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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

#811

Post by Symbiote »

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.

The startup founder in the UK needn't worry about a bad cycling accident (happened to a friend in his thirties), an early cancer (colleague in her thirties) or losing their job just before a baby is born (friend in his thirties).

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#812

Post by throwaway2037 »

nine_k wrote: post #169
raverbashing wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Production of software is nearly 100% R&D. Making a million copies of a software product has a trivial cost. > Production of hardware is some R&D, and then actual manufacturing Totally. And if you think deployment errors are bad, wait until you see how many production errors exist and how many items out of your line come out working and within spec

Indeed. You cannot release a patch for a mechanical part or a PCB.

    > You cannot release a patch for a mechanical part
In NATO, this is frequent and normal. Many, many "recalls" are issued by military manfacturers, then local support staff spend X hours to replace the defective part. It is not so different from automobile recalls.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#813

Post by _t9ow »

mapt wrote: post #38
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, yeah, the meme copy-paste problem diagnosis, but what’s the solution? Rebuild into socialism? Rebuild into communism? Reset into early stage capitalism (lack of regulation and all)? How do you know that those systems won’t also have their own late stage failure? Case in point, the NHS right now. (Edit, posting too fast: To the person below who suggested 90% tax rates; the US never had those rates. On paper they…

The NHS is not dying an entirely natural death. Murder most foul. Your question is coupling a matter of our policy preference, our tactical planning to arrive at that preference, and a hypothetical predictive model. If like some supervillain I had come up with a satisfactory answer to all those questions I would have enacted it twenty minutes ago.

> The NHS is not dying an entirely natural death. Murder most foul.

I'm ignorant on this topic; do you mind elaborating?

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#814

Post by rjsw »

flir wrote: post #779
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…

When I was a kid (80s) I knew old boys with lathes and mills and pillar drills at the bottom of the garden. They were the last generation, I think, of a tradition rooted in the Victorian era which informally transferred a lot of knowledge from one generation to the next. My pet theory is that their disappearance is tied closely to the cost of land. I see US-based hardware hobbyists' shops on YouTube, and I think "I c…

My grandfather got a lathe and pillar drill as his retirement gift from work, he also taught me how to etch PCBs and build radios.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#815

Post by analog31 »

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…

Where I've worked in hardware dev, the biggest bottleneck is software.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#816

Post by dzhiurgis »

dukeyukey wrote: post #497
dzhiurgis wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What makes you think QoL in London is bad? I grew up in a rural farming town and much prefer London. Housing is expensive but that's about it.

Living there for 5 years. Unless you are in finance and live in city, it’s a shitshow.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#817

Post by mywittyname »

foobarian wrote: post #725
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…

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.

Nvidia outsourced their manufacturing, as did a lot of similar startups from the 90s. Even back then, VCs didn't want to invest in hardware companies that were going to actually build their own hardware because that's expensive, they wanted companies that designed their products in the USA and had them manufactured by other fabs.

Nvidia got lucky by building a product that just happened to be amazingly well suited to a technology that would emerge 20 years after they were founded. Credit where it's due, they developed CUDA and gave universities gobs of cash/hardware to train students to leverage CUDA for machine learning and later, AI. But if not for AI, Nvidia would still be a video card designer with a market cap of maybe 5% of its current valuation.

It's difficult to call them a hardware company in the sense that Intel is. They only do designs of hardware, and a lot of their value comes from the software they designed to leverage their hardware in ways beyond their initial purpose.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#818

Post by tormeh »

shawabawa3 wrote: post #722
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…

> 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

We'll see. Taking away local control over land development is going to be controversial. A lot of rich and politically connected people are not going to like this. The last three decades in the west has been an endless series of victories for landowners. It's hard to imagine that this time really is different.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#819

Post by rjsw »

ImHereToVote wrote: post #785
pjc50 wrote: post #745

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We should have shot a few bankers in 2008 to encourage the others.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#820

Post by Symbiote »

GasVeteran wrote: post #433
dzhiurgis wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Depends what you mean by "Quality of Life". I literally won't go to see friends because that would mean travelling to London. I hate the place. It is expensive, hostile, dirty and everyone is rude. I live on the outskirts of the peak district. I can walk/cycle less than 30 minutes out of town and be walking along the old canals, through old villages and get amazing views of the countryside.

People in London probably live nearer to a canal or river, on average, than you do. They're all maintained nicely for walking.

30-60 minutes would take many Londoners to the countryside, the South Downs, Chilterns, etc.

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