There are a lot of cool tech companies in Sweden but I wouldn't call that the Silicon Valley of Europe.
There are also a lot of tech companies in Dublin, London, Berlin, Paris...
I don't think any one of those can claim the title of "Silicon Valley of Europe" as in "the place to be for tech companies".
I'd say most of the US Big Tech have their European HQ in Dublin. And most European startups/tech companies have their HQ in London. That might change with brexit but so far it's what I've seen.
20 years ago the area around Edinburgh was known as "Silicon Glen". Then there's "Silicon Roundabout" on Old Street in London. Every area where there's tech gets compared with "Silicon Valley".
It's telling that everywhere is compared with SV, not with Scotland or London.
Also it is (and was) the only English speaking country in the eurozone.
Tax was a huge factor in drawing some of the big names but the double-Irish (the worst aspect of tax avoidance) had been phased out. Corporate tax is 12.5% which is lower than the majority of EU countries [1] but the existing ecosystem of companies has also helped create an attractive labour pool. If it's purely tax everyone would move to Hungary (9%).
A number of European countries have near 100% English literacy and allow for document workflow and accounting in English. I suspect it's mostly the taxes.
I totally agree that English can be used entirely for businesses in other euro countries but for a US company it is attractive for employees/families to be in country where English is an official language.
> The EF EPI calculates a country’s/region's average adult English skill level using data from three different versions of the EF SET. Two versions are open to any Internet user for free. The third is an online placement test used by EF during the enrollment process for English courses.
> In order to calculate a country’s EF EPI score, each test score was normalized to obtain the percentage of correct answers for that test. All the scores for a country/region were then averaged across the three tests, giving equal weight to each test. Regional and global averages were weighted by the populations of each country/region within each region.
People who don't know english in the first place won't have any reason for taking those tests.
I'm a US expat living in Dublin so I have some "on the ground" views. There are some rather significant software dev operations here, but most are offices of large multinationals (Google, Microsoft, Hubspot, Activision, TikTok is building a massive office currently, etc). There is a massive drop off in salary and interesting work when you look for more "local" (Irish or even European headquartered companies). I get linkedin messages from Irish companies talking about paying 70k euro for senior software positions when the going rate is more realistically at like 120k.
My view is that if Ireland hadn't done their tax shenanigans then none of these companies would be here and it would be an absolute backwater (software dev-wise). Ireland has some really great education and talent but the culture, infrastructure, and personal taxes don't lend themselves to a bootstrap/startup friendly environment imo. So even today a ton of Irish people move to the UK, Canada, or Australia for better jobs.
Looking at the available jobs in Dublin for e.g. Google, I don't think that's wholly accurate. Ireland's tax story does attract US multinationals, but they're not just shell companies.
At least until a few years ago, large corporations had their support centers in Ireland (Dublin), but the focus may have shifted in time.
The specific engineering positions[¹] seem to have a significant rate of customer support/sales/market; it seems that Ireland isn't a technical research center. I haven't looked at how the mix of open positions is in SV/USA, though.
FB and Google have enormous buildings in central Dublin.
AWS runs a very large facilities and developer group. Apple has a headcount of about 4000 people in Cork in a facility that's been there for nearly 40 years.
They're here because of tax, yes, and Ireland is in no meaningful way a leading startup centre. But Dublin in particular has more people working in software than (say) London.
Dublin doesn't have more people working in software than London. It isn't even close.
I have seen estimates which suggest the total tech industry employment in Ireland, not Dublin the whole country, is something like 100k. London had this many open vacancies in tech per week earlier this year. And that is assuming all these jobs are equal which, of course, they are not (you are unlikely to open a support centre in London).
London's VC market alone is multiples of the next largest city in Europe (which I believe is Paris). I think Manchester is actually a larger VC market than Dublin (and Edinburgh is probably coming close).
