[znpy]

the issue with EU companies is often the mindset: https://julien.danjou.info/blog/europes-cloud-problem-isnt-t...

As tech worked who has worked in US FAANGs (still in europe)... the difference is immense.

EU companies simply can't compete and will never be able to compete until they change the mindset. And the change must be pervasive, across all aspects (including IC compensation).

[jve]

Oh boy, that server story is painful to read. That ain't universal across providers. I work at european data center and was a tech and the worst SLA is like next business day and even then if our hardware is at fault, you won't be waiting for the next day for us to start taking action on it. And if you have a feeling you're left in dark, you can even pick up the phone at middle of the night to call our support and either get some status or light some fire that will prioritize the process in the pipeline (well, to actually DO something other than cold reboot at night time you may need to purchase SLA that will require involvement of higher support level at nighttime/holiday)

There are some things that I'd like to be improved in technical support side, but we are way better in "human reachability", responsiveness and "blame game" point of view than US hyperscalers.

[bryanrasmussen]

if the EU furniture maker has the correct mindset and the EU tech company does not then it seems to me the conclusions fall apart

>European tech imported the product ambition. It forgot to import the customer obsession that’s supposed to come with it.

The French furniture maker didn't import the customer obsession. I agree that U.S tech in these particular subsets are better at the EU doing it, and that needs to be fixed but you can't really talk about how great U.S tech is when you can also point at thousands of horrifying lack of support stories from them also.

U.S Tech has a good mindset for replacing hardware when it fails, they have a good workflow for that. The idea that they have good support however should be tempered by regular reading of some sort of online tech news aggregator.

[rcarmo]

As someone who also works for a US company with very large EU customers and partners I can attest this is completely true. Most European people on HN seem to be in the startup/SME space, so this won’t resonate, but the key point is that people who work for US companies also have zero incentive to switch to an EU company due to the mindsets we see locally.

[foldr]

This reminds me a bit of that stuff people used to say about how China could never compete economically with the US until it embraced Western-style democracy, or about how it could copy but not innovate, etc. etc. Europe will continue being Europe, culturally speaking. Some aspects of European work culture will seem off to Americans, and vice versa. But ultimately, if the market for European cloud services grows, companies will adapt and take advantage of this.

[JumpCrisscross]

> The gap is the same “playing not to lose” instinct I wrote about with French tech: do the minimum, follow the procedure, don’t get blamed

Oof, Exhibit B: Arianespace.