Item — HN Reader

> One reason Europe struggles to attract top talent is language fragmentation.

And regulatory fragmentation on top of overregulation. We build billing and just invoicing alone is crazy with different taxes in each country, different compliance requirements for invoices etc.

And then you're only talking about invoicing, not actual innovation and stuff. So being in Europe just massively increases your overhead in terms of paperwork and compliance.

Maybe there's bureaucracy in the U.S. too, but you mostly need to figure it out once, not 27 times.

> the level of investment in the US is on another scale—the comparison isn’t even close.

If I could, I'd make it mandatory for every tech founder to spend a week in the Bay Area once, just to see the scale of what tech can be like.

Even in Berlin, which is often touted as a "tech hub", working at a startup is still this novel little thing and I'd bet half the people in them couldn't tell you who Paul Graham is.

> Even in Berlin, which is often touted as a "tech hub", working at a startup is still this novel little thing and I'd bet half the people in them couldn't tell you who Paul Graham is.

Oh, absolutely. There’s also plenty of anti-US propaganda nonsense. Berlin is a tiny island compared to cities like Raleigh, NC, let alone SF, and they often don’t attract the cream of the crop due to language requirements in many tech jobs. My life is hard enough as it is—don’t force German on me.

> Oh, absolutely. There’s also plenty of anti-US propaganda nonsense. Language requirements, crazy bureaucracy and 50% tax rate. I wouldn't be surprised if a well-paid SWE in Bangalore has more purchasing power after taxes than the same engineer in Germany.