As a German who's been exclusively working in the US tech space for the past few years, there's so many anecdotes that come to mind to highlight how far behind the old world is, both in tech as in spirit:
- Article about Gaia-X in major German newspaper FAZ explained that on AWS you can spin up your own infrastructure, "sometimes even without talking to anyone from sales", from your home!
- When I tried to read or watch reviews about SaaS solutions for invoicing / bookkeeping for German companies, the first half of the review is usually spent trying to convince people that moving off paper-based invoices and folders to all-digital is a good idea in the first place.
- University-educated people in my social circle are often woefully unaware of economic trends that have swept the US, be it the gig economy, X-as-a-service, the nature of Venture Capital, the idea of scaling a company aggressively, the value of information, mobility of labor and paying market rate for experts, the high profit margins of offering a software product vs. (for example) doing one-off consulting for a German industrial company, etc. None of these things bode well for the best talent in Europe working on anything remotely resembling an innovative European tech company. Not even saying we're worse off for it, but the reality is that any European who truly grasps the pace of the US tech industry would rather go there directly than work for a Franco-German government moonshot and hope to be paid maybe a 10% premium over their regular European salary.
I think the two first points are more specific to Germany than to the old world as a whole. Up here in Scandinavia, we often laugh at how much Germans interact with humans, send letters and faxes, and make phonecalls in their business lives. They are woefully far behind. From what I understand the same is true for the south.
While I agree with the basic premise of the last point too I think you maybe underestimate the value of quality of life over salary for many of those people.
You're right, and I'm glad I started by saying that I'm German because lots of smaller European countries run circles around us in terms of tech adoption.
I don't underestimate the value of quality of life, and I don't blame anyone who knowingly works for a stable, "boring", old-school German company which has been the world-leader in its niche for the past 100 years. But I think many people here are not aware that there even is a radically different approach to building up a business (the US/VC/growth model), and that this might be the only model to create modern tech companies to rival the US players. You won't compete with AWS by creating a family-owned business over a few decades where your primary objective is to provide stable and fair employment to people, often for their entire working lives. I'm not saying either one is better, just that I think that's the reality.
>family-owned business where your primary objective is to provide stable and fair employment to people, often for their entire working lives
Maybe that was the case in the '50s to '80s but I recently worked at two small family owned German companies that were leaders in their niche and their primary objective was to make their owners rich, not their employees happy(Kununu employee reviews reflected that). After that, I learned my lesson and moved to $BIG_CORP where at least I know it's all about the profits and they don't pretend to be your family as an excuse to pay you peanuts.
Yeah in the Netherlands here, and I’ve spent some time recently integrating a German fintech vendor. The cross of new and modern and old beurocratic way of doing things has been almost dystopian and really slowed everything down. Contrast to similar vendors in the UK is quite something.
Can you go into more details on this? I've only worked closely with UK/USA companies and I'm really interested how they compare to German/French ways of doing things. Does the Netherlands more closely align to the Uk/USA on this?
In my experience the Netherlands is quite a bit like the US. Not as much VC available, but businesses tend to be pretty agile and willing to pivot to get results. All normal day to day government interaction is digital and works well. ING is a good example of a very big Dutch company that seems to do pretty well with innovation.
Germans have a lot of legal requirements, red tape, old ways of doing things. Netherlands and UK are more streamlined, more parts of govt and daily life are digital, bank systems are more modern.
Ye I’m not a fan. All it does is entrench existing inequality. A few new millionaires are minted but I’m interested in solutions that provide an economic floor for everyone so we can all bootstrap if we want to instead.
The distribution is a result of VC being a lotto that pays out well enough that not only is it not a bad idea to play it in terms of return on investment. Unfortunately it takes a lot of money to "buy every ticket". Which means to "win" for a VC they need to win big enough to outweigh their massive pile of failures.
Except instead of a lotto board paying out it is growth of a successful company.
The second desire? Prepare for disappointment as it isn't a goal. A goal implies a workable path even if it is far fetched like "try to research a way to become immortal". Providing an economic floor is not only not a strategy for advancement (let alone a workable one) it would fail even if you had a magical no knowledge or possession prerequisite requirement provider of infinite "basics" to be unscarce like air or file bit combinations. Economics deal with the scarce - while rendering things irrelevant would be good a floor implies an actual use to build upon into the scarce.
Sorry you lost me regarding why the economic floor is a bad idea. I like advancement too but not at such a high human cost. It is bad value for money and tbh I'm not sure how much advancement is actually taking place as we move beyond the breakneck innovation phase of this technological paradigm shift.
According to some: "It works great!" Thanks to Intellectual-Property-Monopoly Valley the US government has access to all computers all over the world (Intel ME etc.), as well as backdoor access into Google, Facebook etc. [1] [2] [3]. And Palantir works to 'support Homeland security'.
It's not just Germany though. The UK is absolutely obsessed with making phone calls. Lots and lots of completely useless phone calls. Most of them could easily be replaced by an online booking system. Others serve no purpose at all, because all that's required is for them to take some action.
Same with US corporations. I recently tried to sign up for Microsoft's partner network because that's required for an Office 365 integration I was interested in. But I wasn't able to complete their byzantine signup process because there's a bug in the user interface that prevents me from confirming the tax status of my company. It's a simple bug, completely unrelated to the specifics of our company.
I wrote to them asking them to fix the bug so I can proceed. Predictably, they want to talk on the phone. They left some unintelligible message on my voicemail. Then they sent me an email saying they needed additional information from me without saying what that information was. They just want me to reply to arrange a time for a phone call.
Can't comment on the UK / Germany comparison directly, but I still continue to be pleasingly surprised by the quality of access to functions provided by gov.uk. E.g. I recently renewed my passport wholly online, registered my car, checked that the Govt had a record of my car's MOT (roadworthyness) certificate, etc.
I never really appreciated gov.uk until I moved to France. Here nothing is online, you need to take days off work to stand in line and collect paperwork.
A few years behind whom, though? Consumer banking in the UK is eons ahead of America, and the UK has had a very dynamic and competitive consumer phone sector for years.
Having lived in both the England and the US, I'd say that England's cities feel a few years behind American cities in terms of tech, but their rural areas seem a few years ahead of America's rural areas. I can't speak to other parts of the UK, but the gap in America is absolutely huge.
In which way is banking behind? Within EU, you can transfer money for free. You can automate your monthly payments or let companies draw the money. What else is there to offer?
Try to get a French company (take its largest insurer for instance) to send a transfer to elsewhere in the EU. They'll insist on sending cheques (which can't be cached outside of France). I'm still waiting on my refund two years later.
Same in Switzerland. Ordering mechanical components without a phone call or at least email exchange is often impossible. In some ways that's useful, you get free expert consultancy, but sometimes I feel like they almost don't want to sell their stuff. Like you need to ask an employee just to get the price. And even then they often can't tell you immediately.
> But I wasn't able to complete their byzantine signup process because there's a bug in the user interface that prevents me from confirming the tax status of my company.
Dito here, the solution is to validate your domain in Business Intelligence. No I am not joking. My email is in profile, I'll send you the process.
Milage varies in Europe. In Germany, opening a bank account "over internet" means sending paper letters back and forth, while in Belgium I didn't have to sign or send anything by post.
Some allow you to sign the papers online and only require you to authenticate yourself to make the contract binding. This authentication can be done by letter as you said, it in person in the post office or with a video call in which you show your Ausweis.
Your bank just might not support these options, but some do.
Also, it depends on country. When I was opening a bank account in Czech Republic, they required a passport and that's it. In Ireland though, you need to wait until you get registered for taxes, then you need to show the proof that you work, then an accommodation contract in order to open a bank account. I spent a month without a bank account.
Na, you can do it all online for many Banks with some of the id check methods. It's just legally preferable for Banks to have a physical signed contract as there are a lot of responsibility on both parties sides so many Banks require you to sign and send them a contract. So it's not because they technically/legaly can't, it's just because they prefer not to for legal liability reasons.
> Up here in Scandinavia, we often laugh at how much Germans interact with humans, send letters and faxes, and make phonecalls in their business lives. They are woefully far behind. From what I understand the same is true for the south.
I wouldn't necessarily call it "being ahead" to embrace increased isolation from other human beings.
> I wouldn't necessarily call it "being ahead" to embrace increased isolation from other human beings.
Yeah, sorry, I wasn't clear. I was referring to stuff like this in GP's comment:
> Article about Gaia-X in major German newspaper FAZ explained that on AWS you can spin up your own infrastructure, "sometimes even without talking to anyone from sales", from your home!
I personally love human interactions, but the idea that I'd have to call Joe in sales to spin up a VM for a few hours is ludicrous. Likewise for a lot of routine mundane stuff that is easily automatable. I think the world will be poorer if we move humans out of our daily interactions, but that doesn't mean there isn't a lot to gain by moving the humans to where they can what they do best - namely be human!
It should be noted that FAZ is not a tech news paper but a local to Frankfurt one. So the article was written by a person having closer to no tech understanding for persons without tech understandings. There are proper tech news paper in which you will not find such thinks. ;).
Edit:
They do have a technical section but that is 70% cars and the rest are other physical tech thinks like kitchen utensils and vacuum robots.
It's not about the isolation. It's about enabling absurd business models by all sorts of outsourcing, promising to simplify, but in reality complicating things by having to implement all sorts of intrusive anti-fraud checks, because anything automatic can and will be defrauded. Which in turn leads to misery of all involved legit parties, loss of quality of life, by being reduced to some cog in some machine. Oh, of course jobs! The bullshit ones. With the exception of the few at the top.
"University-educated people in my social circle are often woefully unaware of economic trends that have swept the US, be it the gig economy, X-as-a-service, the nature of Venture Capital, the idea of scaling a company aggressively, the value of information, mobility of labor and paying market rate for experts, the high profit margins of offering a software product vs. (for example) doing one-off consulting for a German industrial company, etc."
I know you caveat all this with the fact that we aren't necessarily worse off (I say we but am British - I will always think of myself as European though) but I would argue that the fact the Europe has been behind the curve on any of these "innovations" is because society is less obsessed with the quick buck and that this is good.
None of these financial/technological innovations have provably made life better for anyone apart from VC's and founders, though I am willing to entertain counterpoints.
I don't see how SaaS as a concept has made anyone's life particularly bad. For many B2B the consumer gets exactly what they want--constant support and updates--and the producer gets that sweet sweet high margin subscription payment.
Same for "high profit margins of offering a software product vs. (for example) doing one-off consulting for a German industrial company". Honestly that's a lesson from all the way back to MSFT.
I'm guessing by "paying market rate for experts", they're referring to the pretty large gap between US and European software salaries (even if you're not looking at the Bay).
When that comes up, there's usually some people who say that Bay area engineers are overpaid, but rather I think everyone else is underpaid and should fight for better compensation in general. Evidently you can afford to pay these salaries as a business.
I believe the reply was focussed towards the gig economy and the use of venture capital to scale aggressively.
I agree with a lot of points op is making, but when it comes to e.g. the gig economy and using vc funds to scale b2c businesses by undercutting competitors, I'm very happy that we have a different situation in Germany.
Not to mention the culture at work. I've never experienced a more stuffy, hierarchical, and old-fashioned IT "industry" as I have in Germany.
I've been hosting my server with a German company for years. They have recently opened a data center in Missouri - which would be great for latency (I'm in the southeastern US).
So, I send an email to the effect of "Hey folks, could you please let me know if it's possible to migrate server xxx.xxx to your MO DC? Thanks!" and that started an email-chain of mighty proportions. Every single email starts with "Dear Mr. XXX" (which is not common in the US, even with attorneys) and uses language that sounds like somebody fed a Markov chain with a fun mix between Nietzsche and the entirety of the German civil code. :)
(In all fairness, the company is fantastic and the end-result works great and was done on time)
Dear Mr. ..., is the direct transition for a common formal getting in Germany. Furthermore formal greetings are used for anything business related in Germany. Through that's getting less common with the younger generation.
So yes for a middle aged German speaker with non fluent English skills not using dear or omitting the "Mr" can seem that it maybe might be unprofessional or impolite so they will just add it.
>- When I tried to read or watch reviews about SaaS solutions for invoicing / bookkeeping for German companies, the first half of the review is usually spent trying to convince people that moving off paper-based invoices and folders to all-digital is a good idea in the first place.
As a CTO of a leading company in this space in Germany, I have to absolutely agree. The technology we can bring to the table is years if not decades ahead of the current state of the art and the growth of all contenders in our space is surprisingly slow compared to our US based counterparts.
There are a lot of reasons to this from a culture and market pov, but in general I agree that Germany & Europe as a whole is in a bad spot technologically especially as engineering salaries are simply far below the US so the braindrain is rampant.
I'm curious - do you target the small percentage of businesses that truly grok the benefits of a platform that advanced already, or do you try to convince laggards to catch up?
The early adopters have a lot of options, of which we believe to be the best for a certain segment and have been for nearly a decade now.
SaaS Accounting in 2010 was a tough pitch in Germany and for some segments still is.
The laggards have a large industry catering to them so that's where the most revenue is still concentrated.
From the top of my head our last analysis showed that less than 5% of the TAM of SaaS Accounting Solutions in Germany is captured at the moment by any of the active players.
So the strategy is to provide a meaningfully better replacement for existing solutions while not relying on the advantages of the SaaS model.
As a self-taught junior, my move from Croatia to Germany in attempt to get a "better IT job" at the end of last year was something between amusingly comical to amazingly absurd. Even before the Corona wave hit.
I wish Croatia became a go to place for remote work. Beautiful place and climate, sit at a cafe with a laptop sipping Radlers all day long. I'm guessing there are corruption/inefficiency problems opening remote offices or office parks.
As an EU expat you can easily move to Croatia thanks to EU freedom of movement, most people in the tourist areas speak decent English. I don't know anything about bureaucratic issues for non-EU expats though.
Foreign companies however aren't really willing to open remote offices/parks there because most of the talent pool (not just in IT but across all industries!) heads off to Germany or other countries where there is real earning potential. The "brain drain" across the whole Balkan is immense.
The talent is there, the money could be there if Europeans governments take it seriously, so why not? What's stopping EU from building an AWS equivalent? It's not rocket science.
If Europe could come up with companies like ASML which are at the top of chip engineering, they can definitely build software infrastructure.
Some of your points ring true but
A) What used to be doesn't mean it will always be
B) U.S has it's own problems as you can see
I am French and the few last software projects the state has been involved in were utter catastrophes.
The code that is used to dispatch high-school graduates according to their choice was recently audited by the Court of Auditors[0], and the StopCOVID application's source code was released[1].
The problem is that innovation is just a buzzword. They still hand out millions to private actors like Atos, Accenture, etc, while managers are patting themselves on the back and produce the shittiest software possible to get a 10 years maintenance contract that will cost hundreds of millions.
I'm not saying it's better in other countries, I'm just saying that people must realise that the French state should not be trusted to produce high-quality software.
Cern has more than enough folks that have run systems that are harder to run cloud scale compute.
Even if running a DC is rocket science (it isn't), it is no particle physics.
The EU should absolutely have its own homegrown tech stack, from silicon to billing. I'd start with an EU run internet backbone and federated object storage in each member state.
CERN still runs on openstack for the non-specialised projects, I believe. They do improve the project, but it's not their own solution.
I can't see Gaia-x mentioning a ready solution anywhere and it seems very secret and proprietary for a project that's meant to be transparent, federated, and lunching end of this year. (Unless I missed something?)
If I rememberm AWS CTO is dutch. Throw €100bn in a tech fund and poach him or someone like him, give them free reign, done. Poverty of imagination and obsessive financial conservatism and control freakery from the euro investment community is the real problem, not lack of talent.
