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UK's hardware talent is being wasted

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Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#221

Post by CalRobert »

incog_nit0 wrote: post #143

It's not just in the hardware sector, it's across the board. My (American) wife moved to London years ago and was a manager in a prestigious London museum overseeing 60 people. She has over 20 years experience in some of our top museums and her salary in 2023 was a paltry £30k. We just moved to the US and within a couple of months she has a job in museums here but now paying 2.3x the salary (converted back to £) and…

Museum jobs are hideously badly paid. In many cases the real work is done for free by "volunteers" (really poor saps on a 2-5 year job interview) before finding out the actual job went to a buddy of the museum director who doesn't even need to show up most of the time.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#222

Post by gazchop »

marbro wrote: post #27

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

Hardware engineer here, from a qualification perspective. I worked for a large American defence company and was invited to work in the US. I declined.

The work culture, social and economic stability are terrible. Education is expensive or poor. Regulation and standards are poor. Not a good place to bring up a family.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#223

Post by vixen99 »

edm0nd wrote: post #173
bell-cot wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unfortunately the UK has not been... 20 years, or 112 years? Consider just how far the UK's place in the world fell between 1911 (George V ascended to the throne of the global superpower; his Royal Navy was launching 2 to 4 new capital ships per year ) and 1948 (3 years after "winning" WWII - and basics such as food, clothing, and gasoline were still strictly rationed).

Exactly this. Great Britain colonized huge parts of the globe and had an empire. They were kings of trade and the world. Now they are just a surveillance nanny state and hollow shell of their former self.

I regularly see opinion pieces in the British Press advising young Brits to get out. In 2022 one writer wrote 'Britain is fed up, bitter, and practically broke – and it’s all going to get worse' and indeed it still is and getting worse. One basic problem: an unsustainable welfare and health system and overwrought bureaucracy. Today I learn that one major bank is considering leaving the UK in view of excessive 'red tape'.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#224

Post by CalRobert »

BuyMyBitcoins wrote: post #134
bsnnkv wrote: post #115

I left the UK for the USA in 2020. It was only last week that another HN commenter finally opened my eyes to the fact that since I have left the UK, I have become someone with the ability to take things from 0 to 1.[1] I do not believe I could have achieved what I have in the last half-decade if I had stayed in the UK. There is something deeply rooted in the UK's contemporary culture (which I cannot yet fully explain…

Anecdotally, the British people I have interacted with in a business setting seem to have a dearth of ambition. These people weren’t depressed, but I sensed a kind of defeatist cynicism. As an American I realize our culture encourages taking risks and we are remarkably forgiving of failure. In fact, we seem to congratulate people for the fact that they tried in addition to overlooking the failure. I’m not sure if thi…

American parents: "You can do anything you set your mind to! Anyone can be president! If you fail, pick yourself back up and try again! Your cousin with the big house started out washing cars and built an amazing success from nothing!"

British (and Irish) parents: "The whole system is rigged so don't even try, the guy in the big house up the road got it through shady government contracts, my uncle can get you a job at the council so you'll never, ever get fired, the only reason to ever save money is for retirement or a house, your cousin who tried to start a company thinks he's better than us...."

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#225

Post by leoedin »

atbpaca wrote: post #9

Similar in France / Paris where some American players can easily pay 100K+ euros for SWE. Rest of France salaries are half or even less.

Contracting rates in Paris seem to be much higher - €700-€1000 a day seems common from what I’ve seen.

I suspect a big part of it is labour laws. The UK is similar. Companies don’t want to take on the legal commitment of a high salary person, so they take on contractors instead.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#226

Post by cyberax »

corimaith wrote: post #46
rwmj wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cracking down on monopolies and rentierism would be a good start. Followed by tying pension rises to worker's salaries. None of that is actually going to happen because of who votes combined with a government that's scared of its own shadow.

Well everytime somebody wants to build high density housing or really anything to alleviate the housing crisis we get the usual NIMBY screaming similar to OP about evil corporations coming to destroy the character of their local neighborhood.

If we're talking about the UK, then London is already as dense as it can reasonably be. It went all-in on public transit almost 200 years ago.

And of course, it made it all worse. Now you HAVE to work in London if you want a high salary.

The only real way to fix the housing is to promote remote work and decentralized companies.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#227

Post by Earw0rm »

CalRobert wrote: post #216
Earw0rm wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

BUUUT MuHHH PAAARRRKiiiiNNNGGGG!! (And house values). And we can't _possibly_ make the town look different than it did in 1972 because "heritage". We're talking about a bunch of crusty old church biddies who will literally force you to put the most godawful, hideous house covering in the history of man BACK on your house because they're terrified of being reminded it's not the 70's. (Sorry for the mail link) https://…

Accurate.

In fact, the only post 1972 thing you ARE allowed to do is pave over your front garden and park two Jeep Cherokees (neither of which actually fit in the available space) on it.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#228

Post by coastermug »

refrigerator wrote: post #19

This is spot on. All the smart and ambitious people I know who studied (non-software) Engineering at university in the UK have ended up going into software engineering via self-teaching or finance/consulting because the only hardware engineering career paths seem to be working for Rolls Royce in the middle of nowhere with terrible pay, or alternatively working at Jaguar Land Rover in the middle of nowhere with terrib…

I am a former Mech Eng who trod this path. Started at JLR, moved by self teaching into software. Engineering in the UK felt like it moved at a glacial pace that only made sense in the days of final salary pension schemes. Senior management really struggled to get their heads around why young people were so impatient, but we were not competing for the same rewards.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#229

Post by Guthur »

r_thambapillai wrote: post #51

As a Brit, when I was raising the seed round for my startup, UK and European VCs would consistently try to haggle you down on price while the American VC's were exclusively focussed on trying to figure out whether this could be a billion dollar business or not (in the end we raised a $5m seed led by Spark, and have done extremely well and raised more since). The UK lost Deep Mind - which could have been OpenAI!! -- t…

Circa 80% of world trade is done in USD, and the US literally creates it out of thin air, and it will all bleed into the economy somehow, someway.

Without sovereign protection you just can not compete with that, ever. It's really that simple.

Simply look at China they may export loads of goods but it's predominantly priced in USD, and what do they do with all that excise USD, the only thing they can do, buy US debt. It's truly perverse.

Or look at every UK company that was bought up with those very same magic dollars.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#230

Post by gazchop »

r_thambapillai wrote: post #51

As a Brit, when I was raising the seed round for my startup, UK and European VCs would consistently try to haggle you down on price while the American VC's were exclusively focussed on trying to figure out whether this could be a billion dollar business or not (in the end we raised a $5m seed led by Spark, and have done extremely well and raised more since). The UK lost Deep Mind - which could have been OpenAI!! -- t…

Quite frankly, it's cultural and the thing I hear a lot is simply: fuck that for a job!

I could quite happily get on fine at one of those big American style startups but I don't get excited about hype, I don't have the work culture it demands and I don't have a price on my soul. I'd rather earn a lot less, have extreme stability, have better family time and balance. On top of that there's something tasteless and unethical about a lot of the big startups. Do they really bring good things to society? Do I really want to be part of that?

If I can walk away with half the money, live a modest life and stand with my principles intact, I will take that over twice the money.

I don't think this is political at all. It's not a race either and we have no innate responsibility to build things like this.

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