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

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#761

Post by James_K » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 4:50 PM UTC

sealeck wrote: post #632

James_K wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Market fragmentation is a measurable phenomenon, as far as a language goes. The language barrier is just the cost of a translator. Is that cost prohibitively high in Europe? I hear a lot of explanations of why Europe has fewer tech companies than America, but they are almost never backed by statistics. The most obvious answer continues to be the Bretton Woods system, by which large amounts of money are funnelled into…

> The language barrier is just the cost of a translator. Is it? > Market fragmentation is a measurable phenomenon, as far as a language goes. Market fragmentation isn't about language fragmentation – the EU has no single market for services currently, which means if you want to launch a product EU-wide you are effectively launching a product in 27 different countries. There is some harmonization, but not much. If you…

What exactly is the current single market for services lacking?

https://single-market-economy.ec.europa.eu/single-market/ser...

They seem to have a lot of bases covered.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#762

Post by kjkjadksj » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 4:53 PM UTC

torginus wrote: post #213

shermantanktop wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s shocking. Software engineers in the UK are treated like engineers in the US were in the 1960s. Low respect, low pay, while city boys strutting around in shiny suits snapping their fingers to get anything they want.

That's a weird statement considering I'd have guess the greatest amount of respect and adoration (not necessarily money) (non-software) engineers have gotten in the US would've been during the Space Race and Cold War years. It was real respect for the trade as well, not some secondhand respect that people who make a lot of money and wield a lot of social influence get.

It was respected in the sense that there was a need then in american manufacturing for engineering. But the compensation was nowhere near other professional class jobs. So really the respect seemed a bit false: to get people into the door pigeonholed so they can’t leave for higher compensation. Then when manufacturing was outsourced after the 1960s, many of these jobs disappeared. Now people in Guanzhou are designing the factories and process controls.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#763

Post by cdnthrownawy39 » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 4:54 PM UTC

mrtksn wrote: post #554

cdnthrownawy39 wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canadian here. It's not so much any single regulation, as it is there's so many little ones that seem reasonable on the face of it. But it's also that what makes the ruling Canadian class so is the authority to bypass those regulations. I can give one personal example; I was able to secure some public funding application for a non profit I'm affiliated with. But the only reason I was able to do that was because my pa…

This is very interesting anecdote because it resonates with something that a friend of mine said when I pressured him to explain which regulations exactly are causing him problems in EU. As it turns out, he also complained about excessive documentation he needs to get public funds for his project. So both of you are actually complaining about accessing public funds and not actually doing private investment or startin…

Sort of. Accessing private Canadian financing is a lot harder for the most part, our financial sector is notoriously risk averse for any sort of personal or business loans unless there's a path of guaranteed returns and you have a track record of getting those returns. Last time one of my bosses tried to get something like $2 million in raising funds with Canadian investors, they said that we needed to show I think at least $2 million in net profits for 4 or 5 years at least.

Public funding is easier to access in part because the people that are overseeing it usually don't understand or care to understand what it is they're overseeing. My boss in 2015 or so was presenting my regular IT work as research and development and somehow it worked.

It's not just in new business either. Canada has the lowest investments in business machinery like computers to improve productivity. I don't know what the friction in that regard but just to give you an example; the big name company I was working in 2023 retired the DLink Fast Ethernet switches that we were using as core networking for one of our labs. $200 to upgrade the component that was bottle necking 20+ employees was not worth it and I had to buy it out of my own pocket to demonstrate just how badly it was hampering. And this was after showing fancy power points on the financial impact of 20+ employees doing file transfers at 1/10th the speed they could be (not so much that they didn't have the money, they just didn't believe that an engineer could understand finances. Go figure).

I gotta run, but there's more I can comment on.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#764

Post by mitthrowaway2 » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 4:55 PM UTC

Dalewyn wrote: post #603

rich_sasha wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In much of the developed world, economic productivity seems to correlate strongly with availability of free capital (I don't have a source but I imagine it's fairly straightforward to cook one up). Even US vs Europe, kind of similar economies, but with capital so much easier to come by in the US, and US productivity per capita is flying compared to Europe. Availability of free capital is a function of both just gener…

It's essentially the willingness of a society to fund what looks like and could actually be a complete waste of time and money. In the US there's plenty of money to throw on seemingly frivolous pursuits, because stagnant money is generally considered wasted money. It's considered better to have that money "working for you" invested in something , anything . You could lose out, you could also win big, at least you tri…

Money in a drawer doesn't really detract from any national investment. It's just paper.