I'd be surprised if a decent AWS equivalent can't be built in 10-15B. That should be enough to hire good people and buy infrastructure. How do you figure 100B?
It doesn't have to serve AWS traffic from day one...
So you're saying building an AWS equivalent is harder to do than building ASML? Again: if Europe could come up with ASML (which is just an example I'm familiar with, I assume there are successful companies), why can't it build in AWS equivalent? Which is even easier to do since the problem of scaling server instances is better understood and more intuitive than developing lithography machines like ASML is doing.
You should really reconsider your assumptions about server scaling and AWS business in general. AWS builds truely complex and ahead-of-time distributed systems that humans could never build before because of lack of knowledge and concentrated efforts. Distributed systems are really hard and not very well understood and algorithms are immensly complex and even harder to to engineer espeically on AWS scale. See DynamoDB for example, it's a masterpiece of engineering in distributed systems. You can read the paper entitled "Dynamo: Amazon's Highly Available Key-Value Store" to get a real feel of the challenge. I consider the way you see things as another part of Europs failure to build software quality awareness that can compete with the US engineering.
The main business in AWS is not DynamoDB. I'm not even sure what it is without checking, and seems like people hosting on Google / Microsoft / other big corp can do without.
Nor does Europe need to copy 100% of AWS's feature set.
And ASML has competition as well in Canon and Nikon, although they’re ahead of them in EUV.
Are you an EE? Or a Physicist? I’m wondering why you’ve shrouded ASML in such a golden halo? They’re a company doing basic research in solid state physics, but there are a lot of companies like that.
And the issue here isn’t EU vs US - it’s private vs public industry. ASML is a private company that was spun off of Siemens. Building any kind of a successful venture that actual produces real value is hard - private and public. But public ventures have more money and can’t weed out failures as aggressively as the tough justice of the market.
We’ll have to see how this Gaia-X turns out, but I’m not optimistic.
ASML is just an example of a complicated, competitive, hi-tech leading company coming from Europe. None of the competitors you listed are on par with ASML at the moment as you said. So we've established Europe can actually make tech critical competitive products (sorry for being hung up on ASML, I live in the Netherlands so that example comes to mind)
As for the government vs private venture, I cannot say it's set in stone. China is developing crazy ass infrastructure and companies, all very techy, and none of it is free market. So we've had bad precedents like USSR but also contradicting successful examples like China.
Also - Europe doesn't have to make Gaia-X BETTER than AWS. It doesn't have to become a 1T dollar market cap company. It just needs to do it's job and reduce reliance on China and U.S , that is the whole goal.
and companies, all very techy, and none of it is free market
Whoa - sorry but that just isn’t true. Other than Huawei which is a Trojan horse for Chinese intelligence services, none of the dynamism in the Chinese economy is happening in state owned companies. NONE! Look at Tencent or Alibaba or Xiaomi or DJI or any of the big Chinese tech leaders. Or look at SMIC - they guys ASML we’re going to make that big sale to! NONE of these are state owned firms. If you seriously think that any of what’s happening now in China is any kind of a counterpoint to the abject failure of the planned economy, I can’t help you.
Maybe Gaia-X will be a success - but it is as I said - making a successful venture is always against the odds. But private industry will realize that sooner and waste less capital on failures. Public funding takes years past clear failure to turn off the money spigot. Good luck!
I’m pretty sure that under the hood a lot of AWS services like S3 are backed by dynodb, and if so then ‘chopping up and selling dynodb’ is a pretty core focus.
You're comparing to Amazon the company, the whole e-commerce business unit which is huge.
AWS is big but I don't know how big; competition is fierce. They were there first but other companies are catching up.
Those systems and any other functioning and innovative system will be by definition built bottom-up and not top-down which the EU will never figure out and always actively discourage.
But we are super proud of coining Industrie 4.0, so, that's something.
It would be wonderful to see more free and open innovation and investment in a couple of bleeding-edge tech centers in Germany. A lot of the big internationals are in Munich and Berlin is slowly growing steam for startups, but it's a disappointment to me that there's so many Germans with so much wealth prime for investment and creating a culture of exploration, but instead it sits in real estate or something.
"But we are super proud of coining Industrie 4.0, so, that's something."
Regarding Industrie 4.0:
Currently at a client of mine, a "hidden champion" i.e. world market leader in industry XYZ (1.6B in revenue), I'm struggling to have them migrate from Cobol to Java. They are using their versioning system as a backup for their data, not for versioning the code. Deployments are done via dragging a zip file somewhere. Every new version means the whole system (handling invoices e.g.) is out of service for 10-14 days.
Not that I favor Java, or even that I dislike Cobol.
It is rather their existing human capital that makes anything more fancy than Java even harder to migrate to. At the same time, job postings looking for Cobol-Devs in 2020 are useless and even if they manage to find people capable and willing to work with Cobol per se, their existing code-base is an additional deterrant. This further fossilizes what ever ounce of agility their dev teams might have had.
Isn't it the 'legacy' systems are supposed to be left operating as-is, almost like black boxes with defined properties? Some kind of a known seam in the process. Meanwhile, all extensions to process are to be handled by other means.
Given the current capacities, there could be additional layers added to filter or enhance whatever comes out of the legacy processes.
Sure, there needs to be a "keeper" for those legacy systems, but migrating off them may be asking for too much of a manager's beef to get an approval to accomplish.
European startup tech companies with valuations >= $1 Billion:
* Klarna (Sweden)(online payments)
* N26 (Germany) (mobile banking)
* BlaBlaCar (France) (Ride sharing)
* Vinted (Lithuania) (ecommerce)
* Acronis (Switzerland) (backup/recovery)
* Glovo (Spain) (delivery)
* Outsystems (Portugal) (enterprise app platform)
* Bolt (Estonia)
* Veeam Software (Switzerland)(acquired, I think)
There are more. There's a trillion+ dollars in valuation in the European startup world, a deep and well-educated talent pool, and (in many countries) long experience in technology innovation. I think Europe's going to be just fine.
An extremely disproportionate number of the smaller publicly traded companies in the world seem to be listed in or from Japan, the UK, or the US. I don't know why, or exactly what it means, but it's a really prominent feature of the global economy and shows that something is lacking in Europe outside the UK. I sometimes wonder if people are really unaware or just obstinately pretending.
Maybe because some of the more successful VC companies grow based on moralicly questionable practices and circumvention or outright breaking of laws and regulations.
Practices with which you can get away much less in the EU.
But this also means that US companies have a somewhat unfair competitive advantage on the global marked.
Combine that with the US having the first wave of big tech companies due to other circumstances and some other thinks and is not really surprising.
I mean look at FAANG:
- Facebook, repeatedly and frequently acted in bad fate wrt. to privacy, non us social issues and copyright protection. Lied to monopoly watchdogs.
- Amazon, know for taking advantage of workers (through had gotten better), know to not talk effective actions against massive counterfite good, know to use unfair competitive advantage for their own Amazon branded products, questionable privacy practices for user facing products like the fire ebook reader, knows to enable (not cause) environmental problem through mainly throwing away returned products, probably missed some points
- Apple, well less to say here except how it hinders/prevents repair shops while not returning thinks themselves (just replaced parts). Also there where repeatedly bag reports about the workers condition in the factories whey Apple products where produced, but that probably applies to most tech hardware companiesway. Still the way they undermine the marked with vertical expansion is dangerous, but I don't know if it had already caused damages.
- Netflix, I don't know much about them tbh. Seems fine but I might be wrong.
- Google, repeated acts in bad face for user privacy. Had been good for the first half of their lives but now turned bad and might very well try to literally take over the internet (or what users price at it).
- YouTube (now part of Google) grew partially because of disregard for copyright and then forcing copyright holder into compromises with it.
- Uber, disregard for regulations for commercial public transport and labor law. Had been banned multiple times in some EU countries, now tend to operate under different terms in some EU countries then I'm the US. Had the same problems as the Taxi industry but sidesteps responsibility by putting it into the customer and drivers.
- AirBnb disregard for (the EU version of) zoning regulations and similar. Caused damages by implecitly constraint available and affordable apartment space in some EU cities. If heard estimates that a non small amount of AirBnb apartment providers are acting illigaley with the way they provide apartments in the EU, sadly non where reliable estimates.
But here is the thing both Apple and Google come from a time where a lot of things where just different. But now Google turned bad and Apple is increasingly becoming a latent danger for a fair marked. Meanwhile both Facebook and Amazon had been moralicly pretty bad from the start. Only Netflix seems fine but I don't know anything about it so, duh.
This article describes the scale of the operations behind some of the superhosts on Airbnb - almost unbelievable, but the market will provide I guess! https://www.wired.co.uk/article/airbnb-scam-london
> German newspaper FAZ explained that on AWS you can spin up your own infrastructure, "sometimes even without talking to anyone from sales", from your home!
That quote is quite funny, but I have to wonder: Who speaks to sales before spinning up infrastructure on AWS? The only cases where I see it making sense are when either an entire large enterprise or a non-profit are switching over to AWS and want better rates. For most companies and individuals, not having to speak to sales is the norm.
The venture capital stuff was good for a time when Moore's law was repeatedly erasing whole industries at a cadence of every two years. That's how stupid ideas like blitzscaling could work [0]. How much longer will it last? That remains to be seen.
I find it instructive that a society that hasn't been exposed to VC practices has created some of the most valuable and innovative companies in the world.
[0] Blitzscaling 14: Elizabeth Holmes on Managing Product Strategy, Regulation, and the Mediahttps://youtu.be/juhATwufdbc
> As a German who's been exclusively working in the US tech space for the past few years,
As a new immigrant your are still in the euphoria phase of your new live...
> but the reality is that any European who truly grasps the pace of the US tech industry would rather go there directly..
Well, as a naturalized citizen with a PhD from the US and experience in technology I can assure you, that this is not the case for everybody. Neither me, nor my business partner with the same background - we both work now in China.
Should have been more clear: I worked in the US tech space since ~ 2013 (CyberSecurity) but do so as a remote employee, working from Germany. Hence I got the sometimes surreal experience of working for a VC-backed crazy-growth US corporation while still hanging out with my German friends on weekends who work consulting gigs or at a parts supplier for the automotive industry. Salary-wise the difference was between 2x and 5x, depending on whether you count stock-based compensation. After a while I found it hard to talk to my German friends about my job since it was happening at such a different pace from their regular jobs yet none of them seemed even remotely interested in landing such a job themselves.
I agree with you, I wouldn't move to the US for my job (and neither would any of my former colleagues), but we all appreciated the fact that when it comes to business, it's better to work for a US company which understands that sometimes you have to spend money in order to make money, which is not always the case in Germany.
> how far behind the old world is, both in tech as in spirit
I always laugh out loud reading nonsense like that. It is only true if you extremely narrowly define "tech" as SaaS solutions. Just to mention a few examples: almost all Fortune 500 companies in the US run on "old world" (Germany7) SAP software. Almost all mobile phones run on "old world" (England) ARM designed chips. The worlds best Go player was beaten by "old world" (England) software. The largest airliner in the world (A380) was designed and built in the "old world". Do I really need to go on?
England is the most modern of the large European countries and is obviously not what OP was talking about. He's right, both the regulations and the culture make Germany not a pleasant place to do business.
Having lived, worked and paid taxes in England for a number of years, I can tell you that England typically is 5 to 10 years behind Denmark/Norway/Sweden.
What bugs me more about the EU "tech" sector is the reliance on public and EU sector money. Making "something people want" will still make you less money, you won't be able to scale it up properly, and pretty much anything risky is illegal.
On the other hand, completely mediocre companies can survive and even thrive by applying for every kind of EU subsidy and getting money from overpriced bureaucratic contracts that they overpromised and underdelivered.
Every EU endeavour, be it GDPR, research grants, or this one aims to primarily increase bureaucracy so more do-nothing jobs can be created.
Tech salaries in Europe really are a joke. Even American companies don't pay well here because why would they, the market itself sucks. Combine that with easy immigration to US for Europeans and good affordable education it seems unlikely that talented people would choose to stay here. Part of the reason is the old money in this ecosystem.
The problem with digitization in Germany specifically is that our paperwork is supposedly something to be proud of. "Germans love paperwork" says every article about German culture as if its a great thing. Its really sad to hear this. We should hate paperwork and seek to replace it wherever possible.
Don't look at just the number. Once you consider the cost of living, health coverage, days off, sick days, long service leave, parental leave, and lots of other benefits, it's actually not that impressive.
> easy immigration to US for Europeans
"Europeans" don't exist. UK has drastically different immigration rules than Poland for example.
> good affordable education
Some EU countries provide University education for free, while the US is famously in debt... Are you sure about this one?
Finally, some people just aren't excited about life in the US. I'd take a lower salary to live somewhere else and I know a few people with the same opinion.
Don't just look at the list of things not included either. Actually look at the numbers.
A Silicon Valley total compensation can easily be double that in the UK. That pays for a lot of cost of living, healthcare, time off, etc. It actually is an impressive difference.
It's more than double. The engineers on my team in Portland earn more than 2x the experienced senior engineer we have in the UK. The engineers we have in San Jose make 1.5x what most of our Portland engineers make. And we are not a FAANG.
> A Silicon Valley total compensation can easily be double that in the UK.
Sure, but that's comparing one specific area known for tech, including many big players with a whole country. SV is not the US, like Canary Wharf is not the UK.
> Once you consider the cost of living, health coverage, days off, sick days, long service leave, parental leave, and lots of other benefits, it's actually not that impressive.
You don't think that tech workers in the US get most of that? Software engineering in the US is a pretty cushy gig. A lot of the problems you hear about for regular middle class Americans don't really happen if you're working in tech. It's not fair, but it's the current reality.
The ones I worked with some time ago did not. So it seems really dependent on the job.
But even if you do currently, there's a lot of peace that comes with: it's not company's goodwill, it's a requirement and company's goodwill goes on top of that.
People keep saying that, and I keep not believing them. AFAIK American companies tech offer comparable benefits to salaried employees, even though it's not required by law. And more and more of the "lifestyle" perks are disappearing, e.g. people are working more and more (8-6, 10-10 etc.) but still not getting paid US-style.
The only real deal-breaker, for me, is the risk of health insurance - I'm sure I'd be getting top-notch health insurance for myself and my family, but will it be useful when I need it? Will I know which provider to go to, is "in network", will bill me correctly, insurance company won't reject the claims, ... (but I guess these things are solvable, otherwise top-paid US employees would complain a lot, or emigrate). And of course the fact that I'm paid EU-style (well, better than EU-style as I work in finance with shittier quality of life, but still below US salaries) so I'm guessing US employees would either try to underpay me.
They are "a joke" because you're comparing them to the U.S. If you compared them to Japan / Australia / Canada let alone to the developing world they are great.
Immigration to the U.S never was and probably never will be easy and the education there isn't affordable. Also, the work culture would be quite a shock for an European.
Some people will always try to gain a "better future" , I don't see big numbers leaving Germany though even if immigration was easy.
It's funny that when Europe is mentioned, many people think "Germany". Ask Italians about their tech salaries, I've been told people are happy with 2.5k as a senior developer there...
The average software engineer in Iowa makes around 100K a year. That's pretty good, really, most people would consider it a lot of money. There is a reality distortion field around SV :)
>If you compared them to Japan / Australia / Canada
Can't speak for Japan, but the tech salaries in the big cities in Australia and Canada are far more competitive than those in Europe.
The European tech industry is an absolute joke overall, and I say this as a European. It would take an utterly massive overhaul to correct without relying on outright Chinese-style protectionism, and as more companies move remote and snatch top talent in timezone-friendly countries, time is running out faster than ever.
Good luck to European leaders in responding to the question of "Why would I, as a European in Europe, work for a European 'tech' company for terrible pay, when I can work for a US or Canadian tech company remotely for far better pay, on stronger teams, while retaining the same benefits of living in Europe?".
