[laydn]

I've read all the comments and looks like no one has mentioned this, but as someone who worked a total of ~25 years, on both continents (10+15 years), I have the following observation, and it really is a simple one:

American hardware/software engineers work really, really hard, compared to their European counterparts.

Given identical goals, same level of funding, same underlying tech, and similar market size, a US startup will almost always be more successful then its European counterpart, simply because of the difference of total amount of work done in a given month/year.

I've worked with outstanding people in both continents. Top-notch, impressive engineers. I can easily say, the output of my US colleagues were significantly higher.

[twothreeone]

Less experience overall (5+5 years), but I strongly agree. I think the main reason for this are the incentives, which halvarflake mentioned briefly in his post.. if you can directly affect valuation of your company (which in turn directly drives your own net worth through ISOs/RSUs etc), working hard actually becomes fun and rewarding. Take that away and a 10-3, 4 weekdays, 60+ days vacation, work life balance kind-of-job starts looking a whole lot more appealing in comparison.

[nvm0n2]

Yes and now compare to Asia... one of TSMC's complaints about how hard it is to run a top-tier fab in the USA is that Americans don't work as hard as Taiwanese people do. So compare Taiwan to Europe and imagine the gap!