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deathcakes | 5 years ago

"University-educated people in my social circle are often woefully unaware of economic trends that have swept the US, be it the gig economy, X-as-a-service, the nature of Venture Capital, the idea of scaling a company aggressively, the value of information, mobility of labor and paying market rate for experts, the high profit margins of offering a software product vs. (for example) doing one-off consulting for a German industrial company, etc."

I know you caveat all this with the fact that we aren't necessarily worse off (I say we but am British - I will always think of myself as European though) but I would argue that the fact the Europe has been behind the curve on any of these "innovations" is because society is less obsessed with the quick buck and that this is good. None of these financial/technological innovations have provably made life better for anyone apart from VC's and founders, though I am willing to entertain counterpoints.

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stu2b50|5 years ago

I don't see how SaaS as a concept has made anyone's life particularly bad. For many B2B the consumer gets exactly what they want--constant support and updates--and the producer gets that sweet sweet high margin subscription payment.

Same for "high profit margins of offering a software product vs. (for example) doing one-off consulting for a German industrial company". Honestly that's a lesson from all the way back to MSFT.

I'm guessing by "paying market rate for experts", they're referring to the pretty large gap between US and European software salaries (even if you're not looking at the Bay).

When that comes up, there's usually some people who say that Bay area engineers are overpaid, but rather I think everyone else is underpaid and should fight for better compensation in general. Evidently you can afford to pay these salaries as a business.

_gfrc|5 years ago

I believe the reply was focussed towards the gig economy and the use of venture capital to scale aggressively.

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.