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UK's hardware talent is being wasted

josef.cn

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Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#471

Post by lordnacho »

swarnie wrote: post #371
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.

Did you at least get to play with the demo computers? Some of the most fun times before everyone had a super powerful machine were when we got to borrow the top-of-the-line demo machines to play on all weekend. Set up in one of those conference rooms, pizza for everyone.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#472

Post by ldite »

t43562 wrote: post #428

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…

> 100k jobs aren't that common in software in the UK

They really are, if you're prepared to work for $BIGCO

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#473

Post by GasVeteran »

CalRobert wrote: post #216
Earw0rm wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't building stuff, it's building stuff where stuff needs to be. We built plenty of out-of-town shopping centres, business parks and industrial estates in the 70s, 80s, 90s. We stopped because it turns out they're, for the most part, shit. Given the choice, people will WFH and order off Amazon rather than go within a mile of these places. What we need is to tackle the vested interests in the towns and c…

BUUUT MuHHH PAAARRRKiiiiNNNGGGG!! (And house values). And we can't _possibly_ make the town look different than it did in 1972 because "heritage". We're talking about a bunch of crusty old church biddies who will literally force you to put the most godawful, hideous house covering in the history of man BACK on your house because they're terrified of being reminded it's not the 70's. (Sorry for the mail link) https://…

Yes there are ridiculous rules like that are enforced. However tbh she should have checked first.

Rules around how the area should look, should be decided by people that live there. There are many better examples where it makes a lot of sense for the locals to be strict about rules about what can be erected.

I used to live near the Village of Corfe Castle. Generally the argument is that the place would lose its character and it won't be the same place anymore if it didn't keep its distinctive look.

https://corfecastle.co.uk/the-village/

If you would just start building places that don't fit in with the rest of the village. The village wouldn't have it character and thus it wouldn't have its tourism in the Summer as a result.

There countless towns and village with a bunch of heritage that literally goes back maybe a millennia and the argument that we should throw this away to build a load of crap houses (new houses BTW are awful, I've looked at many in the last few years) is completely asinine.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#474

Post by dukeyukey »

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.

WOrth ponting out the UK is 3rd worldwide in VC tech investment. The US is the outlier, but if you think the UK is bad you haven't seen shit.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#475

Post by lordnacho »

mjburgess wrote: post #468
amelius wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The job of secondary financial markets is to redirect areas of surplus unproductive wealth (that makes no return), to productive areas. By the magic of markets, sustained profitability = productive use of resources. The problem with labourers who work in these secondary markets however, is the same as the guards who watch the gate: they can extract large tolls for being in the right place at the right time. People in…

> The system functions very well to take unproductive surplus and allocate it effectively.

How do you quantify this?

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#476

Post by concerndc1tizen »

CraigJPerry wrote: post #284
wakawaka28 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what happens when there is not much manufacturing in the country anymore, and everyone is encouraged to go to college. I don't know why the software industry hasn't suffered more along the same lines. Maybe the profit margins for software are higher.

Interesting that you say that, my understand of the data is that manufacturing output has never been higher - ignoring lingering Covid shocks - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IPMANSICS But because productivity is higher https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M0100CUSM070NNBR - which doesn’t mean the workers are working harder: a man with a shovel can work as hard as he likes, but he’s never going to compete with the…

Nice charts, but M0100CUSM070NNBR is from 1948 to 1963 :)

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#477

Post by alexisread »

Sadly the UK has a long history of underinvesting in cutting edge tech, from aerospace (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAC_TSR-2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Aerospace_HOTOL further development of Concorde)

to transport (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Passenger_Train https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracked_Hovercraft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hovertravel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_C5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maglev#Birmingham,_United_King...)

to chip design (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inmos transputer, static RAM, VGA standard).

Interestingly, the 3 British designers who made up Flare Technology, had a big influence on console and computer designs in the 80s/90s: They were responsible for the ZX Spectrum (partly), Konix Multisystem, Atari Falcon, ATW (and Blossom graphics card), Atari Jaguar, Super FX chip, Nuon

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#478

Post by hoppp »

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.

The modern monetary system is a big pyramid scheme so...

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#479

Post by dukeyukey »

roenxi wrote: post #98
r_thambapillai wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very true, although I suppose a significant fraction of the decline at that time might be a result of the end of the Empire, which given that there are simply no such successful Empires anywhere in the world anymore was almost certainly inevitable. By comparison, the performance of the UK in the last 20 years vs the US or the Nordics is a singular tragedy.

> there are simply no such successful Empires anywhere in the world anymore There is the US not-an-Empire [0] though, that'll probably count when the history books reflect on the present era. WWI/II can very easily be interpreted as a transition of power away from incompetent British leadership (indeed, European monarchies - the change pre- post- WWI is striking) towards more capable US-based leadership. It isn't cle…

> Their acceptance of poor performers over the last 20+ years has been striking

How many PMs has the UK been though in that time? _Way_ more than the average Western country. We don't accept poor oerformers more than anywhere else, we kick them out of office - but the talent pipeline is abysmal so the next one is usually awful too.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#480

Post by amelius »

mjburgess wrote: post #468
amelius wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The job of secondary financial markets is to redirect areas of surplus unproductive wealth (that makes no return), to productive areas. By the magic of markets, sustained profitability = productive use of resources. The problem with labourers who work in these secondary markets however, is the same as the guards who watch the gate: they can extract large tolls for being in the right place at the right time. People in…

I've heard this many times, but where is the proof? How would you apply it to the story of OP?
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