[Brakenshire]

> After brexit I’d like to see business & gov across the EU standardize on english as lingua franca to enable faster growth.

I wonder whether this will become easier now when the UK leaves, because the English language won't be tied to the competition between the major states.

This is definitely a shame for London, which I think was emerging as the centre of English-speaking Europe, I expect that role now will be more spread across a number of northern European cities, like Stockholm, Copenhagen, Amsterdam etc.

[calgoo]

As someone living in a European country with several languages and internal political problems related to them, i can say that in my opinion this wont happen for a very long time and im not even sure its needed. Kids in these multi language countries are already growing up with english as a second or third language. They are growing up on the internet and are used to reading stuff in english, so the need to standardize on a language, in my opinion, is not even needed. In a generation or 2 the majority of people will speak it anyway.

[adventured]

The problem is that half of the EU has no common language (and that ratio is worse once you step outside the EU and broaden it to Europe as a whole).

Certainly Scandinavia etc. have tremendous English adoption, that doesn't do much for the two dozen nations in Europe that don't. If you're Swedish or Danish and you are fluent in English, the problem is that still doesn't help you with the other half of the EU or Europe that doesn't understand English.

France is near 40%, and Italy is near 35% on English speaking. Even Germany is just barely over 1/2.

Spain, Portugal, Czech, Slovakia, Ukraine, Bulgaria are near or sub 25%. Russia is closer to 5%.

France + Spain + Italy is about $6 trillion worth of GDP, and maybe 1/3 of their combined population is English speaking.

[PeterisP]

That's what the parent post was speaking about - for various reasons these percentages are increasing, especially among the younger people, and the expectation is that in a generation or two the situation would be quite different from the current one that you've described.

[tasubotadas]

Well, in CEE (EU bit) 80% people that are <35 y/o certainly speak solid English - I've been and spent some time in all of them.

The older generation does struggle with English, though.

[te_chris]

London will still be the centre of English-speaking Europe. It's the biggest irony of brexit: London is vehemently opposed to it, but likely not going to be all that affected by it.

[bitL]

Dunno, most people I know are trying to escape London, miserable weather, low pay, massive increase in rent, uncertain future. Despite having most AI startups after US. At FB London as a SWEng you are capped at most at 110k; in the US you'd earn 4-5x more for the same job and on more interesting projects as well.

[mayniac]

Further anecdote to support that claim: in my old job an admin who worked in the London office for over seven years, and had numerous raises and promotions in that time, was on the same salary as her newly hired graduate counterpart in the states. Relatively rural area in the states too, it wasn't NYC where the cost of living may have made that acceptable.

Our relative salaries with the states are god awful.

[bitL]

Nowadays even with Germany. UK is going backwards fast...

[tigershark]

110k$/year? I really find it difficult to believe it, even if it was 110k£/year.

[bertil]

I worked for Facebook London office and the pay level compared to our US counterpart was something that my more talented peers were talking about. The idea of a ‘cap’ feels alien to Facebook in general, but I can confirm that to get more than that, you would probably have to be an exceptional developper -- think: get recognised at a conference, have your work #1 on HN for 24 hours, have regular conversations with iOS or Android core devs, etc.

[bitL]

> have your work #1 on HN for 24 hours

Done. Still didn't go there and they keep spamming me ;-) London is not attractive at all these days.

[bertil]

I joined at the same time as one guy who was working remotely full time, officially based in London. But he was the co-founder and the lead developper of the most used technology at Facebook, so…