Be careful what you wish for: if we move towards a genuine globally-integrated tech market, where work can be done from anywhere, then companies might start asking the complementary question: "why would I, as a company, pay US-level (or even EU-level) salaries when I could hire someone from Russia or India or the Phillippines for much cheaper?"
Arguably anyone that could outsource to very low cost centres has already tried to outsource there and many have learned (expensive) lessons from it.
What seems to work: Geographically distributed but autonomous product-dev centers, with remote workers aligned within a certain timezone.
What doesn't seem to work: Outsourcing pure dev work to timezones with no overlap.
I don't believe the above will change even if things become more remote-friendly. Perhaps we'll see more dev centers pop up to service the needs / wants / cultural or language asynchronicity of a given region, but that would lend more toward expansion than cost reduction. This also resonates with the approaches being discussed that I've read and heard first hand from company leaders during COVID.
That argument from consequences is common against remote working but isn't an actual arguement against the utility.
If there is no benefit for paying a premium why not go with the commodity? Why go with an outmoded restriction to only hire blacksmiths in bounds of the south side of the original city limits? (Because they didn't want to smell the smoke in the posh north side while requiring the smiths live within the innermost set of city walls so they were available during a siege).
Not trying to discredit those numbers, but I wonder about the split per US state. Are they very close? Are there states that pay a lot more than others?
I'm not American, but everything I read suggests that yes, of course; California pays much more than Missouri. I think the difference could be 2x - 3x.
Then again cost of living is also 2x-3x more in SV.
Today I was looking at some job ads for mid-senior devs in London. £50K and 200+ applicants. And then it says:fruits, free parking, private healthcare after 1 year.. And this suppose to be the tech center of Europe..
That's pretty average for dev jobs in commercial enterprises in London (e.g. working for a B2C). In the UK, the big money for developers is in finance (either at a bank, or prop trading, or insurance, or gambling, etc). If you want a shock have a look at the wages in some of the surrounding areas (e.g. Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire) - you'll be lucky to break 40k£, even if your skill set is very specific to what is required. Contrasted with finance in London, you would be looking at 70-80k£ for a mid/senior, and 100k£+ for a true senior/lead.
Also important to realise that 50k£ is 2x the national average wage. So for more than half of the population it's nothing to scoff at.
The UK is also in a bit of a funny place when it comes to immigrating to the US - due to a lot of American businesses having satillite offices here and a lack of specific visas for Britons, you're going to have a hard time finding a company that will be willing to sponser and relocate you.
Another really important factor when looking at the UK labour market, specifically in London (because my experience with it is there, but this could be true for the other major UK cities), is that contract roles are much much much more lucrative that FTE (or at least, they have been prior to IR35). If you're a mid/senior contracting at a bulge bracket bank you could expect a ~500£ day rate. 500£ * 282 (working days - some holidays/sick/national holidays) = 141000£. If you run that into your contracting LLC, rather than take it through PAYE, you can cut your effective tax rate by a big margin depending on how you spend your money - so even more cash that you would be FTE on the same wage.
Mid-senior devs in most of the USA don’t make 400k total comp either.
Solid experience and skills will get you offers around 100k GBP from bigger, well funded startups and if you want to sell your soul to the finance industry you can get like 300k GBP total comp. Those are both real offers I’ve had in London.
> and if you want to sell your soul to the finance industry
What do you mean when you say the finance industry? It's a pretty big field. Is an online bank the same as some real time trading platform?
Also, why is it selling your soul? Is Google / Facebook "better" (that is - more moral) than a fintech company ?
That seems true. However it also needs to be considered that salaries shouldnt be so low that people just leave. For example consider Berlin, rapidly rising rent but not so much for salaries. So people just leave. In such a case you do get more bang for your buck as a company but theres a limit on how much.
Companies maybe, but there’s zero reason for me to move back to the Netherlands if they’re not going to pay me at least what I earn in Japan, and Japan isn’t even particularly high paying.
Well you left one of the happiest countries in the world to live in a not very happy country (according to research). Without knowing anything about you I find it hard to believe your day to day is any happier than it was in the Netherlands.
I moved to the Netherlands from a country that pays developers very good money but had a million other problems...so it's really not all about the money.
Global and a few Japanese companies in Tokyo pay well compared to Europe. E.g. you can make 200+k$ total comp if you have skills in demand (ML, etc.), which is hard in Europe outside management consulting/finance.
How that compares to the US depends on your life choices, etc. I am aware I could "easily" earn 2x in SV, but I hate living in suburbs while I can cycle to work in Tokyo and live in one of the most vibrant city in the world.
Despite what you may think, there isn't some nefarious conspiracy keeping tech salaries low in Europe. It's that this is where the market is, an equilibrium between supply and demand for engineers.
It's precisely the same reason that salaries in certain US markets are so high: FAANG don't pay high salaries because they have fundamentally decided that engineers should be paid X amount, nor because someone has read Marx and wants to give engineers more of the value they create. It's because demand has exceeded supply for engineers in those markets, and that has driven up the equilibrium price. I should also point out that the median salary for engineers outside the NY and the Bay Area is something like $100k, not the stratospheric packages often discussed here as though they were normal rather than exceptional.
(I've not noticed too much of a love of paperwork here in Germany, but I could certainly see how the stereotype was formed)
However, that also means software engineers don't create that much value. I've been hiring developers myself, it takes half a year to get a senior engineer, even with extremely relaxed immigration laws like in Germany, just due to shortage. It's a weird paradox. If companies had enough money, I'd imagine SV engineers jumping on a plane to Berlin right away.
Maybe. I was the CTO of a startup in Berlin until about 18 months ago, and built a engineering team of 13 people. There was certainly competition for engineers, but it never took 6 months to get someone on board[1]. That said, there was definite wage inflation being driven by that competition (at least in Berlin), but it still topped out at around EUR 80k (2 years ago, it may be higher now).
I accept that the Berlin expat market is also a little bit different, where 3 month notice periods aren't insisted upon, and companies know how to move fast. The situation in the Mittelstand software industry could be very different for all I know.
[1] The exception to this, for me, was DevOps, which took so long to hire for that we ended up developing a strong enough in-house capacity that we no longer needed them. Engineering management was also difficult to find.
>If companies had enough money, I'd imagine SV engineers jumping on a plane to Berlin right away.
How many SV developers speak German? Germany isn't quite as English-friendly as other places in the EU (Netherlands, etc.), and if you don't speak the language you aren't going to enjoy yourself in the town very much
Maybe if you just look at gross numbers. It's the old GDP vs happiness as an index for a country's rank debate.
I worked for a multi-national in Berlin; heading a team of 40 internals and another 40 externals, the latter mostly in Ukraine.
As a director I saw the salaries of everyone working under other directors under the same VP. Including the teams in Chicago and San Diego. Salaries were maybe 10-15% lower in Berlin.
We regularly swapped developers around. Usually for six months. People from both CA & IL that came to live in Berlin with their families were always overwhelmed about quality of life in here. Particularly the food. Well, then they fly to Italy over the weekend (affordable, with their spouse & kids, mind you) and they are completely blown away.
If you look at net salary and what it buys you, quality of life, quality of food, healthcare, rent, 20 days/y of paid holidays (+12 paid public holidays in Berlin, more if you live in a state with a Catholic majority ofc.), 6 months (unpaid) unconditional sabbatical after you complete five years with that company, job security because of German laws. The list goes on.
On these measures the US sucks compared to most of Europe. Compared to Germany for sure.
I pay 1,250 EUR/month for a bright, 1075 sqft apartment in the very center of Berlin. The city surely is one of the cheapest capitals in Europe but still.
From my friends in SF or Boston who work in tech, earn more (gross) than me and who visit me from time to time I always hear they're jealous about the quality of life we have here.
I was an expat for 15 years working in India, Australia, Asia and the UK. During the last five years I was on business trips to the US every 2-3 months. Affordable food sucks, good food will cost you $$$ and you can't get it just in any supermarket like here.
I have only one body. What do I care if I make 30% more and live 10 years less to enjoy it?
Being back on the continent for another decade now I know I made the right decision. The only country I lived in with comparable quality of life in many aspects (and even better health care) is Japan.
Finally, in software location is a non issue when you want to start a business. You can shop for money anywhere and you can set up the business where it is convenient, e.g. for tax reasons or access to investors.
I had a software company in Hong Kong seven years ago. I was in Europe most of the time. The team was from all over the planet.
My experience is that if investors want to meet f2f they actually love if you're in Europe as they have an excuse to fly there and meet you.
One of my best friends who's Mexican co-heads a big home delivery SaaS that is growing at crazy pace. He bought a flat here. His workplace is a modest desk in a rather mediocre co-working space in the center of Berlin.
He also bought a flat in Austin, TX. But he only goes there maybe for one month/year. Because ... quality of life. It trumps salaries every time ... if you have understood what it truly means to be human.
We had a funny situation with a fax couple of years ago.My bosses were opening a new company and because of some situation in the bank,they did request to fax the paperwork to them(email not safe, f2f wasn't an option).I asked my manager how is he going to do it,as he seemed quite puzzled. Eventually,he found one dumped behind all the cleaning equipment in the office. Dusted it off and managed to fax it somehow.This was for one of the largest banks operating in the UK. Fintech it's not.
Because the law was a special case for fax machines essentially instead of a generic one and they didn't understand the then very esoteric mathematical concept of converting arbitrary inputs to data and sending it in arbitrary ways.
We don't see laws today for unimagined hypotheticals like if governments if carrying a box with a stable frame of reference anchored wormhole inside that leads to a remote island with 1 ton of heroin is drug smuggling or not.
Fun-fact, a big German insurance company had something like that:
Customer send's fax printed out to paper, that paper got copied to 'real' paper for manual signature, that 'real' paper was then scanned and send digital (email) to a archive, where the printed out that digital contract to 'real' paper again (for the archive)
And the US is one of the only western countries where wiring money from one bank to another might mean that the originating bank prints a check, mails it to the receiving bank where it's typed in manually (hopefully correctly) and clears 6 weeks later.
> the first half of the review is usually spent trying to convince people that moving off paper-based invoices and folders to all-digital is a good idea in the first place.
Paper based invoices are the easiest way to avoid issues with the tax office.
As a counter point, I have seen technology adopted in the EU in ways that the US has lagged far, far behind. Probably the best example of this is chip & PIN for credit cards. In the US we finally have chips, but still no PIN.
That is more the exception than the rule, though, even in the payment space. Here is a more typical example: A few years ago German banks realised that PayPal was eating their lunch, so they decided to start their own payment processor called "PayDirekt". In typical German fashion it was not only 15 years late, but also overly bureaucratic. As merchant you have to sign individual contracts with each bank whose cards you would like to accept. Naturally, it has largely failed to gain traction despite extensive marketing to end users.
Another more recent example was Apple Pay launching in Germany. The German banks thought they could do their own mobile payment apps instead rather than work with Apple. Once again, it failed, and now, tail between their legs, they have begun signing up with Cupertino after they started losing customers to mobile-first banks like N26 who supported Apple Pay all along.
Isn't that because credit cards came later to the EU, so they had better standards because they didn't have to worry about supporting huge quantities of obsolete technology? I don't know the exact details on credit cards, but I know that's true for CDMA vs. GSM and NTSC vs PAL. In the US there were so many black and white TV's already out there that they couldn't abandon them, hence NTSC (which allowed the older black and white TV's to just read the Red channel). In Europe, with out those huge numbers of already existing TVs to support, they could go straight to a clearly better standard, PAL.
This is a common problem, see _The Innovators Dilemma_ by Clayton Christensen.
Pedantic note on NTSC: the signal has a luma (brightness) and chroma (color) component. The NTSC standard had a place for chroma information from the get-go but it was unused for a long time. Color cameras were expensive, storage more complex, and the televisions themselves more complex and expensive. As technology improved it became more practical and broadcasters started doing color broadcasts. Old black and white televisions worked as before but then new color ones...had color. Huzzah for forward thinking specifications.
Black and white televisions just displayed the luma component of the signal. The luma component was not just the "red" signal but a measure of total brightness.
>Isn't that because credit cards came later to the EU, so they had better standards because they didn't have to worry about supporting huge quantities of obsolete technology?
In New Zealand, credit card machines are basically required to be replaced every few years as security standards improve. Is this not the case in USA?
In the US merchants own their own machines and the banks have to strongarm them into getting new ones. This is one of the reasons some places still require a swipe to pay.
As far as I know, the tech of credit cards is also borne from liability regulation. The higher security of the european system allowed the european banks to move liability to the users.
Ahem. No. At the end of the day PAL worked the same way. I know because we had a small black & white TV-Set when i was very little. And been mostly disinterested in it, because playing in the surrounding forests with my friends was more exiting, even for them, who already had colour TV.
It's no surprise the French government is involved in this. They love these moonshot projects that aim to create the French X for any X that is a successful service by an American company.
Qwant[1], launched as "The French Google" with a focus on privacy, serves 10 million searches a day (a ridiculously small number). No one has heard of it, no one uses it, and it's another project with a dream of restoring France to its old glory by an old guard convinced that somehow their country is so exceptional that it can just launch any product and that people will switch to it.
The story is more sinister when it comes to cloud platforms. A government project to free its companies from American domination over this sector will typically involve a bidding process in which established and well-connected companies with a history of costly, slow, outdated tech will win the contracts through their political connections with no consideration for their capacity to deliver or innovate. MPs will make sure their buddies get the contracts. The kind of buddies that lead companies that have so little understanding of cloud technologies that they went with OpenStack[2] to build this new world leader in computing.
It's always the same thing. Old, well-connected companies like Bull that have zero ability to innovate and not a clue about the domain will rake in hundreds of millions in taxpayer money and deliver some garbage platform that no one will use except other government-funded moonshot companies. Always behind, always getting paid, never actually doing anything remotely useful.
Source: I am French. I know how this works, I've seen these ridiculous projects get political support and fail miserably due to corruption and ineptitude. This is more of the same.
That's very true. Another thing is that it is not like EU is somehow very far behind the US in terms of services hosting or "the cloud". There is French OVH provider and there is German Hetzner. While the former has an opinion of being cheap but no so great (especially in terms of support), the Hetzner really shines.
Hetzner does not have all the AWS like "cloud" bells and whistles, however their VPS-es and especially dedicated servers are first class. In many, many situations it makes much more sense (both from costs perspective and ease of migration to other provider) to use dedicated servers and hire someone who will manage them, than throwing tons of money into Amazon pockets to get "X-large instances" that have power of old Celeron laptop (exaggerating a bit, but not that much).
As much as I'd love for Hetzner to step up and start offering more managed services a la AWS, I just don't see it happening, and if it were I'm not sure I'd like the side-effects of that. Hetzner is laser-focused on delivering beefy and very affordable dedicated servers, apparently the way they are able to trim costs is by running most support functions on auto-pilot and having a very narrow set of products (servers, storage box, web space) which can presumably be serviced by a small staff without a high engineering bar. If they went ahead and started building out complex and highly engineered services like S3 or even more complex ones I'd see that immediately eating into their profit margin. Plus: Hetzner is a privately held company.
Isn't that an opportunity for another company to run managed services like S3, RDS, SQS, SES on top of Hetzner servers? I see some issues with multiple companies being involved in support requests, but nothing that can't be solved.
Or, in case their virtual servers suck (which I don't know about), running VM hosts on Hetzner servers as a service.
