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Taking Risk

tomblomfield.com

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Re: Taking Risk

#111

Post by baxtr »

foldr wrote: post #109
baxtr wrote: post #51

Everyone here blaming the costs of living in London being a major driver for people looking for security: SF is not cheap either! I don’t think you can boil it down to that only. What can be others fundamental reasons? also for Europe in general?

>Everyone here blaming the costs of living in London being a major driver for people looking for security: SF is not cheap either! I think startup salaries in SF are higher compared to the cost of living, though. There are startups in London that pay £50k or less to new graduates.

Ok but then it’s startup founder/employee compensation rather than cost of living

Re: Taking Risk

#112

Post by technics256 »

tafox wrote: post #84
CalRobert wrote: post #46

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): "F…

I also live in Europe (Germany & Austria) and what you're saying is 100% true. I like Europe, but I really miss the positive everything is worth a shot attitude in America. Everything here is no, no, no, why would you do that? It's so demotivating, and G-d forbid you make a tiny mistake! Long term I also don't see how this place won't just keep getting poorer... unless there is a major attitude adjustment in the near…

I live in Munich, totally agree.

Re: Taking Risk

#113

Post by gadders »

Time to repost this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15659076

"Entrepreneurship is like one of those carnival games where you throw darts or something. Middle class kids can afford one throw. Most miss. A few hit the target and get a small prize. A very few hit the center bullseye and get a bigger prize. Rags to riches! The American Dream lives on.

Rich kids can afford many throws. If they want to, they can try over and over and over again until they hit something and feel good about themselves. Some keep going until they hit the center bullseye, then they give speeches or write blog posts about "meritocracy" and the salutary effects of hard work.

Poor kids aren't visiting the carnival. They're the ones working it."

Re: Taking Risk

#114

Post by hedgehog0 »

sofixa wrote: post #53
hedgehog0 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Estonia and Bulgaria both have good English speaking levels, decent visa schemes, low and flat taxes, very good in the case of Estonia and maybe getting there in the case of Bulgaria government digital services, and lots of people in tech (so hiring shouldn't be a problem if you can provide good salaries). Also, Romania, Poland have good reputation in this space but I don't have any direct experience with them.

Thank you for the reply! Do you mean the Estonia e-residency? If you got one, may I ask what your experience with it has been? I have always been thinking about it.

Re: Taking Risk

#115

Post by dagw »

agjmills wrote: post #47
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…

as the pension scheme is in the order of 30% of your salary

Honest question, as I have no idea, but don't US employers also offer pension schemes that they pay money into, on top of the listed salary?

Re: Taking Risk

#116

Post by deletedie »

ilikerashers wrote: post #43

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

It should (hopefully) be fairly uncontroversial that there are underlying legitimate reasons i.e. the fallout from the first decade of Brexit. Unfortunately it seems things are likely to worsen heading into the second decade.

Re: Taking Risk

#117

Post by foldr »

baxtr wrote: post #111
foldr wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Everyone here blaming the costs of living in London being a major driver for people looking for security: SF is not cheap either! I think startup salaries in SF are higher compared to the cost of living, though. There are startups in London that pay £50k or less to new graduates.

Ok but then it’s startup founder/employee compensation rather than cost of living

Yes, although it's the US that's the outlier when it comes to compensating engineers. There aren't many other countries where junior engineers can get paid a lot more than other people in professional occupations.

Re: Taking Risk

#118

Post by TMWNN »

sofixa wrote: post #38

I think this misses a big mentality difference between the US and most other developed countries. In the US, people like to exaggerate and boast. Everything is the best, biggest, etc. In the US, "new is always better". Doesn't matter if the new is just the old with an app (coworking, food delivery, taxi, hotels), or just a worse iteration of an already existing thing (all the crappy companies trying to reinvent worse…

>In the US, "new is always better".

Barney Stinson is a wise man. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SNRULEnTVQ>

Re: Taking Risk

#119

Post by mamonster »

deletedie wrote: post #116
ilikerashers wrote: post #43

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

It should (hopefully) be fairly uncontroversial that there are underlying legitimate reasons i.e. the fallout from the first decade of Brexit. Unfortunately it seems things are likely to worsen heading into the second decade.

UK economy stopped being dynamic well before Brexit. The simple reality is that the British political class (starting from New Labour and continuing with the current 14 years of Conservative rule) has no vision for Britain beyond the City + M11+ M40, all the infrastructure required to keep that afloat and a managed decline for everything else.

That said of course Brexit only made the above worse.

Re: Taking Risk

#120

Post by M2Ys4U »

OJFord wrote: post #89
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).

No, the Data Protection Act (2018) is just the legal instrument which sets out the (UK) GDPR. It is 'technically subject to GDPR anymore', it's just a different one (with essentially if not entirely the same contents).

>No, the Data Protection Act (2018) is just the legal instrument which sets out the (UK) GDPR.

That's not right either.

The GDPR is law because it's an EU Regulation that was made while we were part of the EU, and it became UK law automatically when it was passed, as regulations do.

The Data Protection Act 2018 augments the GDPR, but the GDPR would be the law of the land with or without the DPA.

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