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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

#661

Post by bluGill »

tomhoward wrote: post #572
zipy124 wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That’s a big part of it. But mostly it’s that your dev+deploy+evaluate cycle is so much slower. With web software you can write a feature or bug-fix and push to prod in minutes - and repeat that many times a day. With hardware each equivalent cycle is weeks or months (especially in my vertical - farms).

Some of us write software for embedded devices where a mistake in programning means a critical machine in a remote area needs someone to physically go there and thus spend months in test before we dare deploy. Some of us care about quality and won't allow a customer to see bugs thus even though we can deploy in seconds our reputation won't allow it. There is also software that bugs can kill people so again we won't deploy without evtensive testing - much of this is regulated and we would go to prison for deploying at will even if it works.

those who work in any of the above react in horror to stories of how the web deploys to production so fast. we know we are not perfect and don't understand how you would risk it.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#662

Post by bluGill »

wakawaka28 wrote: post #653
CraigJPerry wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Engineers are not ordinary jobs though and so the plite of the 'common man' is irrelavent.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#663

Post by ashergill »

> The reality for most graduates is even grimmer:

> • £25,000 starting salaries at traditional engineering firms

> • Exodus to consulting or finance just because it's compensated better

This is _exactly_ my career so far.

The key thing about the British economy is that while most things operate in a free market, construction is centrally planned by councillors who are incentivised to block most development. So the whole economy is struggling, but industries that need physical space are especially hard hit. Your local council can't block you from writing more code, but can stop you from building lab space near where people want to live and work.

My first job out of uni was in a wonderful small engineering firm in Cambridge. Lab space there is eye-wateringly expensive because it's illegal to build enough, so we were based in a makeshift lab in an attic next to the sewage works. I loved working there, but it shows that we're restricting our small businesses unnecessarily through our planning system.

The solution is frustratingly simple, but politically suicidal for any government that tried to implement it: just legalise development subject to basic design codes. I hope we see some planning reform before it's too late for our struggling innovation industries.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#664

Post by mapt »

cyberax wrote: post #226
corimaith wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well everytime somebody wants to build high density housing or really anything to alleviate the housing crisis we get the usual NIMBY screaming similar to OP about evil corporations coming to destroy the character of their local neighborhood.

If we're talking about the UK, then London is already as dense as it can reasonably be. It went all-in on public transit almost 200 years ago. And of course, it made it all worse. Now you HAVE to work in London if you want a high salary. The only real way to fix the housing is to promote remote work and decentralized companies.

"Reasonably" is doing a lot of work there. It sounds an awful like you're defining the boundaries of reasonability at "Exactly what is built right now and using the exact borders of current municipalities", which is a tautology. Even if we limit ourselves to the current municipal boundaries of London, population density is ~6000 people per square kilometer. Kowloon Walled City survived with 3,000,000 people per square kilometer, Manhattan has 75,000, Dhaka 23,000, San Francisco 19,000.

Their system is a much better one than we tend to have in the US, but "All-in on public transit" looks more like Trantor than London. A majority of the TFL system was constructed more than a century ago.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#665

Post by CalRobert »

zelos wrote: post #654
CalRobert wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It’s nice here! My kids can bike to school and not be killed. But the health care is… meh.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#666

Post by ta1243 »

petesergeant wrote: post #453
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,…

> These days, what are your options realistically in this country? Particularly if you want to hang around your family in the south? In 2013 I was working as a CTO in London, managing a team of 40, and I could just about afford a run-down 2-bedroom in a just-ok part of Zone 1, assuming I wanted to make some savings too. My salary wasn't bad for the role, outside of banking. Anyway, that was pretty much the end of liv…

90% of the problems in the UK come down to the cost of housing in London (and maybe a couple of other key cities, but mainly London)

This cost is driven by relatively high wages in London, so people on good salaries can afford more, so prices go up as supply is constrained and demand increases.

The rest of the western world is starting to see this, and before London had the issue, city states in the far east like Hong Kong and Singapore had the same problem.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#667

Post by ta1243 »

dukeyukey wrote: post #467
blitzar wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is the UK more in line with the norm though and the US is the outlier Mostly the US is an outlier. Unfortunately, UK property prices, food prices, utilities etc make Silicon Valley look cheep.

>Unfortunately, UK property prices, food prices, utilities etc make Silicon Valley look cheep. That's not true - UK food is _very_ cheap, and overall living costs are quite a lot less than the UK. Property is the real killer in the UK (and eating out I suppose).

Eating out is entirely optional, it's property that's the killer, and as everyones wages increase, so does rent, because there's more money chasing the same number of properties.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#668

Post by eastabrooka »

youngtaff wrote: post #396
refrigerator wrote: post #19

This is spot on. All the smart and ambitious people I know who studied (non-software) Engineering at university in the UK have ended up going into software engineering via self-teaching or finance/consulting because the only hardware engineering career paths seem to be working for Rolls Royce in the middle of nowhere with terrible pay, or alternatively working at Jaguar Land Rover in the middle of nowhere with terrib…

Coventry is hardly the middle of nowhere

Yeah but then you have to be in Coventry

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#669

Post by ta1243 »

Symbiote wrote: post #599
PakistaniDenzel wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Can you give a couple of examples, for those unfamiliar with Singapore and/or the UK?

Housing+Development Board comes to mind. Singapore housing policies ensures people can afford to live somewhere reasonable.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#670

Post by bluGill »

baxtr wrote: post #393
anal_reactor wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because risk-aversion and laziness are the smart things to do. Yes, it would be cool to come up with the next Facebook, but most financial advisors will tell you that the actually best thing you can do is some form of "SP500 and hold 20 years" because from the perspective of an individual, the safe option provides the best expected outcome. Similarly, why work yourself to the bone for a miniscule chance of suc…

I definitely agree! But why is this different in the US?

The us generally would do 95% in the safe s&p500 and the other 5% in high risk things. The exact numbers varry of course but that is a good rule of thumb for good future growth.
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