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UK's hardware talent is being wasted

josef.cn

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Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#841

Post by constantcrying »

hintymad wrote: post #679
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…

UK ignited the First Industrial Revolution. It's sad to see that UK has slipped to number 16 or lower when it came to the market share of global manufacturing. And the problem is not to just UK, but to pretty much all the developed countries. Many nations and people have benefited greatly from globalization, but I have to ask: is it worth it if the cost is forfeiting my own country's manufacturing know-how and supply…

>but in the meantime, but manufacturing can still bring great income to many families

How so? If you aren't willing to buy from China many products will become unavailable and the rest will go up 10x in price.

Disentangling yourself from the global economic system is hard and painful, especially if you have just disentangled yourself from one super block.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#842

Post by brewdad »

Symbiote wrote: post #810
nradov wrote: post #743

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Realistically in order to prosper the UK needs to join up as part of a "greater NAFTA" trade bloc. But the UK no longer has anything that the USA needs so they'll have to make major concessions to get a deal done.

The UK left the largest free trade area a few years ago. There's little appetite to join the American one, as it would mean lowering standards (food etc) which ruins Britain's specialties.

I realize it's an outdated stereotype but man it says nothing good about America when the UK won't join up because it would compromise the quality of available foods.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#843

Post by immibis »

tormeh wrote: post #818
shawabawa3 wrote: post #722

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but politically suicidal for any government that tried to implement it Labour just got into government and literally the third bullet point in their manifesto is: * Reform our planning rules to build the railways, roads, labs and 1.5 million homes we need and develop a new 10-year infrastructure strategy. So i would hope it's not political suicide to follow through on that

We'll see. Taking away local control over land development is going to be controversial. A lot of rich and politically connected people are not going to like this. The last three decades in the west has been an endless series of victories for landowners. It's hard to imagine that this time really is different.

New Zealand took away local control over land development, and then promptly elected a right-wing central government that hates land development. :/

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#844

Post by immibis »

rjsw wrote: post #819
ImHereToVote wrote: post #785

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn't what I mean. The moral hazard is caused by the bailouts. It isn't about the sum itself. Merely the guarantee that the tab for large gambling losses will be taken by the taxpayers.

We should have shot a few bankers in 2008 to encourage the others.

How about one in 2024?

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#845

Post by ericmay »

chronic7300690 wrote: post #792
soVeryTired wrote: post #769

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or… Bob makes bread, Alice grows flowers. Alice needs bread; Bob likes flowers but can go without if he wants to. Who’s going to come off worse if they have an argument?

> Who’s going to come off worse if they have an argument? The US. But 4 year election cycles and quarterly earning reports are incompatible with long-term planning.

On the other hand, long-term planning is susceptible to disruption and unforeseen events, and when we have long-term government plans they have a way of taking on a life of their own and defending themselves even if they have outlived their usefulness.

Everything has trade-offs.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#846

Post by twic »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #816
dukeyukey wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think QoL in London is bad? I grew up in a rural farming town and much prefer London. Housing is expensive but that's about it.

Living there for 5 years. Unless you are in finance and live in city, it’s a shitshow.

I lived there as a graduate student and then as a non-finance software engineer for about fifteen years. I liked it, as did dozens of my friends. It's absolute fantasy to call it a shitshow.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#847

Post by jillyboel »

analog31 wrote: post #815
zipy124 wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The largest problem I see is shipping times. If I need to download a new software "part" (library or other), the shipping time is the download time, nearly instant. If I need new hardware pieces, its either next day shipping, a few days by air-freight or three weeks on a boat from china. This limits prototype turnover time, and means iterating quick is much harder. Finally you have the problem that hardware is expens…

Where I've worked in hardware dev, the biggest bottleneck is software.

It's because hardware developers don't take the software side seriously and either assume they can just do it themselves or don't think it's worth a decent salary

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#848

Post by glompers »

pjc50 wrote: post #686
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…

I used to live and work in Cambridge. In many ways it's a victim of its own success; people will, not unreasonably, argue that it's a beautiful little town of historic buildings, embedded in a primarily agricultural county of either prime agricultural land or protected wetland. They're not going to let you build Shenzen in Shelford no matter what the economic benefit might be. Meanwhile it's close enough to London th…

The wiki editor(s) who wrote the boosterish Economy subsection of the wiki page on Peterborough [1] (thirty miles away, same county) make it sound as though it is a growing area that does want to grow more.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterborough

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#850

Post by brewdad »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #755
foobarian wrote: post #725

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it be fair to say that the "unicorn" effect is a lot harder to achieve as well? If VC rely on 1 out of N startups doing well then that 1 success needs to achieve over N-fold returns just to break even. On the other hand I have no trouble coming up with examples of hardware companies that did well: Apple, Nvidia, Intel... but those time scales are titanic.

It's funny that you didn't mention Dell, Lenovo, Sony, or even Microsoft and Nintendo which both make their money off the software than the hardware, but are also companies that produce and selling hardware.

Those companies don't produce hardware. They assemble it. Big difference.
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