Yeah I apologize, I fell into that rabbit hole purely by accident, but it is really really interesting and considering the current prices to get a home built, maybe even practically applicable some day :D
I am in the process of trying to understand how businesses work and I have been comparing the realities of starting and running companies in various european countries. Most of the information that I can find is very surface level so thanks for sharing anything that people should be aware of.
A community/forum/subreddit focused on this does not seem to exist. I guess professionals are too busy.
I was also surprised to not see much discourse over Section 174 recently.
But getting back to the point, europe needs to decide if it wants to be relevant or not in the future. As an italian currently living in my country, I can say that doing business here looks like insanity, it's not hyperbole, the environment is as anti-business and innovation as it can be.
HN used to have that but most YC founders migrated to Bookface where there is better moderation and less off topic or toxic conversations (just take a look at this entire comment section)
Also Section 174, while annoying, isn't the end of the world for most founders, and there is bipartisan support for a repeal of it.
> understand how businesses work
You can only learn by doing. Start your own company or land a BizOps related role, but honestly, it's probably easier to make the classic Italy-to-London move
I speak to my Greek friends and family, mostly outside of tech, and the sentiment isn't yet as positive as the macro numbers in articles like this indicate.
As a diaspora Greek, it's positive news, but it seems this all hasn't "trickled down" to citizens' day to day lives as much. It does give some hope for those who left for economic reasons, and there are even groups out there to encourage a return to restore the brain drain of the 2010s.
That being said the elder population would probably be grumpy no matter how much things improved.
Exactly. Like, what was the outlook ten years ago? Possible exit from EU and euro, state bankruptcy, economic and political collapse. The stability and slow economic improvement might be a bad result for many countries, but for Greece it's IMHO a good result (for me, better than expected).
If you're still on X, or subscribe to newsletters, I can recommend The Greek Analyst[0]. He follows a lot of macro trends for Greece and makes an active effort to be a positive voice in the sea of Greek pessimism, including results like these "great result in relative context" pieces.
One of the things with Greeks (in Greece) really is that they're notoriously pessimistic and depressed, unlike what people usually associate with the country. I do think though that there's a bit of a new spirit though among the younger generation which is slightly less focused on 2k year old history and a bit more realistic in the way they approach the world. But maybe that's just wishful thinking on my end
I don't think it's wishful thinking. I think newer generations in times like these will tend to rebel against the attitude of their parents in any direction that takes them. With grumpy old Greeks, that means the younger generation are calmer and maybe more positive too. Life's too short to be miserable.
I find the ancient and Byzantine history fascinating myself. Naturally the liberation struggles are also important, but the very religious and closer-to-present history and culture don't interest me as much. I also always found it quite hypocritical of the older generation that they biased towards the more recent history and the Orthodox religious aspects, but then they'd sell you trinkets of the ancient world while quietly ignoring the pagan nature of it.
IMO, one of the last big issues with Greek culturally and in terms of economic opportunity for young adults, is mandatory conscription. I won't be returning for anything more than a holiday unless I get a permanent exemption. Many Greeks tend to ignore the opportunity cost this impacts young men with. It's not just "a forced gap year" since you have to do it regardless of if you study or not.
By having emigrated before the peak of the crises around 2015, I avoided both wasting a year on conscription and finished my studies sooner. Anecdotally I'm pretty sure taking that leap was the best thing I could've done, considering what I know of my pees right now (highly educated, but overworked and underpaid).
I think that's spot on - what annoys me with some older Greeks is a fairly consistent 'look at our amazing history' attitude, as if they're ancestors of Gods. But then the actual culture is deeply rooted in Greek orthodoxy, driven by entirely different values, mostly pretty conservative. In reality, many older Greeks know relatively little about their own ancient history, or they focus on very specific aspects of it. Even though it's actually so colorful and full of human conflict and complexities.
I believe it's important for the country to look beyond that history. Not saying one shouldn't be inspired by it, almost everyone in the West is somewhat inspired by it anyway. This is a piece of humanity that played out on the same geographical area as modern-day Greece with a somewhat similar language, but it's long gone.
And I totally agree regarding conscription - if it were some sort of useful exercise for 6 months or so, one could probably make sense of it, but as it stands currently, it's a total waste of time.
I've been keeping an eye on Greece as they started to introduce benefits for foreign capital / workers similar to what Portugal did. I've a feeling this is why Greece is seen to be doing so well. If it ends up being like Portugal, it will be foreign investors and a select few locals that benefit the most.
From the one or two accounts I follow that talk about these macro trends, the benefits for capital at least are helping, not sure about individual incentives. As Greece's tech hubs grow, they also start to paint a different picture of work and work culture in Greece.
I remember being very negative about the Greek's long term outlook ~10 years ago. I mean, it was obvious that there will be an economic downturn for many years in basically all scenarios, but I was very worried about the political uproar, turn to populism and authoritarianism (which would further worsen the economic woes).
IIRC there was an election in ~2015 which Syriza won, back then pretty radical in its anti-austerity campaign. But after they won, they made a turnaround and more or less went along with the austerity.
The problem of Greece is that due to decades of nepotism and corruption, there is no real political hope. The ruling party is one of the two that has brought Greece to where it is now, and the prime minister comes from a family with a long tradition in politics and power thirst.