Dublin is a small city - I was surprised myself for the first time when I was there I expected it to big european capital. In fact population of Dublin is ~500k and they even market it as "Dublin Town". From the city center most of places are available within 5km radius.
And to clarify, the size of Dublin is relevant because even if smaller cities have a relatively lower mean proportion of software developers, the law of small (!) numbers tells us the variance in the proportion of software developers will be larger, meaning some smaller cities will have the lowest fraction of software developers, and others (perhaps like Dublin) will have the greatest fraction -- just by chance, not due to underlying causal mechanisms.
Maybe we have different views on what "Silicon Valley" means, but I think of it more in terms of startups than big corp. From what I've seen there is mainly grunt work at large companies for developers in Dublin. Like big corp ships over their latest printing software to be localized for 18 different markets and similar.
I could be wrong, but a quick search for unicorns in Dublin turned up rather empty...
You must have had poor luck with your Google Search -- heres a few from someone work works in the Irish Dev Scene:
Intercom, Workhuman and CarTrawler and others are in the pipeline like Pointy and Manna. Plenty of Irish software developers -- they also leave Ireland and found companies in other countries like Stripe.
> Plenty of Irish software developers -- they also leave Ireland and found companies in other countries like Stripe.
Geez, the smarminess in this comment - unreal.
2 students who graduated secondary school went to college in usa, lived in usa and started a company called stripe. they were college students who dropped out.
It's like how people claim greatness from some American or European emigre from their country who was able to excel precisely because of the opportunities offered by the West.
I dont use Google. Never heard of any of the companies you posted, but I took a look at the website of the first one (Intercom): "The company was founded in 2011 in San Francisco"...
I'm sure they have some Irish connection, but it's obviusly not a Dublin company.
Product is built in Dublin -- their investment came from the US -- all four founders are Irish. No company at that scale is exclusively a single nationality.
Few months back, when a friend told me he might move to Stockholm from NYC I had no idea what to think. Sounded a bit nuts frankly as he has young kids and stuff.
These type of articles do help with such decisions, making locations more attractive etc. There will be a beauracrat somewhere in all govts pushing these narratives with press. How else do you attract talent in such a competitive world?
One downside if you work for a startup, which can't really pay top dollar, is that stock option possibilities are quite limited so attracting top talent needs to be done using other advantages such as parental leave and child care and judging from your comment that could have been a deciding factor. Another major problem is housing.
It’s in absolute terms smaller than London etc, but relative to population it must be pretty tech-dense. Software developer is the most common occupation these days in a labor market of 2 million. That’s surely unusual?
Sorry this refers to the capital region only. I’m so used to seeing “Stockholm is the SV of Europe” that I didn’t notice this headline being “Sweden”. The population of the Greater Stockholm area is around 2M
I think Berlin is a better place to be as the salaries are still alright when you look at the prices. Renting becomes more expensive each year. However, groceries, restaurants, and alcohol are dirt cheap compared to other capitals like Stockholm, Paris, or London.
Yeah I pay 700€ for a nice 2 person flat in Berlin, and groceries + all fixed costs come out to around 500€. SE salaries here are largely relatively low (entry between 40-50k), but you can still have a very relaxed life here in the sector.
Total, including internet and the likes. The flat has some issues though like really old electricity and small hot water tank. The building is 130 years old and I suspect there are mice living in the walls somewhere.
The contract is from last year, and it is only slightly below the average rent for my area (Neukölln). Even the most-wanted areas still have plenty of openings like this, but they are usually not posted on the open market, you need to have a network of people to recommend you.
It's possible to pay 700 if you signed a contract 5 years ago and the rent was raised by a moderate amount every year. 800-900 should still be doable though.
There are also a lot of tech companies in Dublin, London, Berlin, Paris...
I don't think any one of those can claim the title of "Silicon Valley of Europe" as in "the place to be for tech companies".
I'd say most of the US Big Tech have their European HQ in Dublin. And most European startups/tech companies have their HQ in London. That might change with brexit but so far it's what I've seen.