Comment by pieds
6 days ago
They don't have the capacity. The opinion you present is actually part of the narrative you are seemingly against. That you can compete with big tech if you just want to.
And you "can" compete with big tech, but it isn't actually possible. Because the right pre-requisites, environment and priorities doesn't exist. Not in Europe, not in much of the US and not in much of the world.
The European companies the would (or could) prioritize having their own digital infrastructure (mostly research or more industrial companies) are also having lay-offs, or at least not growing close to more service oriented companies that are hooked into big tech.
For the same types of reasons the US also won't bring back manufacturing.
Edit: It also reminds me of a story from some time ago in Sweden. Because of the growing number of fashion designers the press were talking about the growing fashion industry as "the fashion wonder". The then CEO of H&M commented in an interview that most of these brands were making less revenue than just one of their stores. Many of these companies are now dead or irrelevant while H&M, Zara and Shein are still around and more relevant than ever.
If there actually was even more a shift to the web from desktop it would probably benefit Google with ChromeOS. Just like a shift from Windows for software development benefited Apple and their more closed ecosystem.
I think it's a question of habit / inertia. "This is how we've always done things".
In the company I work for, 99% of people spend their days in some combination of teams, outlook, word, excel and chrome. Word is basically for random text which is expected to last longer than an email or for carting around screenshots, Excel is for people who need five lines in a table. All these things work fine in a browser. The other 1% are either accountants who actually use Excel for what it was made, designers, etc.
Among those 99% there are a bunch of people shouting from the rooftops how much security is a priority for the company, so they run around in circles trying to secure a fundamentally insecure OS, while at the same time being scared shitless to update anything for fear of "breaking something". I'm convinced that moving to something like Chrome OS would improve these 99% of people's lives tremendously. But it's not what they're used to, so everybody just keeps on going down the same path.
I also think something fundamental is missing in the education of your average office worker.
The reason why people are scared to change software is that they can't actually use any software. They basically don't know how it works and are just cargo culting. They memorize some functions, and they think that is all they need to do their job, which they consider to be some higher level thing like being a bureaucrat.
But it's like literacy. You're not literate when you can only read one book. You're literate when you can read any book.
There are principles in how software works, below the level of the programmer, that everyone can learn. What is running on my machine, what is running on the server, why do I see the things on the screen that I see, what do common GUI elements do, and so on.
I entirely agree with you, but I'm at a loss as to how we might improve things.
People just don't seem to care, just like they didn't seem to care to understand how machinery used to work. They know that they should press this button and expect that outcome.
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> The other 1% are either accountants who actually use Excel for what it was made, designers, etc.
I, half-jokingly, recommend firing anyone who opens Excel and hasn't entered a formula within 15 minutes.
That alone would solve a lot of problems :)
At the other extreme, also fire anyone who uses Excel as an app development platform or a databse. Fire even faster if its used for something mission critical.
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Quick comment regarding the "Swedish fashion wonder": It's definitely a pyramid, but I can for sure name a bunch that definitely makes more than most H&M stores. And they keep popping up, and are definitely not irrelevant.
According to ChatGPT avg revenue of H&M stores in Sweden is 5.4 MEUR. If I remember correctly from my market research (I co-founded a Swedish SaaS targeting fashion brands) there at least 100 with more revenue then that - and they're definitely making most revenue outside of Sweden. To name a few; Djerf Avenue, Filippa K, Stronger, ICIW, Peak Performance, CHIMI eyewear, Tiger of Sweden, J Lindeberg... Heck, I can even name drop a bunch doing footwear more or less only; Axel Arigato, Icebug, Björn Borg, Eytys...
But yeah, most brands are doing less. It's a pyramid. But no, Swedish fashion brands (excl H&M) are definitely not irrelevant.
You say that the priorities are missing, but this article is about just that: this politician is changing the priorities. Admittedly for a rather small number of office workers, but it should be seen as a pilot project. Half the ministry staff will be off MS Office by end of summer, is the plan.
No, they aren't. These things happen all the time. Anyone can install Linux on a few laptops. Heck, 'anyone' can create their own Linux distribution. And plenty do. To make a difference they need to hire staff to actually manage it. And because Linux doesn't have the same facilities they probably need to be developers. Europe doesn't have a track record of hiring developers for government service. As a politician from the "Moderates" she is likely against it. It's now all privatization all the time. The US ironically does. I bet this doesn't last much longer than until there is a new minister for digitalisation.
You're assuming they don't know how to make this work -- with that assumption, of course you can claim that they won't get it to work.
If you have any evidence that they are have not staffed the IT department with the right people to make this work, yo ucan go right ahead and post it...
I think some careful optimism is warranted here. At least someone is showing some will to change the status quo, which is what I'm missing from the European leadership in general.