The last days of Silicon Roundabout
newstatesman.com
The last days of Silicon Roundabout
1–10 of 152 posts
Re: The last days of Silicon Roundabout
#2Is this article down playing the effects of Brexit a little? I used to work in Silicon Roundabout and now I live in Paris, I know plenty of developers who've moved out of the UK because of Brexit, but none who have moved to the UK since Brexit was finalised. It must be getting harder and harder for London based startups to find a dev team
Re: The last days of Silicon Roundabout
#3Not surprised there are nicer bits of London to set up in - not surprised the Googles moved to Kings Cross now its gentrified.
Before it was Silicon Roundabout BT had a couple of big offices that I used to go to occasionally and the area was a real dump back then.
Ironically in 95 or so I was up for a board (promotion) at 207 old street and was extoling all the cool things I was doing with the www and internet - unfortuetly I was interviewed by the old school COBOL guys and did not get one of the 18-20 promotions.
Re: The last days of Silicon Roundabout
#4Boris Johnson did some press event when I was at tech hub (I think he was mayor of London at the time). We told him our app was good. "Right, err, so I must download pingtune, _on_ to my app, got it" buffoon / plucky underdog was just his brand
Re: The last days of Silicon Roundabout
#5Is this article down playing the effects of Brexit a little? I used to work in Silicon Roundabout and now I live in Paris, I know plenty of developers who've moved out of the UK because of Brexit, but none who have moved to the UK since Brexit was finalised. It must be getting harder and harder for London based startups to find a dev team
Maybe fintec startups want to be closer to the city
Re: The last days of Silicon Roundabout
#6Is this article down playing the effects of Brexit a little? I used to work in Silicon Roundabout and now I live in Paris, I know plenty of developers who've moved out of the UK because of Brexit, but none who have moved to the UK since Brexit was finalised. It must be getting harder and harder for London based startups to find a dev team
+1 It is but Brexit also coincided with the pandemic which led to a massive spike in remote working so it's quite hard to tell the extend until the dust settles.
Re: The last days of Silicon Roundabout
#7Is this article down playing the effects of Brexit a little? I used to work in Silicon Roundabout and now I live in Paris, I know plenty of developers who've moved out of the UK because of Brexit, but none who have moved to the UK since Brexit was finalised. It must be getting harder and harder for London based startups to find a dev team
I think the article was quite balanced. If anything the tech scene is better since Brexit but I suspect that's in large part to the pandemic. However, if you worked for one of the faultering European investment banks then perhaps you would disagree.
I personally doubt the government's involvement made any difference to Silicon roundabout whatsoever. It was already well known as our tech hub in those days and the rents were low enough to attract creatives. It was also a matter of time before it became more gentrified and property value 'literally' doubled.
Re: The last days of Silicon Roundabout
#8Is this article down playing the effects of Brexit a little? I used to work in Silicon Roundabout and now I live in Paris, I know plenty of developers who've moved out of the UK because of Brexit, but none who have moved to the UK since Brexit was finalised. It must be getting harder and harder for London based startups to find a dev team
It's not just start ups who are struggling.
Re: The last days of Silicon Roundabout
#9Is this article down playing the effects of Brexit a little? I used to work in Silicon Roundabout and now I live in Paris, I know plenty of developers who've moved out of the UK because of Brexit, but none who have moved to the UK since Brexit was finalised. It must be getting harder and harder for London based startups to find a dev team
I think the article was quite balanced. If anything the tech scene is better since Brexit but I suspect that's in large part to the pandemic. However, if you worked for one of the faultering European investment banks then perhaps you would disagree. I personally doubt the government's involvement made any difference to Silicon roundabout whatsoever. It was already well known as our tech hub in those days and the rent…
I think the tech jobs market in London is still better than in Paris for what I do, so possibly we agree? (I left the UK in spite of that not because of it).
Depends what you mean by tech scene being better, if it's a shortage of tech workers, it's better for tech workers, and it's worse for people looking for tech workers - which eventually affects the decisions about where to base a team. But like another commenter said, remote work changes these calculations.
To make it even more difficult to parse, we also had IR35 reform in the same period!
Edit:clarity
Re: The last days of Silicon Roundabout
#10Not surprised there are nicer bits of London to set up in - not surprised the Googles moved to Kings Cross now its gentrified. Before it was Silicon Roundabout BT had a couple of big offices that I used to go to occasionally and the area was a real dump back then. Ironically in 95 or so I was up for a board (promotion) at 207 old street and was extoling all the cool things I was doing with the www and internet - unfo…
> not surprised the Googles moved to Kings Cross now its gentrified.
I really dont understand why people want to work there. Its a really expensive shithole still. Granted there are now lots of new offices full of tech workers, but thats not a selling point.
Facebook and google moved out of soho for kings bloody cross.
I suspect the real reason is that its the only site left big enough to put multi-thousand person offices in still. (along with the _really_ expensive chain shops that we tech workers apparently need.)
People moved to shoreditch because it was cheap, thats why it looked like a shithole. Now it still looks like a shithole, but lacks every other appealing feature.