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UK's hardware talent is being wasted

josef.cn

171–180 of 1001 posts

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#171
post #113
post #89

I left the UK after graduating at 21, fully intending to come back within a couple of years. Its weird watching it from the outside for 10 years waiting for a "good time" to move back and realizing that time isn't coming more and more each year. The salaries in Japan arent great honestly, but mine, the quality of life and how far my money goes is so much better than if I lived back at the UK. Every time I go back it…

>The salaries in Japan arent great honestly, but mine, the quality of life and how far my money goes is so much better than if I lived back at the UK. In a similar situation to you apparently. Every couple of years I'll take a look at UK as well as NZ and Aus (all places I can legally work) and Japan is still the better option. Even with the yen situation and despite all the doom and gloom others write online, life i…

We should form a club - even though I came here from Germany...

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#172
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it was more about economics than competency. By the end of WW2 the UK was bankrupt and completely ruined economically, while the US had become the industrial powerhouse of the world thanks to abundant resources, manpower, and the fact that the war largely took place far from its borders (a few tiny islands notwithstanding). By the end of WW2 the US owned nearly all the gold that Europe previously owned which…

If the UK wants to pretend that WW2 (or, indeed, WW1) happened like a shock storm, unforseen and unforseeable, with no involvement from them they are welcome to do that. The result of that attitude was that the UK parliament was only allowed to govern a small and increasingly irrelevant island with lousy weather and steadily worsening economic prospects instead of a global empire. There is a lesson for people governi…

How do you get the land for your empire to begin with, with peace and diplomacy? I guess war is a hard habit to break

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#173

As a Brit, when I was raising the seed round for my startup, UK and European VCs would consistently try to haggle you down on price while the American VC's were exclusively focussed on trying to figure out whether this could be a billion dollar business or not (in the end we raised a $5m seed led by Spark, and have done extremely well and raised more since). The UK lost Deep Mind - which could have been OpenAI!! -- t…

> Unfortunately the UK has not been... 20 years, or 112 years? Consider just how far the UK's place in the world fell between 1911 (George V ascended to the throne of the global superpower; his Royal Navy was launching 2 to 4 new capital ships per year ) and 1948 (3 years after "winning" WWII - and basics such as food, clothing, and gasoline were still strictly rationed).

Exactly this. Great Britain colonized huge parts of the globe and had an empire. They were kings of trade and the world. Now they are just a surveillance nanny state and hollow shell of their former self.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#174
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an NZer, jobs in Australia pay wayyyy better and everyone here seems to agree that the lifestyle is better there. Lots of NZers move to Oz to improve their life and opportunities. The NZ economy isn't doing great. I'm personally worried that demographics and an incoming Labour government will mean that if you have saved for your retirement our next government will simply tax your savings until you have nothing (th…

In the meantime, it seems your parliament is quabbling over (the limitation of) Maori rights and so on. I guess the end goal is to improve the economy but is the chaos worth it?

Not worth it. Maori rights are an intractable problem - the only way to win is to avoid the topic and punt it to a future government. I'm sure you've worked on projects sunk by a non-technical distraction so you surely understand the mechanics.

National says they (and ACT) are the business party but they seem to be mostly windbags. The NZ government traditionally screws over businesses and founders - they certainly fail to encourage businesses while producing a lot of ineffectual programmes.

I don't recommend anyone try and start a business here. Plus NZ society generally cuts down tall poppies - especially capitalists (sportspeople is the main way to achieve without approbation). Be an employee or leech on the welfare state are the usual alternatives.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Talk too much about these things and you're probably getting sent to prison. This trope is getting a bit ridiculous. For the record, the event that inspired the notion that complaining online could get you sent to person involved individuals encouraging the public to burn down council offices[1] and a hotel[2]. Conspiracy to commit arson has been one of the most serious offences in English law for centuries, and th…

Google’s not pulling it up but I swear I read about police visitations for immigration criticism that didn’t involve calls for murder or arson. The UK arrests people for writing the n-word on Twitter https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/black-twitter-ra... or praying silently near abortion clinics. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g9kp7r00vo so it’s not exactly a stretch.

Here's one:

As relayed by Russian propaganda outlets: https://x.com/VigilantFox/status/1820724008637063664

Reuters fact check: https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/video-arrest-over-faceboo...

