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

411–420 of 1001 posts

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#411

Post by emptyfile »

bboygravity wrote: post #176
tidenly wrote: 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.

[dead]

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#412

Post by blitzar »

troupo wrote: post #408
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…

> The UK lost Deep Mind - which could have been OpenAI!! -- to Google. You're focusing on one success story out of thousands. 90%, or more, of US startups only exist to be sold to the highest bidder or to coast indefinitely long in infinite investor money, and never turn a profit. There's still expectation in Europe at large that your company should have an actual business plan and a path to profitability.

+ DeepMind and its founders are the examples of founders who beat the game

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#413

Post by nonrandomstring »

robertlagrant wrote: post #404
nonrandomstring wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> unfortunately this can't last as those who go hard on progress and tear down everything and rebuilding again A notion of "bare progress" is the elephant in the room. Progress is a vector. It has magnitude and direction. People talk of moving "forward or back", but science also has a steering wheel. > and the Americans and Chinese will make us adopt their ways. This very notion of "progress" as a totalitarian force…

> When Europe was starting a 1000 year technological master-race, more measured minds had to extinguish that fire A lot of the measured minds were saying eugenics was a good idea. It took the horror of seeing experiments and concentration camps to make it so deeply unfashionable the idea couldn't even survive in academia.

I believe you're right. Edwin Black's "IBM and the Holocaust" and Kazuo Ishiguro's "The Remains of the Day" both played their part in revising my naive ideas about simple narratives of WW2.

But look at this post made here a couple of days ago [0]. It's absolutely back in fashion. I think technofascism really is a thing now - you can feel certain people getting quite giddy with thoughts of power.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42735539

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#414

Post by itake »

maeil wrote: post #381
itake wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even internally in the USA, you will see the full spectrum of EU-like VCs to Sand Hill-like VCs.

Correct, but the tail of VC being fat is unique to the US. Pretty much the rest of the world is like the UK in all but a miniscule percentage preferring stability rather than moonshots.

My point is that the VCs located in a few specific zip codes prefer moonshots. The vast majority of VCs in the remainder of the USA prefer stability.

You don't hear about the small capital firms investing in boring slow growing companies, because they are boring and slow growing.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#415

Post by tonyedgecombe »

_hao wrote: post #351
vixen99 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, it's difficult to overstate quite how bad their customer service is. They actually lost a big cheque I deposited.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#416

Post by nsteel »

marbro wrote: post #27

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

I'm a British-American hardware engineer, I've lived in the UK nearly all my life. I've a home, and a family with kids here, I'm very settled. I've had plenty opportunity to move to the US, even before I had a family (with my current employer or under my own steam as a citizen) and I've no interest. I visit the US every few years and by the end of the trip I'm very much done with it all. Other than the much larger job market, I don't think there's a single US thing I want. Everything we have here is either better, or I'm sufficiently used to it. American is an unappealing place to live for many social reasons, I'd much rather move to France or Germany if I had to leave (and wasn't worried about the language barriers).

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#417

Post by foldr »

robertlagrant wrote: post #394
nicoburns wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It’s not something that Americans in general explicitly believe, but you can see it in their attitudes and behavior towards the rich and successful. For example, HN (being somewhat weighted towards American cultural norms) collectively believes that people who have made lots of money are especially wise and hard working, and therefore have special insights to offer to the rest of us. True or not, this is a culturally specific belief.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#418

Post by GasVeteran »

Earw0rm wrote: post #287
wakawaka28 wrote: post #84

Keep importing skilled workers. I'm sure it will work out for you eventually. /s Seriously, I feel bad for our British bretheren. The UK government is seemingly out of control and actively working against the people. There are also long-running geopolitical trends like outsourcing to contend with. Talk too much about these things and you're probably getting sent to prison. It's time for the US to bring some democracy…

You've got the wrong end of this one. UK has long pursued a strategy of "social mobility", which is shorthand for: some places will be shit, and if you're hardworking or clever you can and should leave. So the bright, capable people from white working-class towns either joined the middle classes or skipped the country entirely a generation or two ago. Leaving behind a bunch of people for whom no wage will tempt them…

There is a constant narrative that is pushed on everyone that immigration is necessary because people won't do the menial jobs. There is a huge number of problems with this this narrative.

* Menial jobs were/are normally done in the past by younger more inexperienced people. These were usually done part time while in education. This allows younger people to build basic competency and money management skills. They aren't supposed to be jobs for life and everyone knew this in the past. By constantly importing people from to do these jobs, you stop younger people from building up this basic competency. This stuff is important btw, as I know many people who never had these jobs and had the bank of Mum and Dad pay for them for far too long, they don't know how to manage money.

* A lot of more menial jobs are done by people that are part retired. When I was younger I worked with many part retired people that had a stressful job and moved away and part retired and were on the checkouts out the supermarket, cleaning, pushing trolleys or delivering things.

* A lot of immigrants seem to do jobs like Uber Eats, Deliveroo and other zero hour contract food delivery jobs. If you don't believe me, go to your local McDonalds at 8am on a Saturday morning and every driver picking up food will be a immigrant of one sort or another. These are jobs where people are literally too lazy to drive 5 minutes to the McDonalds drive through on a Saturday morning. I am normally very pro-free market however do we really need to immigrants to do these jobs? I don't use Uber Eats and I have no idea how much it costs, but I think the guy up the road that has a small mansion a Jag and Two Teslas can probably afford to pay a bit more for delivery.

* I am from the South of the UK. If you aren't from London or another big city, London is one of the most horrid places to visit, work. I spent maybe a 4 months working as a freelancer in London (travelling in). People are downright rude, everything is a ripoff. I'd rather be slightly worse off and live here than be "better" off an live in London.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#419

Post by Marazan »

sgt101 wrote: post #367
gadders wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sh…

>I think most Doctors etc need to wait until they're consultants until they make decent money. A consultant gets £100k -> £140K ish from the NHS. However, many supplement that with private work and therefore make significantly more.

Yeah, 100k is starting pay band for Consultants, 140k is after 14 years of service _as a consultant_.

To get to the starting line of Consultant they have to go through the Residency gauntlet which start you off at 36k and hideous hours.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#420

Post by graemep »

paganel wrote: post #356
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…

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…

I agree, but my point is that the France, Germany, and other comparable European economies have the same or similar problems. The UK is not some exception, it is a typical western economy. The US is an outlier (doing better).

> that includes part of their beloved NHS

A more severe problem is that the NHS was debt funded (mostly through off balance sheet debt) in the 2000s. The government kept their promise not to increase national debt by disguising running up disguised debt in the NHS

Its also worth noting that a large chuck of NHS services, GP services in particular, were always subcontracted to private providers.

Post reply on HN