Can Europe Catch Up in Tech? Oliver Coste Says Change This Law
Recorded live in New York City, this Back in America conversation goes straight at a taboo: employment protection for highly paid engineers. Tech entrepreneur and author Oliver Coste argues that strict dismissal rules in countries like France and Germany make it slow and costly to stop failing projects, which blocks the pivots that fuel disruptive innovation.
Coste contrasts Meta’s rapid post–ChatGPT restructuring with SAP’s constraints, explains why Europe dominates incremental industries but lags in high-failure-rate tech, and lays out a flexicurity fix modeled on Denmark and Switzerland. We dig into profit dynamics, brain drain myths, and what happens to Europe’s economy by 2030 if nothing changes.
If you care about Europe’s next decade, this one is blunt, data-driven, and hard to ignore.
