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Announcing Google Research, Europe
- Buetol 10y agoI love how they throw in a link to picasa instead of google photos. Anyway, this is really good news with the EPFL and ETH next to it, it's perfectly placed next to the core research centers of Europe.
- igk 10y agoAlso close enough to Germany(hours with a train/bus from TUM)to hoover up the bright minds from there. And then there is France (polytechnique) and the rest of Europe...
- Roritharr 10y agoThis really makes me consider moving my family to Zurich. Looking back at growing up in Germany/Europe made me really feel disadvantaged compared to people growing up in more tech friendly environments. I would want my child to grow up somewhere where technology is not overwhelmingly debated about in a negative light. So much good stuff is coming out of ETH that it really seems to be a place where people talk more enthusiastically about tech in general.
- ovi256 10y ago>where technology is not overwhelmingly debated about in a negative light Was this really true for the place you grew up ? It sounds so luddite.
- Roritharr 10y agoMy (single)mother was looked down upon for buying us a computer when my sister was 16 and I was ten. It went as far as the local priest calling social services because he assumed neglect. It's not like I grew up around Amish, but its just generally a very acceptable stance here to be skeptical of all new technology. It's very apparent especially when you look at the discussions centering our school system. We still debate about the harm of too much technology in school, theres still no real IT classes and people just now start looking toward programmers as a favorable job, simply because we have stable jobs while so many other industries have problems...
- tluyben2 10y agoSorry where was that? I do not think you have to move to Zurich to experience something better. I have never heard about this and I grew up in a bible belt region in EU.
- linza 10y agoTIL the EU has a bible belt. Can you expand on where that is?
- vintermann 10y agoEurope has a ton of rural places. If you think the US south is conservative, you should try living on an island where everyone's last name corresponds to 200+ year old farms on the same island ;)
- tluyben2 10y agoThis was in a rural place in the middle of the Netherlands: 3 times to church on sunday, not allowed anything else on that day but reading the bible. No contraceptives allowed so most families had children until they could not anymore (8-10 children were not strange), learning and reciting bible passages and singing hymns by heart etc during the week and sundays. And yet the very strict grade school got a computer when I was 9-10 (1984) and I was to teach the kids and teachers how to use it. Although they were not even allowed TVs in their houses, the town 'elders' recognized that this was the future of sorts.
- spacecowboy_lon 10y agoThe Wee frees in Scotland can be like that one very senior Scottish politician was excommunicated for stepping inside a catholic church (for an old friends funeral) a few years ago.
- rmc 10y agoEach country will probably have their own highly religious areas. Many bible belts! For the UK just look at Northern Ireland.
- countryqt30 10y agoI live in Zurich and attended ETH, thousands of bright people! :D
- igk 10y agoCan I ask you for details about your background? I grew up in central Europe and never experienced what you seemed to have experienced
- Roritharr 10y agoI've answered some in other comments. Its not extreme.
- tluyben2 10y agoAmsterdam, Rotterdam, Berlin, Munchen, Madrid, Barcelona London (for now), hell even Malaga are tech friendly and much easier (in my experience, but that is totally a matter of taste: I find Swiss too stiff) to settle. Really wondering where you are from. Edit: fixed Barcelona
- RBerenguel 10y agoBarça is only used for the football team, the city is Barcelona, Bcn (for short) or "down there" if you are not in the area but still in Catalonia
- tluyben2 10y agoDid not know that. Noted for the future!
- bitL 10y agoBarna is the short name of the city ;-)
- RBerenguel 10y agoI think only people from the city or longing to be part of the hip people actually use Barna in speaking or writing. At least this is my experience.
- yunque 10y agoMalaga? I visit every year, and last time I checked there was only Ericsson, Siemens and a group at the university doing human centred robotics... A quick online search leads me to the MalagaMakers meetup (which unfortunately has been quiet since January) and a few small tech companies. Do you know of any hubs or interesting companies there? I certainly noticed the city becoming a bit more modern in recent years, with the whole SoHo thing and the Pompidou, but it generally always seems to be aimed towards boosting tourism. I'm really happy to hear that there's something else going on [:
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- s3nnyy 10y agoI am well-connected in the tech-scene in Zurich and if you're thinking of moving here and getting an IT job, feel free to contact me - you find my email address in my HN profile. Also you can read my blogpost "8 reasons why I moved to Switzerland to work in IT": https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons-why-i-moved-to-switzerland-to-work-in-it-c7ac18af4f90 https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons-why-i-moved-t...
