UK's hardware talent is being wasted
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Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted
#2[flagged]
Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted
#3Too little, too late. The list of reasons to stay in the UK are slim; and there’s very little the UK can do about it (other than begging people to stay out of national pride). Even the strong arguments a decade ago, like the NHS, are cracking.
Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted
#4[flagged]
No.
UK's pay is extremely low. And you know that it is VERY difficult to earn beyond £80k/yr as a SWE outside of top foreign employers in the UK like Google or Citadel. More likely, you'll stagnate at £50-60k.
And when factoring the UK's CoL being comparable to some of the more expensive American cities (SF, NYC, Boston) yet salaries being a fraction of those available there, it makes sense why engineering isn't well regarded, and plenty of people either switch to finance or immigrates to the States, Australia, or Canada.
Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted
#5[flagged]
No. UK's pay is extremely low. And you know that it is VERY difficult to earn beyond £80k/yr as a SWE outside of top foreign employers in the UK like Google or Citadel. More likely, you'll stagnate at £50-60k. And when factoring the UK's CoL being comparable to some of the more expensive American cities (SF, NYC, Boston) yet salaries being a fraction of those available there, it makes sense why engineering isn't well…
Calling it right now: give it five years, and even Raspberry Pi will be relocating.
ARM is already somewhat relocating - some of their newest cores, like Cortex A78, were designed in Austin.
Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
No. UK's pay is extremely low. And you know that it is VERY difficult to earn beyond £80k/yr as a SWE outside of top foreign employers in the UK like Google or Citadel. More likely, you'll stagnate at £50-60k. And when factoring the UK's CoL being comparable to some of the more expensive American cities (SF, NYC, Boston) yet salaries being a fraction of those available there, it makes sense why engineering isn't well…
Calling it right now: give it five years, and even Raspberry Pi will be relocating. ARM is already somewhat relocating - some of their newest cores, like Cortex A78, were designed in Austin.
I don't think they'd relocate, but that doesn't matter.
They most likely will pull an ARM and hire almost entirely in the US and India instead of in the UK, because competitive British engineers would immigrate to the States, and you can get top tier Indian chip design talent across the spectrum for $30-60k.
Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted
#7[flagged]
SWE comp will remain elevated as long as there are marginal returns to software development. The capital structure of turing machine programming allows most of revenue to be spent on salaries. The pay is higher because the marginal cost of a new software customer is essentially zero. It's not because programming is way higher skilled than hardware engineering.
You deserve the wages you can command in the market. If the labor pool is limited companies will have to pay more. Maybe AI will change the dynamics. But otherwise hardware will always struggle to compete on pay.
Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted
#8What ever happened to GraphCore?
Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted
#9Similar in France / Paris where some American players can easily pay 100K+ euros for SWE. Rest of France salaries are half or even less.
Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted
#10I agree with this call to action. Sadly, I think there are more fundamental issues in the UK economy.
For all intents and purposes, Venture Capital is dead in the UK.
While companies do get funded in the UK and are technically "UK domiciled" - in action most of their Engineering and Product teams are located in Eastern Europe or India, or are startups from those markets (and China) who domiciled in the UK to raise from foreign investors.
There just isn't enough liquid capital to invest in the UK compared to other investment classes available.