UK's hardware talent is being wasted

Personally I'd prefer it if good quality healthcare were cheaply available to all without having to be bottleneck on expensive-and-time-consuming-to-train human labour, even if it did mean that the 0.5% of the population that are doctors might end up working differently (and not necessarily for less -- it's not as though the industrial revolution has impoverished society).

I'm somewhat bucking this trend as a hardware engineer in London, a few comments:

> Geographical Constraints: Unlike lucrative software jobs, hardware engineering demands physical presence.

Not completely true. Our engineers take hardware home, and I have a mini-lab at home for developing hardware. If COVID2.0 kicked off tomorrow, we would be robust against this.

> Venture Capital: European VCs, mostly bullish on fintech and SaaS, remain wary of hardware. Result? A feedback loop of underinvestment and missed opportunities.

Extremely true. I cannot overstate how wary of hardware investors are. As with software, you have two types of hardware: research-based and engineering-based. Engineering-based hardware is actually quite low risk if the risks are well understood.

> Innovation Stagnation: We're not just losing salary differences; we're missing out on the next ARM or Tesla.

100%. Even when the UK accidentally creates the likes of ARM, it always fails to stop it being purchased by other Countries.

> False. London is around the same as NYC and more expensive than most parts of California and definitely Texas. This also ignores:

I'll put some numbers to it. If you want a house share (one bedroom, shared common rooms and utilities), at a £1600 budget you will struggle to find somewhere. On a £25k salary, losing £5k to pension, etc, your ENTIRE salary goes on accommodation. If you are one of those pesky eating humans who sometimes requires clothes, travels to work, etc, it's literally impossible.

> "UK's small market limits growth."

In any situation you have to realise the opportunity. As the article points out, the hardware engineers are 25%-50% of their US counterparts at the same quality.

> Your next unicorn isn't code. It's cobalt and circuits. Back the tangible.

It's actually a mixture of the two. Software and hardware working in tangent. The barrier to entry with software is very low, it's difficult to compete there. The barrier to entry to hardware is higher due to time and costs, you can work there and have less concern about competitors.

The profit margins are also far higher, as there is a tangible thing, there is a greater perception of value. You buy and it takes a year to develop. You spend another year writing , people expect to get it for free, despite the same resources being applied. When you buy , the next iteration which is a year of can be sold at full price, and people will pay it.

Can you explain how your link supports your argument?

The conservatives ran austerity-based policies for the last 14 years. Is your argument that they did not have a choice?

This is really not a UK-only thing, it's a thing everywhere.

The US has some defense jobs that pay well (but are immoral IMO), and there are some gambling-machine related jobs that pay well, but otherwise engineering pays really poorly.

I used to work as an embedded engineer in Slovenia, in the automotive industry, and wanted to potentially move to Germany or Austria or Switzerland to do something similar. After interviewing with some really prominent companies, household names if you will, and seeing their offers - I bushed up on my CS and switched to finance.

> It's conflating a bunch of things.

Not really. I am talking generally about this notion that we need to keep importing people.

> Menial routine work for juniors has been eliminated or automated to the margins, that much is true. No office-boys and far fewer supermarket cashiers. For those with people skills, there's plenty of café work, but that's about it.

That is often repeated but I don't think that is quite as true as people make out. There aren't robots yet (or likely to be) stacking the supermarket shelves. Yes self service has taken most of the cashier jobs (not all btw).

> And a shift, for various reasons, to the contracted-out agency model for cleaning. Mostly done by immigrants, but they work harder than most semi-retired Brits would be willing to. Even if they're less flexible than the old boy who'd fix a bad door or window as well as sweeping the floor, and have none of his loyalty.

In other countries to emigrate there you need to have skills they need. When I moved abroad previously the company had to justify looking outside of the country to employ me. I don't understand how it can be justified that they can't find cleaning staff. BTW I employ a cleaner so I know roughly how much they cost.

> UberEats on the other hand is taking the mick. A lot of their workers are undocumented, the self-employed contractor status allows the operator to avoid the normally stringent penalties for immigration law breaches. I don't know if they lobbied for the law to be that way, but it's a massive loophole. So this is illegal work and maybe shouldn't be conflated with legit immigration. How much it's a problem I'm not sure.. the actual numbers are quite small, but like the loudspeakers on the bus thing, it's a very visible breach of the norms and rules, so there's an argument that it's bad for society on that basis. And like I say, the operator is blatantly exploiting it, they can't be blind to what's going on. I'm pretty liberal on immigration, miss the positive contribution the former Eastern Bloc countries made prior to Brexit, but the whole food delivery sector is overdue a clean out.

It doesn't matter whether it is small or not (I don't think it as small as you are making out). It shouldn't be happening. Also just because you don't like the people that are highlighting this issue, doesn't mean that the issue isn't important.

The reason why things are a mess is that nothing gets sorted out properly in the UK. We have had leadership failures now for years.