What is it like to work for Apple?
It makes my dream come true. I used to work for SwiftKey in London, write a blog and Apple found me through it. I enjoy working in it because, thanks to its size, technological and financial background, one can really focus on things there.
And what exactly are you working on in Apple?
I’m working on Xcode, which are development tools that are used around the world to create iPhone applications.
Apple is affiliated with California’s Silicon Valley. How do you live there?
Three hundred days a year is warm and blue sky, which encourages outdoor sports. The number of potential social contacts is also fascinating, a lot of technology companies and startups are concentrated in a small area. But sometimes you feel like you’re in a bubble where no one is dealing with anything but technology.
How is the local mentality different from the Czech one?
Americans are much more confident. Czechs are pessimists, they expect things to go wrong. America charged me with such greater optimistic energy.
Would you like to live in Europe or the USA in the future?
In Europe and in the Czech Republic. America is the best place to live for the richest five percent. But she also lives there most. In the US, cases of poverty and social conditions are worse than usual in Europe. San Francisco is at the top of the list of cities with the highest incidence of homeless people. Health insurance, something commonplace in Europe, is inaccessible to tens of millions of people in the United States. Thus, uninsured Americans must decide whether parents with an infarction will call an ambulance or go bankrupt. It is the unexpected medical expenses that are the most common cause of personal bankruptcy in the USA.
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There are certainly more topics to discuss about the social and economic distribution and attunement of various groups of the population in the USA.
One of the reasons for the escalation or visibility of this problem is social networks. They are basically set up to upset people. Their algorithms work on the principle of unleashing emotions. That is why I perceive Facebook as a weakness of Western democracy. If Facebook’s protection against abuse does not improve, then any further choices will be similar and it will be addressed that this social network allows detailed access to and targeting of users.
What will you talk about at our conference?
About Tesla, I’ve been watching her for several years. One of my hobbies is renewable energy. And Tesla is the industry leader, helping to kick-start an industrial transition to just such resources. One thing is what states do, but if companies do not produce products and people do not want to buy them, then nothing will change.
How much more will Tesla’s shares go up?
It is not an investment board, but I think they will develop positively in the long run. Much more than the stock price, which is quite reactive, but I’m watching its quarterly sales. And I believe that in ten years, the price of Tesla’s shares will be several times higher than today.
Reason?
I think that Tesla will be the most valuable company in the world by 2030. Even with the S model, it has shown that it is able to produce the most technologically advanced electric cars and not go bankrupt. Even then, strong future growth could be expected. With the advent of the affordable Model 3, it has only been confirmed. People realized that Tesla would stay on the market and their expectations were reflected in the growth of its share price.
Despite the efforts of oil companies and standard Tesla carmakers, the carmaker is able to produce electric cars on a mass scale and thus achieve decent profitability. Only a loss of demand could kill it, which is definitely not the case. On the contrary. Tesla registers over 600,000 pre-orders on Cybertruck alone. It currently produces about half a million cars a year and in 2030 plans to be 40 times. Technological development in Tesla also does not sleep. Interesting in the future will be, for example, solar roofs and battery storage, which the carmaker is working on. He is therefore well on his way to the most valuable company.
What will be the main technological trends of the next five or ten years?
Today, the transition to a green economy is taken a bit like going to the dentist. Something we have to do, but we don’t want to do much. Many things will have to change, there will be many opportunities and many billions of companies will grow around it. The trend will also be machine learning and artificial intelligence, which will increasingly help to recognize what is difficult or slow today. I expect even more progress in this.
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Silicon Valley is known as the cradle of innovation and startups. Do you perceive it from the position of someone who lived there as well?
Silicon Valley was and still is a unique place where a lot of ideas meet a lot of money. At the same time, it’s insanely expensive, you have to pay people adequately. So even those startups have it a lot harder in Silicon Valley than elsewhere in the USA. Because what do you need when building a startup? A couple of enthusiasts, a bed, food, or investors who will support you in the start. And because of the huge cost of living in Silicon Valley, it’s not very smart to start a startup there. It’s much more sensible today to send a development team to another part of the United States, such as Seattle or Austin, Texas, or the eastern environment, to locations like New York and Boston. Or calmly outside the USA. Maybe to Berlin.
Is it really such a price difference compared to California?
The differences are even fivefold. Large companies do not bother much. Then it pushes out other people who have lived there for a long time and are not able to stay there. Thus, Silicon Valley turned into a bubble for the rich.
| He studied robotics at the Czech Technical University in Prague and computer science at King’s College in London. He previously developed the iOS platform for SwiftKey, currently working as a senior developer for Apple. He is also a speaker at Apple’s professional conferences. He likes swimming and traveling. |
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