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

[iggori]

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?

[salawat]

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.

[jleyank]

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.

[iggori]

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.

[iggori]

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.