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UK's hardware talent is being wasted

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Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#731

Post by mattnewton »

pydry wrote: post #496
mattnewton wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have noticed this anecdotally as well in costal areas of the United States. It’s like textbook Baumol’s cost disease[0], except housing is rising fastest while the cost of labor nearly not at all, because buyers (hiring firms) just don’t buy [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect

I always found it interesting that a lot of economists thought that a rising tide lifting all boats could be characterized as a "disease".

The Baumol effect is paying more for the same productivity, which can feel like a disease when you have to pay more and more for the same in some area for services relative to goods to the point where you end up pathologically preferring goods over services.

The JFK-popularized term defending a special interest project trickling down benefits to a wider community isn’t really what it feels like to someone in a coastal US city and who is trying to hire an electrician or baby sitter and finding they are priced out of the market.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#732

Post by kitd »

esskay wrote: post #617
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…

Hey now you could also go and work for Airbus...but it does mean having to go to Stevenage, as well as getting terrible pay.

Double whammy lol

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#733

Post by rbanffy »

While it's a shame so few hardware engineers have the opportunity to build hardware, I wouldn't say they are being wasted. I am a hardware engineer. I invented a couple hardware devices, but I transitioned to software very early in my career and I don't regret that. I don't feel my talents or education has been wasted - my understanding of how a computer works down to the transistors (planar CMOS, I'm from the 80's) is handy when I have to predict how software will behave (and how it'll ultimately break).

Engineers are, ultimately, problem solvers. Some problems are hardware - electronics, mechanical, electrical, production, and so on, but the space of problems we've been trained to solve is a lot bigger than that - If you can see feedback loops, you have a future in commodities, banking and finance. And, as we recently learned the hard way, in politics as well. We are all trained to identify sub-optimal solutions and to have an almost irresistible itch to solve them.

One quote I love is that "scientists see the world as it is, while engineers see the world as it could be".

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#734

Post by rbanffy »

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…

> That’s not the kind of thing young, unproven founders can pull off, anywhere.

The UK, with a comprehensive social safety net, should be more willing to take small risks. I know it's now what happens, but it'd be important to understand why something that should be actually isn't.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#735

Post by wakawaka28 »

bluGill wrote: post #662
wakawaka28 wrote: post #653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The nominal value of highly automated processes has never been higher. Meanwhile, ordinary people are not able to find as many good jobs as they once did. Wages in almost every industry are stagnant at best, at least when adjusted for inflation. >A claim that manufacturing should employ more, in the face of increased productivity, That’s a claim that manufacturing should replace other endeavours in the economy which,…

Engineers are not ordinary jobs though and so the plite of the 'common man' is irrelavent.

You can't have so many engineer jobs unless you have manufacturing, and if you did have manufacturing then there would be "common man" manufacturing jobs too. It's all connected. Every job market that is really critical for national security is depressed by this outsourcing and importation of cheaper goods and labor.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#736

Post by ImHereToVote »

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…

This is the true cost of the bank bailouts. This is the moral hazard incarnate.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#737

Post by varispeed »

rbanffy wrote: post #734
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…

> That’s not the kind of thing young, unproven founders can pull off, anywhere. The UK, with a comprehensive social safety net, should be more willing to take small risks. I know it's now what happens, but it'd be important to understand why something that should be actually isn't.

What safety net? UK does not have a safety net.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#738

Post by eru »

chii wrote: post #293
porker wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Profit goes out of the country, reducing investment and rich UK people to invest in new UK companies. It's the same problem with many of our companies being sold to foreign investors: profits are taken outside the country (as we did to other countries in the 19th century and earlier) so our labour enriches other countries while our country gets poorer.

> labour enriches other countries while our country gets poorer. in reality, the UK isn't poorer than before. It is about the same - no growth. It is only poorer when compared to the US's growth. One's labour, when being paid market rates, does not make one's country poorer. And those profits from said labour was paid for by the acquitition of the capital - money was invested. So in essense, the "poorness" that the U…

> [...] but the UK gov't lack of industrial policy and investment.

That's a weird conclusion to draw.

Governments aren't generally known for their ability to pick winners ahead of time. How about instead of trying industrial policy (again), the UK could try to remove roadblocks that keep them from having successful companies?

They could also try to leave more money in the hands of taxpayers, so they can invest.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#739

Post by ImHereToVote »

mertnesvat wrote: post #708

> Sarah: Built a fusion reactor at 16. Now? Debugging fintech payment systems. It's striking to imagine a fully functional fusion reactor that could benefit humanity, yet its creator now focuses on fintech payment systems. This highlights the importance of a strong middle class, which seems to be declining globally. A thriving middle class, with disposable income and free time, creates the conditions for innovation.…

What you are saying is essentially true. I just don't want people to come away with the notion that building a fusion reactor and yielding net energy from said reactor is equivalent. They are very very very far away from each other in terms of complexity.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#740

Post by rbanffy »

llm_trw wrote: post #635
Beretta_Vexee wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being an engineer means mastering your production tool. For everything to do with physical production, you need to be close to the means of production to gather essential information on quality, capacity, operator feedback (machine and quality operators are invaluable sources of information.), etc. Most information is not digital or hardly digitizable. I don't completely agree with the article's classification of ARM…

I'd go one further and say you have to be at least a journeyman in whatever tools your process is using. The difference between someone designing a part in cad and someone designing the tool paths for the machine that makes the part in cam is night and day.

> The difference between someone designing a part in cad and someone designing the tool paths for the machine that makes the part in cam is night and day.

I remember, in a CNC programming class, the instructor calling out one of the students on a lathe program: "One millimeter increments?! What material do you think you are using? Styrofoam?!".

That class is where I feel in love with the ASR-33 teletype and its cadenced hum. It was punching the tapes we feed into the CNC machines. I wish I could have bought that machine when it was retired not too long after my class.

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