I'm not sure failure should be praised, but it should be accepted without judgment, and entrepreneurs that haven't succeeded should be lauded for trying. Failure is a necessary part of success. It's cliché, but people really do fail their way to success. So why stigmatize it if it'll discourage entrepreneurs from trying a sufficient number of times in order to be successful?

I'm increasingly convinced that having the one automatically brings in the other. The hallmark of the American attitude is that you, and only you are responsible for your own success. This means that if you're not succeeding, it's because you're not working hard enough. It leads to a "rat race" culture, where everyone works harder to be labeled as a "go-getter", but all it ends up actually doing is raising the baseline expectation for how much work you're supposed to do.

These are quite the sweeping claims you're making for all ~125 million american workers.

There are so many factors to consider, yet you make such broad assumptions without a trace of evidence or logic to backup your narrow-minded claims.

Also, please don't call my claims narrow-minded without giving me an opportunity to counter your arguments. I googled "america work culture." These are some of the links it sent me to:

http://www.businessinsider.com/difference-swedish-american-w...

http://www.expatfocus.com/expatriate-usa-business-culture

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/03/america...

All of the links above describe a culture where the employees feel underappreciated and overworked. This is during a time when inequality is growing to obscene levels, tons of good middle class jobs have been shipped overseas, and most new jobs are forming in only a handful of urban centers across the country. If you have any evidence to counter my broad interpretation of the US work culture, I would appreciate it.

>1. Practically everyone takes a summer vacation in Sweden

>2. In Sweden, it's somewhat easier to be a working parent

>3. Coffee breaks are serious business in Sweden

1,2 are consequences of semi-socialist policies. Also, coffee breaks?

On the other hand, most Swedes will pay between 49 and 60 per cent through a combination of local government and state income tax. No thanks.

Get back to me when software devs across industry start making six digits in europe.

> http://www.expatfocus.com/expatriate-usa-business-culture

> Discrimination in the Workplace

What else should the federal govt do, apart from outlawing it? Force employers to hire based on gender, racial quotas?

>There are fewer holidays and in some cases, American companies only allow two weeks a year for holidays. Christmas holidays are fewer with only December 25th being an official day and people do return to work on December 26th.

Depends where you work. If you wash dishes for minimum wage, I wouldn't expect multi-week paid vacations.

> https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/03/america...

tldr

> Why do so many people—particularly women—seem to have so much on their plates?

That's what they wanted

---

> All of the links above describe a culture where the employees feel underappreciated and overworked.

If they're underappreciated, they can switch jobs. If they're overworked, its by choice or a consequence of bad decision making.

Ultimately, there's much more personal freedom. And if some people fail to take advantage of that, its not the system's fault.

Career is a choice. But of course, most people don't have 100% job security.

>Also, the fact that you suggest that dish washers shouldn't get vacation is telling

That's not what I said. They should have all the vacations they want, but not at other taxpayers' expense. Otherwise, you have hard-working people give up to 60% of their income away for vacations of dishwashers. Perhaps this is a great achievement for Swedes, but would be looked down upon in the US.

> The lower and middle classes need stability too, yet in America, you've either made it or you haven't. It's way too binary in my opinion.

Inequality of results is a logical result of capitalism. You can't have the cake and eat it too. If everyone 'made it', no one would truly 'make it'.

> You act like there's no personal freedom in Germany, but with their paid vacation for _everyone_ and socialized healthcare, it seems to me like they have much more freedom than your typical American.

Sure, but the benefits fall largely upon the lower classes. Wealthier individuals don't need so much help from the state, yet they're the ones contributing the most.

By no means I aim to defend everything that goes on in the US - e.g. the healthcare situation is abysmal. But ultimately, there are pros and cons of both approaches to policy.

This is absurd. There are people who are making hundreds of millions of dollars a year while tens of thousands of people work minimum wage jobs because that's all they can get, and you're saying that it's their fault for not producing more? You really need to realize that our quality of life isn't because we are so amazing, but because of the opportunities our position in the world and society have given us. And in America, those opportunities are being offered to fewer and fewer people: economic mobility is declining, and has for a while[1]. A person can only pull on their bootstraps so hard.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/us/harder-for-americans-to...

