Comment by raverbashing | Hacker News Reader

Comment by raverbashing | Hacker News Reader

Well, it's a lot of factors (I am currently in an European country, YMMV between them)

- Lack of "drive". Young people mostly want to find a nice job and that's it. In my perception this is less in France, where people may want to "kick ass" more (historical pride maybe) and maybe in the UK or Germany

- People are 'naive', and by that I mean the sentiment "this is the way it is, don't bother changing". Since everything pretty much works, it's difficult to see faults (or maybe faults enough to motivate a change)

- People in Europe need more hand-holding. They are usually more theoretical as well instead of "go there and do it", something is much stronger in the American continent (which goes from Canada all the way to Uruguai/Argentina/Chile in the south)

- Labor laws, difficulty in getting talent outside of the EU (depends on the country really - still, usually easier than getting an H1B)

Also, every country has its quirks: French cannot speak english to save their lives (usually)

In the end, Europe has a lot of opportunities, they have only to think outside of the box. But don't be so quick to count them out, they have literally thousands of years of experience.

Lack of "drive". Young people mostly want to find a nice job and that's it.

what most people don't realize is that the time of uninterrupted careers and job security is over, and so even if you want to be just an employee, you're still essentially an entrepreneur. You'll still have to do constant R&D to keep your products (job skills) current, and do sales to get the next job.

This way you may not have to invest into things and get into debts beyond typical mortgages or car loans, but you'll also lack the potential upside of being in business for yourself.

Yes, that's very true. For most people at least. The previous generation here in the EU, had this notion of a 'permanent job', which was an iron-clad, for life, contract. State guaranteed. You could be folding paper planes all day and sit counting your pencils. Again. And still nothing happened. This was quite common. I know a lot of people, especially in PT/ES who are in trouble with their parents; they want to take risks while their parents tell them to get this cushy job for life (which doesn't exist anymore). It's a real pain to convince people that this was a crazy notion (and poisonous!) in the first place.

I agree, there are no more cushy jobs, or at least, not in the amount it existed once.

But the constant renewing of abilities is more a characteristic of IT. In the majority of professions this is much less pronounced

I think part of the problem is that job security is still drilled into everyone's heads: older, educated European parents are quasi-unfireable at this point (having been hired on old-style contracts with ridiculously favourable terms), and even young teachers are typically state employees with exceptionally high job security and exceptionally low competition - my sister is studying to be a teacher in Austria, and she already knows what her salary will be when she starts work in 3 years' time. And these are the only adults with whom young people spend any significant amount of time.

Meanwhile, in industry, there are jobs available, but often not as actual employees. Companies will bend over backwards to hire young people on a "permanently temporary" basis, i.e. perpetual, full-time, single-client freelancers. Legally, this tends to be a very grey area, but if you complain they'll obviously just not renew your contract. So nobody does.

The decrease in job security is probably also contributing to the "brain drain": if salaries are higher elsewhere, and there's no longer a security advantage to staying at home, then why not move?

> even young teachers are typically state employees with exceptionally high job security and exceptionally low competition

This is definitely no longer true in Austria. For the first couple of years of their career, young teachers are usually hired on a contract basis. If they are not needed the following year, their contract is simply not renewed.

Together with the infamously bad ability by Austrian schools and school administration to estimate demand for the following years, I've heard horror stories of teacher who didn't know at the end of August whether or not they will have a job in September.

That said, at the moment there seems to be a shortage of teachers, caused by the attempts of the last decade or so to steer people away from becoming teachers (because we have too many ...). So with a decent choice of subjects it shouldn't be too hard to find a job.

> Since everything pretty much works, it's difficult to see faults (or maybe faults enough to motivate a change)

This is an interesting angle.

Are less well developed countries better for entrepreneurs? More holes to fill? Anyone have anecdotal evidence either way?

European countries are as full of things that don't work as third world ones. I lived in switzerland, for instance, and found it astonishing how things that "simply worked" back home (a developing country) were still badly implemented there. Paying rent and tracking mail packages are two examples I still remember didn't work well/could be heavily improved...

There are holes to fill everywhere.

What is wrong with paying rent in Switzerland? I've lived in several countries and here (Geneva) they handle rent payments pretty well, it's just doing it online/taking one paper to the atm (with UBS), honestly I see no faults in that

Reply on news.ycombinator.com