work as a contractor
- cross border worker with double taxation agreement
Moving around in Europe is not the same like in the US. There is nothing like “european citizenship”. It means nothing.
It makes more sense for me to move to Singapore or the US rather than Berlin.
Also a lot of europeans that do move to these EU locations never really can feel at home. Because after all it is a different country and you will always feel like a foreigner.
You work in Berlin but your heart is still in Warsaw.
"There is nothing like “european citizenship”. It means nothing."
Check your privilidge mate. Have you ever seen immigration papers citizens of Russia/China have to fill in?
Are you a terrorist? Have you ever expressed views that could be considered extreme?
Provide evidence you are going to return to your coutry after this visa expires. Oh, you are applying for permanent residency, prove that you have not been abroad for more that 520 days in 10 years. Alao provide us with proof of address in the form of utility bills for the past 10 years. If you are not on the right type of visa, no driving lisence and no mortgage for you.
Oh, you want to start a business, has your company been endorsed by one of our approved sponsors? Oh, you want to get a job, is it on the shortage occupation list? Oh , you want to bring your kids, do you earn enough to support them (by the way your wife's salary doesn't count because we said so)? Have you moved house, gotten married, got a new passport? Must registed with police withing 7 days but the waiting list to register is 3 months long. Lso we chanhe immigration rules twice a yeat and you have no way of knowing what we changed and why. You think we should explain the rules to you mate? Fuck off, pay an immigration solicitor.
I don't understand your point about FTEs. Again, how's that different to the US? If you're in the NY office it's not the same as SV HQ or you work remote from Idaho. And whether you work for a salary locally with your own LLC or contrast that against fewer taxes vs. cost of living in the city of your employer + moving seems to be a fairly reasonable tradeoff.
I haven't moved around the US personally, but know a great deal of people who do in Europe. Schengen must be 35 years old or so? Everyone can move where they want. And yes, there is, I guess, more cultural diversity in Europe, but that hasn't stopped most people. In fact, many find it freaking awesome. It makes for much more diverse discussions, food, music, opera, everything. Europe is Europe. And the US is the US. To me, neither cultural concept is per se better or worse. You get to enjoy slightly different things.
I can also tell you, from personal experience having lived in Berlin for many years now that there are tons of people from all around the world who disagree with you on not moving here.
And your last point... How would you feel at home moving to the US or Singapore if you can't even stomach moving from Warsaw to Berlin which is literally only a 6 hour drive by car???
I can tell you there are a ton of your countrymen and women enjoying life here and we have pretty awesome Polish cuisine throughout the city. If you ever come to Berlin, feel free to reach out via gbx at mailbox dot org. Definitely much more is possible in Europe than only ever staying in your home city.
Borders in Europe are defined by what you think is possible, not so much by what is, in fact, possible.
Cool! nice initiative.
For me is important my privacy, and using EEUU apps/services/dns/cloud/third parties things for using internet it should pass through EEUU services, threath analysis, NSA, FBI, Goverment interest, that's why this kind of initiatives are important.
FYI "EEUU" only makes sense in Spanish-speaking countries (AFAIK). When writing in English, for English-speaking audiences, use "the US". Otherwise everyone will be very confused, especially in the context of an article about the EU.
"United States" translates literally to "Estados Unidos" in Spanish. Because some rule that sounds unfathomably stupid to me, in Spanish you can turn that into EEUU instead of EU, because both the "E"s and the "U"s are plural ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
There's a few other examples I'm aware of, like FFAA for "Fuerzas Armadas" ("Armed Forces"), but I have the feeling this is an obsolete practice.
I feel that the ability to bootstrap projects in all the large EU countries is way harder than the US, or smaller euro ones (like the Netherlands or Estonia).
In Spain for example, the cost of something similar of an LLC is way higher than in the US, not to mention that you have to pay almost 400€/month (at minimum) just for owning the company as Social Security fee, even if I'm also working for someone else paying my social security through my salary.
It's a huge burden if you're in my situation, which is having an average salary, not a lot of savings and you don't have a family that bails you out.
Also, this listing lacks a few more that I listed here: https://iagovar.com/mapas/european-web-hosting-alternatives