You can't just run a service of S3 scale on someone else's datacenter, both from a technical and a business perspective. You need fine-grained control over every aspect, from servers to cooling to network fabric to utilization by other applications etc etc. And you need to be in control of the business trajectory. If you forecast your S3 clone to grow 1000% every month, you need to start building actual datacenters and make bulk deals with hardware suppliers months ahead of time. If you tell Hetzner that they should build a new datacenter because your demand will outstrip their current ones, they're gonna shrug their shoulders. Even if you handed them the cash you got from your VCs for scaling, they might say "eh, not really the direction we want to take, thanks".
Regarding their virtual servers: They're great, don't get me wrong! But it's a tiny piece in the puzzle that is AWS, starting from things like VPC/Security Groups to managed services like load balancers, gateways, cross-DC availability, etc. And that's just the EC2 part.
Hetzner Cloud is great for what it is, I personally love it. But the pace of product development at Hetzner is such that I would anticipate something like a managed load-balancer maybe being available in 1-3 years from now, and after that another year for the next product etc. They don't seem to be in a rush to compete with AWS (or even Scaleway) by broadening their product offerings, they'd rather stick to their strength which is fast and cheap servers. I commend them for it, and their approach is very German, but it doesn't help you if you need these managed services.
To give an anecdote regarding Hetzner and them building out an S3 clone: I once asked support if there was a way for me to upgrade the 10TB max object storage solution (Hetzner StorageBox) to more than that since I had outgrown it. Simple reply: No, but you can spin up multiple storage boxes...
I wonder how much that is based on the company background. Hetzner is a traditional hosting company. Cloud companies either had large existing software development base and datacenter expertise, being way larger than a company like Hetzner, (Amazon, Microsoft, Google) or don't run the hardware themselves (Heroku, various DBaaS offerings, ...) and focus on the software offering, typically backed by VC to cover the initial investment. I assume Hetzner would like to expand there, but it's expensive, a culture shift and somewhat risky given their well-founded and established competition.
EDIT: I guess DO, Linode, ... are closer equivalents to Hetzner?
OVH's support is not great but at least it's cheap and they have some transparency. Azure and AWS have shitty support too for small customers but they are expensive.
Hetzner is nice. We also have Scaleway in the same category.
> Azure and AWS have shitty support too for small customers but they are expensive
oh yeah, AWS is terrible with support!
I have to rely on their support forum for any support as 20% of our spend for crappy support is just not feasible. I.e. I get no support whatsoever. You can trick them a bit by wrapping it up in a sales inquiry though.
France also has online.net (now Scaleway?) which I haven't used recently but was very good and reliable for me 3 years ago. Been using Hetzner ever since, which has set the new bar.
You know? When you hire someone to manage some VPS or dedicated server in some DC, why not have them manage your own rack(s) connected via your own fiber on premise instead?
That is one thing i fail to understand, since it goes against the lore of decentralized, packet switching, nuke proof, and so on.
It may have been prohibitively expensive for many in the not so recent past, but it isn't anymore in more and more places. Even redundantly connected.
And to be honest, some pizzeria or hairdresser could be run from some NAS.
Just search for someFAANG is down on HN, to get a feel for the ripples it causes globally when they have a hiccup.
It really is about the affordances of getting access to space, power and the network. Nothing is hard individually, but not knowing how to navigate the landscape is much more daunting than typing some numbers into a web page.
This is basically the same line of reasoning used by people that say you could replace your corporate slack with IRC. Of course you could, but there's a good reason that people don't. If you just want to compare one VPS to another, the only thing you're comparing is cost and availability. But really there's many more factors that people are interested in considering beyond just that. Even if the only service you're interested in using is a VPS, using an AWS EC2 would have so many benefits over a Hetzner VPS that I'd struggle to list them.
Amazon, and Google, and Microsoft... don't win cloud business because people are dumb, they win it because they offer a better product.
well, the thing is, if you literally only need one server, AWS is ridiculously expensive. the value proposition is just not there. you have to design for the cloud from the start to come out on top.
Well literally only needing one server is already a contrived use case. But if I was only in charge of one server, I'd still prefer to be in charge of one server on a platform that had AMI, CloudTrail, IAM, Amazon Inspector, GuardDuty, AWS Certificate Manager, CloudFront, AWS CLI, EBS, CloudWatch, AWS Config, ALB, Route 53, Secrets Manager, AWS WAF, and plenty of the other features that I might find perfectly useful in a one server environment. The value proposition of vanilla VPS providers is just "figure it out yourself". Deciding that a feature rich platform is worth the expense over a single product service provider is often a perfectly rational and cost effective decision.
The idea itself of supporting Europeans alternative to face American and Chinese tech giants is by itself noble (and I think necessary).
However, the usual way it is done is a disaster: top-bottom, funding some existing behemoth company that will have no capacity whatsoever to innovate, nor will to do so. But they will get the money because they have good connections.
If you think about it, it is not very different of the American military-industrial complex and the way the DoD/Army/DoE fund their programs (F-35 ?).
Creating a good environment for startups and giving grants to several ones in parallel to create an internal competitive market would be both cheaper and more effective.
But that would imply first a generation switch....
> However, the usual way it is done is a disaster: top-bottom, funding some existing behemoth company that will have no capacity whatsoever to innovate, nor will to do so. But they will get the money because they have good connections.
That's the tragedy of the government-backed tech in France. You also have a lot of very skilled tech companies there, but they are not the ones getting government support to grow further.
>That's the tragedy of the government-backed tech in France. You also have a lot of very skilled tech companies there, but they are not the ones getting government support to grow further.
That's almost an universal tragedy.
The good techies, the innovative engineers or the avant-garde researchers... Typically, the one doing the work... are generally not the one doing outreach, going around in convention, networking, making connections with politicians.... And getting Grants.
On the other side, many conference/convention/"one-man-show" dudes are generally much better to talk than to produce anything useful.
Their is a million of example of that, in both side of the Atlantic ocean.
I would say it is less tragic in America, mainly because there is a Venture Capitalism culture there that Europe do not have.
I is too easy to attribute this to some „culture“ that randomly formed and which did not happen in europe. I mean how likely is that? I believe there is a much more structural thing to it
> to some „culture“ that randomly formed and which did not happen in europe
Because when WWII ended and Europe was rebuilding, in some low-key corner of the West Coast of the US, some military contractors were trying to figure out what would their next projects look like (and getting more money from the US Gov. to fight the Russians, of course)
Then these guys became the best (read, selling more) in one thing called semiconductors then the best at this other new thing that was called computers and that's how it went.
And I might add that being the junction of tech and (accidentally) some weird hippie corner of the US might have helped in some aspects.
It is also a matter of culture. For example cutthroat capitalism is not really a thing in Europe, social capitalism (or soziale Marktwirtschaft) is. Culture plays a huge role in this. Most Europeans have a lower risk appetite since it's not like Europe is swimming in successful, well funded, well advertised startups to set an example for a new generation of entrepreneurs. Most also value personal life too much to be willing to make all the sacrifices a startup would require.
But one of the biggest issues in Europe is that it's not very unified yet. A French startup will launch a French product, not a "European" product. The only way to get buy-in from enough people is to have a multinational startup and product. An initiative promoted by both Germany and France has a better chance since it may appeal to ~150 million citizens.
France has been world-leading in verification, e.g. CompCert and Coq come from INRIA, model-checking was co-invented in France. This stuff is largely language independent. Yet the big sellers of this kind of stuff (e.g. EDA software from Synopsys,
Cadence, and
Mentor) is in the US.
That doesn't invalidate my points. SAP is a market leader and comes from Germany. A lot of leading finetch also comes from Germany or UK. A lot of major antivirus vendors in the Czech Republic or Romania, etc. Berlin, Barcelona, Paris, London are all big IT tech innovation and startup hubs in Europe.
Yet the overall scene is not quite as dynamic as the one on the other side of the Atlantic. Startups never seem to be as well funded or advertised. People take fewer risks here, there's no obvious culture of risking it all to found a startup. The whole ecosystem is not designed around this. Maybe this is changing now but today the market really isn't flooded with local products but rather with products of Silicon Valley. A lot of investments in European startups still come from SV instead of being local. There are some products that are big in one European country but don't really seem to make it over the border and it's probably because Europe is not as unified a marked as it could be.
I agree with most of your points, and the huge unified, and rather homogeneous market is a core advantage of the US in certain product categories. Since you mention SAP:
clearly, SAP is successful in a space where Europe's heterogeneity should be a problem -- different legal systems, different accounting rules etc ... and yet SAP succeeded.
Maybe it was because SAP was founded in 1972, half a century ago, when European decline was not as pronounced as it is in today?
Well, I think we have no choice in Europe even if it looks weird and too late. Keeping on depending on the US or China for vital infrastructures such as cloud would be a suicide for Europe. US and China cannot be trusted as they only think business and tech in terms of predation and domination. And their tech companies have too many bonds with their intel agencies.
This move should be seen as another evidence of the growing atlantic rift.
Honestly there are very capable and smart engineers in France, and I don't blame the country ambition to develop its own solutions, but the SSII mafia (or how are they called now?) is killing innovation.
It's a very top to bottom decision process (starting from the Government/MP), with big bucks involved, and very little understanding of how to drive these tech projects, all the way to the bottom.
What I don't understand is the status-quo after years and years of failed projects. What a waste of tax payer money.
Thats not really specific to France. Any large government contract in any country will go to bodyshops like Accenture, Cap Gemini, IBM, TCS etc. The difference is that the French government keeps thinking that innovation is a top-down process that can be managed like you would manage an aircraft program or a nuclear power plant
> there are very capable and smart engineers in France
I would not be so sure. I looked at the IT salaries there (both as a permanent and as a contractor) and it just doesn’t make sense to stay there when you could earn way more money elsewhere in Europe.
There's definitely an IT brain drain in France due to low salaries, very few people of my former school actually work for a french company anymore, they almost all went somewhere else to get a better pay.
In the post-covid world of increased remote working, the brain drain will likely increase tenfold since developers won't even have to leave the country anymore.
Romanian programmer here (I still live in Romania), I would choose another European country over a well-better paid job in the US in almost all cases, the reason being that that way I'd be closer to home, we actually have decent healthcare in Europe and the social contract as a whole is more robust compared to the US (it mentally helps going out on the street and not seeing the multitude of homeless people that I've read one can find on the streets of San Francisco), public transport is decent to exceptional and for me personally there's also the gun-control issue (or lack of it, more exactly), I really don't see myself living long-term in a country as gun-loving as the US is.
Have you been to any major French city recently? There is still a crisis of homeless refugees, there is clearly different reasoning behind why they are there but in general I'd argue the effect is the same.
1) Closer to home country.
2) No visa needed.
3) Less anti-immigrant rhetoric.
4) Better work/life balance.
5) Free healthcare.
If 10 years ago there were predominantly outfits servicing larger US/UK/Scandinavia companies, now it's shifting towards building their own products/services. Basically the guys learned how to do it and not they start spreading the wings. The only thing missing in Europe is active and mature VC sector that could match that in the US.
I didn't say there's none. Every single country in Europe has varying levels of it but nowhere near to what the US have been having over the last few years.
I don't know, I think you have to look at it with an EU scope. Within Shengen only Luxemburg and Switzerland pay significantly better than France. Germany is more or less aligned
I don't think the definition of brain drain and remote work allowing people to stay in their country really fit together.
If I, a french worker, stay working in France, I pay French taxes and my lineage and social impact remain in France. I can't imagine how that is not a plus pour mon cher pays.
There are "good" French companies where you can grow a career and get a good salary.
What surprises me is that these companies seem to either hide their French roots, and are often ignored by the academic world. When I was student in engineering school, the only companies we would hear from where the big French corps like Orange, Cap Gemini, Thales and co.
I'm sad to see that these French companies don't get the support and publicity they deserve. I hoped that the French tech thing would help these companies, but I only ever hear about startup with vague pitches founded by business school graduates which don't know a thing nor care about any "tech".
Perhaps that they feel a need to actively hide their french origins is a hint at being seen as an active downside to work with - or perhaps it is just a result of the style being set by the existing "leaders" akin to the name zeitgeist from multiword to acronym companies (IBM/Standard Oil) to single word as fashionable (Amazon, Apple, Google).
Personally I am of the philosophy that if they have to appeal to nationalism they suck as they lack any other qualifications or other features to cite first.
I know plenty of really capable and smart people in France that doesn't want to leave the country. Living somewhere is not just about salary, and quality of life as a software engineer is quite good in France.
that's assuming money is the one important thing in your life though :p I'd personally need at least 3 times my current french salary to start thinking about compromising my other life choices
Salaries have diminishing returns too. If you balance income and quality of life, if you can reach a certain point that's reasonable for you, it doesn't make sense at all to go through the trouble of moving.
Anyway the US is really at the bottom of the list. Most people would prefer anywhere in Europe or at worse Canada and Australia.
I agree that these efforts have been very hit or miss but on the other hand... What should they do instead? Just give up and accept that we're going to simply be technological vassals to America? Or should Macron and Merkel learn Javascript and take the matter into their own hands?
We could've gone the Chinese way and just close the door to American companies, effectively forcing the local populace to use home-grown tools, but we're too nice for that. Instead we try to compete fairly in an open market, except that in practice most multinational corporations manage not to pay taxes in most European countries and they have a huge headstart so it's not really all that fair in the end.
It's easy to be cynical about it but again, tech is too important to just say "well, we lost, I guess we'll increase wine production instead". I want the EU to keep trying.
>Old, well-connected companies like Bull that have zero ability to innovate and not a clue about the domain will rake in hundreds of millions in taxpayer money and deliver some garbage platform that no one will use except other government-funded moonshot companies.
What alternative is there though? The government also tried to help small start ups and incubators with fiscal advantages. We have the brains, we have the means, the government is just trying to make it happen. The hope is that eventually it'll manage to seed the industry. We also do have significant tech companies in Europe today that actually do interesting work, so it's a bit unfair to say that we only have "ridiculous projects" that are "never actually doing anything remotely useful".
I'm French too, I know that we love to be cynical about everything, always see the glass half empty but it's not a very productive attitude. "MPs will make sure their buddies get the contracts", as if France was suddenly the most corrupt country in the world. Look around, see what the rest of the world is doing. We're not doing that poorly.
Listening to French entrepreneurs, the usual suspects (labor laws, taxes...) are not so much of a problem.
They all seem to rally around an kafkaesque bureaucratic nightmare of interacting with anything state-related... Especially orgs collecting payroll taxes... The stories I see, where you get nailed huge fines every year, for small nitpicky details. They all talk of nightmares where some admin comes and destroy their company with a single inscrutable letter...
I hear stories like this often, I can believe there's a problem here. It is true that we like red tape over here.
That being said the problem with these testimonies is that you'll often hear people complain when something go wrong but nobody is going to tell you how great the French tax system is when it plays in their favor. It's... whatever the opposite of survivor bias is. People also like to deflect the blame away from them when their companies go under. When you don't have COVID-19 you have to find something else.
But I'm sure that there are things that can be improved regardless, I just wish we were more constructive about it instead of just throwing the whole system in the garbage and lighting another cigarette while looking pensively at empty space Camus-style.
That's where I'm at (small improvements, minding Chesterton's fence) and I hope someday someone will stop listening to big French-capitalism-style conglomerates that are always trying to bring new laws, new contract types, to reform it all to make it more American, or German, or Danish... and start listening a bit more to SMEs. Of all kinds.
And I also think part of the problem is overzealous government orgs, who I'm sure take their job very seriously, but are not encouraged to think mistakes are made with no intent to cheat, by default.
I liked the idea of a 'by default we think you made a mistake, our laws and procedures are too complex, let's settle this without penalty, with a generous paiement plan... let's wait a bit before we punish you'... I don't know...
Merci de le dire... Parfois cette mentalité collective qui nous caractérise me rend dingue... Le Français passe son temps à cracher sur tout et tout le monde, et surtout sur son propre pays. Donc ça fait du bien de voir des concitoyens qui restent lucides et positifs. Big up.
