The cost of living thing is debunked very quickly, but I think it's missing some aspects. I'm not in UK, but just on Europe main land, but I can easily pay for my flat, don't need a car for anything, while still living pretty much in the city center, should I lose my job I still get payed while looking for another job, should I get sick I can also just go to a doctor or the hospital and pay up to nothing, my kids just go to kindergarten and school also with paying up to nothing. At the very least most of that is not true for the US. So earning less is okish. Of course I'd also love to get more. But it's not as much needed as it might be in the US.
UK's hardware talent is being wasted
651–660 of 1001 posts
Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted
#652Earlier quoted context omitted.
Parts are pretty much instant, pcb turn around times are 3 to 15 days depending on how complex they are. Even in the bad old days of punch cards and priesthoods the turn around for software was faster. I have a little pcb mill in the garage that I use for prototypes. To this day I've not met another EE that knows what a voronoi mapping is, or why you'd want one. In a previous startup where I was the software engineer…
Only for simple pcb. If you are making multi-layer pcb with complex stacks, pcb manufacturing and soldering (with associated tooling setup, validation and so) are easily 2 months of turnaround
Well to be fair if you add "validation" the turnaround for any noncomplex piece of software can reach months pretty quickly as well.
But yeah I'm not gonna argue that sw isn't faster than hw in 99% of the cases.
Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted
#653Earlier 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…
The nominal value of highly automated processes has never been higher. Meanwhile, ordinary people are not able to find as many good jobs as they once did. Wages in almost every industry are stagnant at best, at least when adjusted for inflation.
>A claim that manufacturing should employ more, in the face of increased productivity, That’s a claim that manufacturing should replace other endeavours in the economy which, is a complex claim at the very least.
It is a complex claim but I'll make it really simple. We import most of the things we rely on. Everything from plastic toys to car parts to critical medicines are all imported. Letting yourself become totally dependent on other countries while our STEM grads are underemployed, and would-be manufacturing line workers are forced to do bullshit like driving for Uber, is no way to run a country. It is going to backfire one day unless there is a major reversal in the trend.
Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted
#654Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s exhausting trying to explain this to American leftists. They believe the UK / EU is rich, their healthcare is amazing and “free”, and no one has to work more than 35 hours a week. They visit London and Paris once in 10 years for vacation and think they understand the economic order.
Ah yes, my fabulous Dutch healthcare basically consisting of being told "you're fine" and overpriced acetaminophen.
Please don't tell me the grass isn't really greener in the Netherlands. Moving over there (from SE England) is one of my dreams.
Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted
#655Earlier quoted context omitted.
Capitalism is not the problem so much as policies that promote trade imbalances and outsourcing of jobs. If there are people somewhere willing to work for much less than you are, there are far fewer opportunities to do anything. It is not normal to get a ton of cheap imports forever, and a reversion to the mean is not a sign that capitalism is failing. Unless the whole world was to demand the same standard of living…
What we are seeing is a great levelling out of living standards across the world. Poor countries are unquestionably getting richer, while rich countries are stagnating and decaying. It's a period of readjustment, but self-limiting.
There's no need for the West to stagnate like this. We could let the rest of the world develop itself while we continue to be self-sufficient. That requires tough decisions like choosing to limit imports of foreign goods and labor. But that is unfortunately not how it's going. Some people have been selling out their own countries for decades to make a quick buck, or perhaps to defend some economic theory that the plan with the highest cost efficiency is always the best.
Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted
#656I'm a Brit who has worked in finance and AI. I honestly want to move into building hardware. My background is physics, I want to build things that make the world better. But the businesses just seem absent. One of the UK's most exciting hardware projects was Reaction Engines, and they went bankrupt recently. I really want to know what we can do to fix this. As a country, we aren't building things that people want. Wh…
Same. I'm in the UK, I've been a software dev for a long time (with forays into physical consumer products, not electronics/hardware).
I tinker with robotics, rpis, embedded tools, and the potential _power_ there is huge. But I never hear or see of jobs or opportunities (in the ballpark compensation of software).
Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted
#657If engineering isn't near the factory, it's not as effective. Here's one of the most generic electronic components - a 1K resistor.[1] These sell for about US$0.0015 each. DigiKey has a list of many suppliers. There are a few old-line US resistor makers in there, including Bourns and Ohmite. They're price competitive with Chinese companies. But when you look up their engineering job locations, none are in the US or U…
Taiwan is kinda nice though? And just a short hop to Japan for holidays or even long weekends.
Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted
#658Earlier quoted context omitted.
JLR is based in the metro area of Britain's second city. It's not exactly the middle of nowhere. Rolls Royce is in Derby, on the edge of the Peak District with much to offer. Much cheaper housing with more space available. And unlike in London, driving a car isn't hounded by terminal congestion.
JLR Gaydon is not in the metro area of Birmingham. It's in nice countryside and near a motorway which helps, but it's a fair commute out of Birmingham at rush hour to there. The nice surrounding towns/villages are expensive, and even the shitty ones aren't cheap (hello Banbury) as they're on the edge of commuter distance to London. Derby I haven't lived in but know people who have. It's an old manufacturing town and…
Can confirm, I grew up in Derby and it's an absolute desolate wasteland for anyone with any ambition, intelligence or a need for a modicum of culture.
Saying the peak district is good for young people is like saying there's a great lake near Detroit, it's not exactly what they're after.
Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted
#659Earlier quoted context omitted.
This gaslighting is getting a bit ridiculous. The oppression did not start in the wake of Southport, it has been in place for years. But I'm going to talk about Southport first. People were arrested for pointing out that the Southport murderer was a Muslim terrorist. Well guess what, he was: https://news.sky.com/story/southport-stabbings-suspect-faces... The media said it was all disinformation and put forth many str…
He wasn't a Muslim he was brought up a Christian! The rumours were he was an asylum seeker who came over on a boat But as you end up quoting Breitbart what hope is there
Just because someone was "brought up as a Christian" doesn't mean they are one. And he WAS a terrorist or wannabe terrorist, as evidenced by everything said in that article. You're over here whining about Breitbart as your neighbors are being jailed for merely talking about these issues in a way that displeases your overlords.
Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted
#660Keep importing skilled workers. I'm sure it will work out for you eventually. /s Seriously, I feel bad for our British bretheren. The UK government is seemingly out of control and actively working against the people. There are also long-running geopolitical trends like outsourcing to contend with. Talk too much about these things and you're probably getting sent to prison. It's time for the US to bring some democracy…
Could you elaborate further? I am a skilled immigrant in the UK. I pay my taxes and have not used any benefits. I even pay for my medication; the only free service I have used is a GP appointment or a hospital scan, which was likely covered by the IHS (Immigration Health Surcharge). What have I done to make the country worse off?
It's nothing against you personally. I'm sure many immigrants are good people and some scarce skilled workers must be imported. But there seems to be a desire from the top to import too many foreign workers across the West. This contributes to the low wages and lack of opportunities described in the article.
The UK also has outsourced a lot of manufacturing, which further worsens the job market. I don't know how many hardware engineers are imported unnecessarily or else part of "offshoring," but by all indications I've seen personally the number may be significant. This is from an outside US perspective, so take it with a grain of salt.