One thing I care about as a Swedish engineer is interesting work on the forefront of technology. Sadly that’s also been sacrificed in the Nordic model.
I very much agree with the Finish parent that we need to adapt our societies. It’s not just about economic standard of living, it’s about staying relevant.
In fact I would even go further: it’s an ethical question to me. I see the holding back of ambitious, entrepreneurial people in order to preserve “social stability” as increasingly unethical.
> One thing I care about as a Swedish engineer is interesting work on the forefront of technology. Sadly that’s also been sacrificed in the Nordic model.
I am also a Swedish engineer and find that there are plenty of interesting and innovative companies to work for. As a software engineer it has typically been easy to find jobs that offer better compensation packages than what the union requires but I still see a union agreement as a positive thing if the company has it. To me it signals that they care about their employees. I also believe that the strong unions in Sweden have given us the (at least) five weeks of vacation, compared to the two in (the weakly unionized USA) and other quality of life and safety improvements.
> I see the holding back of ambitious, entrepreneurial people in order to preserve “social stability” as increasingly unethical.
This is quite an ignorant view. Social stability is the foundation for society, and society is the foundation for innovation. Who will build what you innovate? Who will buy it? Who will service it? Who will innovate based on your innovation? If you did an honest comparison of the innovative output of socially stable countries with those that are not socially stable you would change your mind.
I think we have different opinions, but also that you are misinterpreting on purpose. The reason I put social stability in quotes is that it’s not the perfect words for what I mean, but it’s meaning should be clear from the context.
What I was referring to was the Nordic cultural focus on a certain kind of “equality”, often referred to as the law of Jante, which is very focused on holding capable independent-minded people back.
> Who will innovate based on your innovation?
This is an excellent question, but I would like to turn it around: Who’s innovation do you innovate on top of? The answer in my case is “Anglo-Saxons”. There is pretty much nothing in my tech stack from the EU. It’s just a black hole. Does that not concern you at all?
"From the EU" is hard to discriminate in our industry these days I think, things are developed all around the world these days.
Then again maybe we have different tech stacks but mine typically includes: Linux (originally from Finland), ARM (from previously EU member UK), C++ (designed by a Dane) and Python (designed by a Dutch). That's the basis at least then there are other stuff as the need comes by.
As for social stability, I didn't intentionally misinterpret you. The kind of monetary equality that we traditionally have had in Sweden is good for social stability (the one without quotes I was talking about). That has changed during the last couple of decades and with increasing differences in income comes the increasing social problems we see.
OTOH I do agree that Jante can definitely be a negative factor when it comes to innovation.
As long my country can continue with its standard of living, I'm not so sure why I should worry why the tech stack is not from my country. It's a global economy and many things are global: the engineers working on said stack are not from the same country, also China, USA or Taiwan wouldn't be there if we wouldn't buy from them. Even Tesla wanted to come to build its factories here, and once the bullish attitude will give way (because it will) I'll have my local stack humming under my rear - built by unions just fine.
This 100%. We had "tax day" (release of tax records from last year) yesterday and the public flogging for entrepreneurs "earning too much" was rampant. This society has very heavily turned anti-achievement in the last few years.
> One thing I care about as a Swedish engineer is interesting work on the forefront of technology. Sadly that’s also been sacrificed in the Nordic model.
youre so high on copium if you think that the economic model has anything to do with that...
if you were a world class talent, you'd be able to get a position for such a job under any economic system. youre just not.
> One thing I care about as a Swedish engineer is interesting work on the forefront of technology.
Do you have concrete examples? I can imagine that if you're working on avionics Sweden might not be the best place, but otherwise it really doesn't seem to be lacking opportunities for a small country.
Sweden is fairly decent for avionics actually. For example we’ve designed and built our own fighter yet (the Gripen), which I’d say is impressive for a small country of 10 million inhabitants.
I’m interested in fundamental challenges around computing: programming languages, cloud platforms, operating systems, combinatorial optimization, database technology, machine learning and the like. Not many bleeding edge opportunities around that here.
We also have a work culture were effort and ability is not rewarded (which at least I associate with strong unions), but “playing politics” is. It’s very hard to stay motivated in a culture like that. I think this is an important part of the downward spiral.
> I’m interested in fundamental challenges around computing: programming languages, cloud platforms, operating systems
Yeah, for programming languages you should probably have been Danish and for operating systems the Finnish have had quite an impact. Both socially stable countries with dare I say pretty strong unions...
I'm dead serious. Btw, I'm also thinking of Anders Hejlsberg and Rasmus Lerdorf. They also live in North America. But that doesn't remove the fact that they were all born and bred in Scandinavia.
I'm guessing that their decision to move west had very little to do with the "stifling" unions and more to do with the increased opportunity for a skilled SWE over there. I would say that that increased opportunity has also very little to do with "stifling" unions and more to do with the huge single market that the US is. That huge single market allows companies to grow fast. The EU works hard to be a single market as well but we have language barriers, bigger legal differences and dare I say bigger cultural differences.
Also talking about Scandinavia, as tiny as it is population-wise, we've had a disproportionately large impact on the world in many different areas. Some factors that contribute to this, I believe, are our free education system and the social safety net that unions have played an important part upholding.
> We also have a work culture were effort and ability is not rewarded (which at least I associate with strong unions), but “playing politics” is.
To me that sounds like your typical large company. I've had a great time working at small startups but I've found that my job satisfaction pretty much scales with the inverse of company size (within limits, it seems 20-30 employees is the sweet-spot for me).
Adding to this, I also found that once a startup reaches a certain point, more "experienced" management starts getting hired (often from bigger companies), and the large company politics gets brought into the startup. Reflecting on it, oftentimes when this happens it is the time for me to start thinking about looking for a new job.
Well in the US there is at least the hypothetical of becoming the next Jeff Dean. In Sweden, not so much. I think it’s disingenuous to pretend there’s not a difference.
What sort of interesting work is not possible in Sweden? I've worked in many tech hubs and am now in Stockholm; Oxford, London, Palo Alto, etc, and haven't noticed anything
My impression is that the more ambitious and intellectually demanding the less of a chance you will see it succeed in Sweden, at least if its software. So sure, if you want to build a consumer app that plays music or lets you talk to friends then Sweden is great. If you want to build OpenAI, then not so much.
I very much agree with the Finish parent that we need to adapt our societies. It’s not just about economic standard of living, it’s about staying relevant.
In fact I would even go further: it’s an ethical question to me. I see the holding back of ambitious, entrepreneurial people in order to preserve “social stability” as increasingly unethical.