Why not?
The prime minister of Singapore is an active C++ programmer, and has shared
source code on his Facebook page, asking for bug reports [1].
Code is at [2].
While it is easy to laugh at these modern "maginot lines" that the french love to build, the concept of "technological sovereignity" seems very reasonable.
When many goverment bodies more or less have to use foreign software-infrastructure, then "maginot lines" sound reasonable.
Very reasonable indeed IMO if e.g. German police has to use AWS because of lack of alternatives, or the countless local authorities running on windows.
On the other hand, it is not the US to blame for their tech-supremacy. It is Germany and France to blame.
There might be many reasons to cite why we lack behind. But the whole spirit behind a government-google, a government-aws, government-yaddayadda comes across as being more part of the problem than part of the solution.
I am personally very cynical about sovereignty as a concept - it just means "nobody is willing to try to pay the heavy price to try to stop us" dressed up as something noble. Every whinge about loss of sovereignty is a complaint that they cannot control others anymore.
While there may be some good for avoiding outside control it is a cover for their drooling about shoving others inside their domain of control.
One problem that I think is somewhat related to the top-down, bureaucratic situation is that whatever big project they try to do is a copy of something else.
They didn't want to build Google / Facebook / Whatever before those existed. Instead, they want to build a "French Google". Qwant is an example of that. Whatever they're trying to accomplish with Orange in the cloud business is just a "French AWS".
During the lockdown when everyone was using Zoom, some politician was unhappy that EU countries would depend on foreign technology. Solution? Build a European Zoom! I find this kind of ironic, seeing how Skype used to be European...
The Qwant story is even worse than this, the level of cronyism and ineptitude, the extreme turnover of engineers, the lies from well connected french oligarchy hustlers...
There has been no better example of this mindset recently than the development of the StopCovid app. It makes no sense on a number of levels, but there are so many government officials pushing it in the name of “la souveraineté de l’État sur la santé”.
In terms of technology and innovation the German side is likely similar, though I wouldn't go as far as calling it corruption. Larger companies like Deutsche Telekom have been doing local cloud stuff for years now, leading to amusing overviews such as [1].
Having interacted with some of the folks at conferences I'm pretty sure there's a core of people in there somewhat committed to open source which was nice to see. But in terms of innovation none of the projects branded as "German X as a service" over the last decades stood out as particularly innovative or remotely well managed.
OTC is just a rebranded openstack, with a super unreliable api -- we have to use it for certain reasons at a client of mine and they're very keen to get off it.
No, this approach doesn’t. Complex working systems are built on a core of simpler working systems. Picking winners works incredibly rarely. Industrial policy and the infant industry argument barely ever works. You’re far more likely to get the Argentine or Indian car industry[1] or the Irish steel industry than the Korean ship building industry.
Airbus did not arise from the government putting out a tender for an airline company to be delivered in working order. There were many smaller, working, profitable aviation companies first.
[1] They all disappeared absent subsidies/tariffs.
How do they think Google became what it is, or most American companies like Amazon? That the US government funded it and kickstarted them with VC funds?
A company like Airbus makes some sort of sense since the government heavily funds Boeing/Lockheed Martin via defense contracts. But Amazon/Google and VC-backed tech startups and companies?
Not to mention that the pay for software developers and engineers in general in Europe is ridiculously low for a comparable position in the United States, or even Japan. How are they going to retain talent?
* A good, free education system
* Social security
* Good healthcare system
* Proper democracy
* Politicians who aren't clowns
* A total of 500 police killings ... in total since 1950
The US is close to becoming a failed state due to the increasing wealth and income gap.
Also, please do me a favour and read up a bit on the history of silicon valley and us innovation. It's hard to claim the government investment isn't a big factor. The DoD is behind a lot of stuff.
And I say this with envy - the US model of government investment is way better than the European one. OP correctly described the issues we have.
(Not saying Germany is perfect and the US is pure shit, I was being overly provocative to establish an extreme counter point)
> * A good, free education system * Social security * Good healthcare system * Proper democracy * Politicians who aren't clowns * A total of 500 police killings ... in total since 1950
None of these things (for good or bad) have anything to do with making good tech products.
But they do have all to do with low salaries. My salary is low for American standards, but I can rely on public hospitals, public schools, and public transportation systems. I do not need to save for retirement either. Or for my kids tuition.
> My salary is low for American standards but I can rely on public hospitals, public schools, and public transportation systems. I do not need to save for retirement either. Or for my kids tuition.
I think about this quite a bit, while the median middle class salary is higher in the US, the burden to fund everything out of pocket here is enormous. If salaries are 10-20% higher in the US, much of that goes out the window to fund things like health care, retirement, higher education, daycare/pre-K education, high rents, etc. Things that most Europeans take for granted. All of a sudden that 10-20% gap seems much smaller.
Also keep in mind that not everyone working in tech in the US is making SV level salaries.
Yes, the DoD is behind a lot of stuff but they seem to get it right, unlike most EU countries with gov funded programs that are an absolute disaster.
EU taxpayers consider unacceptable that govt funding goes to waste, but in the end gov funding goes to waster anyway because the amount of bureaucracy is staggering and we don't even get internal competition like the US.
So we waster money and we basically burn it without any positive outcome.
The US DoD has a unique advantage relative to their counterparts -- I've worked with a number -- in that they culturally have a very high risk-tolerance for a government org. They will readily spend vast quantities of money on a high-risk/high-reward project knowing that it will likely fail, and they are okay with that. They've internalized the idea that maintaining an absolute tech advantage, which is an explicit objective, requires being willing to fail spectacularly. We talk a lot about those failures in the US but they also have many brilliant successes.
In my experience, many EU equivalent programs have a strong bias toward being the "second-mover" because it is seen as too risky to be the first-mover. When opportunities arise to be a legitimate first-mover in Europe with a government program, everything tends to grind to a halt due to analysis paralysis because everyone is terrified of failure. I've seen a number of cases where the US showed years late but ended up taking the lead because they can make decisions so quickly and back that with large quantities of money.
This is because most decisions in the EU are dictated by France and Germany. Germany for example is very hierarchical in how things get done and hence this is reflected in the EU too.
Not sure if if Germany is very hierarchical (not saying I'm sure it's not). I experience it as being very decentralized and as a collection of quite independent actors.
Granted, I never worked in a Volkswagen-style mega-corp, so my perception is biased.
Germany is (until recently) also ethnically homogeneous, unlike the USA.
Its a lot easier to offer those services when everyone has roughly the same income, the same education, the same IQ, the same genetics, the same family experience.
If by until recently you mean the 1960s, maybe? Why do people always assume that there wasn't any immigration to Germany before 2015? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastarbeiter
It's so boring that in every discussion where some other country does something better than the US, people find a million reasons why this could never work there.
The problem is not retaining talent. People doesn't just migrate in mass to the USA. The problem is how easy is to create a company, raise funds and get the needed licenses.
Pretty sure the strict and difficult process of getting a working visa has something to do with that as well, not just that not everyone on the planet is interested in migrating.
Usually you migrate to a better country to improve your life. USA is attractive in some ways, but also unattractive in some other ways that are personal to everyone.
For me the salaries in the silicon Valley are very attractive, but the social issues in the country makes me prefer Europe. Even though my salary is ridiculously low compared to USA.
It was acquired quite early on by Google, but the original Google Earth/Maps project which had been developed by Keyhole had received money from In-Q-Tel, described on the wikipedia page as:
> It invests in high-tech companies for the sole purpose of keeping the Central Intelligence Agency, and other intelligence agencies, equipped with the latest in information technology in support of United States intelligence capability.
I've said it before, it still puzzles me how come the Russians let the Google StreetView car do its thing on the streets of Moscow and other big Russian cities, the Chinese were smarter than that.
> How do they think Google became what it is, or most American companies like Amazon?
Because of us government funding which created silicon valley. Silicon Valley itself is pretty much a DoD project. The foundation of the internet and many of these companies were laid by government - direct spending, subsidies, tax breaks and in amazon's case, legal protection ( they didn't have to collect state taxes ) until fairly recently.
> A company like Airbus makes some sort of sense since the government heavily funds Boeing/Lockheed Martin via defense contracts.
> But Amazon/Google and VC-backed tech startups and companies?
Many of the VCs had indirect government ties. But that's besides the point. Amazon/Google doesn't exist without silicon valley which the government created, government subsidies and government protection.
And this isn't including the government's role in keeping international markets open to google/amazon/etc. Notice how there wasn't much pushback from most countries while google/amazon gobbled up entire countries? Now compare that to intense pushback china gets for any and everything.
> Not to mention that the pay for software developers and engineers in general in Europe is ridiculously low for a comparable position in the United States, or even Japan. How are they going to retain talent?
Considering american tech companies own the european market why wouldn't american developers get higher pay? If europeans protected their market and european tech companies take over the european market, tech pay would inevitably rise.
> Now compare that to intense pushback china gets for any and everything.
Its much easier to trust democratic governments than autocratic ones. If China were a democracy I highly doubt this would be the case. Sure some would push back but many would back it too. The push back that China receives is also because of their economic colonialism and I guess rightfully so. German car companies for example dont receive as much push back. Ericsson/Nokia doesn't receive as much pushback as their counterpart Huwawei.
> Its much easier to trust democratic governments than autocratic ones.
History shows otherwise. They are equally shady. After all, it was a democracy that broke every treaty with the natives and exterminated them. But I guess it all depends on your biases and agenda. Certainly, nobody can objectively say that US, Britain, France, etc as any less shadier than any autocratic countries.
> If China were a democracy I highly doubt this would be the case.
Really? Bolivia is a democracy. Venezuela is a democracy. Russia is a democracy. If china were a democracy, the chinese people would vote to fully annex hong kong and taiwan. And being a democracy, I suppose the chinese government would have to follow through, huh?
> The push back that China receives is also because of their economic colonialism and I guess rightfully so.
Now this is rather absurd. Especially considering it is us trying to force china to adopt our ways. But agenda tends to blind people.
> German car companies for example dont receive as much push back. Ericsson/Nokia doesn't receive as much pushback as their counterpart Huwawei.
But iranian, venezuelan, russian, etc companies do. And conveniently saudi arabian companies don't. They are not a democracy.
So there goes your theory about democracy. It has nothing to do with democracy. It's about geopolitics and power. The need to maintain dominance over the world as long as we can.
Or Outscale; the "French AWS" owned by Dassault Systemes...they did do a great job of cloning the AWS console feature set; but the backend was supposedly all VMware & Cisco UCS. Surprisingly not Bull hw, given that the people responsible for it came from there. Coulden't be cheap to run, and I've always wondered who used it outside of 3DS.
If you want a real "French AWS", you should look at Scaleway (well, their VPS will be entering beta Q3 2020 so it's not AWS yet, but it's coming closer and closer)
Europe: Politicians want "something great", so there is a verdict that "something great" will be developed. A huge budget is provided, but it must be ensured that the usual suspects (public or semi-public research institutions) get most of the share. The whole project structure becomes fragmented beyond believe, nobody cares about commercial success. The project fails, but not in the eyes of the researchers, who claim that there was never the goal to create a commercial product. With the bazillion of research money they gained "valuable insight" into the whole problem and made "considerable progress".
US: Andy von Bechtolsheim meets with two bright guys, sees the huge potential of their algorithm, walks back to his Porsche, signs them a 100,000$ cheque, and a few years later we have a global tech giant called Google who the rest of the world either admires or is afraid of.
Also: this "something great" must be something they (EU politicians deciding about funding) have heard about! And what have they heard about? Something US companies have already been commercialising, hence started a big PR offensive.
That's why the EU started big funding of research on cloud computing after Amazon made money with it, started big funding of research on search engine when Google made money with it, started big funding of research on AI/ML after Google made money with it ...
I predict that the EU will go all in on supporting research on quantum computing when Google sells it in a big way.
On the other hand there's already some well established hosting companies in both countries.
I would hope that this initiative will not be built from the ground up but capitalizing on that.
Qwant is poorly managed, but that doesn't mean every project is doomed to fail. If you would judge Google success based on their failed projects, it would be the same conclusion.
Well but Qwant has its core product in its infancy, if they can't even manage that, you tell me.
The problem has many layers, Europe is not really united, which makes most markets small, the governments are pretty bad at managing investiments in tech fields, and there's not enough private capital going around pouring money into this.
You're a bit harsh, it does work, so they do manage that.
I don't think there's the intent to kill google or become as big.
Competing against Google is also a huge task...
It's far from perfect, there's definitely stuff they do wrong, but it's also far from being the Quaero fiasco.
Well, maybe you're right, but I tried to give them some feedback about spanish results and the difficulty to use quotes and even when I really tried, it was impossible.
as for your link about OpenStack, was there anything in 2013 which would have been an alternative to OpenStack? If you wanted to build your own cloud infra back then this was the standard to do it with, no?
> The kind of buddies that lead companies that have so little understanding of cloud technologies that they went with OpenStack[2] to build this new world leader in computing.
Do you have arguments or is it just a blank criticism?
OVH for instance is built in part on OpenStack, what's so very wrong with it?
There was Cloudwatt also, that was supposed to be the "French AWS", and as you said got hundreds of millions from the government, was created with the help of big, old companies (Orange, Thales, Bull) and was an utter failure.
I hope they learned their mistakes and won't do them again but I fear they'll just do it the same way.
What the French government doesn't understand is that you don't create a tech giant the same way you create the TGV, the Ariane rocket or Airbus. That model worked for those giant industrial projects, but it doesn't work for tech.
Thank you for this, couldn't have put it better myself.
I'll go one step further and make conjecture that the entire Gaia-X thingie is likely from the get-go a nice little scheme to milk public money directly into the pockets of the proponents of the whole affair.
Brussels is teeming with firms whose specialty and sole purpose is fabricating bogus "projects" to squeeze EU research grant money into their and their clients pockets.
Though Bull doesn't exist anymore as independent company.
I did an internship there (before it was bought, in 2012), the river of public money had mostly dried up and I felt like the company didn't really knew what to do, even if there was some nifty tech being developed here and there.
I agree completely: as a European, I find these projects pathetic. We need the humility to learn something from the US and create an environment and a framework in which private companies can thrive, instead of being constantly dragged down by bureaucracy, regulations, and a legal-judiciary system eager not to help but to assert its power.
Definitely, I didn't mention them only because I'm more familiar with the culture of the US (although indirectly). One thing we should certainly learn from China (and I guess other Asian cultures) is to copy first, and only when good at it start innovating. It takes a lot of humbleness and pragmatism over pride. And it works.
That is literally how you innovate! What a lot of people are unaware of is that Europeans had been copying and stealing Chinese secrets for over a millenia:
Hell, even the name America for which we give to the United States today was stolen since America was originally given to "Latin America" named after Amerigo who had only set foot in Latin America.
I was also astounded when I found out how much US brands actually copy each other. So really, there is no shame in copying from others first before innovating, because that's what essentially learning is all about right? I mean we are constantly standing on the shoulder of giants, but for some reason, for certain sectors, we tend to lock out that process.
No kidding. When I was in France I was appalled at the rates they were paying software developers. For a collection of countries that boasts better living standards for people, the comparative gap in pay for technical positions is absurd.
An entry-level tenured professor or a nurse at a hospital earn less than 2000 EUR per month. This gives them barely enough to rent a small room in a shared apartment.
Meh that's honestly not the number one problem in france. I'd even say it's a competitive advantage. Not everyone is willing to expatriate for salary, you can get really great engineers for half or even a third of what they'd be paid in SV
But then why hasn't France been invaded by US companies to hire these great engineers for half of SV money?
