I never thought someone would use something associated with "Fail early, fail often" in the same sentence with nuclear reactors.
Think Hiring a Ruby Developer is Hard? Try Staffing a Nuclear Reactor Startup
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Re: Think Hiring a Ruby Developer is Hard? Try Staffing a Nuclear Reactor Startup
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think what the GP tried to say is that France is not the easiest environment to launch a startup. Labor laws, taxes etc. make it one of the less desirable places in Europe to start a company.
If dealing with administrative stuff is too difficult for the entrepreneur, they could always try to find comparable talent elsewhere or to convince the established, proven talent to move where it's convenient for the entrepreneur.
If dealing with government bureaucracy is not your thing, a nuclear startup probably isn't.
Re: Think Hiring a Ruby Developer is Hard? Try Staffing a Nuclear Reactor Startup
#73I'm close with someone who was offered a position at a nuclear startup NuScale, that aims to manufacture cookie-cutter, modular nuclear reactors, where you scale the power plant by adding more reactors over time as your needs change, and ship the old spent ones off. As I understand it, part of the problem in hiring is that for a nuclear startup you really need experienced engineers as you go into producing working pr…
This is why I don't think nuclear power is the future. Renewable power can afford to be innovative. Nuclear power will never innovate as fast. Even if it's better than wind right now, you can't have people hack on it, or manufacture in the cheapest country (I hope), or have small countries regulate its use in a cost efficient way. Of course, it's great for the countries who already have it up and running, and those c…
Same goes for some renewable power sources like hydroelectric plants. Bursting dams are more dangerous than meltdowns and have killed way more than nuclear disasters.
Some of the more famous hydroelectric accidents:
* 1959, about 2000 deaths: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaiont_Dam
* 2009, 75 deaths: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Sayano%E2%80%93Shushenska...
* 1975, about 171,000 deaths (of those 26,000 immediate): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam
Re: Think Hiring a Ruby Developer is Hard? Try Staffing a Nuclear Reactor Startup
#74Don't perpetuate the myth that ruby developers are difficult to find.
Have you tried to hire one in the Boston area lately? Our second Senior rails dev position has has been open for about 5 months.
Re: Think Hiring a Ruby Developer is Hard? Try Staffing a Nuclear Reactor Startup
#75I'm a bit scared that there might be "rockstar" nuclear engineers out there.
I might be wrong, but I was under the impression that engineering, with the exception of software engineering, was still very much a "suit and tie" field.
Wearing a tie is often expressly forbidden in a lot of environments.
Re: Think Hiring a Ruby Developer is Hard? Try Staffing a Nuclear Reactor Startup
#76These two have admirable goals but I don't think I'm alone in finding it hard to justify the terms 'nuclear reactor' and 'startup' in the same sentence together. It's incredibly judgemental I know, but I have a hard time taking those two young PhD students on a stage talking about nuclear power seriously... and I'm a young person myself. It just makes me think, will anyone take such a business seriously if they brand themselves as a tech startup? IMHO they would do better to actively steer themselves away from being seen in this light.
Re: Think Hiring a Ruby Developer is Hard? Try Staffing a Nuclear Reactor Startup
#77Just cross the Atlantic, open a subsidiary in France. You will find there a lot of extremely qualified engineers for everything nuclear related.
But then you have to operate in France, which by all accounts (from my European colleagues) may not be worth the cost :)
I am French, working in Germany having founded a Limited in UK and I spent some years working in Denmark. If you factor everything in, the cost difference between the US and EU is negligible.
In the nuclear field, like in any highly skilled engineering field, the costs will come first from the salary of your employees. In fact, it will be cheaper in Europe, because in Europe, highly skilled engineers tend to work for less money because they have 6 weeks holidays (which you can take), 3 month sick days, very good health insurance and a 40h week. When you start to build stuff, the BOM is the same in the US or in Europe.
This is from my experience in the oil & gas and pharmaceutical industries (my field as process & chemical engineer).
Re: Think Hiring a Ruby Developer is Hard? Try Staffing a Nuclear Reactor Startup
#78I'm close with someone who was offered a position at a nuclear startup NuScale, that aims to manufacture cookie-cutter, modular nuclear reactors, where you scale the power plant by adding more reactors over time as your needs change, and ship the old spent ones off. As I understand it, part of the problem in hiring is that for a nuclear startup you really need experienced engineers as you go into producing working pr…
This is why I don't think nuclear power is the future. Renewable power can afford to be innovative. Nuclear power will never innovate as fast. Even if it's better than wind right now, you can't have people hack on it, or manufacture in the cheapest country (I hope), or have small countries regulate its use in a cost efficient way. Of course, it's great for the countries who already have it up and running, and those c…
Besides the point brought up by jeltz about what "renewable" includes, I fail to see how the speed of innovation, or the fact that people can "hack it", will determine which energy source is "the future".
Argentina, a developing country with a history of social turmoil and a relatively high level of goverment corruption, has been using nuclear power efficently since the '70s.
Probably "the future" will need mixed energy generation. It won't be only nuclear nor only renewable.
Re: Think Hiring a Ruby Developer is Hard? Try Staffing a Nuclear Reactor Startup
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is why I don't think nuclear power is the future. Renewable power can afford to be innovative. Nuclear power will never innovate as fast. Even if it's better than wind right now, you can't have people hack on it, or manufacture in the cheapest country (I hope), or have small countries regulate its use in a cost efficient way. Of course, it's great for the countries who already have it up and running, and those c…
Besides the point brought up by jeltz about what "renewable" includes, I fail to see how the speed of innovation, or the fact that people can "hack it", will determine which energy source is "the future". Argentina, a developing country with a history of social turmoil and a relatively high level of goverment corruption, has been using nuclear power efficently since the '70s. Probably "the future" will need mixed ene…
Given the life expectancy of reactors, we'll probably not live to see the last nuclear reactors decommissioned (unless we end up as cyborgs). We'll probably need more of it in the next 20 years (what's the alternative? gas is running out, coal is just dirty, and renewables have issues).
But I see renewable power getting a lot cheaper than nuclear. It's easier to cut costs. It's easier to experiment with new stuff. More automation will bring the costs down, while nuclear tends to be one-off projects (note, modular nuclear might level the playing field a bit, but you can bet that they won't be laser-focused on bringing the price right down).
Energy is all about costs. Nuclear power is unlikely to drop in cost as much as solar and wind.
Re: Think Hiring a Ruby Developer is Hard? Try Staffing a Nuclear Reactor Startup
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
If dealing with administrative stuff is too difficult for the entrepreneur, they could always try to find comparable talent elsewhere or to convince the established, proven talent to move where it's convenient for the entrepreneur.
If dealing with government bureaucracy is not your thing, a nuclear startup probably isn't.
That node.js or iOS app startup is looking better all the time...