And even engineers at BMW or similar don't get paid in stocks, which means that the supply of engineers made rich by big exits is next to zero. Just look who founded all the hot startups in SV - it's mostly ex-Paypal/Google/FB/MS/BigStartup employees who found or invest the boatload of monies into new startups. And regular salaries may be enough to pay off credit on a house, but not enough to save for funding and bootstrapping a company.

Here, basically the only way to fund a company if you don't happen to have rich friends/family is by a line of credit - and thanks to EU banking regulations the banks now require real deposits of securities (eg a house/car) for a credit line; this again reduces the eligible persons to rich people. No way to see a poor immigrant fund a multibillion dollar company like in US... given the more and more xenophobic neonazi appearances (Pegida, AfD) immigrants actually more have to fear for their lives. (Okay, I've exaggerated here, but the xenophobist trend even in government massively worries me)

I really hope it improves though.

I was actually completely shocked when I moved to California, signed up with an internet provider, and had a technician come to my house the next day. Crazy!

(Other DSL companies can be hell, because they don't own much of the infrastructure, so you'll get stuck in endless finger pointing and shifting of blame. Cable internet providers have their own problems, but are generally a good option, as well.)

there is some DOCSIS (cable) service, mostly from Vodafone but also a smaller provider named telecolumbus.

There was versatel, but 1&1 smartly purchased it at what I believe to be an absolute steal. They have what is clearly the widest fiber network reach outside of Telekom, and 1&1 is actually going out there and selling it.

I could, if I really wanted to, get 1Gbps symmetrical for only 500EUR/month. The catch is the ~3000EUR install and minimum 3 year commitment. but, at least the option is there. Telekom, if they have fiber "available" at your address, will offer you 20Mbps for around 700EUR a month, then do this really weird delivery of an STM-1 (155Mbps) circuit, broken out into E3s (45Mbps) to a Cisco ASR1002 (a 5000EUR device, easily), that is converted to a rate limited GigE interface. Oh, and the install fee is about 1200EUR and takes a solid six weeks...but only if you call every day to remind them.

Berlin internet connectivity is a sick and twisted joke.

Currently work is being done to upgrade the phone network to 500/200 in the next years.

I'd add that, in my opinion, there is also a lack of appreciation for good engineering in many of the few existing startups. You could almost say even software startups don't consider themself technology companies. The implementation of the product is just something that somebody needs to do and often gets outsourced to some agencies.

In general the focus is on the founders more than it's on the teams. Ultimately that also shows in salaries. Startups are considers something for junior engineers that accept worse pay because they are doing something hip.

Volkswagen Wolfburg has a very big IT devision, VW financials Braunschweig too... Audi and Porsche also do a lot of IT stuff... they work together with the local univeristies on self driving cars etc.

I was doing self driving car stuff 10 years back at tu braunschweig with VW.... I never been in a big german company where they outsourced IT work to india and co.

And regarding outsourcing to India: If you read through the software related job postings of Bosch you will quite often find the phrase: "You are the Software Architect and are responsible for coordinating our Indian implementation team". When I looked last time there were a lot more of these postings than "we are looking for an excellent software engineer with skills in X/Y/Z".

Did they really fail if they still have the money to try again? They certainly managed to con their investors at least once. What is a failure when it gets others to pay your rent for at least a year?

If you con your investors then there's no chance of starting over. If you make your investors aware of the risks and it just doesn't work out (but you handled the situation well) then you've failed but are still well ahead of those who never tried.

Also, although investors may pay your rent for the year, as a founder you're expected to take <50% of your market wage in most cases and you'll be working longer hours, so this isn't a great argument.

A new sucker is born every minute.

> as a founder you're expected to take <50% of your market wage in most cases and you'll be working longer hours

relying on the assumption that the founder is actually doing work he is getting paid for, or that he didn't hire several friends that receive most of the money.

> Chip on your shoulder?

Lets say I have a good reason to no longer trust any sheme that the founder can just kill with little consequence to himself.

These are the basic risks you need to control for before investing.

If you are European and have a bank account in your homecountry, from what I've read you don't even need to fly over to Estonia to get that bank account, the bank will accept that. If not, that's the only thing you really need to go to Estonia.

This is one of the most ridiculous things I've read on any web page in years.