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UK's hardware talent is being wasted

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Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#351

Post by _hao »

vixen99 wrote: post #223
edm0nd wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I regularly see opinion pieces in the British Press advising young Brits to get out. In 2022 one writer wrote 'Britain is fed up, bitter, and practically broke – and it’s all going to get worse' and indeed it still is and getting worse. One basic problem: an unsustainable welfare and health system and overwrought bureaucracy. Today I learn that one major bank is considering leaving the UK in view of excessive 'red ta…

The UK has no shortage of good banks. Santander can fuck off for being worse than their competition.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#352

Post by zimpenfish »

vladvasiliu wrote: post #330
mrtksn wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it seems that the culture in America is that wealth is virtuous and confers status, whereas in Europe that at least isn't so universal and some circles it is even seen as shameful Isn't this due to different types of Christian traditions? AFAIK In some, it is considered that the wealth is given by the God to the virtuous ones and they are merely guardians of it and responsible to use use the wealth in a virtuous wa…

The way I see it, at least in France, it's not really a question of religion. "The rich" are thought to have acquired their wealth doing dubious things, mostly by "exploiting the poor". There's also a very strongly egalitarian way of thinking, as in pretty much everybody is interchangeable. So, if someone does better than somebody else, it's likely because of something "unfair" (or luck) and not thanks to being more…

> "The rich" are thought to have acquired their wealth doing dubious things, mostly by "exploiting the poor".

To be fair, that's probably true in the vast majority of cases.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#353

Post by mrtksn »

inglor_cz wrote: post #345
mrtksn wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which regulations exactly you find burdensome or overwhelming and stopping you from attempting the become wealthy, change your life and the world maybe? Why would you skip having 1 billion Euros just because you could have had 2 Billion but the government took the rest? Up until 1960's rich Americans payed %91 tax, and yet they kept their entrepreneurial spirit - why you can't do the same at the stated %50? When Appl…

Nominal tax rates were 70 or 90 per cent, but no one really paid them. The tax code was full of loopholes for that purpose. You can't rely on such paper figures to determine real tax burden in the past.

Which is still the case. No one is skipping getting rich because of taxes, they end up paying very little anyway.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#354

Post by walthamstow »

rgmerk wrote: post #109
wbl wrote: 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.

We drop the kids off at my parents and go for dinner at any one of hundreds of top quality restaurants. Can't do that in Kettering.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#355

Post by gadders »

lordnacho wrote: post #344

Here's a story I tell from time to time. When I was at uni, we had an internship as part of the course. The course was a joint course between Engineering and Econ/Management, so you could choose from a very wide variety of industries to satisfy the thesis requirement. The business school would coordinate the internships. So I went interviewing in the engineering firms to the west of the country. Aerospace, materials,…

Fundholding GPs don't do badly. A lot get 6 figures if they are partners in a surgery.

I think most Doctors etc need to wait until they're consultants until they make decent money.

But I'm like you - fell into banking due to being a Lotus Notes developer when it was flavour of the month and have never left. I reckon I'm on over double what I would be if I'd ended up working for IBM or Cap Gemini or similar.

[And I should say I ended up in project/programme/change management. I'm not still a Notes Developer]

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#356

Post by paganel »

graemep wrote: post #316
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…

> 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 ( Yes we have many comments on HN talking about how harmful the US VCs attitude is because they force good businesses into choosing between being unicorns an…

For the last 20 or 25 years the UK has been coasting on the North Sea oil&gas money, I'd say that worked up until the early 2010s, and then on the almost complete financialization of its economy and on selling out whatever pieces of the economy could still be sold out (that includes part of their beloved NHS).

But that can only work for so long and is beneficial in the medium to long-term for a very limited number of people (basically the owners of said financial capital), at some point you have to produce some real wealth, wealth produced from real stuff via resources of the Earth + human ingenuity and, yes, + human work.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#357

Post by Xmd5a »

cpursley wrote: post #279
samastur wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a myth they tell themselves. USSR won by incredible amounts of American supplied material.

You’ve watched too many Hollywood movies. Yes, Lend-Lease was very helpful - but only about 5% of Soviet GDP. For example, the Soviets produced more tanks than all other allies combined, and that was while under massive active attack and invasion - even moved entire factories. The real myth is that the Soviets just threw meat waves and would have lost without Uncle Sam. Most of that was anti communist propaganda and…

I think he's right though, the 5% figure isn't accurate. Perplexity answer below:

https://anonpaste.pw/v/6f99bf00-ab49-48fc-978a-27f656a37c02#...

Nonetheless, the production hell people working at those factories went through shouldn't be downplayed.

Documentary (2024): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjGYMFVMeYo

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#358

Post by Peanuts99 »

pfdietz wrote: post #111

Reading all this negativity about the UK made me wonder: is it possible that the UK throwing in the towel and asking to become part of the US could actually become reality? It's an admittedly outlandish idea, but suddenly it didn't seem entirely preposterous.

Probably because 85%+ of the population would reject it.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#359

Post by mattnewton »

lordnacho wrote: post #344

Here's a story I tell from time to time. When I was at uni, we had an internship as part of the course. The course was a joint course between Engineering and Econ/Management, so you could choose from a very wide variety of industries to satisfy the thesis requirement. The business school would coordinate the internships. So I went interviewing in the engineering firms to the west of the country. Aerospace, materials,…

I have noticed this anecdotally as well in costal areas of the United States.

It’s like textbook Baumol’s cost disease[0], except housing is rising fastest while the cost of labor nearly not at all, because buyers (hiring firms) just don’t buy

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#360

Post by [deleted] »

nobodywillobsrv wrote: post #286
maeil wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instead, a lot of extremely smart people in the UK would rather get the 'safe' job at Google, or McKinsey than the 'this will never work but can you imagine how cool it would be if it did' job at a startup. This isn't just an EU thing, for what it's worth. The US is the outlier.

False. Even good jobs with American companies and what not are subject to ridiculous tax problems in the UK. You give you employees equity but then they have to raise vast sums of capital just to hold on to it to afford their taxes when there is virtually no real liquidity pre IPO. It's anti success. And there is garbage everywhere, people keep voting for antisocial housing and bad cultures. It's a failing state.

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