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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

#781

Post by jononor »

sylware wrote: post #549
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…

Yep, look at RISC-V, the most promising hardware is from the USA. It is not yet on the latest silicon process, but with the latest GPU, I guess we could run the latest games, until the game devs recompile and QA a bit their games (obviously on elf/linux)

Most promising by what definition? And what subset of applications/markets are you considering? In the microcontroller space, China is leading on RISC-V. EspressIf, WCH, et.c are already shipping units at scale. Of course these are low value chips, but the volumes are large. The combined shipments for microcontrollers are in tens of billions of units annually. The technology choices in the space changes slowly (32 bit over 8/16bit is quite recent...), but over the next 10 years RISC-V looks poised to take a decent chunk.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#782

Post by ldite »

zipy124 wrote: post #711
ldite wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I didn't mean FAANG companies - these days I work for a boring 500 person SaaS company (outside London) and we have at least 50-100 engineers at £100k+, excluding equity.

I get a lot of recruiter spam on Linkedin for roles at retail banks, outsourcers, consultancies, SaaS companies, startups, etc. etc. in the £90-110k bracket. I do also get a lot of recruiter spam for laughably underpaid jobs, in particular hardware/embedded roles, which is why I switched out of embedded.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#783

Post by wakawaka28 »

youngtaff wrote: post #689
wakawaka28 wrote: post #659

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Just because he was a wannabe terrorist doesn't make him a Muslim which what you claimed The people who were jailed were generally jailed for rioting and incitement to riot

He was at least Muslim-adjacent, I think we can agree. Does it matter? Immigrant with ties to Al Qaida plots terror attack and actually murders people, comment section screaming "Ackshually he was not proven to be a Muslim" for real...

>The people who were jailed were generally jailed for rioting and incitement to riot

And I'm sure that given that officials gave many of them a year in prison, just a week after arrest, and after letting real criminals out to make room in the prisons, and after promising to make examples of them, means justice was served. Give me a break. Obviously the authorities can claim that anything calmly painting immigrants or even known criminals in a bad light is inciting a riot. It means nothing when laws are as screwed up as they are in the UK.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#784

Post by rbanffy »

kristianc wrote: post #760
rbanffy wrote: post #741

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fair. UC and the NHS are far from ideal, but, compared to the US, they are heaven.

I think that needs to be qualified heavily — salaries in the UK are much lower both in nominal and PPP terms, so there's much less opportunity to build one's own safety net, and the NHS is overwhelmingly focused on providing care for the elderly. To a young(ish) startup founder, the presence of the NHS and UC makes little to no difference.

Maybe a good way to incentivize more risky entrepreneurs is to provide a better safety net. I would, however, caution against making it too perfect (and I hate myself for saying that, because I would prefer people worked on whatever brings them happiness, not money) - part of the drive for Americans (and the reason they risk so much on it) is the need to accumulate as much capital as possible as soon as possible, because they know they won't enjoy any sort of safety net when they grow old.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#785

Post by ImHereToVote »

pjc50 wrote: post #745
ImHereToVote wrote: post #736

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the true cost of the bank bailouts. This is the moral hazard incarnate.

Local councillors being against development is nothing to do with bank bailouts, which have (mostly) been repaid by selling off the banks again.

That isn't what I mean. The moral hazard is caused by the bailouts. It isn't about the sum itself. Merely the guarantee that the tab for large gambling losses will be taken by the taxpayers.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#786

Post by henryaj »

ashergill wrote: post #663

> 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…

Yup. From Sam Bowman's Foundations[0]:

> [The TCPA] moved Britain from a system where almost any development was permitted anywhere, to one where development was nearly always prohibited. Since [it] was introduced in 1947, private housebuilding has never reached Victorian levels, let alone the record progress achieved just before the Second World War.

> Today, local authorities still have robust powers to reject new developments, and little incentive to accept them. Historically, local governments encouraged development because their tax bases grew in line with the extra value created, but this incentive has been eroded by successive reforms that have centralised and capped local governments’ tax-raising powers.

[0] https://ukfoundations.co/

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#787

Post by kristianc »

rbanffy wrote: post #784
kristianc wrote: post #760

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that needs to be qualified heavily — salaries in the UK are much lower both in nominal and PPP terms, so there's much less opportunity to build one's own safety net, and the NHS is overwhelmingly focused on providing care for the elderly. To a young(ish) startup founder, the presence of the NHS and UC makes little to no difference.

Maybe a good way to incentivize more risky entrepreneurs is to provide a better safety net. I would, however, caution against making it too perfect (and I hate myself for saying that, because I would prefer people worked on whatever brings them happiness, not money) - part of the drive for Americans (and the reason they risk so much on it) is the need to accumulate as much capital as possible as soon as possible, bec…

Let me rephrase — in the UK we have a generous and expanding safety net, for the elderly, voted for by the elderly, and paid for at great expense by the working population.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#788

Post by wenc »

JonChesterfield wrote: post #423
marbro wrote: post #27

Why don't all British hardware engineers move to the United States? What keeps them in Britain?

I'm under the impression that tech people working in the US on visas are exploited. The end of year review / firing round which is so popular in the US means you can lose your job, which means you lose your visa, and you get something like 4 weeks to land a replacement or have to move out of the country. At 20? Sure, who cares. If you've got a house, kids in a local school? The level of stress about being abruptly th…

You're not wrong, but immigrants from other places are willing to take that risk with their families. This insecurity, for better or for worse, selects for a type of hungry immigrant who are also risk-takers, for whom the push of their own country overrides the risks.

(Don't get me wrong -- I'm not condoning it -- US immigration is really wanting. I'm just remarking on its 2nd order effects).

If you grew up with European norms, it might feel like exploitation. But for others seeking opportunity or fleeing poverty, it's a good trade off.

I've been studying the history of early emigration lately. Seems to me that outside of those who didn't have the means to leave, the Brits who were more upper class stayed home because they were happy enough with the status quo. It's the more blue collar Brits who had less to lose that went over to the new world. And America was built by the latter group.

(Canada OTOH was initially populated by the Brits who went over to the new world, but were happy with the status quo of being Brits i.e. the United Empire Loyalists. That's why Canadians today are just a little more risk-averse than Americans. Source: I'm Canadian).

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#789

Post by hackandthink »

mike_hearn wrote: post #759
throwaway48476 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They spent the wealth of empire fighting a war and achieved what exactly? They would have been better off losing. Crazy when you think about it.

Just so everyone is clear, the Nazi plan for what to do with an occupied Britain was to enslave large parts of population, to completely erase Britain as a country, and they also considered mass deportations of the native population. "Better off losing" is not really supportable under any reading of the historical evidence.

Hitler admired the British Empire.

https://www.quora.com/What-was-Hitlers-opinion-of-the-Britis...

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#790

Post by wenc »

akomtu wrote: post #185
wenc wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, other countries (former British colonies) have more access to US "specialty occupation" working visas than the UK does -- none of these are H1-B. Canadians and Mexicans have TN, Australians have E3, Singapore and Chile have H-1B1 (a subcategory of H1-B but with its own quotas). https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary... Most foreign engineers in the US (outside of H-1Bs) are actually…

It's not surprising in the light what the US celebrates on the 4th of July.

I have to correct myself slightly -- the Brit engineers I do meet in the US often come here on an L1A/L1B intra-company transfer from a British subsidiary. So that's one path.

But yes, the visa path for UK citizen to accept a direct job offer is much more limited.

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