Last week I was on a European road trip attending 15 meetings with engineers from all over Northern Europe (Belgium, France, Norway, Netherlands) and learned two things about software in Europe.
1. Great pool of talent
2. Companies get software
I spend copious amounts of time in the “field” doing sales calls, Webinars, and conferences here in the US and meet lots of talented people. The difference between US companies and Europe companies from what I saw – now granted I only met 15 out of a million companies – is that the European companies seem to really know how to foster a top notch engineering team. This isn’t an easy thing to do, especially with deadlines, outsourcing, turnover, and all the other things that a company needs to deal with, but one that is a necessity to be successful and compete with those who know how to do it.