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UK's hardware talent is being wasted

josef.cn

721–730 of 1001 posts

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#721
post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vast majority of NHS expense is keeping an aging population alive. A lot of the rest of government spending (nearly 80% of my council tax for example) goes on social care for that same aging population. The NHS spends less per capita than the US spends on medicaid. Not less per person covered, less overall.

How do poorer countries manage to avoid getting outright bankrupted by social care? Why is it such a black hole money-pit in the UK particularly?

It’s a black hole money-pit everywhere. There is no return on spending money for people who will never be productive again.

The only way that kind of wealth transfer works is with a growing proportion of workers, but that has long not been the case in many developed countries.

The solution for all these countries (even the US) is to dismantle all wealth transfer to old people. It might be the only way to incentivize production of families that raise productive children. Or tell old people to expect declining quality of life (faster than it already is).

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#722

> 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 wh…

> but politically suicidal for any government that tried to implement it

Labour just got into government and literally the third bullet point in their manifesto is:

* Reform our planning rules to build the railways, roads, labs and 1.5 million homes we need and develop a new 10-year infrastructure strategy.

So i would hope it's not political suicide to follow through on that

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#723
post #688
post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rolls Royce in the middle of nowhere 100 miles north of London. 1 hour on the train. > Jaguar Land Rover in the middle of nowhere 100 miles north of London. 1 hour on the train.

Bit of a distance to go for a pint in the evening. Isn't JLR in Solihull? That's two hours from London.

> Isn't JLR in Solihull? That's two hours from London.

Not 100% sure, I'm from the middle of nowhere, sorry, Derby - where Rolls Royce is primarily based. I know there's peak-time, non-stop, trains between London/Derby that take about an hour. I know this because when I got my first job in London, I still hadn't found a place to stay, so I was commuting from Derby to London every day. And when I finally moved to London it took me almost as long to get to work even though I was living in the city!

I just assumed with JLR being around Birmingham that travel to/from London would be about the same (because Birmingham is very close to Derby).

EDIT: Just checked with trainline.com, there's several morning trains from London Euston to Birmingham (New Street) that take 1hr 17mins.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#724

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

I tried that but the cop said it was still speeding even if I refused to acknowledge the speed limit sign.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#725

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…

Would it be fair to say that the "unicorn" effect is a lot harder to achieve as well? If VC rely on 1 out of N startups doing well then that 1 success needs to achieve over N-fold returns just to break even.

On the other hand I have no trouble coming up with examples of hardware companies that did well: Apple, Nvidia, Intel... but those time scales are titanic.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#726

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…

UK ignited the First Industrial Revolution. It's sad to see that UK has slipped to number 16 or lower when it came to the market share of global manufacturing. And the problem is not to just UK, but to pretty much all the developed countries. Many nations and people have benefited greatly from globalization, but I have to ask: is it worth it if the cost is forfeiting my own country's manufacturing know-how and supply…

The US outsourced its manufacturing to China in the name of comparative advantage. Bob bakes bread, Alice grow apples. Everyone is better off because of specialization.

In Thomas Friedman's latest nyt column, he refers to China's manufacturing dominance as a play to de-industrializing other countries. It may just be globalization is incompatible with political realities.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#727

If 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…

Many of the legacy component vendors retain domestic US manufacturing to supply military parts. They come with a premium price and aren't usually worth using commercially but that is one of the last backstops preventing all knowledge from disappearing.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#728
post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vast majority of NHS expense is keeping an aging population alive. A lot of the rest of government spending (nearly 80% of my council tax for example) goes on social care for that same aging population. The NHS spends less per capita than the US spends on medicaid. Not less per person covered, less overall.

How do poorer countries manage to avoid getting outright bankrupted by social care? Why is it such a black hole money-pit in the UK particularly?

More workers to older people ratio

More social care from family (which is unpaid and thus is hidden in GDP figures)

Less social care

Expectation in the UK that wealthy old people should not pay for their own care and instead poorer working people should

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#729

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…

Would it be fair to say that the "unicorn" effect is a lot harder to achieve as well? If VC rely on 1 out of N startups doing well then that 1 success needs to achieve over N-fold returns just to break even. On the other hand I have no trouble coming up with examples of hardware companies that did well: Apple, Nvidia, Intel... but those time scales are titanic.

> Apple, Nvidia, Intel.

Not sure they are great examples. Intel is going through a lot of pain now (but it's been very successful in the past). Apple was in a terrible situation before its reverse acquisition by NeXT (NeXT paid one Steve Jobs for all of Apple and got $400 million in change). Nvidia got insanely lucky with Bitcoin, then with AI. Its original plan was to make 3D accelerators for gamers and, maybe, engineering workstations.

All of them were a couple wrong decisions away from doom multiple times.

Think Commodore, who made one of the most popular computers ever, only to be mismanaged into the ground.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#730
post #182
post #115

I left the UK for the USA in 2020. It was only last week that another HN commenter finally opened my eyes to the fact that since I have left the UK, I have become someone with the ability to take things from 0 to 1.[1] I do not believe I could have achieved what I have in the last half-decade if I had stayed in the UK. There is something deeply rooted in the UK's contemporary culture (which I cannot yet fully explain…

It's the UK's aristocracy, most likely. They own nearly everything in the UK, haven't earned any of it, and the last thing they need is the invasion of rich self-made entrepreneurs.

The same thing is trending in the USA, just got started a couple hundred years later.

It'll get there.

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