>VERDICT Missing context. The clip shows a June 2024 arrest, according to Devon and Cornwall Police, and predates the Southport knife attack by around a month.

Hence not debunked (a strategy we're used too).

Times article on the subject: https://archive.ph/3OkeG Police arresting nine people a day in fight against web trolls

>More than 3,300 people were detained and questioned last year over so-called trolling on social media and other online forums, a rise of nearly 50 per cent in two years, according to figures obtained by The Times.

>About half of the investigations were dropped before prosecutions were brought, however, leading to criticism from civil liberties campaigners that the authorities are over-policing the internet and threatening free speech.

>Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, said the Crown Prosecution Service emphasised section 127 was to be used only in “extreme circumstances”. “But the problem is ‘grossly offensive’ is not something you should normally be prosecuted for. It’s not showing harm to other people. It’s not showing that somebody is being harassed ... attacked or threatened.”

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#176
post #89

I left the UK after graduating at 21, fully intending to come back within a couple of years. Its weird watching it from the outside for 10 years waiting for a "good time" to move back and realizing that time isn't coming more and more each year. The salaries in Japan arent great honestly, but mine, the quality of life and how far my money goes is so much better than if I lived back at the UK. Every time I go back it…

IMO the UK should look at what Singapore did and maybe learn from that.

There's really no excuse for a country like the UK other than ordinary plain and simple mis-management from the top.

Singapore did not depend on neighboring countries to climb out of 3rd world poverty. To name an example.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#177

As a Brit, when I was raising the seed round for my startup, UK and European VCs would consistently try to haggle you down on price while the American VC's were exclusively focussed on trying to figure out whether this could be a billion dollar business or not (in the end we raised a $5m seed led by Spark, and have done extremely well and raised more since). The UK lost Deep Mind - which could have been OpenAI!! -- t…

Why not hire US consultants to get from starting to mid-sized?

I’m curious, if you think the issue is cultural.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#178
post #109
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When a man is tired of London he is tired of life.

Or maybe he’s just tired of a specific kind of life which might be fun in your early twenties but is less appealing when you’ve got kids and can’t enjoy the nightlife and culture anyway.

Plenty of culture isn't gigs and nightclubs - London isn't terribly good, for its population size and economy, for those anyway.

Think museums, parks, galleries, theatre, exhibitions.

Granted it's not the only city with those, the problem the UK has is that its small, desirable cities are unable to grow or reinvent themselves. Cambridge and Bristol should be ideal for hardware startups, but the cost of both housing and working space is insane for small, provincial cities, partly because NIMBYism and partly because building infrastructure is absurdly expensive when you're constantly having to work around 200 year old buildings and 800yo city plans.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#179

As a Brit, when I was raising the seed round for my startup, UK and European VCs would consistently try to haggle you down on price while the American VC's were exclusively focussed on trying to figure out whether this could be a billion dollar business or not (in the end we raised a $5m seed led by Spark, and have done extremely well and raised more since). The UK lost Deep Mind - which could have been OpenAI!! -- t…

Isn't it also an income issue? I'm from EU and would be totally open to move to UK if there was an opportunity to make more there while working on something cool. But there simply isn't? Then there are US startups where I could likely make 2 or 3x what I make in EU or UK. So why would talent every consider moving to the UK to build a startup in 2025 anyway?

Also even the safe job wage in the UK is perhaps only 2/3 of in Germany for example

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#180
post #159

As a Brit, when I was raising the seed round for my startup, UK and European VCs would consistently try to haggle you down on price while the American VC's were exclusively focussed on trying to figure out whether this could be a billion dollar business or not (in the end we raised a $5m seed led by Spark, and have done extremely well and raised more since). The UK lost Deep Mind - which could have been OpenAI!! -- t…

Completely agree, the problem in Europe is not regulations or anything like that - it is a mindset issue. It is one of things that europeans can learn from Americans. My hypothesis is that this is a combination of old money and class consciousness. In other words, the rich are risk averse because all they care is preserving their wealth and the working class don’t believe and can’t even imagine that more is possible.

Well it’s not necessarily a good thing. In Europe we are traditionalists and we retain a lot of spirit (Geist) by not striving for pure progress
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