I know they have some small offices on campus at top universities where they employ a hand full of PhDs for ML/AI research but that's a drop in the ocean.
You could probably ask the same question of Romania, Russia or Poland. I think it's just a question of the general business friendliness of the place. And there are quite a few American companies in Paris and Sophia-Antipolis
Can't speak for France but London's tech scene is brimming with overseas offices of American companies. Out of my 5 tech jobs, 3 were with American companies, the other 2 being British.
I agree but by paying such low rates / salaries they don't get all the developers they need to do all the projects they would like to do (source: my experience in Italy, where there are more companies looking for developers than developers with spare time for them) and still those companies manage to keep going no matter if projects are delayed or cancelled. If they couldn't either they would close or find more money to spend. Of course that's great for those countries that can move faster, their advantage increases.
The problem with European software plays is a monetary problem. EU capital is much more expensive than US capital (ultimately due to the latter's status as the 'world reserve' currency due to the enforced petro-dollar regime).
This is why Europe's IT sector is much more focused on B2B servuces/bespoke developments (low risk business models) and hardware/infrastructure (historic manufacturing/telecoms legacy).
in terms of software products/B2C/SaaS high risk/hit businessmodels the US can relax and cherrypick from the European R&D knowing they can buy out any local player due to cheaper money.
The EU has in the past always declared IT and the Knowledge Economy as 'strategic', but has never protected the sector from US appropriation.
Why wouldn't an entrepreneur just borrow dollars in the US and exchange them for Euros? Or just take equity investments instead of debt and not bother with interest rates in the first place?
That looks like a good analysis to me. There are so many regulations in EU that if something happens, even organically, it has to be in order with EU regulations and priorities. The USA appropriation was never out of EU control, it was rather an accepted strategic choice. (At least, that's how I like to think about it...)
The US are not exactly regulation-free. Actually, I remember seeing people in HN who mentioned legal costs for companies tend to be much higher than in (continental) Europe.
The cost of capital is indeed one of the core issue. In Europe, almost your only way to get funding is through banks, the whole concept of VC is near absent.
In terms of innovation, etc. I think a lot of it is cultural essentialist BS. Just look at OSS: lots of core projects have a strong root in Europe, or even originated from there. But the culture of VC + university that is one core of innovation post WW2 in the US is completely absent in Europe. Intuitively, the fact that the market is more fragmented feels like an issue, but I don't know of any serious study on that.
There's no European software in the pragmatic sense. Because anyone with two bits of brain buys the first ticket to SF and tries their luck in the valley. Because that's where the magic happens.
If you have correctly identified the market niche, you have a great idea, you have a team, the opportunity, chances, timing, business plan, etc... you won't waste time anywhere, you go and apply to YCombinator or whatever.
As long as the biggest consumer market is there, there's no point in trying to start here.
American internet companies can address a large, relatively homogeneous market of 300 million people that all speak the same language. This alone is a big competitive advantage over any European company.
Indeed. And not only common language, but ease of doing business with companies across the continent in general. Here in Europe, due to legal/language/cultural differences, and due to laziness, the default mode of operation for small companies in services is to avoid or neglect doing business with strangers from other parts of Europe. It is safe and comfortable, but does not create big multinational juggernauts.
For these B2B applications, it is important to have your potential customers in your network. One can argue that achieving such a network is easier in the US, where most of the potential customers presumably are.
This is great because it will be so easy to spin up instances- just provide your VAT registration, detailed plan for GPDR, mechanism for 'right to be forgotten', cookie policy, application for any protected region of origin usages, and pandemic mitigation policy and after a short series of review and revisions you will be put in the queue for the no-bid government IT contractor to reject your request because they phased out the instance type you requested.
SAP, for all its many faults, actually has some quite successful products.
Australia's banks have been focused on replacing their legacy IBM mainframe core banking systems (stuff like CSC Hogan) with something more modern and non-mainframe. CBA went with SAP, and their project was very successful. (At least it appears that way from the media, and CBA employees who I've talked to tell me that it isn't just some good PR, it really has been a great success.) By contrast, other banks who went with other vendors had less success – https://www.itnews.com.au/news/suncorps-oracle-core-finally-...
On the other hand, Aldi Nord now successfully runs SAP HANA/Retail. The at the same time attempted (and internally highly fought against) move from decentral to central organization is probably what killed Lidl's SAP project.
[1] suggests that part of the problem is that Lidl's business processes were non-standard, and Lidl decided, rather than change their processes to match what SAP's solution supported, to instead customise SAP's solution to support their non-standard processes – and that was the point at which the project came undone, the SAP customisations couldn't scale to high turnover (but surely vanilla/uncustomised SAP Retail would not have had this problem)
Lidl's non-standard processes may well be a big part of their business success. But maybe that was a sign they shouldn't have gone with an off-the-shelf solution like SAP, and should have stuck with their legacy in-house system, or tried to build a custom next generation in-house system. And their experience isn't necessarily transferable to another business whose processes might be more standard, or who might have more flexibility to alter their processes to meet the needs of an off-the-shelf solution. And if they'd gone for some other off-the-shelf solution instead of SAP (such as Oracle or Infor), they might have had just as many problems – the more customisation heavy an ERP implementation project is, the greater the risk of failure.
The corona app doesn't need to be a huge contract. But SAP and T-Systems can sure waste a huge amount of time and charge a huge amount of money for it.
Everything the federal government does is a huge contract. Of course, in a hypothetical paradise it wouldn't have to be. But in the real world, it is. That's still no reason to be surprised.
From what I know, SAP and Deutsche Telekom were chosen because:
- SAP built an app on very short notice where Germans traveling abroad could register for one of the government-organized flights back to Germany. The government was satisfied with how this played out, therefore they were the first choice for building the app part.
- Telekom is already operating several backend services for the RKI (the German counterpart of the CDC) and the local health offices, so they were the first choice for building the backend part that needs to integrate with these systems.
Disclosure: I work at SAP, but not on the Corona app. I'm not referring to any internal knowledge. What I know, I know from public media.
Quick off topic question: How is the work culture at SAP?
Is the public sentiment that it's software is impossibly hard to manage and develop for based in reality?
(Disclosure the one time I had to access SAP Data via an API it felt like running against a wall of legacy tables and badly documented interactions -> My sentiment may be biased)
It's a good place to work. As with any large enterprise, there's quite some politics going on between org units and teams, but my direct managers are committed to shielding the team from most of it so that we can stay productive.
As for whether SAP software is "impossibly hard to manage and develop for", I cannot comment on it much since I'm working in cloud infrastructure, so I'm mostly dealing with Docker, Kubernetes, Openstack, etc.
I've seen a bit of SAP software, and IMO a good way to think about it is that an SAP system is kind of like a separate operating system. It's a completely different world. And just like I (a Unix guy) would be completely lost if you asked me to manage a Windows Server system or develop for it, same with the SAP system.
Most people only ever learn to use it in the same way most people who come in contract are only users with no deep admin/dev knowledge. So the question is if you can find someone who has deep-enough knowledge of the system to implement or configure what you need.
That's hard especially for the kernel. If you're running Linux, it's not that hard to hire someone with kernel development experience. For the SAP kernel, it's next to impossible. All these guys work for SAP.
It isn't if you do it well. Think of WhatsApp that had about 55 people when it was bought for several billions. Especially if you need it done quickly, many mediocre developers are no substitute for a few good developers.
Maybe SAP and Telekon can be arsed to gather their best if it's actually important. For Toll Collect, the usual suspects failed very hard. Much effort, buggy and very late results.
The Swiss app is developed by a small independent development studio, and for what it's worth they seem to be doing a better and faster job than SAP & Telekom:
I know for a fact that there was no formal tender process, it was just a matter of having the right contacts and being at the right place. Sadly connections still matter much more than experience in Germany.
Well in the EU we still have opportunities to fight against other's monopolies and try to impose ours. Which a single small country can't and, at the end, is expected to become vassal of the US or China.
> laugh at the failures
Talking about failures, there are so many in the UK right now that the Brits, rather than laughing, should first focus on their own internal issues, which by the way, are seriously impacting the future of Europe.
>Well in the EU we still have opportunities to fight against other's monopolies and try to impose ours. Which a single small country can't...<
Except for Korea, Japan, Singapore, etc.
>Talking about failures, there are so many in the UK right now<
This is why it's good Britain got out sooner than later. Europe, especially France and Germany, can't handle the idea that their 'European way' of doing things hasn't kept pace with the times. It's easier for these people to attack those trying something new than to accept the possibility of change. At least catch up with SEA before taking cheap shots at the UK.
Korea and Japan, being great, ancient and ultra-modern civilizations are totally depending on the US ruler for their own defence while they have to face a very dangerous neighborhood with N-Korea, China and Russia. And they're not very happy about it...
And Singapore is a dicatorial city state less populated than London or Paris (an less rich). We could have expected a more ambitious model and destiny for a nation which once ruled the world.
> can't handle the idea that their 'European way' of doing things hasn't kept pace with the times.
Good luck with keeping pace with the times with Boris Johnson, Cummings and Patel...
And to get back to the initial topic : what is the plan in UK for a sovereign cloud ? Well I guess the main idea is to give all your data to US companies and abandon any ambition to control your data privacy.
> taking cheap shots at the UK
For a couple of years Britannia has been wandering in the streets with a target painted on her dress and a message: "Hey, don't you dare shoot me, EU assholes"
No kidding. I would love European tech sovereignty. Something I've been advocating for a long time. I wish the Linux in public institutions that was tried in Germany caught on.
> I wish the Linux in public institutions that was tried in Germany caught on.
Linux doesn't have a lot of lobbying power, and no important public figures like Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates that would personally intervene on its behalf.
I dont hate US hegemony. They are there because they got things right. American companies are more innovayive and fast paced than their European counterparts (assuming they even have counterparts). In general, I would love to have American tech culture with a European safety net.
> They are there because they got things right. American companies are more innovayive and fast paced than their European counterparts
That's naive. Europe simply wouldn't allow (rightly so) a company to become Google or Amazon. A conglomerate like Gaia-X seems like a safer alternative to US tech giants.
Hm. What do you think of Bertelsmann and all its subsidiaries then? Like independence of media, while the heiress is best friends with our chancellor? "Staat im Staat". Also Arvato and Infoscore, which almost nobody knows while rambling about the SCHUFA...
Europe has to start from somewhere in a market currently dominated by the US and the Chinese... This project may look like a joke for people in the Silicon Valley but everything we do in Europe looks like a joke for Americans.
They laugh at the EU, at our spaceship program, at our industry, at our techs... Whatever we do they say we are old and finished. OK have good times laughing. Meanwhile we go on progressing. Discretly, maybe ridiculously, but we do.
> Europe has to start from somewhere in a market currently dominated by the US and the Chinese...
Yes, and it has to start by copying them. Copying to the letter, like following a recipe, humbly. That's how absolute beginners learn. Not by proclaiming absurd moonshots (by the way, it's "France and Germany", as usual, not the EU) and insisting that we'll build something different, new and innovative and blah blah. Just copy: it will force us to do the things we don't want to do, it will go against our values and culture. Which are probably what's holding us back now.
I think you did not get the purpose of the project and its context.
1. What should we copy ? We already have cloud companies in Europe. The issue is not about a lack of knowledge about cloud technologies. It is a matter of market share. Our companies are not big enough to provide adequate services to european states and sensitive industries.
2. The goal is not to create from scratch a European cloud giant that would be able to challenge Chinese and US powerhouses. It is just way not to rely on them as they cannot be trusted in any manner when it comes to data management and fair competition. As stated many times by Trump and Xi Jiping, EU is a competitor or even worse an enemy. In Europe we share this same bellicose analysis too now. And cloud is a battle among others, but an important one.
True, I don't think we need to copy the technology: that is probably easily available, you just need good engineers and money. The problem is exactly the second you mention: why is it that EU companies don't have the market share that US ones have? Why are our companies not big enough? What prevents entrepreneurs in Europe from creating tech giants such as the US ones? These are the things we need to copy- not the technology.
> The goal is not to create from scratch a European cloud giant ... It is just way not to rely on them
And how do you avoid relying on them? Are you going to force EU companies to choose a EU cloud provider, even when they would have preferred a US one? No, you need to create an offer that is competitive: and once it is, it will be competitive for everyone, not just our companies.
> why is it that EU companies don't have the market share that US ones have? Why are our companies not big enough?
They created the Cloud and we arrived late on this market, so we lag, therefore our companies are not big enough. This FR-GER initiative will secure market shares for european actors, in order they can grow enough to provide a sovereign platform for EU companies which need it.
> Are you going to force EU companies to choose a EU cloud provider, even when they would have preferred a US one?
All defense/sensitive/state owned companies, administration and maybe banking companies will not have the choice as they must comply to EU or national rules about data management. And I guess many european companies competiting with US and Chinese ones in highly competitive markets where bleeding edge techs and secrecy matter are looking for sovereign European solutions.
> They created the Cloud and we arrived late on this market
Same for the web, for the mobile, and for many other sectors. We seem to be always late on the market, why is it so?
> All defense/sensitive/state owned companies, administration and maybe banking companies will not have the choice
Ok, so if I understand it correctly the EU is going to regulate out from some sectors non-EU companies and has to both come up with a legal excuse and to create some acceptable alternative before the regulation comes in force. And if the alternative is mediocre it won't be much of an issue because there will be no choice anyway. But the idea of creating an interoperable standard is good: it could allow a sane competition between companies to provide a basic standardised service. I hope it doesn't resolve in the next embarrassment. It won't solve our problem of constantly lagging in most consumer high tech sectors anyway.
> Same for the web, for the mobile, and for many other sectors. We seem to be always late on the market, why is it so?
1.We lost the WWII. The US won it and took the leadership of the world. At a moment we were rebuilding our continent, they developed very quickly and took a competitive advantage in many sectors. We managed to catch-up in some but not in others. And since the beginning IT has always been an American thing (apart Minitel in France in the 80's). The information era was shaped by IBM, Bell, Intel, Microsoft. Not by Thomson, Siemens or Olivetti.
2.The US are very good at selling stuff and making profit. But as I stated in another post this also has big downsides.
3. Europe is not a country and there are 27 economic policies and strategies which does not help European companies...
4. I think mobile developed first in Europe (Nokia ?)and not in the US but this is detail.
.
> And if the alternative is mediocre it won't be much of an issue because there will be no choice anyway.
This move is not about making good products or value the european savoir-faire.
It is about geopolitics.
> And since the beginning IT has always been an American thing
> apart Minitel in France in the 80's
> Thomson, Siemens or Olivetti.
> I think mobile developed first in Europe (Nokia ?)
Yep. And let's not forget that the www was invented by an Englishman in Geneva.
So how come we seem to be losing all the battles in the end? I agree that there's geopolitical explanations too: another commenter mentioned that the petro-dollar system grant the US with a much lower cost of money- and it's not a small thing. If I understand it correctly, the US acts as the world's bank: prints money that everybody is forced to use and emits in exchange debt titles that everybody wants to buy. That's a huge advantage.
But let's not forget that in the US rules are simpler and companies often have a relative freedom to break them if the public finds it useful; that they can easily downsize and fire underperforming people in case of need; that professionalism and expertise are highly valued; that public administrations are open and welcome new initiatives (imagine in the EU a small private company like SpaceX was at the beginning getting multi-billion contracts from ESA...).
While in France you have judges ordering (shamelessly, in my view) that Google both has to do a certain job and pay for the privilege of doing it.
> So how come we seem to be losing all the battles in the end?
Vast question, and apart the geopolitical reasons, I could not say why we are unable to develop in specific sectors such as IT. I could not speak about whole Europe, but France, my country has serious issues with transforming a tech success into an economic success. If you take this Minitel story for example : the US would have made it a worlwide success 15 years before Internet emerged with hundred of billions of profits. In France it was distributed almost freely to families by the state owned phone company. So it became a booster to the national economy but not much more than that. It never became a standard, never went out of France and never allowed us to become an early IT champion...
