The question is what happens if/when it stops being sustainable. It's not so easy to adjust from those sorts of salaries downwards. The endless flow of VC money into absurd startups with no business plan worth a damn is caused by groupthink and extremely bad monetary policy by supposedly "independent" central banks. They aren't really independent of course, they're creatures of government and politicians can reign them in any time they want.
Why would they do so? Inflation. Bubbles. The sort of problems that have occurred repeatedly throughout history. And what happens when they respond by raising interest rates and ceasing to buy up all the low risk debt instruments? Well, suddenly boring but profitable businesses become useful to invest in again because they pay out dividends and the like. That in turn leads to a sucking sound as money flows out of the venture and equity markets, which makes it harder for those businesses to buy up all the talent, trashes the returns offered by VC funds and makes "sell $1 for $0.90" type business models unsustainable.
Fundamentally, the salaries we earn now from US firms may not be reflective of the value we're actually creating. They may be partially an artifact of money printing. Of course, the Eurozone prints money up the wazoo too so I'm not saying that in relative terms EU/US programmer salaries will get closer just that the very high salaries and proliferation of zombie fake businesses may go away.
> Of course, the Eurozone prints money up the wazoo too
I disagree that the ECB prints as much money as you say. Sure we have had ridiculous amounts of "quantitative easing", but this has been nowhere near as bad as it has been in the US. The frugal EU countries (Germany, Netherlands, Austria, etc.) always keep a leash on the ECB.
I don’t understand - what do you think is the problem with this? What exactly is wrong there?
They aren’t spending your money, or tax payer money. They’re doing nothing but pumping money into workers’ hands and the economy, creating thousands of skilled jobs. It’s currently a massive wealth-redistribution system.
Why are you sarcastically turning your nose up at it, based on some accounting metric, that doesn’t even involve or effect you? Why don’t we want this in Europe?
> They’re doing nothing but pumping money into workers’ hands and the economy
They are not really pumping that money into workers and economy given how they don't want to spend any money on drivers.
> Why are you sarcastically turning your nose up at it, based on some accounting metric
It's not "some accounting metric". The measure of a successful business is whether it can support itself. And not if it can siphon unlimited investor money for a decade.
> Why don’t we want this in Europe?
Because those 20 billion dollars are better spent on actual businesses.
Per levels.fyi, Uber pays senior engineers in the Netherlands ~180k/year. That's a difference of ~2x compared to the US, and is pretty much top-of-market for the region. If by "local market rates" you mean "slightly more than the best-paying native tech companies", then sure.
It's great for employees, for now at least.
The question is what happens if/when it stops being sustainable. It's not so easy to adjust from those sorts of salaries downwards. The endless flow of VC money into absurd startups with no business plan worth a damn is caused by groupthink and extremely bad monetary policy by supposedly "independent" central banks. They aren't really independent of course, they're creatures of government and politicians can reign them in any time they want.
Why would they do so? Inflation. Bubbles. The sort of problems that have occurred repeatedly throughout history. And what happens when they respond by raising interest rates and ceasing to buy up all the low risk debt instruments? Well, suddenly boring but profitable businesses become useful to invest in again because they pay out dividends and the like. That in turn leads to a sucking sound as money flows out of the venture and equity markets, which makes it harder for those businesses to buy up all the talent, trashes the returns offered by VC funds and makes "sell $1 for $0.90" type business models unsustainable.
Fundamentally, the salaries we earn now from US firms may not be reflective of the value we're actually creating. They may be partially an artifact of money printing. Of course, the Eurozone prints money up the wazoo too so I'm not saying that in relative terms EU/US programmer salaries will get closer just that the very high salaries and proliferation of zombie fake businesses may go away.
I agree with you except for one thing:
> Of course, the Eurozone prints money up the wazoo too
I disagree that the ECB prints as much money as you say. Sure we have had ridiculous amounts of "quantitative easing", but this has been nowhere near as bad as it has been in the US. The frugal EU countries (Germany, Netherlands, Austria, etc.) always keep a leash on the ECB.
I never said anything about people working at Uber.
However, Uber as a company has so far lost over 20 billion dollars and only turned a profit once. Yup. A very successful and sustainable business.
> only turned a profit once
I don’t understand - what do you think is the problem with this? What exactly is wrong there?
They aren’t spending your money, or tax payer money. They’re doing nothing but pumping money into workers’ hands and the economy, creating thousands of skilled jobs. It’s currently a massive wealth-redistribution system.
Why are you sarcastically turning your nose up at it, based on some accounting metric, that doesn’t even involve or effect you? Why don’t we want this in Europe?
> They’re doing nothing but pumping money into workers’ hands and the economy
They are not really pumping that money into workers and economy given how they don't want to spend any money on drivers.
> Why are you sarcastically turning your nose up at it, based on some accounting metric
It's not "some accounting metric". The measure of a successful business is whether it can support itself. And not if it can siphon unlimited investor money for a decade.
> Why don’t we want this in Europe?
Because those 20 billion dollars are better spent on actual businesses.
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To be fair, Uber in EU pays local market rates. This means that salary difference between senior developers you mentioned and EU ones is 8-10x
Per levels.fyi, Uber pays senior engineers in the Netherlands ~180k/year. That's a difference of ~2x compared to the US, and is pretty much top-of-market for the region. If by "local market rates" you mean "slightly more than the best-paying native tech companies", then sure.
I stand corrected, I never talked to Uber in Netherlands. Honestly I never even saw an ad in EU for more than 150k/year