Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

UK's hardware talent is being wasted

josef.cn

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 1001 posts

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#261

Post by CalRobert »

makingstuffs wrote: post #254
CalRobert wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, my fabulous Dutch healthcare basically consisting of being told "you're fine" and overpriced acetaminophen.

Sounds like the non-existent British NHS where getting an appointment to see a doctor is about as likely as meeting the Loch Ness Monster for a spot of tea and crumpets.

Ironically when we were living in Ireland and my daughter was going to have to wait 16 months to get a suspicious growth checked for cancer it was the UK that made it possible for us to go to a private clinic near Belfast and have her checked in a week. And it still wasn't even expensive. Free healthcare isn't actually free if you die waiting.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#262

Post by ilrwbwrkhv »

r_thambapillai wrote: post #51

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…

Same. I grew up in Canada and my country didn't fund my dreams. The US did. It is a shame and the amount of loss that Canada has every single year because the dumb VCs who exist in Canada cannot look at that big picture.

For example, right now there is not a single VC in Canada who does large pre seed / seed investments based on an idea and the founding team.

In the US you can get a 1 million cheque within a week.

That is the real reason Canada is failing on a macro scale.

@dang hopefully I have kept this well balanced.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#263

Post by Cumpiler69 »

mrtksn wrote: post #258
Cumpiler69 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Yes, there are advantages of a stable and well functioning systems Current EU is definitely not a stable and well functioning system. Look at economic conditions, political outcomes, illegal immigration, wealth inequality, societal and political trust, homelessness rates, birth rates, free speech suppression, welfare austerity, etc Everything has been going downhill since the 2008 crash. It's a powder keg. >they are…

Yeah right, Reform AFD Rassemblement national Fratelli d'Italia and other risings stars have nothing to do with race and even if they do it's Americans behind it. Everyone knows that Europeans are much more racist than Americans, it's just that we are much less explicit about it and its issues are different than the issues in the USA.

You might want to look more at why people are against the waves of illegal immigration and less on the color of their skin.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#265

Post by porker »

timthorn wrote: post #197
lmm wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. No public transport, almost no culture, and housing anywhere nice is even less available than in London. For a young person working at one of these firms, where can you live? Where could you meet someone to date? What can you even do at the weekend?

JLR is based in the metro area of Britain's second city. It's not exactly the middle of nowhere. Rolls Royce is in Derby, on the edge of the Peak District with much to offer. Much cheaper housing with more space available. And unlike in London, driving a car isn't hounded by terminal congestion.

JLR Gaydon is not in the metro area of Birmingham. It's in nice countryside and near a motorway which helps, but it's a fair commute out of Birmingham at rush hour to there. The nice surrounding towns/villages are expensive, and even the shitty ones aren't cheap (hello Banbury) as they're on the edge of commuter distance to London.

Derby I haven't lived in but know people who have. It's an old manufacturing town and hasn't much to offer graduates. Or anyone really. The Peak District is great, and if you can live out that way and commute in then do it. But again, you won't have similar people for local friends.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#266

Post by dzhiurgis »

lmm wrote: post #119
dzhiurgis wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait what. Quality of life in rural UK is worse than rat race of London?

Absolutely. No public transport, almost no culture, and housing anywhere nice is even less available than in London. For a young person working at one of these firms, where can you live? Where could you meet someone to date? What can you even do at the weekend?

> No public transport

When I live in London I didn't drive, which was kinda nice but also meant I've only been out of city like once a year.

Sitting in traffic sucks of course, but driving rurally opens so much.

As for weekends - driving and hiking I guess?

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#268

Post by porker »

Earw0rm wrote: post #190
incog_nit0 wrote: post #143

It's not just in the hardware sector, it's across the board. My (American) wife moved to London years ago and was a manager in a prestigious London museum overseeing 60 people. She has over 20 years experience in some of our top museums and her salary in 2023 was a paltry £30k. We just moved to the US and within a couple of months she has a job in museums here but now paying 2.3x the salary (converted back to £) and…

The culture sector in London is notoriously badly paid. Mostly staffed by the intellectual trophy husbands and wives of the financial sector. Even similar sized public sector organisations (thinking education) pay far better. A senior headteacher with 50 or 100 staff will do a lot better than a cultural manager.

> Mostly staffed by the intellectual trophy husbands and wives of the financial sector.

Oh so true. Which helps to explain the number of levels of management in UK cultural institutions, because in London there are enough of these people who want a (poorly paid) role that it's better to have 3 layers of management when 1 would do.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#269

Post by geraldhh »

ttoinou wrote: post #242
bowsamic wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What is this spirit we retain that US looses ?

humanism

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#270

Post by cladopa »

mrtksn wrote: post #159
r_thambapillai wrote: post #51

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.

Let's make simple calculations. In California, near the start of the 20th century there were more than 34 million native Americans living in what was their land. Now there are in California 300-700.000 native Americans.

They were exterminated and replaced by a very small European population. Like sterilising a Petri dish and letting bacteria grow, the opportunities that population experienced were the biggest any population in the world ever had. Just look at a graph of the population growth of US OR California in the last century and compare it to others.

Now there is in California a population of near 40 million people.

That is not a "mindset", this is real growth that they could experience and the rest of the world could not.

Post reply on HN