Summary: He received free money from EU. Now that he could not get enough from UK government, he is leaving.
He’s almost certainly just re-hashing open source AI anyways.
I’m leaving London for NYC and taking my tech startup
91–100 of 261 posts
Re: I’m leaving London for NYC and taking my tech startup
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
That was the suggestion that was made to many industries and regions, yes. In reality it seems that those funding sources are not being met, e.g. Cornwall [0] and the red wall [1] [0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-55279468 [1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-levell...
The top-rated comment on this FT article [0] spells it out really quite clearly. English regions used to receive funds of £1 billion a year from the EU regeneration fund for poor regions with the final year om 2018 the final figure being £1.12bn of the £8.4 billion total over the seven year period. For 2018, this worked out to be Midlands (£190m), Yorkshire (£143m), Cornwall (£95m), the north west (£88m) and the nort…
Some of the comments are excellent but the ft is definitely not better than here. There's very little moderation of trolls and it's clear that many of them on the ft are paid - judging by how incessant and on message they are. It can be tiresome filtering through them.
Re: I’m leaving London for NYC and taking my tech startup
#93Beyond that, I believe that Europe’s (particularly Britain’s) negative cultural attitude towards sales is a major inhibitor to building tech champions on the same scale as the US or China. In my thirteen years of working in the UK, I’ve learnt that in British culture sales and selling is viewed negatively. The linked HBR article talks about self-promotion not sales. That seems quite different to me. And speaking from…
I was going to cite the same section, but what the author fails to notice or mention is a massive amount of inflation circles the planet right now that has not been seen since the 70's, which is perhaps before his time, but he may have noticed being based in London the BBC's Faisal Islam has already dropped it into a report that the Bank of England is seeing 5% interest rates in 2022 with inflation remaining on its c…
"Helicopter Ben"
I think you mean Papa Jerome "Money Printer goes BRRRRR..." Powell.
At least Bernake had a cap on the balance sheet...
Re: I’m leaving London for NYC and taking my tech startup
#94It's pretty common in Europe for people to get a socially-funded education then go off to the USA. It's called brain drain and has been happening for a while, not sure why this guy needs to write an article pretending that's not what's happening here.
Moving to the US from Europe isn't that easy. I only made the move because my wife is a postdoc over here, but with things like H1-B freezes and covid-19 it can be very difficult to do.
Re: I’m leaving London for NYC and taking my tech startup
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
Short answer: the UK and the EU have different priorities and the Tories are not interested in giving money to get more fancy “intellectuals” (who tend to be foreign and liberal). Also, for now Brexit is costing more than the money that was supposed to be saved.
The UK has actually remained a member of the EU's science funding programme after Brexit as part of the exit deal, although that membership has not been formally ratified yet.
Yes, that is part of the trade and cooperation agreement (who knows how long this thing will last, though?)
It includes mechanisms for the UK to pay if British scientists get too much of EU money. Who can bet anything on the British government keeping their word when they need to pay? The government with no qualms about breaking international laws “in specific and limited ways” when it suits them, and that is reneging on its promises about the Irish protocol?
Besides, this does not cover any use of other EU funds beyond Horizon Europe, like the ERDF.
Re: I’m leaving London for NYC and taking my tech startup
#96Sounds like the author is upset that Brexit has closed the valve on the pipeline of cheap labour from EU workers. There's no shortage of talent in London trust me, it's just that you're going to have to start paying more than a pittance to get it. Brexit so far has been a positive thing for tech workers' salaries.
Tech workers salaries are going up everywhere, though, and it's happening in other industries too. It can't be because of Brexit that a bartender in NYC is getting paid more, but they are.
Found it amusing after moving to the bay area that a job ad on the side of a local Chinese restaurant was offering more for a "floor supervisor" than a professorship at Oxford Uni that I had just seen.
Re: I’m leaving London for NYC and taking my tech startup
#97Highest effective tax in the US, insanely expensive real estate and rents, high and rising crime [1]. Good luck, you're gonna need it.
[1] https://www1.nyc.gov/site/nypd/news/pr1006/nypd-citywide-cri...
Re: I’m leaving London for NYC and taking my tech startup
#98Trying to start a business in the UK: "What are you doing? You'll fail! You'll go bankrupt! You'll be homeless! Why don't you get a nice civil service job with a government pension?"
Trying to start a business in the USA: "Rock on, bro! You're going to be the next Zuckerberg/Gates/Bezos!"
Re: I’m leaving London for NYC and taking my tech startup
#99I work for a company head-quartered in one continent, listed on another and I work in a third (the UK) - and sales are based all over. Not for one moment saying there aren't local issues/idiosyncrasies - but I'm unsure how moving your company solves them, and article seems to overlook all manner of problems: Aren't you going to lose staff when you move? Is everybody going to have to get up really early to talk to Eur…
Well precisely Moving to NYC/silicon valley is going to mean fishing in a very over fished pool. There is a reason why "meta", Google and amazon are expanding engineering over here and the wider EU: lots of (comparably) cheap talented labour. Even if you don't loose staff, operating an engineering team over large distances is a challenge unless you know what your doing. Given that he's blaming the engineers for conce…
I don't know about his own mindset, but my first thought when he talked about attitudes towards sales is well of course you're hearing negative attitudes towards sales if you're in a company full of engineers with PhDs, nothing to do with Britishness
I mean, HN isn't British, and it's skewed towards people working for high growth companies in California, and yet because it's also skewed towards people whose mindset is engineering subthreads on sales are full of people with a negative view of salespeople, sales as a profession, sales as an organisational priority, products sold by enterprise salespeople etc.
Re: I’m leaving London for NYC and taking my tech startup
#100Beyond that, I believe that Europe’s (particularly Britain’s) negative cultural attitude towards sales is a major inhibitor to building tech champions on the same scale as the US or China. In my thirteen years of working in the UK, I’ve learnt that in British culture sales and selling is viewed negatively. The linked HBR article talks about self-promotion not sales. That seems quite different to me. And speaking from…
I used to work for a startup founded by a few Brits. We had engineers in London, but no sales people, because of the culture. I was much easier to sell to Walmart than Tesco.
That's funny. I work at a public B2B tech company whose primary customers are in the retail space. Our main sales office for EMEA is in London and they're absolutely crushing it and always have been. They habitually convert more of their (albeit smaller) pipeline than North America does. Literally some of our best sales people are there in London.
Sure there's some satellites in France and Germany because locals prefer locals, but Brexit hasn't changed a damn thing for us.