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> That's not how developer productivity works

So me pointing out that there are no FAANGs is reductive but claiming 32 hours is peak productivity isn't being reductive? Hmmm.

I hate to break it to you but productivity is measured not by wishful thinking but by capital markets. If German devs were more productive then capital would move to Germany.



No, it's because you're massively confusing capital accumulation with worker productivity and you boiled your argument down to "that neighborhood is full of McMansions, while the other neighborhood is full of slums, therefore that neighborhood must be full of hard working productive people and the other must be full of lazy bums who aren't as productive otherwise they'd also have McMansions too".

Capital accumulation is much more than worker productivity, it depends on historical factors, the local banking sector, time in the market, investor mentality and risk taking, local laws and regulations for both workers and investors, and most importantly taxes, both on workers and on investors. Worker efficiency is only a small part of that. As a productive worker I have no control of the other factors that attract investors to my city/country like political instability, corruption, geography, wars on my border, banking, taxes and laws.


> You're massively confusing capital accumulation with worker productivity.

No I think it's you who is confused about the difference between capital, which can be moved, is fungible, and property (like mcmansions). The whole point, literally the whole point, of capital markets is enabling people to move their money opportunistically in a way that's impossible with property.

> it depends on historical factors, the local banking sector, time in the market

Do you realize you're talking about Western Europe here and not like some developing nation? And Bavaria no less? Like I wouldn't be at all surprised if some of the extant banks in the area go all the way back to knights of templar.

> As a productive worker I have no control of the other factors that attract investors to my city/country like political instability, corruption, geography, wars on my border, banking, taxes and laws.

Again, Western Europe, not LA or subsaharan Africa or whatever. Germany is without a doubt top 5 in terms of both stability and lack of corruption.


You missed out on important factors like different investor behavior, consumer spending behavior, taxes, laws and regulations, national scale and language barrier, for your anecdote.

For example, if your wealthy Bavarian "Knights Templar" money investor (who probably isn't as wealthy as US VCs, but we'll gloss over that), can make more money through real estate investments, why would risk it all and take a gamble on some risky tech start-up in a country that has more bureaucracy, higher taxes, more workers' protections, smaller scale than the US, conservative consumer who still use cash, etc.? It's too risky to invest in tech here, compared to the US, even if you were wealthy investor.

Germany along with any other wealth European country, and the US aren't remotely comparable in the tech markets to draw the conclusion that because Germany doesn't have FAANGs it's because its workers can't be as productive as the US ones, when there's so may other factors I enumerated above at play that impact the tech sector.

You rant is just not a valid argument for this position.




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