It's the allocation of capital that matters. Land, machinery, and so on.

The extent of this is that if money sits in drawers not being spent, it represents diminished demand, which suppresses prices; the government can then print a corresponding amount of money to allocate capital towards other purposes. Leaving money in the drawer means delaying until another day your vote for how national resources should be allocated.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#765

Post by wkat4242 » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 4:56 PM UTC

> Venture Capital: European VCs, mostly bullish on fintech and SaaS, remain wary of hardware. Result? A feedback loop of underinvestment and missed opportunities.

Um? We're pretty crap at SaaS too here in Europe.

The problem is just that venture capital is simply not really around in Europe. Part of that is better labour protections, you can't just start a firm and dump all your staff if it doesn't work out. I think that's a good thing too.

And really hardware is a China thing these days. The "designed in" is just a small part.

But Britain also has the Brexit problem. I'm glad I'm not British.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#766

Post by pyb » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 5:00 PM UTC

On the other hand, HW engineers are very cheap to hire in the UK. So, as a founder, you could look at this problem as an opportunity.

I'm more concerned with the impact of Brexit, in terms of attracting people, and also the issue of quickly shipping goods to and from the EU.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#767

Post by kjkjadksj » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 5:00 PM UTC

lmm wrote: post #119

dzhiurgis wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait what. Quality of life in rural UK is worse than rat race of London?

Absolutely. No public transport, almost no culture, and housing anywhere nice is even less available than in London. For a young person working at one of these firms, where can you live? Where could you meet someone to date? What can you even do at the weekend?

UK people are so god damned spoiled. Sometimes I will pull up street view imagery of a random town in scotland or wherever in the UK that I see locals from there on reddit make a seething comment about. Then I will look at the town center and its basically greenwich village: walkable, pubs and shops all over the place, bus network goes everywhere, actual regional rail potentially, everything the american urbanist dreams about. You know where you actually meet people on a date in 2025? On an app, which they have users on all over the UK.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#768

Post by kjkjadksj » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 5:05 PM UTC

lmm wrote: post #320

dzhiurgis wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No public transport When I live in London I didn't drive, which was kinda nice but also meant I've only been out of city like once a year. Sitting in traffic sucks of course, but driving rurally opens so much. As for weekends - driving and hiking I guess?

Sure, but at that point you're having to buy a car (which is much harder as a young person - car prices have gone up, insurance has gone up faster, the driving test is harder than it was and lessons cost more...), you'll need somewhere to park it which adds to your housing costs, you still can't go drinking, and in general you're cut off from a lot of what young people are doing.

Even tiny UK towns have excellent walkable mainstreets and are small enough to walk from field to field on the other end in no time. It is a far cry from the american obligatory car experience where it might be a 2 hour walk to your nearest grocery store even in a city suburb.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#769

Post by soVeryTired » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 5:08 PM UTC

wcfrobert wrote: post #726

hintymad wrote: post #679

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or… Bob makes bread, Alice grows flowers. Alice needs bread; Bob likes flowers but can go without if he wants to. Who’s going to come off worse if they have an argument?

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#770

Post by mhh__ » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 5:10 PM UTC

Earw0rm wrote: post #184

mhh__ wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The good news is that a relatively small amount of aggressive planning reform (namely, firing everyone involved and never calling it "planning" ever again) will fix most of the (fixable...) worst aspects of modern Britain. We banned building stuff in 1947, we can undo it.

The problem isn't building stuff, it's building stuff where stuff needs to be. We built plenty of out-of-town shopping centres, business parks and industrial estates in the 70s, 80s, 90s. We stopped because it turns out they're, for the most part, shit. Given the choice, people will WFH and order off Amazon rather than go within a mile of these places. What we need is to tackle the vested interests in the towns and c…

Yes, so destroy the current system, then we can do all that. All we basically need is a system that can properly facilitate "Yes, but" rather than "No" and has a mechanism for bartering.

Also I don't think you're right about university cities. Taking Cambridge for example, it's completely strangled, and not by a need for buses. The causality is backwards.