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UK's hardware talent is being wasted

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Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#431

Post by anonzzzies »

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…

Yeah, I was raised with that idea. I did make some nice businesses, but I don't care for growing because of growing. If I catch a few 100k a year for everyone in the company (yep, it is the reason I like tiny companies: we can just decide to all make the same), I don't really care about the rest. Doing that for 10 years (even shorter but he) is enough for anyone to live out their life in comfort out of the (etfs etc) interest here. I keep on doing making new things as I like it, but need no more money, so that helps.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#432

Post by whywhywhywhy »

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,…

The UK is over educated so everyone who walks into an interview has a degree so it just isn’t worth anything and puts you at the starting line, internships are there to mold nothing into something and if that values too low for you there is a queue of people behind you also with degrees who would be happy for the opportunity.

If your focus is money then higher education is the wrong path anyway, it’s oversubscribed.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#433

Post by GasVeteran »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #95
GamerAlias wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Preach. My friend is a gifted passionate Aerospace engineer (top in his specific stream at Cambridge) and basically is withering away working for the above 2 firms. The location is grim being far from others and generally far from other young exciting people. Additionally in his org, there just isn't a sense of excitement/ urgency which leaves him with little to do. Prioritising career for a career that's not there W…

Wait what. Quality of life in rural UK is worse than rat race of London?

Depends what you mean by "Quality of Life". I literally won't go to see friends because that would mean travelling to London. I hate the place. It is expensive, hostile, dirty and everyone is rude.

I live on the outskirts of the peak district. I can walk/cycle less than 30 minutes out of town and be walking along the old canals, through old villages and get amazing views of the countryside.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#434

Post by marcinzm »

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…

> 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.

Most of those are people complaining about a business having to make changes because it took $50+m in funding and now needs to justify it. The business was only "good" because it got $50m and didn't need to do things like charge enough money. If it hadn't gotten that $50m then those people wouldn't consider it such a good business or even know about it.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#435

Post by fxtentacle »

amelius wrote: post #395
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.

It's called capitalism because we use capital to allocate value creation. So obviously finance extracts wealth, that's their job in a capitalist system.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#436

Post by bjackman »

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…

Not just in startups. Feels like Arm lost almost their whole software division over a few years. This was an extremely stable high-profit-margin business, and it was obvious that it was uncompetitive on the labour market. But something in the culture stopped management from increasing salaries, so everyone buggered off to foreign companies.

I hear they fixed it eventually but seems like an unnecessary loss.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#438

Post by CalRobert »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #406
CalRobert wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lived in Ireland for 10 years. It's not the same as the UK but there _is_ cultural overlap. Every time you shared a new idea with _anyone_, even things as simple as "I want to buy a site and build a house on it", the first thing you hear is how that's a bad idea, you will fail, it will never work, and you need to leave it to "professionals". Not to mention the whole idea that trying to be successful is "notions" an…

>"That's a bad idea, you'll never make it work, you'll go bankrupt and it will kill you..." There is an element of truth to that, self build projects seem to go about was well as the typical software project.

We got ours built for what it’s worth. Beautiful house, though we ended up leaving.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#439

Post by GasVeteran »

lmm wrote: post #119
dzhiurgis wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait what. Quality of life in rural UK is worse than rat race of London?

Absolutely. No public transport, almost no culture, and housing anywhere nice is even less available than in London. For a young person working at one of these firms, where can you live? Where could you meet someone to date? What can you even do at the weekend?

There is a culture there. I am not sure what people mean when they say there isn't a culture outside of the London. If you mean things like events, art exhibs etc. We have those here. If you mean bars, pubs and restaurants we have those here to.

Is it as glitzy as London. No. But saying there is "no culture" is just absolutely asinine.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#440

Post by gadders »

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.

To be fair though, they work for it. A consultant I saw recently did a full day with the NHS and they 3 - 4 hours of appointments in the evenings privately at a different hospital.
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