Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

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.

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.

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.

/me snorts...

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!

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)

Germany nailed that process in 1983.

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.

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.

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?".

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.

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.

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.

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.

$100k is €88k. As an engineer in Europe I'd consider that very high. Not sure I'll earn that much even at end of career.

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.

States should neither be trusted nor simply be involved in producing anything.

That's not what they're for and they are therefore profoundly incapable of doing it.

The simple fact that they are not subjected to competitive pressure is argument enough to prove my point, but it's far from the only one.

And quite funnily, the first public AWS service wasn't S3 or EC2, it was: SQS (according to Wikipedia) in 2004

I would add a number 0. to your list: Vision, and then they would be in order of importance

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

https://www.nextinpact.com/news/108986-six-ans-apres-son-lan...

https://www.nextinpact.com/news/108320-qwant-mail-fail-linag...

turnover and employee discontent: https://www.nextinpact.com/news/108123-le-cahier-doleances-s...

Deepl (https://www.deepl.com/en/translator) will do a great job at translating those articles.

It's far from perfect, there's definitely stuff they do wrong, but it's also far from being the Quaero fiasco.

None of these things (for good or bad) have anything to do with making good tech products.

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.

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.

How did you get that impression? Hm K, maybe not horror clown grade, rather sad clowns.

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.

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.

> 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.

Anyway the US is really at the bottom of the list. Most people would prefer anywhere in Europe or at worse Canada and Australia.

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.

Or, in case their virtual servers suck (which I don't know about), running VM hosts on Hetzner servers as a service.

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.

https://www.ubique.ch/index.html

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.

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.

edit: apart from Bertelsmann: DATEV

> 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.

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.

More concrete specs and technologies are being built, but not ready to show.

One of the authors of the "technical architecture document" here. AMA, but I cannot share in-progress work.

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.

Of course an app is a much smaller project than launching a cloud provider.

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.

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.

Because these are definitively taxes that should be included.

If yes, I am really curious to know how this is possible