We simply have different mindsets. But I think that other European countries are far better than us in this domain.
> While in France you have judges ordering (shamelessly, in my view) that Google both has to do a certain job and pay for the privilege of doing it.
Again this is geopolitics. In France Google is perceived as a dangerous company for our European interest. MOreover like other US tech companies, they cheat to avoid their tax duty in France, which infuriates many people. So all the actions intended against Google are part of a dirty war. These actions are undoubtly unfair. But do not forget Google actively lobbies against our governements at the EU level, try to prevent us from passing laws to regulate our data privacy issues, help the US agencies to spy on us... They are not our friends.
> Same for the web, for the mobile, and for many other sectors. We seem to be always late on the market, why is it so?
From what I have seen it is because of an "ask for permission culture" as a norm. The French show up the most in news stories with "felony interference with a business model" stories.
Say what you will about its role in food but it isn't exactly surprising that innovation doesn't spring forth when new ways of doing things are greeted with such hostility.
> These are the things we need to copy- not the technology.
This is only my own subjective opinion: the worst thing that we could copy from the US is their business mindset. It destroys society, states, fair competition, and at the end the core values of capitalism. Their mindset gave them leadership but now is about to destroy their society.
We have to find our own path.
I agree up to a point. I do think as well that there are the downsides you mentioned to the US business and social culture. But at the same time it produces a clear supremacy in a lot of sectors. We might be able to find a sweet European middle ground, but we need to start with the idea of learning from others, and learning is always a changing process. And I don't think that declaring your pride and love for who you are is a good starting point for any kind of change.
HN comments are just Reddit comments with a thin veneer of objectivity. So mostly just a group think of patting each other on the back, if your opinion conforms.
Europe did a lot of things that seemed unsexy, but habe proven to be good in the long run. That’s why most of the debates in Europe on healthcare, for example, are “the premiums are a tad high”. Compared to the American civil war inducing train wreck that is their healthcare reform debate.
There are tech powerhouses around major universities, like TU Berlin or ETH Zurich. The problem is that the VC market is nowhere near SV.
Also, SV unicorns are all consumer and ad businesses. This is where a homogeneous huge market helps. It’s easier to have network effects when everybody speaks the same language.
The project was politically driven while most of the slides were selling dreams.
As usual in this kind of project
- there was a schedule carved in stone
- the Conway's law gets a beautiful practical example
so the research becomes quickly a joke.
Some people:
- worked on out of topic subjects. At least no harm.
- criticized because of external/past/personal/out of topic reasons.
- criticized the work of others while doing literally nothing. My boss knew it, but since they are well known to wrote nice documents to get the fund for many years.
- worked very hard while being criticized through hidden communication.
- were here because of the data.
- were here to get the technology if by luck it ends up to be working project.
The usual burdens, I guess, but it basically kills the motivation (it is my experience in one specific project).
In the end, people went to the different meetings to see Europe.
It seems some other projects are driven in the same way according to what I have heard.
It is only a sum up of experience.
YMMV.
I sincerely hope that Gaia-X will be managed in better way.
AWS/AZURE/GCP aren't exactly beloved by their customers, product quality is sporadic, domiciling things with the US is more questionable than ever before, and their margins are high. This seems like a great time for solid international (ie non-US) competition.
If they want Competition to "HyperScalers" then why not just use OVH?
Generally speaking, I dont think any of the Europeans have technical problems, I think they have a Product Placement, Marketing and Sales problem. And I think it is more or a cultural issue. ( Not saying it is a bad thing )
IMHO the broader issue is that there isn’t a european culture or market. Instead you have a fragmented set of markets, each with their own expectations and regulations. That makes it incredibly hard to create a product that serves Europe as a whole instead of just Germany, or France, or something else.
Even just the basics are way harder than they should be, for example the lack of a common language is already a pain to deal with.
The goal is not to built yet-another-hyperscaler. The existing hyperscalers will integrate in GAIA-X.
Rather we want to give users the power to see where their data is stored and to control the use of their data if they choose to share it in an "ecosystem".
Many EU countries are scared to put their data from public administration / hospitals / ... into a cloud where lawful interception could be enforced via the US Cloud Act or similar.
This once again ignores what are probably more profound issues.
Europe has tech companies and independent cloud providers. Yet they seem to never grow large or fast enough to become leaders globally or even in Europe.
SAP is mentioned, which is a giant. But it is 50 years old. This is not the type of company that is going to challenge the status quo and come up with disrupting technology.
I think countries like France and Germany should really look at their tech and business environments, including universities, finance, tax, labour law, etc.
...and the issue is that the products are too expensive due to a vast number of factors. I'm just a private hobby developer, so maybe there are markets where this is different. But when I was looking for cold storage backup and virtual hosting providers in the EU none of the offers were even remotely competitive with US offers. They're twice or even more as expensive and less reputable.
Especially concerning backup this bothers me a lot. I'm currently with Crashplan for Small Business and it works well. I would love to have all my data on EU servers, but where is the EU backup solution with decent backup software that allows me to store more than 2 TB of data for $3.06 per month?
I can't see how this French initiative would change this. If you look up "Gaia-x" it doesn't even come with a web page where you can buy the product or check out its pricing and conditions. It's nebulous vaporware - so typical.
> Europe has tech companies and independent cloud providers. Yet they seem to never grow large or fast enough to become leaders globally or even in Europe.
Very true, but I'm unsure why that is the case. My guess it's the country/language fragmentation, ie. companies looking mostly at suppliers from their own country. But I'm not sure that is the case.
Also another guess is that European companies buy US software but US companies don't often buy European software perhaps? Again, nothing to back that up with except for a hunch.
> That is already far too late, according to analysts at Gartner, who forecast that the global market for public cloud services will grow by 17% to $228 billion this year. “The leading cloud providers have already moved quickly to build up this market,” said Gartner analyst Rene Buest.
Person not poised to make exorbitant money off venture thinks venture a waste of time. Alternatively, person who might lose money if venture goes ahead thinks venture a waste of time.
Does anybody have any technical details to share about Gaia-X? I mean service discovery, interchangeable services/interfaces, etc. has been around since the SOAP days (~ 2003) at least. Cloud can mean many things. Does there exist anything at all or is it just talk at the political level atm? Do they intend to fund new research into bringing these things, or will they pick existing tech?
Thanks, that's exactly what I feared and would call strategical/non-technical ;) I mean it mentions "open source technologies", and contains a vague general description of the concept of identity providers, and, of course, platitudes a la "industry 4.0" but nothing concrete. I want to hear about protocols, operating systems/POSIX/Linux, integration into TelCo provisioning platforms maybe if that's on the radar and they want to have 5G on board, payment standards, containers (chroot, VMs, Docker-like/Linux-only namespace containers, or whatever), or even IP networking. Also, going by the stock photos and the use case example, I'm a bit surprised this is targetting industry applications rather than public authorities, schools, medical etc.
That's at least something. Unfortunately, this reads more like a program to keep academic research institutes busy and rehashes phantasies of dynamically matching service providers to consumers and policies, something that was a hot topic in academia, and academia only, during the SOAP times, but wasn't used at all in practice (even today you're using lots of yaml to bind stuff on clouds). Moreover, it doesn't use any established logic programming paradigm and re-invents an ad-hoc service ontology/taxonomy and query language (this after the EU spend lots of money in the last decade to fund research on SemWeb ontologies) and they're just using Neo4j (which is fine as a graph DB but not a standard by any means). On top of that, they're using OpenAPI and JSON payloads; this isn't a good fit when the majority of established protocols one would like to use (and that have been created by lots of EU money) are based on WSDL and XML (payment protocols) or even EDIFACT (logistics). OpenAPI/SmartBear has certainly sold their primitive JSON Schema thing well I guess (that just exists on paper or in the form of broken Swagger Java apps). Didn't they want to push European tech? Then why are they promoting gitlab and k8s? I could go on and on, but this doesn't look promising. Tbh, making an undergrad project out of this is embarrassing for French academia who has produced some of the best work in the field.
The "technical" architecture reads like an extensively annotated UML diagram about... generics. There are a lot of guiding principles, a lot of references to data sovereignty, but after reading it I have zero clue of what they are going on about.
Can you point us to some examples of governments beating the private sector in software? I can’t imagine that EU governments can pull together funding greater than Google or Amazon tbh. Besides you then have to convince the private sector to move to your new unproven cloud platform
Just recently, the DWD (German Meteorological Service) was banned from providing a free (and ad-free) general purpose weather app, after they were sued by other app developers that felt that competing with a government financed agency would be unfair.
Of course an app is a much smaller project than launching a cloud provider.
I wouldn’t read the lack of public investment into software as accidental. Just look how terrible investments like healthcare.gov are to see why: massive mountains of cash if you’re not a worker and no need to deliver anything usable. There’s money in not understanding how software works if you’re a politician or a contractor.
That said, I don’t think I have ever heard of governments releasing copyrighted, closed-source software, let alone trying to make money off it. That just doesn’t make any sense. I don’t see any reason why the lack of a profit motive would be a detriment to competition in the event governments do invest in free software
Honestly this seems like something a trade treaty would be useful for if it weren’t written by multinational corporations. Until then we’re gonna be stuck with really, really shitty decisions as individuals, like ios vs android.
Hell, have you seen any competition in software in private markets? There’s isolated pockets of competition in certain circumstances, but from my perspective the major markets all colluded to fuck us roughly the same ways.
That said, this effort will fail for lack of decent hardware investment to keep costs down.
The EU could build support for this 1000 different ways. They need only shake another GDPR-shaped stick that gently encourages business to buy local and the rest would be history. But they can't really do that yet, because there is no viable local market.
Look at Huawei to see how effective government bureaucracies can be when they decide to compete with efficient business.
I wonder how much they will be paying their software developers. Right now, a senior developer that really understands cloud and distributed computing can make more than $500,000/yr at Amazon, Azure, or Microsoft. If they want to attract the talent to build this, they are going to have to pay a lot more than they are used to paying for software engineers.
I would guess that the top 5% of talent in cloud architecture is in global demand. Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, attract developers from all over the world, not just those local to Seattle or Silicon Valley.
Knowing you can triple your salary by moving is a pretty big incentive for a lot of people.
They will form an entity but I'm not sure if it's even going to have developers on the payroll.
My understanding (I've been involved with this on the sidelines) is that development is going to happen mostly by the member/participating companies in collaboration.
USA Payroll tax: 15.3% combined, first $127,000 only (3.89% effective)
France Payroll tax: 20% for salaries over €151,965.
USA Income tax: 42%, including State (CA) and Federal, excluding deductions
France Income Tax: 50%.
So the labour cost will be a lot higher due to payroll taxes, and the employee will take home less due to income taxes. High VAT (20% in France, 8.5% in SF) means consumer purchases are also more expensive. If you are in Paris, you're at a latitude 48.8N, SF 37.7N.
The same is true for moving to other Anglo countries: UK, Canada, Australia have similar lower-tax regimes.
France, Germany etc. are charging huge payroll, income and sales taxes to fund their huge welfare states and bureaucracies, but in the process ruining their competitiveness.
San Fran also has over 8k homeless in a population of 800k. The overall homeless rate in France is about 5x lower per capita.
My opinion on paying taxes changed drastically after I visited the USA 2 years ago (San Fran, LA, Vegas). I was absolutely shocked by the amount of poverty I saw and I had never realised that America had such a drastically different culture to Australia.
For the 2019-2020 fiscal year, San Francisco will spend $364 million on the homeless.
I think there are other major issues besides lack of money from lack of taxes.
For one thing, when comparing per capita, you shouldn't just look at the population of San Francisco. A lot of those 8k homeless people came from other parts of the state or even other parts of the country to San Francisco. This is in large part that San Francisco has nice weather and is relatively welcoming to the homeless compared to a lot of cities and jurisdictions. Whereas in a lot of cities, homeless residents might get a lot of harrassment from the police, in San Francisico for the most part they are left alone.
So when doing per capita homelessness in San Francisco, you probably need to look at a much larger overall population that just that of San Francisco.
That still leaves a 3.5 times higher homeless rate per capita than in France. One third is a lot but it's not the driving force behind homelessness.
>As of 2014, the city was believed to have approximately 7,000 homeless residents.[55][56] As of 2015, approximately 71% of the city's homeless had housing in the city before becoming homeless, while the remaining 29% came from outside of San Francisco. This figure is up from 61% in 2013.
> France, Germany etc. are charging huge payroll, income and sales taxes to fund their huge welfare states and bureaucracies, but in the process ruining their competitiveness
That's a common bashing legend that France/Germany are taxe hell and it is mainly bullshit.
I am currently live in France with salary over 100k and my effective taxe rate is under 20%.
Both France and Germany (and almost every European country) have a gazillion way of reducing legally your taxe bill if you do it right.
Currently, some of my colleagues in Switzerland, a well known taxe heaven, pay more taxe than I do.
Really the only way as an employee is to have a family because income tax depends on household size. And let's remember that there is a de facto second income tax (CSG/RDS) on top of the income tax.
But this is a small part of the issue with tax. Regarding employment there are the taxes paid by employers, as you rightly point out, which make the cost of labour quite high in France, but there are also all those other taxes on about everything.
Off the top of my head... in France, you pay tax as a household rather than an individual. So if you are married with children you get a tax cut for each child up to 3.
Private pension contributions are also tax deductible and don't actually have to be used for retirement (you can use it to fund a first house for example)
Other things that you can take off your tax bill include alimony payments, charitable donations and investments made in certain French initiatives.
So yes, there are many ways to legally reduce your tax bill quite significantly here.
As an individual you may be OK re. tax if you are married with children because they give strong tax advantages to those households [basically they count how many people live on your income when calculating income tax], which must be your case.
But overall tax levels are high, taxes are many and complicated, red tape works against you.
France is #1 in the EU for public spending [1]. Deficit is within average and constrained by Eurozone rules (excluding the current mess). Money does not magically appear.
As I said, taxes are many, complicated, and often useless. This of course overlaps with the issue of red tape but is an issue in itself.
There is a reason why so many rich French people live in Belgium or London. There is a reason why when Peugeot merges with Fiat-Chrysler the new company is headquartered in Amsterdam.
Just another example I've recently found (this is supposed to be abrogated this year): If you're a company and your turnover is greater than EUR760k annually then there is a special, additional tax on your advertising spending. There are plenty of things like that. This is bonkers.
That's a well known overstatement that comes mainly from the fact Pension system, education system AND health care system are almost entirely state-owned in France. You can find the same pattern in some Scandinavian country btw, France is not an exception.
> There is a reason why so many rich French people live in Belgium or London.
You can say the same with British and American near the Leman-lake /Zug in Switzerland. Fiscal optimization is everywhere.
> There is a reason why when Peugeot merges with Fiat-Chrysler the new company is headquartered in Amsterdam.
That's not surprising, Holding companies always love specific countries for legislation/taxes reasons. That include Netherlands, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Ireland. Almost every European major multi-national has an holding in one of these.
> If you're a company and your turnover is greater than EUR760k annually then there is a special, additional tax on your advertising spending.
That I totally agree with you. This is a good example of terrible case by case politic bullshit.
It is certainly not an overstatement, and the issue of tax goes far beyond what you may see as an individual (for example, overall labour costs [1]).
France is not an exception in its organisation, in fact its health care system is LESS state-owned than, say, the UK's. But it spends a lot, taxes a lot, and, to compound the issues, is not flexible.
You seem to actually agree that France has problems with its legislation and tax in the rest of your reply...