- igk 10y agoDoes this offer stand for Europeans as well?
- s3nnyy 10y agoEveryone who has an EU passport (including Romania and Bulgaria since 1.6.) can / will get a work permit.
- paganel 10y agoAs a Romanian, that sounds great! Does the Swiss tech scene have any life in it? I mean, apart from Google's offices and the like (I would personally like to avoid big corporations, mostly). I'm asking because as seen from Eastern Europe industrial powerhouses like Germany and Northern Italy look like they're at least 10-15 years back when it comes to IT (Berlin excluded).
- s3nnyy 10y agoSome Swiss IT-highlights include: - The biggest Google software engineering office outside California (around 2000 employees). - Logitec, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco - ETH university - Many ETH-spinoff/startups: Doodle, Bitspin (bought by Google), Teralytics, Archilogic, Fashwell, Getyourguide, Numbrs and I surely forgot many others. It is a great place to live and is the only place where net-salaries are on par with New York / SF. Salaries are in the range of 7000 - 10.000 CHF / month after taxes. However apartments can be way cheaper than in San Francisco.
- kriro 10y agoInteresting. I never had the feeling of not growing up in a tech friendly environment in Germany. It's traditionally geared a bit more towards machines than software but overall I think fairly tech friendly/open. Maybe it depends on the specific region. Entrepreneurship is another issue, I feel like "failing" had and still has an overly negative connotation here.
- XCSme 10y agoI have actually applied to Google Zurich (but after 10 interviews they didn't hire me) and studied a bit how the life is there. There are many advantages or living there, but the cost of life and the fact that most people in Zurich are immigrants makes it a pretty cold city where it is hard to make friends or stay for a very long period of time. I think that now your point about "tech friendly environments" is not relevant anymore, because many countries support tech companies and offer a lot of grants for programmers and tech-related activities.
- Ftuuky 10y agoMy parents were immigrants in Zurich and I lived there the first decade of my life. I can confirm what OP said, it's a very expensive city and people are really cold and lonely.
- make3 10y ago10 interviews? is that normal for a research job? that feels like a lot
- Maro 10y agoI work at Facebook, I think I had ~10 interviews in total. I think 5-10 is pretty normal for large companies: 3-4 on the phone, 3-5 on site, plus followup. It's very exhausting. In my case it took 4 months from first contact to offer accepted.
- wmkn 10y agoI had a total of 21 interviews at Apple (oh which 4 were phone interviews). Was not hired in the end. I would not recommend it...
- maxerickson 10y agoThese sorts of stories point to it still being an excellent job market for employers. In a market that was more favorable to employees, there'd likely be less interviewing and more provisional hiring.
- 1010310201 10y agoIt is really a stretch to claim that Germany isn't tech friendly. It isn't pseudo-tech friendly, i.e. Germans have the obnoxious habit of separating hype from tech. The only area where I'd agree is nuclear power, which regrettably doesn't have wide acceptance.
- f_allwein 10y agoBut that's only because nuclear power uses non-renewable raw materials, creates waste products that are dangerous for tens of thousands of years and occasionally leads to catastrophic accidents.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- zerr 10y agoNot at all. Germany is one of the most tech/dev friendly country, especially if you are outside web dev. I see a lot of C++ engineering opportunities there. If only it was an English speaking country, and they had a sun... (It's a shame that we don't have a good English speaking country in whole Europe...) ;)
- dav-id 10y agoI hear the English can speak English quite well
- dmoo 10y agoUs Irish also have some ability.
- T-A 10y agoYes, but then there is the "sun" part...
- Natanael_L 10y agoWe Swedes too, for that matter.
- astrange 10y agoI had the strangest problem with Swedes where they'd seem to speak perfect English, but repeatedly mishear me as saying something offensive and never stop to make sure. Actually I think I mentioned "cutting myself shaving" to someone and they apparently to this day believe I'm suicidal.
- Natanael_L 10y agoHaven't seen it myself, but I'm guessing it's a bit Dunning-Kruger effect + unwillingness to ask outright (the average Swede don't want to look silly, etc). While we have a significant exposure to English, few of us regularly have casual conversations with native English speakers, so our vocabularies aren't as good as we tend to think.
- chrisper 10y agoWhere are you living now?
- moondowner 10y agoI guess ETH Zurich and EPFL are the reason why Google chose Switzerland "Europe is home to some of the world’s premier technical universities, making it an ideal place to build a top-notch research team"
- tomp 10y agoI'd guess the main reason is low tax on salaries, and less competition from finance than e.g. London.
