591–600 of 1001 posts
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Try unfollowing Musk for a bit. It'll do you good.
Try unfollowing CNN, MSNBC, and BBC for a bit. It'll do you good.
I come from an unprivileged background, my father joked that he might leave me an empty bottle of whisky when he died. I went from making 20k USD at my first job to over 800k per year.
Taxation never particularly blunted my avarice or desire to advance further, and I never minded paying my taxes either. Frankly, only two things ever really slowed me down: the good old boys clubs in Europe, where if you haven't gone to the right schools, they treat you like you're supposed to be a slave rather than expect a slice of the pie... and the good old boys clubs in the US, where unless you're in CA/NY, well, again, how dare you expect a slice of the pie.
If I could, I'd gladly try to get richer than Musk, and honestly, fuck the taxes. Having miserable poor people around me sucks more than paying taxes. I'd rather they enjoy some of my success too. That way I can hire fewer bodyguards.
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The largest problem I see is shipping times. If I need to download a new software "part" (library or other), the shipping time is the download time, nearly instant. If I need new hardware pieces, its either next day shipping, a few days by air-freight or three weeks on a boat from china. This limits prototype turnover time, and means iterating quick is much harder. Finally you have the problem that hardware is expens…
True but that reality applies to all your competitors. Your investors should care about your performance relative to the market.
They’re more concerned with factors that will cause the company to self-destruct. Running out of money before hitting PMF and growth is the most common failure mode for any startup, and is much more likely with any hardware startup, due to the dramatically slower iteration times.
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This is a myth they tell themselves. USSR won by incredible amounts of American supplied material.
A truck without a driver has no value in a war. Lend lease was important but the ambition and drive to defeat Germany required huge sacrifices on all sides that are impossible without shared cultural ideals.
I think a lot of this is exactly right - but one tiny caveat I'd add is that comparing the UK to the USA is sometimes a misnomer. On a size basic, the UK is much more comparible to a US state that the USA as a whole, and a lot of the observations made here are probably equally true of some US states like Colorado where talent is moved out to California.
The UK is almost twice the size of the largest US state--California. And that comparison doesn't fare well for the UK. The UK is below the US' poorest state in terms of GDP per capita.
https://www.mylifeelsewhere.com/country-size-comparison/unit...
It's not just in the hardware sector, it's across the board. My (American) wife moved to London years ago and was a manager in a prestigious London museum overseeing 60 people. She has over 20 years experience in some of our top museums and her salary in 2023 was a paltry £30k. We just moved to the US and within a couple of months she has a job in museums here but now paying 2.3x the salary (converted back to £) and…
>> Only London's financial sector pay was globally competitive - but now with Brexit's rules fully locked in even that sector is slowly losing its talent and customers to Europe and beyond. Citation needed. No-one wants to live in Frankfurt.
TLDR: They're not moving to Frankfurt but they are moving out of the UK.
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> Production of software is nearly 100% R&D. Making a million copies of a software product has a trivial cost. > Production of hardware is some R&D, and then actual manufacturing Totally. And if you think deployment errors are bad, wait until you see how many production errors exist and how many items out of your line come out working and within spec
Indeed. You cannot release a patch for a mechanical part or a PCB.
Also common is to patch around issues, when possible, in firmware. This is often lower cost/effort, but can’t fix everything.
There are similar kinds of fixes for purely mechanical parts. Depending on the part and problem, mechanical can be easier than a PCB rework (eg: modify a part in CAD and 3D print or get your local machine shop to do a run).
I agree with this call to action. Sadly, I think there are more fundamental issues in the UK economy. For all intents and purposes, Venture Capital is dead in the UK. While companies do get funded in the UK and are technically "UK domiciled" - in action most of their Engineering and Product teams are located in Eastern Europe or India, or are startups from those markets (and China) who domiciled in the UK to raise fr…
> For all intents and purposes, Venture Capital is dead in the UK. The UK has the 3rd largest tech VC sector worldwide - only after the US and China > in action most of their Engineering and Product teams are located in Eastern Europe or India London also has the largest software sector outside the US, after the Bay Area, Boston, and NYC.
And as I mentioned before, most startups tend to only be UK domiciled for funding reasons, but majority of their operations and leadership are located outside the UK.
Foreign (read: American) VCs tend to conduct transactions in a handful of very well regulated markets, so a Chinese, Indian, or Romanian startup will often have to make a domiciled corporation in a financial hub like the UK or Singapore in order to raise.
For example, Revolut has around 16,000 employees, but barely 2k in the UK and around 7k in Poland+India - and most of these roles are engineering AND strategy roles.
> London also has the largest software sector outside the US, after the Bay Area, Boston, and NYC
Source? Boston is nowhere near a top software hub - both Seattle and Austin are much larger in the software space than Boston.
And I would be shocked if the net amount of SWE roles in London is higher than Tel Aviv or Bangalore.
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The UK cannot just "be Singapore". What happened in Singapore was a specific, unrepeatable combination of its geography, the needs of the region, the size of the country, and the culture. To maintain its wealth today, Singapore relies on a large underclass of underpaid non-citizens. Around 40% of the country are non-citizens. In addition, London sort of has its own Singapore(s) in the form of the City and Canary Whar…
This is true but there are many policies that the UK could copy from other countries like Singapore that would work much better than what they are currently doing
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I spent a decade in a low-wage country and the number of people who were "glad" to spend even half that much time there -- paid handsomely! -- could probably be counted on one hand. Virtually the only people who stay longer than 3-5 years are ones who end up founding their own businesses there. Raising children away from your native culture isn't the deal breaker you imply. There are international schools (though, wi…
So everyone fully admits that these countries are in fact "worse" in every way?