His best man is the biggest gangster in Greece, Marinakis. They found a ship of his containing 2 TONS! of heroin, and nothing happened.
Because the Mitsotakis family controls the court system in Greece.
Not to make an excuse, but tell me a country that isn't like that. For all the pomp and circumstance that democracy provides, it all feels like it boils down to tribalism where oligarchs rule and control the tides. Sure we all control our individual boats but the tide is what controls the sea.
Sure every nation has an elite, but it’s a stretch to say that Germany, Sweden, Denmark, USA, and many other countries have an oligarchic system similar to how it is in Russia, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan.
Why didn't the EU force the removal of those requirements? Apple will keep playing games to make alternative stores uncompetitive and keep away unwanted developers.
I think 8 was intended to stop that sort of thing, but maybe Apple thinks it doesn't apply?
8. The gatekeeper shall not require business users or end users to subscribe to, or register with, any further core platform services, as a condition for being able to use, access, sign up for or registering with any of that gatekeeper’s core platform services listed pursuant to that Article.
You are probably right, and now I wonder if this doesn't also apply to the standard Apple developer program.
I have not read the DMA but in the gatekeeper section of the official website the Core platform services listed are AppStore, iOS and Safari. Let's suppose that you single out iOs, why should I sign up something about AppStore to develop apps?
DMA enforcement only started today. Until today, all these plans were just words on a paper. The EC will only look at the real state of the world now that enforcement has started, and make their enforcement decisions based on that and the public feedback. They aren't giving any kind of pre-approvals or pre-denials to the plans.
(If they were pre-evaluating plans, the optimal play for the gatekeepers would be to propose something totally unreasonable, and then negotiate it to something that's mostly unreasonable but just barely acceptable to the EC. That would be a bad outcome for the EC. So from a game theory perspective, they're better of making the companies guess at what will be acceptable rather than negotiating, since the companies will want to be conservative.)
As long as Apple has a higher level of access to the device than the user does, it's still Apple's device. They've just done a great job at making the user think they own it.
Probably because Romanian farmers make more money selling their produce outside of Romania and the Netherlands and other countries can produce so much cheap produce that it's cheaper for Romania to import it rather than pay the price Romanian farmers are willing to sell it in the internal market.
Offense seems to be the only thing you do around here. I know I’m privileged, I work with unprivileged people to help them get better sometimes and that is probably the best way to feel how much inequality there is between us.
Having a lot of money relative to the place you live in doesn’t guarantee your happiness. Privilege means nothing in the face of illness of a loved one, having to live with parents at 30 because you had to evacuate a rent made without contract and more things I would like to not share on a tech forum..
Please get a sense of what’s being talked around here, what’s the negativity for?
I don't want to be negative and it's great to see what you've accomplished, the problems you are mentioning and alluding to are unfortunately not exclusive to your country, I could share some horror stories too and I come from the "developed and rich" western europe.
The point is that the net income you get is very high for european standars, let alone Romania.
With that level of income it is really weird that you cannot solve the problems you have.
The phrase "I would still need to not spend anything for a year to be able to afford a house" is bonkers.
No offense but you seem very uneducated in the matter. Being self employed makes it more difficult for OP to get a loan while "good" real estate is reaching almost western european level of prices in Central & Eastern Europe.
Your post reeks of jealousy for OP's net salary but you fail to account for your accumulated wealth over time of you and your family. OP's had not been earning this wage for years while you and your family has.
OP probably uses a lot of his net salary to support his spouse and family while you dont have to do that.
Bonkers it is yet it’s true. The house prices are a joke right now here. I don’t know what drives such prices, 95% of Romanians will never be able to afford a €200k house with 50sqm of paved courtyard in front. Supply and demand my ass…
Believe me, I’m so sick of “calling for details” because everyone hides most useful details in the house ad, then asking if it has paperwork ready which most don’t and expect you to buy the house based on how the house looked 20 years ago before heavy renovations with the cheapest materials possible, then spending numbing hours on trains to get to see that house in real life only to see how many lies were said on the phone and how that house would never be evaluated at more than half its price…
That above is extremely common, I’ve been going through this for the past 4 years and I’m So. Sick. Of. It.
If you think house prices are a joke now, just wait 2-3 years.
I'm actually a structural engineer with a passion for passive houses and went into programming 8 years ago. I designed and built a lot of houses and I know what you're talking about.. the house builders chase profits disregarding any laws.
IMHO the best thing is to buy a lot and build yourself the house, this way you are sure that you get what you want.
To my ears, supply and demand sounds like it makes a lot of sense here. Romania began as a country where most people owned their home, and still is; and it sounds like making the move from owning to renting comes with significant loss of political privileges, like healthcare, apparently. If I didn't speak English and would lose access to healthcare if I sold my house, I probably wouldn't sell it either unless it was absolutely necessary. Hence the supply is low, and when you throw corruption on top of that...
OP, consider moving to a country where renting doesn't turn you into a second class citizen if this really bothers you so much. It's counterintuitive, but you'll probably find the property markets to also be more sane there.
This type of dispute can set up very bad precedent.