Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Why don't more UK graduates want to join start-ups?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–86 of 86 posts

Re: Ask HN: Why don't more UK graduates want to join start-ups?

#81

Post by nickthedart »

deathwarmedover wrote: post #80
nickthedart wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I probably sound like a broken record on HN, but this is surely a big part of the problem - living costs in London. Even £40k doesn't give a great standard of living in London, due to ridiculous accommodation and transport costs. I think that startups should locate somewhere much cheaper but still attractive to grads, somewhere north. Examples - Birmingham, Nottingham, Sheffield, Leeds, Newcastle.

>Even £40k doesn't give a great standard of living in London That all depends on your definition of "great standard of living". I started out on £20k and have never felt that I was slumming it in London.

Fair point. My personal definition of a reasonable living standard, is being able to save a house deposit and eventually buy a 2-up 2-down terraced house, without forgoing all social life or basic no frills holidays. Such as house costs £70-80k in a cheap part of a northern city, £120k in a more up-market part, and, as for London, well maybe its under £300k on the very last stop on a tube line - Morden for example. In London you're likely to end up in a shared apartment for years. It might be a nice apartment, with good housemates, but it'll never be yours, and what happens when you get married and have kids? Lots of people answer "well then I move a 45 min train ride away". My other definition of decent standard of living involves not paying out thousands of £ to catch a stressful crowded train every day. ;)

Re: Ask HN: Why don't more UK graduates want to join start-ups?

#82

Post by fumbe »

Great post! I'm an MSc Tech Entrepreneurship student with a software background and would either join an existing startup or launch my own. I'm actually attending the silicon milkroundabout event this Sunday.

I can relate to the problem in the following ways:

(1) Culture - The UK and Europe in general does not have the same 'entrepreneurship spirit' like they do in the US. The vast majority are looking for stability, rather than risk and rewards (both personal and financial). A recent article published in the telegraph stated that my university (UCL), has the highest number of graduates going into self-employment, and the figure was still just 2.4%, so you can imagine the rest. http://tgr.ph/tTMHaJ

(2) Value - There not so many people from a software background in my course (around 10%), so I tried to reach out to undergraduate Computer Science students in the same department in order to organise something similar to the silicon milkroundabout, but just for students on campus, i.e. match up budding tech entrepreneurs with developers and aspiring hackers. We received less than 3% interest, which kind of reflects the newspaper figure. I don't think they see the value of joining a start-up at the early stage. http://econ.st/uOw02e

(3) Presence - In the last few months, even though the term has just started I’ve received a lot of emails about recruitment fairs on campus with banks, financial institutions, large corporate IT companies etc. These are normally oversubscribed and I'm sure a lot of these graduates will end up in those companies, as they are recruited whilst still in their final year. Perhaps finance might be a factor as well. A lot of people can’t afford to work for ‘shares and equity’ after graduating with thousands of pounds in student debts, they would rather clear or reduce those as quickly as possible.

So, I would say, if you want to get more students taking part rather than established developers, you would need to come to campus and organise events there. Maybe do a tour around UK universities. Someone I met at a recent techmeetups event is actually founding a startup that teaches kids in school how to write python code. If they start early they are more likely to do it out of interest, rather than to get a secure job with a bank.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't more UK graduates want to join start-ups?

#83

Post by comm_it »

This may be a bit of quiet topic now but I still thought I'd throw in my comments.

I interned at a start up in my penultimate year and it was both a great experience, and I got paid (not a lot, but enough). I got to learn about business practices quickly, I did some meaningful work and contributed towards several products, we practised agile methods and it was all round a good experience. There was, however, more legacy code here than I've had to deal with before.

In my final year I started applying to more start ups (in London this time), and got offers from a number of them, I didn't take any of them. Why? They all wanted me to work for free. Working for free in central London? I don't need the experience of an unknown company that bad (harsh CV reality).

So I instead did the usual and got a (well paying) internship at a big bank. I had a great time, didn't run into very much legacy code, worked with lots of very cool, and very new, technologies, and learnt a lot about technology and business. It didn't take much consideration when deciding to take their job offer afterwards, turning down my MSc offers.

The kind of work I was going to be doing from day one mattered a lot to me, and it didn't seem to be much of a comparison. There just really wasn't much to entice me into a startup again.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't more UK graduates want to join start-ups?

#85

Post by will_hines »

This event was advertised on campus at UCL, but not specifically within the CS department. We received an email through JobOnline, but that's a service which you have to sign up to.

I have just sent out an email to all students in the Computer Science department; there were also flyers in the Engineering Cafe here which is the main hub for technical students.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't more UK graduates want to join start-ups?

#86

Post by Hushpreet »

A good discussion.

There are a variety of reasons as to why this occurs, particularly in the uk. The most prominent is the lack of awareness of joining a start-up as an achievable or even applicable career option.

NACUE, the business which I work on, encompasses a network of 40,000 enterprising students. And our biggest barrier is enabling students and grads to understand that are different modes of being entrepreneurial post graduation, and therefore 3 career options: 1. Launching a company 2. Being entrepreneurial whilst working for one of the big boys - an intrapreneur 3. Joining a start-up team

The third has the greatest potential. Given the thriving start-up community in London and others areas, and still, the record graduate unemployment.

We're working on raising the awareness of the above problem. Looking to launch a programme next year - this can hopefully tie into the milkround.

Lastly, I don't think you need to be on campus. What we all need is to be visible, and that is achieved through networks (i.e. ADCAS, EEUK) and online, social media - that's where they're engaged.

I've promoted this across network - have a good one this weekend. Also, based in Old Street if you want to share some ideas.

Hushpreet

Post reply on HN