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

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#421

Post by blitzar » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 9:58 AM UTC

inglor_cz wrote: post #363

fmajid wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK’s case, feudalism is alive and well. The entire tax system is designed so parasites descended from thugs like the Duke of Westminster or Charles of Battenberg-Saxe-Coburg und Gotha never have to pay property taxes on their extensive land holdings.

That was worse in the 18th and 19th century, and yet people were willing to ground new corporations back then. I think the answer is something the left won't like - we (Europe) are killing ourselves with bureaucracy, often environmental bureaucracy. A road to hell paved with good intentions. The documentation to the Lower Thames Crossing, a planned highway tunnel, already exceeds 360 000 pages. This is just crazy. ht…

The people who claim they didn't do something because of "bureaucracy" or "regulation" were never going to do anything anyway.

It is a generic handwavey excuse for losers who never tried.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#422

Post by bloqs » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 9:58 AM UTC

James_K wrote: post #77

God, this place is such a sh*thole (literally if you count the sewage in the water). It's depressing. Every week, X is going downhill, Y is failing, we're out of money. I am so hopeless about my country's future. I feel that this is our century of humiliation.

It's not, its just that you are swept into the news cycle of doomerism where engagement is established with FUD. The UK is fine compared to many of its peer nations in many areas.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#423

Post by JonChesterfield » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 9:59 AM UTC

marbro wrote: post #27

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

I'm under the impression that tech people working in the US on visas are exploited. The end of year review / firing round which is so popular in the US means you can lose your job, which means you lose your visa, and you get something like 4 weeks to land a replacement or have to move out of the country.

At 20? Sure, who cares. If you've got a house, kids in a local school? The level of stress about being abruptly thrown out of the country seems untenable.

I would expect that dynamic to suppress wages for immigrants (as you have fear to keep them in line instead). Healthcare seems to be similarly set up to frighten people into staying in their current employment.

This perspective might not be accurate, but it's why this British engineer is unwilling to move to the US.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#424

Post by gambiting » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 9:59 AM UTC

blitzar wrote: post #405

ktallett wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the UK more in line with the norm though and the US is the outlier? I would say the UK, Europe, and Japan all have similar wages (although Japan has worse benefits and on the whole a larger expectation of workers so it's not like for like.)

> Is the UK more in line with the norm though and the US is the outlier Mostly the US is an outlier. Unfortunately, UK property prices, food prices, utilities etc make Silicon Valley look cheep.

Not disagreeing with your general point, but UK food is very cheap, compared to almost anywhere in western europe and nowadays with the states too.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#425

Post by graemep » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 9:59 AM UTC

PakistaniDenzel wrote: post #335

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…

> The UK's economic outcomes have been similar to comparable European economies (like Germany) and better than some (like France) Who says those countries were well governed though? IMO they are all run by idealogical morons

I agree they were also badly governed - that is my point.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#426

Post by ktallett » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 9:59 AM UTC

nobodywillobsrv wrote: post #277

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…

Exactly. Half the population are saboteurs and vote to suppress success

Success is viewed differently by some. Being educated, having healthy lives, having access to many public servicesnare seen as a successful healthy life by many.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#427

Post by Marazan » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 10:00 AM UTC

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…

It's because post GFC the USA stimulated and the EU went all in on austerity.

It is fairly clear what was the best option.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#428

Post by t43562 » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 10:00 AM UTC

Just a note - 100k jobs aren't that common in software in the UK. Perhaps they're there in finance but there are a lot of people looking for software jobs now who accept much less. I've managed to avoid the finance sector my whole career in the UK by working for telcos, since I felt that, for me personally, finance was intensely boring and motivated by all the worst and most short term values.

IMO the whole attitude to finance here is difficult because not enough people have become rich through software/electronics to be angel investors. It's still a place where the big old money comes from people in banking. The arts are respected, being rich is respected, but the rest of us are still "techies" and that's an attitude prevalent throughout the population. The person who fixes your washing machine gets called an "engineer."

It's a matter of who has the power.

Success breeds success and we have had some great ones - it's just that the whole economy is still skewed towards finance. People want the pound to have a high value. Investment comes here to seek "safety". Costs are high. Everything is short term. We have "spaffed billions" on leaving our local trading bloc but moan a lot about investing in HS2. In other words we're not really united and trying to build a future. The population is aging and some of it thinks "only a few more years for me" and "I'm alright jack".

Do I really know? This is all just the bullshit whirling around in my head.

There's a chance with net-zero. It will require huge investments. If you want to do hardware then I suggest you think about that. Octopus Energy's Kraken system, heat pumps that work together to spread out demand over the day, home energy controllers, battery chargers ...who knows. One word of warning though: I'm actually from Africa and any idea that ends with "....for disaster relief in Africa" is a mistake. If your idea only works in poor countries then I think you'll never make any money. Nobody really cares significantly about disaster relief, especially the potentates of those countries who have allowed the disastrous situations to occur through their own mismanagement.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#429

Post by flask_manager » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 10:01 AM UTC

mrtksn wrote: post #299

tirant wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regulations often stem from a particular mindset. However, they also serve to perpetuate that mindset. As a member of the working class, I find there’s little incentive to build something new or innovate because the effort required to navigate through all the burdensome regulations is overwhelming. On top of that, any additional income I might generate from bringing my ideas or initiatives to market would be taxed at…

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…

We have global commerce; you are not only working on the creation part of something new, but also competing with similarly skilled people working with different more advantageous start conditions.

Nobody is talking about the difference between 1 and 2 billion, they are talking about the difference between 50 and 100 thousand, while competing.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#430

Post by inglor_cz » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 10:02 AM UTC

blitzar wrote: post #421

inglor_cz wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was worse in the 18th and 19th century, and yet people were willing to ground new corporations back then. I think the answer is something the left won't like - we (Europe) are killing ourselves with bureaucracy, often environmental bureaucracy. A road to hell paved with good intentions. The documentation to the Lower Thames Crossing, a planned highway tunnel, already exceeds 360 000 pages. This is just crazy. ht…

The people who claim they didn't do something because of "bureaucracy" or "regulation" were never going to do anything anyway. It is a generic handwavey excuse for losers who never tried.

It is often accomplished enterpreneurs who complain of bureaucracy.

I remember reading a German enterpreneur's complaint that he was unable to build an extra electric connection between his two industrial buildings in Germany in less than a year, due to endless rounds of permiting for that single cable.

He contrasted the situation to Poland, where his application on a similar site was processed in two weeks and it took two more weeks to actually build the connection.

If you think complaints of bureacracy have no merit, maybe you never faced any. It now takes about 10 years to get all permits for a regular block of flats in Prague, Czechia. It used to be 3 years or so back in 2000, and it takes only about 9 months in Denmark.

These are experienced developers, and they are still stuck.