European companies don't have an innovation problem, they have an incentive prob | Hacker News Reader

European companies don't have an innovation problem, they have an incentive prob

productics.substack.com

2 pointsiggori7 comments

I wrote this after years of working inside large European companies. What looks like an "innovation problem" is usually an incentive problem. People aren’t rewarded for taking risks, owning outcomes, or pushing things forward, so the system defaults to safety and process.

I’m curious how this compares to what engineers see in the US. Is it the same pattern or something different?

Incentive problem is technically the same in the U.S. You might think there's ownership conferred by taking risks and such to the individual worker, but it is much more akin to the feudal sharecropping arrangement. You are delegated a body of work by your liege when they are pleased, but the moment you fall out of favor or become inconvenient, poof. The real answer to the ownership question manifests. It was never yours in the first place. You just sold your blood, sweat, and tears to enable someone else to thrive in the long run while you get tossed aside at the first sign of difficulty.

I get what you mean about long‑term ownership. My point in the article is a bit narrower. In many EU companies people don’t even get ownership inside the work itself. Decisions are spread so thin that nobody can push, take responsibility, or move anything forward.

I’m trying to understand whether this is a specifically European pattern or if US engineers run into the same thing.

So are you saying that in European firms, you'll attempt to take ownership of something and push forward an initiative; of which a part is getting in contact with, and developing a consensus with other operational stakeholders in the business, but eventually get told "No, you cannot proceed because $reason, and how dare you try, it's not your place?"

Absolutely happens in the U.S.; I've been on both sides of it. The one taking ownership, and the one denying someone else ownership. It's part of business. I've also been denied ownership as well, and grudgingly passed ownership. I can't say as I've had the pleasure of working for a European firm to shed light on that, but I will admit to being a bit jealous, because my biggest challenges have always been reining in skeevy behavior, which is something supposedly much easier to do over in Europe on account of regulators having a reputation for actually having teeth.

A lot of that could just be grass is greener fantasy on my part though. I'm almost afraid to have that bubble popped, because at times it is like the candleflame of hope in that there is at least somewhere they enforce doing things right.

Well, if the EU is really going to detach from the US tech embrace, they're going to have to create and deploy new software. This will demonstrate the validity of the post.

That’s exactly the tension I’m pointing at. If Europe wants real tech independence, it needs to fix the internal incentive structures that make shipping slow and risky. Curious whether people see signs of that changing anywhere.

Not trying to bash Europe. I’m trying to understand whether these incentive failures are universal or more common here. I’d love to hear from people who’ve worked on both sides.

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