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Tech Giants Take Their Talent Hunt to Cambridge, UK

nytimes.com

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Re: Tech Giants Take Their Talent Hunt to Cambridge, UK

#131

Post by foldr »

zimablue wrote: post #124
zimablue wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the multiple nuclear states in Europe and its standing army which would give the US itself a hell of a fight are otherwise easy prey for ... aliens?

Russia's nuclear capacity? How is that relevant? The UK alone has 215 nukes (just checked wiki), so yeah maybe Russia could kill all of us and we'd only kill 90% of them but past a certain threshold additional nuclear weapons are irrelevant. My last post as HN is supposed to be better than this kind of nationalistic -swinging but I think the idea that Europe is reliant on US for protection is pretty absurd. Multiple…

That's supposing that the weapons work as advertised. The UK is entirely reliant on Trident for its nuclear deterrent, and it is reliant on support from the USA to maintain Trident. If Trident turns out not to work very well (which is entirely possible), or if relations with the USA sour, or if ballistic missile submarines turn out to be easier to detect and/or more vulnerable than expected, then the UK could very well not have an effective nuclear deterrent.

>you can't just assume that all of our nukes are faulty (and nor would anyone else)

No, but you also can't assume that we have enough nuclear capability to successfully respond to Russian first strike. No-one really knows how well the relevant systems will work. France is the only other EU country with any significant nuclear capability.

Re: Tech Giants Take Their Talent Hunt to Cambridge, UK

#132

Post by sgt101 »

Balero wrote: post #41
foldr wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the unexpected things that get you, though. I had to have a few emergency room visits for rabies shots, and ended up paying about $1500. I don't really know how to measure how "good" my insurance was, but I was working at a university in MA, so I expect the policy was at least decent. (The rabies vaccine is very expensive. The theoretical cost of the treatment, which the insurance company theoretically paid, was…

Funnily in the UK with the NHS it's again the unexpected things. In this case it's paying for parking, it adds up quick, especially if your'e visiting someone who's in hospital for a while.

My hospital sold me a week long pass for £10 when my dad was ill

Re: Tech Giants Take Their Talent Hunt to Cambridge, UK

#133

Post by swebs »

meheleventyone wrote: post #25
adventured wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not STEM supply pushing down the salaries. Japan has fewer per capita stem graduates than the US, with a highly developed technical economy, and dramatically lower engineer salaries than the US (with a GDP per capita roughly the same as the UK).

This makes me think the question is better phrased the other way around. Why is SV compensation so high compared with the rest of the world?

Huge tech industry profits, high demand for skilled programmers, limits on foreign workers who tend to drive wages down.

Re: Tech Giants Take Their Talent Hunt to Cambridge, UK

#134

Post by swebs »

ensiferum wrote: post #74

“How do we stop the A.I. brain drain to the U.S. — or to the U.S. companies anyway?” Uh.. create an alternative work place with comparable benefits and compensation?

No, no, how do we stop brain drain to US companies while still paying less than half of what those companies pay?

Re: Tech Giants Take Their Talent Hunt to Cambridge, UK

#135

Post by notahacker »

kdelok wrote: post #100
angarg12 wrote: post #11

> As the tech workers land the big salaries, home prices are skyrocketing, and the locals are being squeezed out. Joke is on them, I'm a new tech immigrant to Cambridge and I still can't buy a house here.

Agreed - I think the key to owning a house in Cambridge is to already own a house in Cambridge. That and work in the City or buy-to-let. On the other hand, buying in conjunction with the local housing associations is more feasible, so it's not all doom and gloom.

There are also several towns and villages commutable into Cambridge with housing which is very affordable by South East UK standards, and certainly for anyone working in tech, even if that means braving horrible traffic on the commute in.

