[anon4242]

> I’m interested in fundamental challenges around computing: programming languages, cloud platforms, operating systems

Yeah, for programming languages you should probably have been Danish and for operating systems the Finnish have had quite an impact. Both socially stable countries with dare I say pretty strong unions...

[bjornsing]

Are you serious? Bjarne Stroustrup Lives in New York and Linus Torvalds lives in Portland, Oregon. They are my examples, not yours.

[anon4242]

I'm dead serious. Btw, I'm also thinking of Anders Hejlsberg and Rasmus Lerdorf. They also live in North America. But that doesn't remove the fact that they were all born and bred in Scandinavia.

I'm guessing that their decision to move west had very little to do with the "stifling" unions and more to do with the increased opportunity for a skilled SWE over there. I would say that that increased opportunity has also very little to do with "stifling" unions and more to do with the huge single market that the US is. That huge single market allows companies to grow fast. The EU works hard to be a single market as well but we have language barriers, bigger legal differences and dare I say bigger cultural differences.

Also talking about Scandinavia, as tiny as it is population-wise, we've had a disproportionately large impact on the world in many different areas. Some factors that contribute to this, I believe, are our free education system and the social safety net that unions have played an important part upholding.