UK's hardware talent is being wasted • Hacker News Board

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#371

Post by swarnie » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 9:31 AM UTC

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 wonder if we ever crossed over, i also worked for Intel in the west country (Swindon) and now whore myself out to aerospace/defence in the same area.

I see what our engineers are paid and its genuinely concerning.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#372

Post by inglor_cz » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 9:31 AM UTC

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…

"the Soviets produced more tanks than all other allies combined"

For such feats, factory equipment mattered. So did trucks. Studebakers were relatively cheap and probably wouldn't move the needle on your GDP-based meter, but they were very important to Soviet logistics.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#373

Post by retrac98 » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 9:32 AM UTC

nextos wrote: post #49

refrigerator wrote: post #19

This is spot on. All the smart and ambitious people I know who studied (non-software) Engineering at university in the UK have ended up going into software engineering via self-teaching or finance/consulting because the only hardware engineering career paths seem to be working for Rolls Royce in the middle of nowhere with terrible pay, or alternatively working at Jaguar Land Rover in the middle of nowhere with terrib…

To some extent, this also applies to software. Except for DeepMind and a few other select places like Altos Labs, getting past £100k is hard , especially outside London. Unless you go into finance, of course. But then, you have to stick to London. Finance is like a black hole that sucks a big chunk of the mathematical, CS and statistical UK talent. They have very proactive recruiters trying to e.g. connect with Oxbri…

I know plenty of engineers (web application developers) making over £100-£150k outside of London, usually in fairly low-stress remote jobs.

The pay is clearly nothing compared to the US, but I wouldn’t say it was massively hard for them to get where they are. They all have 5+ years experience at a senior level, and are otherwise just reliable, capable, low-maintenance employees, but maybe that’s rare!

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#374

Post by bagels » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 9:33 AM UTC

cladopa wrote: post #270

mrtksn wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pop…

Do you have a source for 34 million Native Americans?

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#375

Post by fxtentacle » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 9:34 AM UTC

_t9ow wrote: post #337

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…

The highest marginal tax brackets tend to kick in very, very early in Europe. That makes a huge difference.

For a married couple in Germany, they reach 40% in effective tax rate somewhere above 600,000€ in combined annual income.

My take would be that once people have 100k€ in net annual income per person, they just do other things and work less because it brings them more happiness than the additional money would.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#376

Post by paganel » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 9:35 AM UTC

mrtksn wrote: post #348

_t9ow wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The highest marginal tax brackets tend to kick in very, very early in Europe. That makes a huge difference.

Does it? How many people skipped getting rich because they could have been richer? Any factual examples? BTW, rich don't actually pay much taxes. The luxury life they live is usually not taxed, most of the things they do is considered business expense. When a worker flies to Ibiza they first pay social security and income taxes, then they pay consumption taxes like VAT. When a businessman flies to Ibiza they deduct w…

What the OP is trying to say is that to grow from 50k euros earned per year to 1 million euros earned per year is very, very cumbersome and, yes, mentally challenging and very stressful, and that a lot of people actively choose to stay/remain at the 50k euros per year level and they'll not take the risks of trying to get to more than 1 million per year.

Once you're at more than 1 million per year there are other challenges and you can probably afford to hire someone to take part of that burden off your shoulders, but until you get to that point you're on your own and it's very damn stressful (and by stressful I mean that that includes the possible inflated but all to real fear of getting to prison because of that tax-thingie that you didn't fill the 100% correct way or because some work your company did broke some municipal regulations or whatever and now you're on the hook for damages and, yes, personal liability).

Actually your VAT-skimming thing at the end is a very good example of that mentality, i.e. the innovators here having to have the Tax man front and center in their minds, before innovation and trying to build something useful off the ground, because if you don't know how to play the Tax man (at the limit of legality, as your example is) then you're toast. That "playing the Tax-man" thing consumes a lot of people's energy in the early stages, energy that would have been way better spent trying to actually make something new and innovative.

[the 50k and 1 million figures are just used as examples, maybe it's not 50k but 70k or 80k and maybe it's not 1 million but 5 to 10 million, but the idea stays the same]

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#377

Post by IneffablePigeon » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 9:35 AM UTC

marbro wrote: post #27

Why don't all British hardware engineers move to the United States? What keeps them in Britain?

Not wanting to live in the United States, I would venture.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#378

Post by inglor_cz » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 9:35 AM UTC

hdougie wrote: post #370

inglor_cz wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What makes you think anything has changed here? Certainly in the UK, there are plenty of "loopholes". Outside of PAYE, there are plenty of ways to legally lower your tax burden, and plenty of wealthy business owners and shareholders make full use of those loopholes.

This is true and I believe it doesn't make sense to compare tax burdens of the people who are already wealthy.

It makes sense to compare tax burdens of well-paid employees, a favorite cash cow of most governments. These are the people who sometimes start new businesses, and use their savings to do so.

And there is a meaningful difference to the volume of their savings if their top tax bracket is 30 per cent or 55 per cent.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#379

Post by maeil » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 9:36 AM UTC

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.

You didn't read what I quoted and replied to. Please do so before responding with "false".

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#380

Post by Beretta_Vexee » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 9:36 AM UTC

leoedin wrote: post #225

atbpaca wrote: post #9

Similar in France / Paris where some American players can easily pay 100K+ euros for SWE. Rest of France salaries are half or even less.

Contracting rates in Paris seem to be much higher - €700-€1000 a day seems common from what I’ve seen. I suspect a big part of it is labour laws. The UK is similar. Companies don’t want to take on the legal commitment of a high salary person, so they take on contractors instead.

This will depend enormously on the company: a consulting and IT services company like Capgemini will employ Moroccan university graduates at 32K€/year. Apple will recruit the best engineers from telecoms companies, arms manufacturers, research institutes and intelligence services for 120K€/year and the same in share, equity.

France knows how to train excellent engineers and give them responsibilities in major government bodies, but doesn't know how to keep them in France. A glass ceiling is rapidly forming for engineers. French companies only value management. There's also this constant desire on the part of French companies to go low-cost.

The speed run of the French engineer is to be admitted to a good engineering school, to be recruited on diploma in a large state body, to spend 3-5 years there with a low salary but great responsibility, to be recruited by a Swiss or American company, profit.