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Taking Risk

tomblomfield.com

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Re: Taking Risk

#41

Post by cauch »

Something that was not really approached in this article is the underlying assumption that "entrepreneurship is good" and the difference of culture towards that.

Start-ups can be seen as the things that bring society forward, or the things that create useless junk and enshitification from bullshit-talkers who just want to make money. It's not 100% the first in US and 100% the second in Europe, but the balance is just different.

I think that one aspect is just that US is more ok with bullshitters and con artists: they consider it's part of the game. In Europe, it's seen as immoral, and there is a fine line between "being optimistic while raising money" and "being misleading while raising money".

Inversely, Europe does not have so much prejudice against institutions. Maybe it is again due to the fact that in US, they consider bullshitters and con artists as part of the game: they are expected to be either the exploited or the exploiter, so, of course, you don't want to put yourself in a situation where you can be exploited.

Re: Taking Risk

#42

Post by xnorswap »

red_admiral wrote: post #17

There's the risk aspect and the regulation aspect. Personally I think there's something to be said for a country where your car can't collect data on your trade union membership and sex life and pass it on to your insurers. (The UK is no longer in the EU so it's not technically subject to GDPR anymore, but they "forked" that law when they left and it's now called the Data Protection Act (DPA).

It's worth noting that's Data Protection Act (2018), there was also Data Protection Act (1998) which predates GDPR and had many of the same laws. People outside of the UK only started caring when a regulator with enough teeth (and penalties harsh enough) took notice, but data protection has been a requirement in the UK long before GDPR and should hopefully continue long after it.

Re: Taking Risk

#43

Post by ilikerashers »

The UK economy is not very dynamic and becoming less so. Low wages, high immigration, low investment.

It’s not just a mentality thing, there are legitimate reasons unfortunately

Re: Taking Risk

#44

Post by sofixa »

ggm wrote: post #23

Bankruptcy laws and social mores massively different. In the UK to go bankrupt is to be painted with indelible red shame dye. In America... going bankrupt means you are closing out the book on one failure to try another.

> In the UK to go bankrupt is to be painted with indelible red shame dye

Is it? Do people generally know when someone (personally, or in this case, since we're talking startups, their company) goes bankrupt?

Re: Taking Risk

#45

Post by varjag »

hedgehog0 wrote: post #29
DeathArrow wrote: post #15

It would be more interesting to not consider just US and UK, but the whole world. Lots of new startups might come from Asia. Eastern European startup scene is interesting, also.

May I ask which countries in east Europe would you consider to be good and convenient, esp for foreigners (non-EU)? When I visited Budapest I like it there, but don’t know much about the tech scene.

Poland had a dynamic startup scene for a while, and it was enegrized even more when basically the whole IT sector of Belarus had to relocate there.

One caveat is you're not going to see the level of exits that is possible in the United States, but the talent is there.

Re: Taking Risk

#46

Post by CalRobert »

Not the UK, but I'm a Californian who lived in Ireland for ten years. The risk aversion is _intense_.

Me: "I want to build a house"

My Irish friends: "That's a bad idea, you will fail, it could fall down, you don't know anything about houses". They were extra horrified that I didn't want to build it out of concrete blocks because "you can't build a house out of wood"

My Californian friends (but one in particular): "Fuck yeah I'll bring a nailgun"

And this applies to EVERYTHING. If you have any ambition it's "notions". People scold their children for being "bold" (admittedly the word is used differently, but still). If someone makes one euro more than you they're a horrible capitalist bastard.

I point out that workers in my field are paid three times as much in the US (or more) and somehow am a class traitor.... for saying we should pay labour better.

Anyway, Europe has a bright future as a cheap third world backoffice for US companies at this rate. The fact that people here are paid closer to zero than what they'd make in the US is just sad, and they deserve better. The health care isn't even that good (though Ireland is especially bad at this).

Maybe that's just Ireland though. I'm in the Netherlands and it seems a bit better, maybe because the only people I talk to are other immigrants.

(I built the house, with contractors as well of course. It's a beautiful, warm, well-insulated, wood frame house with ridiculous new world features like high ceilings, aircon, and deciduous trees to the south)

Re: Taking Risk

#47

Post by agjmills »

colesantiago wrote: post #6

The UK isn't really known for being an ambitious nation when it comes to the startup ecosystem. For jobs, unless you're working in finance in London, for tech salaries (except for FAANG) it is simply no surprise that it is so low on average [0] that isn't even worth it. What is more damning is that I saw an internship in the US earn more than a job posting of Head of Cyber Security at the HM Treasury which is $50-57K…

Whilst I dont want to defend the relatively low compensation for public-sector jobs in the UK, it is more nuanced than just salary.

In this case, it was actually a salary of £50,550 - £57,500, so total compensation of around £75k (circa $95k), as the pension scheme is in the order of 30% of your salary. Then there's the usual US vs UK medical cover and vacation allowances.

It's still a way off, but the gap is smaller than you think when you crunch all of the other benefits into a single number.

Re: Taking Risk

#48

Post by roenxi »

red_admiral wrote: post #12
colesantiago wrote: post #6

The UK isn't really known for being an ambitious nation when it comes to the startup ecosystem. For jobs, unless you're working in finance in London, for tech salaries (except for FAANG) it is simply no surprise that it is so low on average [0] that isn't even worth it. What is more damning is that I saw an internship in the US earn more than a job posting of Head of Cyber Security at the HM Treasury which is $50-57K…

> The UK isn't really known for being an ambitious nation. Industrial revolution? Railways? An empire on which the sun never sets? (Ollivander voice: "evil, yes, but ambitious"). Sure, things have gone downhill since then.

We don't judge nations in the present based on their historical peak. The UK hasn't been capable of building anything like that for more than a century; the hammering the Germans gave them was really exposing weaknesses that were already starting to set in from the 1910s.

The UK is no longer known for being an industrial leader. Or indeed for achieving anything in particular except fading away with a certain gracefulness.

Re: Taking Risk

#49

Post by robin_reala »

Our instinct is to regulate and tax the technologies that are being pioneered in California, in the misguided belief that it will give us some kind of competitive advantage.

I don’t think that that’s the reason for regulation: it seems to me that US companies traditionally don’t care about externalities (environment, privacy, accessibility, etc.), and regulation is required to bring them into line. That doesn’t always mean that their business model will survive unscathed, but that’s generally a good thing.

Re: Taking Risk

#50

Post by oblio »

reedf1 wrote: post #22

I considered a startup after university in the UK. The talent arbitrage is absurd, physics grads with 1sts from top Russell Group unis fighting to be paid £30k/yr. For me it came down to security, life is expensive, rent is expensive. I didn't have a spare parental garage to setup five computers - I barely had room in my flat for one desk . I barely had money for that flat let alone internet, and food. I had zero cap…

> The talent arbitrage is absurd, physics grads with 1sts from top Russell Group unis fighting to be paid £30k/yr.

That much?!?

I'm joking, but I've always wondered with FAANG never set up large R&D centers in Southern Europe. They have good universities and salaries are extremely low, even lower than in the UK.

Plus good weather & co. The actual Mediterranean climate :-)

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