What's hard? Just switch.

Imho, the missing component here (in both the EU and US) is an individual right to access covered services.

Where "access" is specifically defined as full functionality on a device of an individual's choice, and offers safe harbor for example options. Like HTML over HTTP (without javascript) or REST APIs.

This should be built on top of existing accessibility requirements, with the goal of preventing not having a Google / Apple smartphone from being an access barrier.

"Covered services" should be defined two-fold, either by market share above a certain threshold or services that are required for normal life/studying/work (and tied to any public funding).

It should be default illegal for entities to make bargains with Google/Apple (or app developers) that exclusively rely on certified devices, except for extremely limited special circumstances.

What country? Which university?

I don't know where you are, and I'm not an expert, but a job requiring specific technology typically means it is your employer's responsibility to provide that technology. So if they signed a contract that mandates you have a smartphone, you can use your own if you like, but I think they are legally required to provide you with one if you choose not to buy one. In fact in most cases, I think they should prefer that (since the security of your personal device is very much none of their business).

I think this is kind of a ticking time bomb with a lot of companies depending on personal devices for 2FA.

Which is exactly the point of the whole "sovereignty" debate: on one hand there's a lot of slop about "national interest" and "privacy" and "features" and such, and on the other hand management decides for whoever offers something (anything) cheaper and with a golf tournament on top. And then everybody moans and complains about the situation.

Oh boy, that server story is painful to read. That ain't universal across providers. I work at european data center and was a tech and the worst SLA is like next business day and even then if our hardware is at fault, you won't be waiting for the next day for us to start taking action on it. And if you have a feeling you're left in dark, you can even pick up the phone at middle of the night to call our support and either get some status or light some fire that will prioritize the process in the pipeline (well, to actually DO something other than cold reboot at night time you may need to purchase SLA that will require involvement of higher support level at nighttime/holiday)

There are some things that I'd like to be improved in technical support side, but we are way better in "human reachability", responsiveness and "blame game" point of view than US hyperscalers.

As someone who also works for a US company with very large EU customers and partners I can attest this is completely true. Most European people on HN seem to be in the startup/SME space, so this won’t resonate, but the key point is that people who work for US companies also have zero incentive to switch to an EU company due to the mindsets we see locally.

if the EU furniture maker has the correct mindset and the EU tech company does not then it seems to me the conclusions fall apart

>European tech imported the product ambition. It forgot to import the customer obsession that’s supposed to come with it.

The French furniture maker didn't import the customer obsession. I agree that U.S tech in these particular subsets are better at the EU doing it, and that needs to be fixed but you can't really talk about how great U.S tech is when you can also point at thousands of horrifying lack of support stories from them also.

U.S Tech has a good mindset for replacing hardware when it fails, they have a good workflow for that. The idea that they have good support however should be tempered by regular reading of some sort of online tech news aggregator.

> The gap is the same “playing not to lose” instinct I wrote about with French tech: do the minimum, follow the procedure, don’t get blamed

Oof, Exhibit B: Arianespace.

This is simplistic to the point of meaninglessness