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

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#391

Post by PakistaniDenzel » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 9:43 AM UTC

coopierez wrote: post #251

bboygravity wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The UK cannot just "be Singapore". What happened in Singapore was a specific, unrepeatable combination of its geography, the needs of the region, the size of the country, and the culture. To maintain its wealth today, Singapore relies on a large underclass of underpaid non-citizens. Around 40% of the country are non-citizens. In addition, London sort of has its own Singapore(s) in the form of the City and Canary Whar…

This is true but there are many policies that the UK could copy from other countries like Singapore that would work much better than what they are currently doing

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#392

Post by kdmtctl » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 9:43 AM UTC

zmgsabst wrote: post #177

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…

Why not hire US consultants to get from starting to mid-sized? I’m curious, if you think the issue is cultural.

Yep. Bring Musk aboard. /s

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#393

Post by baxtr » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 9:44 AM UTC

anal_reactor wrote: post #318

baxtr wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. But I wonder what’s the underlying cause? Europe wasn’t like this for centuries. What is the cause of this mindset?

That's because risk-aversion and laziness are the smart things to do. Yes, it would be cool to come up with the next Facebook, but most financial advisors will tell you that the actually best thing you can do is some form of "SP500 and hold 20 years" because from the perspective of an individual, the safe option provides the best expected outcome. Similarly, why work yourself to the bone for a miniscule chance of suc…

I definitely agree! But why is this different in the US?

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#394

Post by robertlagrant » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 9:44 AM UTC

nicoburns wrote: post #220

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.

> don’t believe and can’t even imagine that more is possible. And/or don't think that more is better/desirable. I wouldn't consider myself working class, but I was definitely raised with the idea that making obscene amounts of money is actually pretty selfish/immoral and not something one ought to strive for. That doesn't preclude going into business. But it is pretty antithetical to the VC funding model and the crea…

> it seems that the culture in America is that wealth is virtuous

I don't think I've ever seen this claimed anywhere except as a criticism.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#395

Post by amelius » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 9:45 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,…

At this point someone please explain to me how finance doesn't exist to extract wealth from the rest of us.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#396

Post by youngtaff » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 9:45 AM UTC

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…

Coventry is hardly the middle of nowhere

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#397

Post by robertlagrant » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 9:46 AM UTC

jajko wrote: post #334

ttoinou wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is this spirit we retain that US looses ?

Quality of life, if you define an actual proper life as something happening outside of work hours and sleep. We don't worry whether my insurance will cover the next health issue that will happen to me, be it broken leg or lifelong costly treatment. I don't have to desperately try to save maybe 1.5 million $ to put my kids through decent university, if they desire to do so. I am not brutally tossed on the sidewalk whe…

You also get your defence and healthcare advancements mostly paid for by Americans, either as taxes or healthcare costs that funnel into R&D spend. It's easy to give things away when you mostly only have maintenance costs to bear, and not very much risk.

(Not an American.)

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#398

Post by ktallett » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 9:46 AM UTC

robertlagrant wrote: post #383

graemep wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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 and not getting funding. HN has a very wide range of economic opinions, and some people are extremely uninformed about what it takes to do hard things that can't be grown organically, and what it takes to maintain a business running when it's done the hard thing in…

Most of the issues here relate to scale and actual quality of the idea/business in the first place. Hard things can really be split into, challenging but a problem to solve, or this never should have become a business. The former will work well with the right sort of investors. The latter will eventually sink, the investors simply provide money and poor ideas such as trying to incorporate AI into every business model.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#399

Post by truckerbill » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 9:46 AM UTC

nobodywillobsrv wrote: post #331

alecco wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is policy is oriented to growing GDP and not GDP per capita. Large corporations benefit from GDP growth and lower wages, so they incentivize the political class to grow the population artificially (wink-wink).

The other problem is the welfare state or just the state. So much graft and just living off printed money. It pushes out success. What percent of the UK is effectively civil servants or people receiving benefits? What percent are net takers? A lot

it’s more about wealth. You need a functioning welfare state to allow people to take risks

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#400

Post by torginus » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 9:47 AM UTC

alephnerd wrote: post #10

I 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 fr…

Well my East European perspective is this:

When management decides to launch a new product, they bring in an UK-based 'analyst' who usually does a piss poor job of gathering requirements/docs/building up the project, so you have to step in and 'shadow manage' the whole thing, from producing architecture diagrams to talking to customers, writing specs, writing Jira tickets, besides actually doing the job you're supposed to do.

The only thing they do do is act as an interface layer to upper management and giving each other reacharounds.

But when it comes to handshakes and glitzy product announcement galas, they're all over the place and you are not even invited, the best you can get is having your (usually misspelled) name show up in context of 5 other high-ranking ne-er-do-wells, who they want to suck up to.

Then they leave for a higher paying position to another UK company, and post on linkedin about leadership and inspiring teams.

You are forgotten, but not for long, since people actually start using the stuff you wrote and support tickets start rolling in.

Poor poor UK people having to sit in all those executive positions while contributing nothing.

It also doesn't help that for most West Europeans, places like Romania is synonimous with the Shadow Realm.

The funny thing is, having them spit in your face like this is actually a privileged position, since that means you're usually out of the trenches, where you only see the Jira tickets that you need to solve.