- chmars 10y agoThere is no low tax on salaries, that is a myth … and there is a lot of additional mandatory fees in addition to direct salary tax. Switzerland is only a tax haven for a very small target group – and someone has pay for these tax privileges, i.e., salary earners in the private sector.
- seanmcdirmid 10y agoSwiss income tax IS low, relatively. But if you want to actually buy something....
- saiya-jin 10y agodepending on canton/commune of residence, and income, it can be relatively small. I would call it medium taxation though, at least for common folks. definitely not a tax haven though. VAT is small (8% or 2.5% on essentials), but prices/fees are very high to begin with.
- nuschk 10y agoWell, finance takes also a large chunk of Switzerland's GDP and thus is scooping up many engineers as well. Maybe it's not as pronounced as in London, but it certainly isn't very easy to hire good engineers here because of all the banks and hedge funds. I think google came to Zurich because of EPFL/ETH, the very high living standard and most of all the rather liberal labor law. It's very easy to fire someone in Switzerland, compared to the surrounding countries.
- wbhart 10y agoI wonder if this is because Google is having trouble recruiting people to the US, due to the crazy political system there, or because of visas or because of people with concerns about surveillance, gun control, the death penalty, lack of whistleblower protections, etc.
- geodel 10y agoOr it could be just because they want distributed teams with multicultural talent in different timezones.
- sotojuan 10y agoFrom what I've seen there's a ton of research or computer science-y talent in Europe. Makes sense for Google to try to get some of that.
- spacecowboy_lon 10y agowhy would they do that when they can get their pick of european talent and pay them 50% less than they would in SV
- delroth 10y ago50% less than SV in Zürich? You're greatly mistaken. Last I checked I'm paid more here than what I would get if I were to do the same job in Mountain View.
- saiya-jin 10y agofor me it's 1:1, depends on after-tax money (which is real salary, anything else are just some imaginary numbers). now go out for a dinner, go get car repaired, try to buy house in countryside and we can talk about comparable
- jpatokal 10y agoHave you looked at housing prices anywhere near Silicon Valley recently?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- planetjones 10y agoA good sign of commitment by Google to their Zurich office - recently the Swiss papers had stories of Google looking towards building their London office, due to limitations in acquiring work permits for staff in Switzerand. This news somewhat contradicts it; Zurich really is an attractive location for talent to flock toward.
- spacecowboy_lon 10y agoZurich attractive? - I though it might be Google hedging its bets in the event of Brexit. Though Cranfield CIT and half way between Oxford and Cambridge woudl have been another good choice. - they could even have taken RAF Twinwoods over as a site for a DC as it has a direct link to the Grid.
- tdaltonc 10y agoIf they thought that Brexit would have a big impact on their business, they could just wait a couple weeks to announce anything.
- delroth 10y agoGoogle secured 5 new buildings in a very nice location in Zürich at the end of 2014: http://www.nzz.ch/zuerich/google-zieht-an-die-europaallee-1.18443807 http://www.nzz.ch/zuerich/google-zieht-an-die-europaallee-1.... This article says this is enough space for 5000 more employees.
- anonymousDan 10y agoI wonder what kind of impact brexit had on their decision. Presumably not much since Switzerland is outside the EU anyway.
- amelius 10y agoI would rather see Europe monetize their own tech instead of some US company.
- dharma1 10y agoWould be great if the next Google/Facebook/Microsoft was European and HQ'd in Europe, but it's hard to see that. ML anecdotes - Schmidhuber makes a point of how LSTM was developed on European taxpayer's dime. Backpropagation was invented by Esko Linnainmaa (a Finnish researcher) in the 70s. Universities or startups can't compete with finance/Google/FB level compensation, so that's where a lot of the bright minds go.
- ocdtrekkie 10y agoMaybe they'd be able to if Google et. al. had to pay their taxes and had their monopoly practices broken up.
- Maro 10y agoI also used to think that, and in the long-term I agree, and I have (i) done a startup in Europe (failed for lacking of funding) (ii) worked for a European startup (Prezi). But right now I work for Facebook (in London), and this is a good thing. You can go to these places and learn a lot, a lot more than what you can figure out on your own with your friends sitting in a garage or at one of the moderately successful European startups (moderately successful=0.1% of Facebook, that's already like $300-500M), which any sane entrepreneur here would be super happy over, fully so. By "a lot" I mean cultural things, vision, strategy, how to set your own expectations, how decisions are made, what tools are available, etc.