Edit: The graph that you posted in you reply below is obviously not the same metric. It states it is "general government" spending while I mentioned "public spending". But even so, your graph shows France ahead of Germany and the UK.
> It is certainly not an overstatement. As you say, France in not an exception in its organisation, in fact its health care system is LESS state-owned than, say, the UK's.
It is. Especially if you compare with the public spending/GDP collectively [1]. It is currently lower than USA and right in the average of OECD.
> You seem to actually agree that France has problems with its legislation and tax in the rest of your reply...
I totally agree with that. I disagree with the fact it is a taxe hell. In my experience, as a European who lived in several countries including France, it is in the average of Europe.
That said, I agree with you about the red tape / administrative burden.
Unless you are earning above 400k€ per year your income taxes will be less than 42% of your income in Germany. Lets say you are earning SF type salaries in Germany. Something like 150k€ per year. Your income tax will still only be 30% of your income. So why are only 90k€ arriving on your bank account? (60% of your salary). Because medical, unemployment, long term care insurance and pensions are mandatory but also provided by the government in Germany. The effectiveness of these insurances is much lower if only a minority is taking advantage of them.
Imagine extreme examples like everyone who signs up for unemployment insurance is freshly unemployed and once they find a job they cancel their insurance. There is no way to make it work without the government.
I hope Gaia-X will be built as an Open source project. Because of economics of scale closed source companies usually cannot compete with Open source projects. Meaning that open source projects can attract more developers from different companies and backgrounds than closed source. Plus if its open source everyone in the world benefits not just Europe.
Interesting that Lidl only recently made news about moves into the cloud computing area.
Reading the article "German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier, speaking in Berlin, described Gaia-X as a “moonshot” that would help reassert Europe’s technological sovereignty, and invited other countries and companies to join." It's not clear if this is limited to European based countries and companies only and if not, kinda moots the statement a bit.
Be interesting how this progresses and competition is good and some standards would also work well. Though I do fear that the usual company suspects will pile into this pie just because they have a European satellite office, like Amazon, Google, Microsoft.....
I hope this is an EU wide initiative and not just another FraGer based one for many reasons.
So many questions and could just be a tool to bash the Tech giants into opening up more.
The article seems to conflate cloud services with merely storing data. Of course that's part of any cloud stack, but to the average HN reader it is evident that cloud services are much more than that, such as running software and transforming data.
I think this might be a reflection of a misunderstanding that also happens on a higher level in European politics. Cloud services are much more than just "computers that store data" and the political implications of data sovereignty or what have you.
Cloud services are insanely complex systems built on the latest advances in areas like operating systems, networking, hardware, etc.
You don't get there with political statements of good-will, even when they're backed by what looks like a non-committal, lukewarm coalition of private companies. You don't stumble upon it by just saying "Ha! We need a Europe response to cloud services!"
You get there by being obssessive and single-minded about the problem, employing all your energy and focus on the task at hand, most likely fueled by the ambition of a lucrative or economically strategic incentive.
It saddens me as a European that the latter is what Europe seems to lack sometimes, and this initiative doesn't give me any hope for a change of course.
The description of Gaia-X and that of old world culture sounds like a standard government/enterprise project with all the same problems. The US model comes from venture funding, where you seed 10 firms solving the same type of problem, and the most desirable result prevails. The institutional model of increasing stakeholders to produce something that satisfies all of them is what makes enterprise development such a farce. The mentality is captured in the criticism that something is, "underfunded," which is the expression of a worldview that "funding," comes from some welfare oriented source, and not earned as compensation for providing value. The strategies to "get funding," vs. the ones that earn revenue are largely orthogonal, and people with the funding mentality have in effect the opposite of the "growth mindset," that is necessary to build things others want.
These development cultures build lots of things, just very few things that anyone uses willingly. It's just more solutions to govern, not tools people need.
>One important concept underpinning Gaia-X is “reversibility”, a principle that would allow users to easily switch providers.
Switching providers would imply some new tech or standard, no? A bit like docker is portable. Except for all parts of the cloud. So are they thinking a FAAS standard, a load balancer standard?
Well that's kinda my question. Modern cloud have like 50+ distinct "things" in them. I just don't see how they think this can even be standardized without it being a massive standard. Specific areas are low hanging fruit - like you say k8s but what they're promising is a pretty comprehensive if you can move from one provider to another for your cloud needs
My bet would be focusing on things like a common interface for Object Storage (everyone is making their products S3 and DynamoDB protocol compatible already) plus a common interface for cloud API operations (creating / managing infrastructure). Those would go a long way. Then you can think about how compatible more niche services like the various message queues etc can be made.
Kubernetes is your answer. For parts like blob storage, DNS, and identity provider, you can already use a few commercial or open source products (Minio, Keycloak, ...)
This might sound terrible ... but this will come from Scandinavia/Finland or not at all. Possibly in the form of one or a few, very well thought out startups and/or standards that the rest of Europe can buy into.
This is not about size, it's about 'getting it right' - and then having the system follow along one way or another.
They are competing with Google, Amazon and Microsoft. Those are not normal companies.
I also think that people underestimate that this space will get very low margin eventually and become even more commoditized. Most companies totally overpaid for IT enterprise solutions the last decades, they are sales driven and live off lock in effects of their hardware to milk their customers.
Now we got rid of physical hardware then it will take companies another 10 years to figure out that they also don't need 90% of all the cloud solutions they got sold on. The rest you can run everywhere cloud neutral with kubernetes or something else.
Will those three companies earn a trillion dollars during that process? Sure.
"repository of existing services and resources that are available in the ecosystem, including the capability to search this repository"
Yeah I totally want to spend my time digging around in there for "which random company can I get a crappy version of AWS Lambda from?"
I'm no fan of monocultures and US/Chinese influence but if they want it to actually work they could say "here's a terraform provider that figures it out for you". That would be nice. So far it sounds like this is just "we'll make a list of cloud providers and some of their services"
So, instead of working with well established EU companies like OVH or Lease Web, they, once again, build-to-fail a sovereing solution.
They will not be able to hire the necessary talent, don't benefit from decades of expertise, have to build trust with multiple communities plus a client portfolio and have to pay for building infrastructures.
As @heipei said, Europe mentality is already years late when it's about tech. And while I do think we desparatly need our own alternative to the US GAFAM and clouds, this is, once again, a doomed attempt that will mostly enrich a few well connected people.
From the article
"The companies will inject an annual €1.5 million combined in the underlying association, with plans to double the sum later."
1.5 million ... I hope this is a typo.
This project is still born because they are missing a federated accounting and payment service at the heart of the platform.
Why? Because it's damn near impossible to deliver such feature for dynamically orchestrated services from a federation of providers.
Sovereignity, interoperability, compliance is a nice sales pitch. But it seems that when it comes to getting paid or paying you are on your own. Imagine trying to pay for hundreds of services from companies spread across dozens of countries...
Alas, looks like a PR move to cobble something together from existing components by consultants for EUR1.5m a year (from the article, unless I misread what that is for).
I've been developing backend distributed systems for a while, and kinda want to have a gig in Europe, so the title got me too excited I guess.
But, my dreams of reinventing the wheel in Europe for a (relatively) high paycheck aside; what could possibly go wrong? :)
I wish them good luck. I think that right now the US and China really have a lock on cloud and AI.
Europe has lead the world in user privacy and rights, so I hope they can leverage that and bake human rights into their systems. Hetzner is a very good cloud provider. I would use them exclusively if it were not for the tiny latency lag between the SouthWest USA (where I live) and Germany.
> " a platform joining up cloud-hosting services from dozens of companies, allowing business to move their data freely"
This is practically dead before it's created. The other platforms (AWS, GCP etc.) are hyperscale due to their useful integrated nature of building blocks. You're not going to get that with a bunch of random vendors. It's hard enough as it is for a large company to create a somewhat homogenous environment, and existing projects that are supposed to be multi-vendor like OpenStack (and CloudStack) are just not on par.
Say you have a few vendors, one runs VMWare, one runs Hyper-V, and you need a workload with scalable counts of CPUs, and the datacenter of the VMWare guys is full and you now need to use some of the CPUs in the other datacenter. Are you going to have a single API (and perhaps console) where you say: I want a machine with specs X, image Y and parameters Z to do that and have the lower layers resolve it? Probably not.
> Are you going to have a single API (and perhaps console) where you say: I want a machine with specs X, image Y and parameters Z to do that and have the lower layers resolve it? Probably not.
Why not? Isn't Kubernetes already most of the way there? (I have only played with it very briefly, but it looks like it should solve this.
The workload is most likely a container anyways, mostly resolving the "image" issue, so the key parameters are CPU, storage and RAM. Ignoring dependencies between containers (e.g. you probably want your web app server and database to be colocated), for the simplest implementation, couldn't you simply create a Kubernetes cluster covering VMs from all providers?
Not: because you would either lose platform-specific functionality between whatever hypervisor the different vendors happen to use, or you would get multiple APIs. I'm sure attempts other than libvirt exist, but nobody has really succeeded. It's all either Xen, KVM, or VMWare so far, and a little bit of Hyper-V, and none of them are compatible.
There is a really interesting discussion to be had here about if and what the EUs past policy failing was. Is the issue that they were insufficiently capitalist and drove all their innovators to the US? Is the issue that they let their markets too open, and should have copied the Chinese approach? Is the issue that they shouldn't be concentrating on tech at all and should be leaving it to people better at it than Europeans?
There is a real litmus test of something in the EU and their technology situation.
Having been to a few tech conferences held by the EU commission, I would say the issue is not (wholly) to it being too open. The biggest problem with the EU is that it is ultimately 27 sovereign states with different language and cultures and very different economic situations.
What the EU tries to do is to bring these 27 states closer by awarding grants based on cross-border collaborations (so company A in France needs to collaborate with company B in Italy) and also helping the poorer states. This is a very rigid process, hence I guess this is why we've not seen much success stories so far.
If China wants tech sovereignty, I don't see why Europe shouldn't. I don't understand the negative comments here.
The core problem isn't really the innovation, the economics, or europe's ability to compete with american giants, it's rather geopolitics, privacy, GDPR, surveillance, industrial espionage, tax havens.
I have sadly no faith in europe to get this right. While capitalism is under fire right now it does one thing better than anything we know right now. Innovate. I don't see a government competition with a group of smart, capable people, who would reap all the money from said effort.
Most of old Europe saw China succeed in its "Copy a successful American thing" manner and decided to try the same. Except they don't have the competence overall as orgs.
They are not shielding their market, putting everything behind a firewall, requiring joint ventures. Instead they actually respect human rights and the power of law. They don’t even use a non-latin language.
I think the residents of Britain, Ireland, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, and the entirety of central and eastern Europe (except Romania) would be surprised to hear that they don't speak a Latin language.
German might not be a Latin language, but has very obvious roots there. Which are btw. more apparent than in English, because the grammar has not been simplified yet. I suspect the way to learn both languages is not that different. It also has to be way easier if you already know a similiar language, which was my point.
I speak five European languages including German. What you say is the opposite of the truth - English has far more Latin influence than German. By one estimate around a third of English words are derived from Latin (via Norman French, thanks to the Norman conquest of Britain in the 11th century.) German doesn't have nearly as many Latin words.
It's true that German and Latin both have case systems (accusative, nominative, etc.), but German didn't get this from Latin - they both inherited it independently from proto-Indo-European, their common ancestor. English used to have a case system too but it's been lost.
With that being said, my original post had a stupid mistake: I meant to imply that the listed countries don't speak a Latin language, not that they do.
> With that being said, my original post had a stupid mistake: I meant to imply that the listed countries don't speak a Latin language, not that they do.
I got that.
You are right, German is per definition not a latin language. You win 5 internet points, even though you still did not get the context of my original post, which is why you were downvoted.
> I speak five European languages including German. What you say is the opposite of the truth - English has far more Latin influence than German.
Nobody is interested in how many European languages I speak and it does not matter here, but I do speak German and English and have studied Latin. English might have more Latin words, but German feels way more like Latin than English does, because it is more structured and rule-based, has less exceptions (funnily enough because it has had less influence from French aka Latin).
It is not only about a case system, it's also gender of words, conjugation of verbs and the whole structure of sentences. English feels more linearly "one word comes after the other"-style, while German and Latin both rely more on rules and sentences can (or sometimes have to) be taken apart piece by piece. One thing they have in common is the ability to form long sentences with the predicate all the way at the end, making the listener remember the whole thing before finally getting the actual meaning.
Another important point is: You can mostly just read both Latin and German, because words are pronounced the same way they are written. We might pronounce some Latin words differently than they were originally prounounced, but since Italian behaves the same, we should be reasonably close.
Competence at designing and building large systems on schedule. At Nokia there was a saying around 2010 that in the time the Chinese produce a new phone model we can produce a new powerpoint slide.
That's just it. There are individual luminaries where individuals can act. But as a full system, you just don't get good tech products out of Europe.
You misunderstand. It isn't that Europeans are dumb. They're just people so of course there are smart ones and dumb ones same as anywhere else. I'm not claiming some racist thing that Europeans aren't competent just like I'm not claiming Americans can't build subway.
Europe itself though isn't set up to make pioneering software products. Just like America can't efficiently build subway.
Realistically that will just yield guidelines on GDPR compliance, which was already adopted by major providers, and interoperability. Even if this non-political actor would lead to regulatory advice, we already have similar guidelines in areas like security, framing that alone as anti-competitive seems somewhat odd. I doubt a major cloud provider is "hindered" by suggestions such as "give your users something to control where their data goes" / "give your users the ability to get their data back out of your infrastructure". Startups might have problems work existing regulation that essentially says "make sure this data doesn't leave the country/union" but I don't see much difference to investing in any other compliance on the other side of the pond there.
This is so sad. As a European I would love to see some Internet giants created. Everybody says it's because we don't have homogenous market and so on. But my hunch is it is something different: Existing European companies are much more protected than their US counterparts, or even their UK counterparts. Think ThomasCook - would have been definitely been "saved" like TUI in Germany. That doesn't happen that much in the US I believe. Instead new comers are generated at a higher rate creating completely new markets, think Tesla, Facebook, amazon etc. That entire life cycle of companies dying and being newly born seems somewhat skewed over here.
> Existing European companies are much more protected than their US counterparts
That's a complete myth. The USA affords a lot of direct and indirect protection to its companies, far more than Europe does usually.
You have things like the "Buy American Act" ensuring US companies don't face external competition for public markets, a different system of measures and crucially norms slowing the entry of external actors and a strong cultural emphasis amongst the population on economic patriotism and buying American which mostly doesn't exist in Europe.
Do we need internet giants though? Are they a good thing for people? Perhaps a system that encourages a handful of really big companies in de facto control of large swaths of our communications infrastructure is not something that's actually good for the world.
- Article about Gaia-X in major German newspaper FAZ explained that on AWS you can spin up your own infrastructure, "sometimes even without talking to anyone from sales", from your home!
- When I tried to read or watch reviews about SaaS solutions for invoicing / bookkeeping for German companies, the first half of the review is usually spent trying to convince people that moving off paper-based invoices and folders to all-digital is a good idea in the first place.
- University-educated people in my social circle are often woefully unaware of economic trends that have swept the US, be it the gig economy, X-as-a-service, the nature of Venture Capital, the idea of scaling a company aggressively, the value of information, mobility of labor and paying market rate for experts, the high profit margins of offering a software product vs. (for example) doing one-off consulting for a German industrial company, etc. None of these things bode well for the best talent in Europe working on anything remotely resembling an innovative European tech company. Not even saying we're worse off for it, but the reality is that any European who truly grasps the pace of the US tech industry would rather go there directly than work for a Franco-German government moonshot and hope to be paid maybe a 10% premium over their regular European salary.