Gergely Orosz Profile picture
Oct 25, 2021 6 tweets 2 min read Read on X
London used to be the tech hub of Europe before Brexit (VC investment, # of tech positions, big tech presence etc). I lived/worked there for 5 years and it was great.

Still a good place... but Brexit is making EU engineers explore options outside the UK like this, one at a time: Image
As someone who has seen London tech at its prime, I think one of the biggest misses of the current UK government is not doing more to "retain" the London tech hub.

Dublin, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin and other EU "hubs" are slowly, but surely pulling London EU folks away.
My response to "what is your take on choosing the next city?" was this: Image
"What will the next EU* tech hub be?"

*taking the UK out of EU.

My take: it should have been Paris... if they capitalized on it, and changed a bunch of policies (which they don't and won't).

Amsterdam & Dublin are the biggest winners, and plenty other gainers). Image
And here's an inbound DM on why Paris (sadly) is a place that will struggle to attract tech talent. Even though it has all many characteristics in location, size, population, transport to be a tech hub.

The language for tech is English, and in Paris you *need* to learn French. Image
A person weighing in (over a DM that I edited to remove personal details) on Barcelona.

And on how you should expect to (eventually) learn the local language either way. Which I agree with - I'm slowly improving my Dutch as well in Amsterdam. Image

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More from @GergelyOrosz

Aug 22
What is happening at Sonos is hard to believe.

The company released a new app that is a big regression in reliability, usability and functionality vs the old one.

Sales are falling thanks to the new app.

There is no quick fix.

They want to re-release the old app... but cannot Image
Screenshot from

Talk about a company damaging themselves, thanks to ignoring practices like:

1. Only release a product that has been properly tested (was not the case w Sonos)

2. Have a rollback plan, especially when skipping #1 (also not the case)reddit.com/r/sonos/commen…
And yes, Sonos used to have a great software experience.

I got my first Sonos around 2019 or so I think - and the setup and tuning were very nice (positioning speakers in a room for best performance.) Worked well for me at least.

Here’s a much earlier experience:
Read 5 tweets
Aug 21
Do I have this right:

Major banks skipped due diligence on the deal when providing massive loans to the world's wealthiest person buying Twitter for $44B, assuming they would make a quick buck by selling on these loans.

But they cannot sell it on and make money on it? Image
The full story by WSJ:

It's hard to feel sorry for massive banks that don't make the quick buck they expected to do, because they loaned for an objectively terrible deal? (Twitter was sold for 2-3x the value of Snap, despite fewer users, similar rev)wsj.com/tech/elon-musk…
FWIW Snap today:

- Has ~2x as many users as we can assume X has (Snap: more than 800M MAU)

- Has ~2x as much annual revenue (about $5B)

- Is worth $15B

... meaning X would be valued no more than $15B today, most likely.

No wonder that loan cannot be sold on!
Read 6 tweets
Aug 19
It's notable that coding assistants like Copilot, Tab9 and many others are available in most IDEs... save for XCode.

This means we have an unlikely "control group" to determine if these AI assistants make a major difference in coding: native iOS devs vs everyone else!
Assuming these coding assistants provide a meaningful and long-term productivity boosts: teams doing web and Android development using these tools (e.g. via Jetbtains or GH Copilot) *should* be meaningfully more productive vs iOS folks.

Interesting if we'll see major differences
The reason for this is how XCode seems to be deliberately hostile for extensions: and so the inline coding extensions that IDEs like Visual Studio and Jetbrains IDEs support (and that AI tools use) are not available for XCode.
Read 10 tweets
Aug 8
Outside of coding and customer service, what are areas where GenAI / LLMs result in very clear productivity gains or business gains, without a deterioration in the experience for customers?

These are two areas I currently see as "yeah, GenAI actually works here, not just a fad"
Funnily enough, even when Sundar Pichai was asked about GenAI, he seemed to only list these two examples. Two weeks ago he said:

"There are pockets, be it coding, be it in customer service, et cetera, where we are seeing some of those [GenAI] use cases seeing traction"
The "et cetera" is what I'm interested in.

Coding is a fantastic fit for GenAI:
- Simple grammar (simpler than human language!)
- Huge amount of extremely high quality training data (code that compiles!)
- Hallucinations can be limited by compile/test
- Humans review output
Read 7 tweets
Jul 31
Here is an EU regulation that surely massively accelerated online businesses:

The right to return any physical goods purchased online within 14 days.

Here’s why (my recent story with a faulty vacuum cleaner that will make me only buy stuff like this online, even from a shop:)
I needed a vaccuum cleaner while in Hungary. So I walked into a retailer shop and bought a cordless one.

The vacuum cleaner broke after 7 days (no charge.) Took it back to replace it… but was told that in-store purchases are not eligible for the 14-day return. Only online ones
So now the retailer is sending my brand new vacuum cleaner for repair. I have no appliance for 2-3 weeks while they attempt to repair what should have not been broken.

There is zero point as a consumer buying appliances in-person: thanks this 14-day policy not applying to them.
Read 8 tweets
Jul 30
It's a good reminder that CrowdStrike most likely caused more financial damage to their customers than their annual revenue.

CrowdStrike annual revenue: $3B. "Just" the damage caused to a big customer (Delta): $300-500M.

It is only business sensible Delta sues CS/MS for this.
Delta (by regulation) needs to stand in for the losses and cover them for passengers.

The interesting parts of the lawsuit will be:

1. What contracts did Delta strike with CS/MS in case of them causing financial damage to their business, like now?

2. What does the judge say?
FWIW suing Microsoft seems to be pointless to me. Liability stands with CrowdStrike: they very clearly caused the damage. Just me, but I cannot see a judge come to any other conclusion.

Ship changes that run in the kernel at your own risk, as we will see.
Read 5 tweets

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