- dharma1 10y agoI agree it's a good learning opportunity for individuals, but I still hope Europe will be able to produce new large, successful tech companies in the future. Right now a lot of the value is captured by US companies
- wehadfun 10y agoIs that a dog?
- dominotw 10y ago>This really makes me consider moving my family to Zurich. If you immigrate to America you can become an American. You can shop till you drop, eat mc donlads, celebrate 4th of july and call yourself an american. This can not be said for any other country. In Germany you will always be an "immigrant", maybe if your kids are white and young enough to pick up the language maybe they can become invisible. But for anyone else it impossible to become german, dutch ect. I don't mean any of it in a negative way, btw.
- SmellTheGlove 10y agoVery good point. I'm born in the US from an immigrant family, grew up here and all, but have US and Italian citizenship. I go to Italy pretty regularly and it's debatable whether most there actually consider me Italian, because I grew up in a different culture. That view might not even change if I were to go live there indefinitely. And to some extent I agree, or at least can see where that comes from. And I look like anyone else over there, speak a couple of dialects in addition to standard italian, etc. Now it doesn't mean you're necessarily treated poorly, but your cultural identity will always be something else. It's not as though no one will talk to you or be your friend. but it's different than the US where you can show up, declare yourself American, and pretty much have it stick.
- jpatokal 10y ago"Any"? Try telling that to (say) Canadians, Australians, South Africans, Singaporeans...
- namelezz 10y ago> call yourself an american. Sure you can call yourself whatever you want but whether or not you being treated as an american is a different story. I know several immigrants who get yelled by the local people to "go back to your country." US immigrants still suffer from loneliness like other immigrants too.
- ulfw 10y agoCompletely disagree on that. Lived ten years in California. Studies, Green Card etc. Could have gone for citizenship, but didn't. I was never seen as an American. Ever. Not even a little bit. I was always 'the German'. Almost every coffee shop, restaurant, super market, you name it I got asked where I am from or where my accent is from. No. It is not cute. It reminds you you are NOT one of them.
- Aoyagi 10y agoYeah, surely this isn't a move to get some EU funding... And to provide a base for the massive lobbyist team in Brussels.
- kamakazizuru 10y ago1) Why do you think Google needs EU funding for their research ? Last I checked they had one of the largest cash reserves outside the US - which means a lot of it is in the EU, if anything this is a way to smartly spend that cash rather than get taxed repatriating it. 2) The lobbyists can be based in Brussels, Zurich isn't that close to Brussels anyways!
- Aoyagi 10y ago1) Needs? Of course they don't need it. A -lot- of organisations asking for EU funding don't need it. 2) Yeah, but Zurich is a much nicer place than Brussels :) . And most likely not as watched by investigative journalists.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- secure 10y agoSwitzerland is not even in the EU — I think being in the EU is a prerequisite for any EU funding, though :).
- germanier 10y agoNot at all. There is quite a lot of EU funding in Switzerland going on as they are very closely associated. It's been reduced bit in recent yours though because of the political developments in Switzerland. Anyway, there is also a lot of EU funding in countries much farther removed, see e.g. Horizon 2020 which is the most important EU science fund http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/docs/h2020-funding-guide/cross-cutting-issues/international-cooperation_en.htm http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/docs/h2020-funding...
- tormeh 10y agoAnyone know why so many tech/pharma companies have research/development departments in Switzerland? It sounds expensive and not very centrally located. A young company where I live have HQ in Switzerland, but that's just a post box and some servers for tax reasons. The are so few people working there it's negligible.
- s3nnyy 10y agoI definitely see the reasons behind this move. The computer vision department at ETH is particularly strong and that spills over to industry as well. There is Fashwell, a startup that is doing pretty well and they do ML / computer vision quite extensively. Also, the ML meetup in Zurich has 2000 members, which is a lot for a small town like Zurich (http://www.meetup.com/Zurich-Machine-Learning/ http://www.meetup.com/Zurich-Machine-Learning/). Salaries are huge (7000 CHF - 12.000 CHF after taxes) and the living standard is very high. I am well-connected in the tech-scene in Zurich and if you're thinking of moving here and need support, send me a message (e-mail is in my HN-handle). Disclosure: I am a tech-recruiter.
- jedberg 10y agoThis is great, I'm glad that they are tapping into the many very smart Europeans who aren't willing to leave Europe to work in the states. That being said, I'm pretty sure this is almost an entirely tax based move. By doing this, they now have a way to spend a bunch of the money they have "stranded" in Europe.