Re: Tech Giants Take Their Talent Hunt to Cambridge, UK

#136

Post by dood »

petercooper wrote: post #16
Balero wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK has a higher cost of living, with London pretty much equal to NY or SF and other high cost cities. The other equivalents are cheaper in the US.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ That's not my experience of both places, and I've not found any data that supports London being as expensive as SF including https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou... - I've found it much easier to live in London on a budget than SF where you'd throw your personal safety and comfort into jeopardy by cutting too many corners.

Those numbers look quite wrong, I don't think they're comparing like-for-like.

For consumer goods it seems they're comparing a cheap UK supermarket to Whole Foods in SF, and for rents they must be ignoring square footage and/or using different definitions of city center to get those comparisons. I checked out rental prices in SF on a recent visit and found SF pretty good value compared to London.

Re: Tech Giants Take Their Talent Hunt to Cambridge, UK

#137

Post by arethuza »

pjc50 wrote: post #120
angarg12 wrote: post #11

> As the tech workers land the big salaries, home prices are skyrocketing, and the locals are being squeezed out. Joke is on them, I'm a new tech immigrant to Cambridge and I still can't buy a house here.

I moved to Edinburgh for this, which has worked well for me; although there's not a huge depth of job market especially in smaller companies. And the thing squeezing out locals in the city centre is .. AirBnB.

We sold a large flat in the New Town about a year and a half a go and a lot of the people who viewed were "investment" buyers - I must admit I didn't give any thought to what they would actually do with the property once they had bought it.

We sold to a family with young kids who wanted to live there - which I preferred.

Re: Tech Giants Take Their Talent Hunt to Cambridge, UK

#138

Post by Anderkent »

cup-of-tea wrote: post #55
detritus wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

General life experience? I don't doubt that the parent wasn't being absolutely comprehensive in the scope of their answer, but surely you appreciate that direct communication in person is.. well, at the very least 'efficient'? I can't believe you're actually wanting a source for this, lol

> but surely you appreciate that direct communication in person is.. well, at the very least 'efficient'? No, I don't. I believe written communication is far more efficient. Cavemen talk. Writing is the greatest technology we've ever invented. Forget all your latest devops crazes, you can't do anything useful without writing.

Writing is great for one-way communication. If you actually mean to collaborate, if you don't know what you don't know and what to ask the other person, in-person communication is way more efficient.

And it turns out if you're solving nontrivial problems as a software team, you're talking is more of the collaborative kind than the one-way-information-distributing kind.

Re: Tech Giants Take Their Talent Hunt to Cambridge, UK

#139

Post by blibble »

gabbo wrote: post #110
IshKebab wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also we get 2-3x more holiday, and sick days don't come from your holiday allowance. And the hours are shorter. I work 40 hours a week for very good pay (for the UK). Previous job was 37.5 hours. I bet Google's hours are much longer.

I know a lot of Google US employees who work 40 hour weeks (plenty who work more but usually by choice), their sick days don’t come out of their vacation allowance at all, and after 4 years of working there they get 5 weeks of vacation per year on top of 12 days of paid holidays. Even Amazon employees do pretty well, getting 2 weeks paid time off + 1 week of "personal days" (de facto vacation days) in year 1, then th…

in the UK every single employee gets at a minimum 5.6 weeks paid holiday

if you work 5 days/week ("full time") that's 5.6*5 == 28 days paid holiday, guaranteed by law

this includes people stacking shevles in supermarkets, not just people with market power working for Google and Amazon

Re: Tech Giants Take Their Talent Hunt to Cambridge, UK

#140

Post by arethuza »

foldr wrote: post #121
zimablue wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the multiple nuclear states in Europe and its standing army which would give the US itself a hell of a fight are otherwise easy prey for ... aliens?

Russia's strategic nuclear capability dwarfs that of any country in the EU. The Russian armed forces aren't what they used to be, but without the backing of the US, Russia's conventional military threat to the EU is also serious.

They have a lot of nukes because nukes are cheap and Russia's economy is pretty small - a good bit less than Italy and less than half of the UK.

They probably do pose a realistic threat to the Baltic states - but that's because they are very small and isolated.

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