UK's hardware talent is being wasted • Hacker News Board

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#711

Post by zipy124 » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 3:39 PM UTC

ldite wrote: post #472

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

Exactly what he means by not common, meta employs only around 1000 software devs in london, same for goldman. If you only have 1000 devs you can bet they aren't hiring that many per year. There aren't that many $BIGCO jobs in London, but yes they do pay very very well.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#712

Post by ta1243 » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 3:39 PM UTC

sebmellen wrote: post #160

realusername wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lived and worked in both countries and I feel like the UK is in a worse situation than France nowadays. It's hard to admit for French citizens but the EU significantly props up the French economy and reduces the structural issues of the country.

EU meaning… Germany?

Germany provides about the same contribution to EU GDP as California and Texas do to the US.

The top 8/51 states(+dc) generate 50% of US GDP, the top 3/27 EU generate EU.

The bottom half of EU states generate just 9% of EU GDP, but then the bottom half of US states generate 14%

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#713

Post by lotsofpulp » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 3:40 PM UTC

constantcrying wrote: post #575

paganel wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany was quite fine until a couple of years ago, mostly thanks to very cheap Russian gas. About France I agree, they have the same problems as the Brits do, maybe because they lost access to cheap African mineral resources as a result of Francafrique [1] ending? I couldn't tell, to be honest. But at the end of the day the point remains that if you want to have a world-beating economy you need to have access to rel…

Germany's number one economic problem is energy costs. Blaming the increase on Russian gas hits only a tiny slice of the problem. The real problem is a completely botched "energy transition", which deprecated very important energy sectors, which were still absolutely needed. To be clear, I am in favor of renewables. One benefit is that they create independence from the whims of the US and Russia. Nevertheless the tra…

While legislation restricting innovation is a problem, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom, all have the same bigger problem of expecting smaller and smaller working populations to support bigger and bigger non working populations.

In the long term, the level of wealth transfer in these countries is not sustainable, and each year it incentivizes those who produce to seek greener pastures where they get more rewards.

Look at these population histograms:

https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-kingdom/2024/

https://www.populationpyramid.net/germany/2024/

https://www.populationpyramid.net/france/2024/

https://www.populationpyramid.net/italy/2024/

https://www.populationpyramid.net/spain/2024/

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#714

Post by GasVeteran » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 3:42 PM UTC

Earw0rm wrote: post #694

GasVeteran wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

On the cashier jobs - the thing is that they can rely on fewer and more trained/experienced staff. This may not be a bad outcome for those in the jobs, but it means less availability of casual work. Which is not the same thing as no availability, but there used to be plenty of this kind of work to go around, such that it was the norm that 17/18 year olds could get it without particularly trying. That is not the case…

> Trying to bring skilled labour into the UK, or trying to get residence as an apparently useful and self-sufficient person, is actually quite difficult, so I'm not sure how all the low-skilled labour ends up here, other than large agencies in areas (social care, farm work) with known skill shortages.. being large agencies, the bureaucratic overhead isn't too bad for them, whereas for an individual or small company, it's more trouble than it's worth.

Most of the skilled labour that I've encountered in the UK from immigration was Indians etc. that Accenture brought over. It is a gold ticket for the Indian developers and it is cheaper than paying people like me. So they do the same thing from the most skilled to the least skilled if the company is large enough.

> There's no way you can just bring a cleaner over from abroad because you want someone to clean your house/office.

I wasn't claiming to. I was saying that I know roughly what the costs are.

> As to shouldn't be happening. Yes. But as for so many other things in the UK and its gradual slide towards a low-trust society. So it becomes a case of figuring out which battles to pick, which ones are genuinely impacting peoples' day to day. And I think collectively (not particularly a left vs right thing), the country has forgotten how to prioritise that.

This feels like a false dichotomy. Many things can be done quickly if the bureaucracy wills it. The fact is that they don't.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#715

Post by ta988 » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 3:42 PM UTC

zipy124 wrote: post #558

tomhoward wrote: post #519

I don’t think it’s just a UK thing, or that it’s much easier to start a hardware startup in the USA. I think it’s more that the bar for getting a hardware startup off the ground is much higher than a software startup - everywhere in the world. Personally I’ve been trying to self-fund and bootstrap a hardware startup (based in Australia but I’m reasonably well connected in Silicon Valley as I’m a YC alum). I’ve had pl…

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…

In some shops this is solved by staggering scheduling so people work on several projects. Some aspects of HW can be simulated (think analog with SPICE-likes, or logic level like the chip designers and FPGA users do) so this reduce the need to iterate every time in hardware.

A lot of the iteration work can also be done on the board you received. You don't have to wait for your new board to see if those additional decoupling capacitors will do something, you add them on your current board by hand... You would be amazed at how far rewiring can go, sometimes entire BGAs are removed, installed dead-bug style and each pin wired by hand.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#716

Post by yobbo » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 3:43 PM UTC

r_thambapillai wrote: post #51

As a Brit, when I was raising the seed round for my startup, UK and European VCs would consistently try to haggle you down on price while the American VC's were exclusively focussed on trying to figure out whether this could be a billion dollar business or not (in the end we raised a $5m seed led by Spark, and have done extremely well and raised more since). The UK lost Deep Mind - which could have been OpenAI!! -- t…

Set UK/EU tech salaries at maybe 30%-50% of US, and factor in higher taxes. Then integrate over 40 years, resulting in a number from which investments can be drawn. Add to the corresponding US number all the profitable exits from previous ventures. There's just so much more US investment capital available.

It can be argued that a responsibility falls on EU equity companies, pension funds, and so on, but they do not make seed investments.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#717

Post by idhegeu » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 3:43 PM UTC

robertlagrant wrote: post #538

blibble wrote: post #28

you can do worse than creating credit reports they could be figuring out how to get people to click on ads

Ads only work because there are useful products to buy. They're a sadly necessary indicator of a productive economy.

The fact that ads work doesn't mean that they're beneficial to the economy.

I disagree with the premise that non-human entities are entitled to my attention.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#718

Post by zipy124 » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 3:46 PM UTC

bArray wrote: post #553

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 fin…

One bedroom house shares in london (Zone 2 or further) are closer to £1-1.2k a room currently btw. They maybe get that high in Zone 1, but there's almost no reason to live in euston or kings cross over living in camden/kentish town for example in the northern direction.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#719

Post by vv_ » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 3:46 PM UTC

lobochrome wrote: post #580

vv_ wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you get a job in Japan? What were the requirements?

Speaking the language helps. Also working in a highly specialized field.

If it isn't a secret, what field?

Do you think it is possible for an Embedded SE to find work in Japan?

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#720

Post by constantcrying » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 3:46 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #713

constantcrying wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany's number one economic problem is energy costs. Blaming the increase on Russian gas hits only a tiny slice of the problem. The real problem is a completely botched "energy transition", which deprecated very important energy sectors, which were still absolutely needed. To be clear, I am in favor of renewables. One benefit is that they create independence from the whims of the US and Russia. Nevertheless the tra…

While legislation restricting innovation is a problem, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom, all have the same bigger problem of expecting smaller and smaller working populations to support bigger and bigger non working populations. In the long term, the level of wealth transfer in these countries is not sustainable, and each year it incentivizes those who produce to seek greener pastures where they get more…

You could outgrow the problem, by increasing individual productivity or you can stop the wealth transfer. It will stop sooner or later anyway.

I made some comments elsewhere about the long term. It is delusional to think that it is possible to continually have jobs that pay significantly more than identical jobs elsewhere in the world.