European vs American

I recently moved to Toronto, Canada so I've had the chance to experience a small part of the North American (NA) way of life.

The most striking difference between the NA way and Europe's (EU) style, besides the unapologetic consumerism, is the spirit of do it yourself vs who are you to do it yourself. In EU to change the world via technology you need to get a degree from a university, get a master's, work as a lowly worker for X years in a large company to slowly get up the ranks and by the time anyone is willing to listen to your vision, your vision is no longer fresh and relevant. In NA you work as a coder for a couple of years, get a following in the social media of your choice and startup! The web world moves way too fast for old executives, here the difference between graduate and "acquired by Google" is a good idea and hard work. Here you CAN DO whereas in EU you can only hope to one day, maybe, change a line of text in an outdated webpage.

Things are not 100% rosy, sure. If your idea and/or execution sucks or maybe even if it doesn't but a competitor does it better than you, you become jobless, homeless, maybe even hopeless so fast your head will spin. Things moving fast means you get where you want faster or crash and burn. 35 is old, 40 is too old and 50 is dinosaur old. The startup scene is also filled with pretenders, 20 year old "social media experts," lawyers, smooth talkers and other leaches feasting upon the fresh fruit of Web 2.0 but being critical in who you hire can as always help. Did I mention you need a lawyer? Oh yeah a GOOD one!

Life's good here. It is not California for sure but a talented innovator can do real good. With Microsoft jumping on the app bandwagon with Windows 8, every player and their cat releasing a tablet and the Web 2.0 now requiring mobile apps coders will be in business for a VERY long time. Now excuse me I have to go read up on HTML5.

Till next time,
Stratos out.