As far as I know the rant is about Hungary, not the European Union in general. Labour and tax laws aren't the same everywhere in Europe, and the Hungarian economy is hardly representative of the EU's.
Reproducing Silicon Valley is another story. Arguably it's very hard to do even in NY or other parts of US that are more or less similar to California. After all, labour law is just one of many factors. For instance, even with all that overhead, I bet it's still much cheaper to hire a bunch of top-notch, English-speaking programmers in Hungary than in California.
> even with all that overhead, I bet it's still much cheaper to hire a bunch of top-notch, English-speaking programmers in Hungary
Actually, towards the end of the post he delineates the real tragedy: nobody starts a legal small consulting business in Hungary, for all the reasons he states. It's cheap to hire hi-tech labor in Hungary as long as you just send checks to individuals and leave the government out of it as much as possible.
So the situation is that the gov't, through heavy-handed social legislation, makes it basically impossible to start a small business legally. Big business I suspect has ways and means of gaming the system and making a profit regardless. Bad for Hungary.
Hungary is a bit extreme, but there are many countries in the EU and in the eurozone with very similar problems. "Social protection" needs to be cut down in most of Europe, we cannot be competitive otherwise.
Sure I understand that different parts of Europe are different, it was just nice to see someone explain it, because we in the states keep hearing regulations are overbearing in Europe. I understand that it's not all of Europe, and that was my point, we tend to get the rolled up news over here and not being close to the situation it's can be difficult to understand the dynamics. This article helped me understand the nuances of the gripe.
Define "top-notch". Because under my definition of the term, I would expect there to be very few engineers in Hungary that match that description.
IMHO, Silicon Valley works because it houses a hugely disproportionate amount of the very best engineers, and from my experience the top .1% or so of engineers open up possibilities that otherwise simply aren't there.
Yes, the capital is here, but I think that's an effect and not a cause. If you took Facebook and started it in any other place in 2004 (with just a handful of exceptions) with exactly the same access to funds I highly doubt it ends up as it is today.
Eastern Europe is notorious for highly skilled engineers. Because careers in Engineering and natural sciences have a long history and have always been viewed as prestigious positions.
And not everyone has emigrated to California, some have but US emigration is just too rigid. Many of us would want to move to SV, but unless we want to endure H1B slavery status our doors are pretty much closed.
However if anyone out there wants to take a shot at hiring some of us as contract workers, contact me.
I am from a milieu with excellent Engineering talent and could easily build a 5-10 man team of excellent engineers at roughly 60.000$ annual price point.
All companies started in Hungary, even if they later become US entities, chose to keep their engineering in Budapest, because talent is available, and for much less than in SV. Also, it's less saturated.
E.g. I had a chat with a VP of a chech-US startup and they were inquiring about the possibility of expanding in Hungary, because they satured their chech sources, but SV is too expensive / also saturated.
Also, companies like Morgan Stanley, SAP or Microsoft are not starting new offices or expanding in SV, but they are over here.
So, talent is available. In fact, this is so obvious that companies like Morgan Stanley et.al. showed up here, giving good salaries, making my job as a startup guy trying to hire much more difficult.
To be fair though, specific talent like "has worked with Hadoop for a year" or "has worked at Google on the core search engine" is not present here. Also, people are much more likely to prefer to work at a BigCo than in a small startup, compared to SV.
You will not experience the problems I pictured in the post, when you don't have to compete in Hungary. In other words, of course it makes sense to hire excellent Hungarian engineers, and sell the product elsewhere. Problem is, when you have to compete with companies, who do not pay their taxes, who do not pay social security after their employees etc, and their prices are HALF of your costs. And of course they have excellent contacts, and they will sue you with obviously false claims, and then you go to court, and loose. Then you will understand depression.
According to the dictionary: outstanding, notable, superior. Seriously, though, take any reasonable definition. If you asked me a number I'd say 1% but yeah, you could say top 0.1%. I can't see how that gives any more precise information though, given that we don't have a practical, objective way of measuring programming skills.
> Because under my definition of the term, I would expect there to be very few engineers in Hungary that match that description.
Why? I'd expect any country with >10 million people, very high level of literacy, a couple of good universities and internet connectivity to be home to a good number of top-notch programmers. I can't see how that's particularly controversial.
In any case I'm not sure why you're taking issue with this. I never said that Hungary has proportionally as many top-notch programmers as in Silicon Valley. My point is simply: hiring people in Hungary is no more expensive than in California in terms of U$; if you have a company with 20 programmers in SF you could sure find 20 replacements in Hungary and save on payroll.
Here's my minimalist definition of "top-notch engineer" in regards to Silicon Valley startups:
- has experience working in the early stages of a venture-backed startup
- went to one of the top schools in the world, such as Stanford, MIT, Harvard, etc
- has an extensive personal portfolio of software projects on which they contributed
My point is that Silicon Valley "works" because it has lots of people that meet 2 or 3 of these bullet points. There is no place in the world that really comes close.
Nobody is objecting that you can surely hire people cheaper in other countries, but for small companies the cheapest labor source is almost never the winner. It's far more important to have the very best engineers.
> - has experience working in the early stages of a venture-backed startup
This has no effect on someone's ability.
- went to one of the top schools in the world, such as Stanford, MIT, Harvard, etc
Those are not "top schools in the world". The only advantage they provide are great contacts and opportunities thans to those contacts. In terms of knowledge, many schools around the world (including many in the former Eastern bloc) provide excellent education.
> - has an extensive personal portfolio of software projects on which they contributed
Again, this has nothing to do with being in SV. Many bast-known open-source projects were started outside US (I'll leave it to someone else to list them, but I'm sure you can think of a few off the top of your head).
The world was a way different place 30 years ago. You couldn't reasonably have expected someone to have an extensive software portfolio or have experience at a tech startup. Now, both are commonplace among top hires.
The definition of a "top-notch" programmer is about how competently he/she can write required programs, not about how "commonplace" among Valley programmers are his/her biographical details.
ADDENDUM - An example of your bullet points working just as badly more recently than 30 years ago:
I would expect there to be very few engineers in Hungary that match that description
And you would be so incredibly wrong. Hungarians are smart. Smart like Americans used to be, back in the 19th century when an American who did his work out in the barn could revolutionize entire industries for breakfast.
And why are there so many top-notch engineers in SV? Because of the climate, because there are more natural-born engineers, or because many top-notch engineers have moved and move there because there is the capital and the best environment for startups?
And why would you expect Hungary to have very few top-notch engineers?
Reproducing Silicon Valley is another story. Arguably it's very hard to do even in NY or other parts of US that are more or less similar to California. After all, labour law is just one of many factors. For instance, even with all that overhead, I bet it's still much cheaper to hire a bunch of top-notch, English-speaking programmers in Hungary than in California.