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Taking Risk

tomblomfield.com

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Re: Taking Risk

#91

Post by oblio »

Shrezzing wrote: post #72
SeanLuke wrote: post #30

> Along with UCL, these British universities represent 4 of the top 10 universities in the world. ... according to QS Global Surveys. A disreputable organization who won't open their data and whose rankings are based at least 50% on reputation surveys (!!), of which only 2% or so are responded to. Is it worth mentioning that it's based in England? I'm not saying the US should have more institutions. I'm saying that i…

The UK has an age-based advantage in this metric. Oxford & Cambridge are nearly 1,000 years old. Once you take that into account, the stat becomes "of the top 8 universities (ex. Oxbridge), 2 are in the UK and 4 are in the USA". Imperial is very high quality institution, definitely the peer of Berkley/Yale. UCL normally isn't thrown into the top 10 though - it'd usually appear in the top 25.

The oldest university in the world isn't from the UK, so that clearly can't be such a huge factor.

Re: Taking Risk

#92

Post by dukeyukey »

roenxi wrote: post #48
red_admiral wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The UK isn't really known for being an ambitious nation. Industrial revolution? Railways? An empire on which the sun never sets? (Ollivander voice: "evil, yes, but ambitious"). Sure, things have gone downhill since then.

We don't judge nations in the present based on their historical peak. The UK hasn't been capable of building anything like that for more than a century; the hammering the Germans gave them was really exposing weaknesses that were already starting to set in from the 1910s. The UK is no longer known for being an industrial leader. Or indeed for achieving anything in particular except fading away with a certain graceful…

The UK still gets more tech funding than anywhere except the US and China, and more unicorns than anywhere except those two (and potentially India, but sources disagree).

Re: Taking Risk

#93

Post by SeanLuke »

lordnacho wrote: post #61
SeanLuke wrote: post #30

> Along with UCL, these British universities represent 4 of the top 10 universities in the world. ... according to QS Global Surveys. A disreputable organization who won't open their data and whose rankings are based at least 50% on reputation surveys (!!), of which only 2% or so are responded to. Is it worth mentioning that it's based in England? I'm not saying the US should have more institutions. I'm saying that i…

But reputations are what they are, and you can't dispute that those four unis are top drawer by that "measure" if we can even call it that. Regardless of what you think of QS. I also think it's silly to have uni rankings, but the way to think about them is that they simply construct a ranking that shows what people expect based on reputation. If you don't have Harvard and Cambridge in your top tier, your ranking is w…

> But reputations are what they are, and you can't dispute that those four unis are top drawer by that "measure" if we can even call it that.

But reputation is not a just measure of quality. It's mostly a measure of whether someone has heard of the institution at all, or knows anything about them. Similarly, US News has reputation survey based measures for its terrible rankings, and is roundly criticized for them, as they largely shut out better but newer but less well known institutions.

Re: Taking Risk

#94

Post by keiferski »

I’m in continental Europe, not the UK, but I think the same basic cultural attitudes toward startups and entrepreneurship are the same. It is not a common or accepted thing to be building a business here, especially if you’re in your twenties. Your family will most likely wish you got a stable job at BigCo/university/government/etc. and there is a very real sense of “falling behind” if you spend years on something that doesn’t pan out.

Re: Taking Risk

#95

Post by Aromasin »

reedf1 wrote: post #22

I considered a startup after university in the UK. The talent arbitrage is absurd, physics grads with 1sts from top Russell Group unis fighting to be paid £30k/yr. For me it came down to security, life is expensive, rent is expensive. I didn't have a spare parental garage to setup five computers - I barely had room in my flat for one desk . I barely had money for that flat let alone internet, and food. I had zero cap…

I'm in the same boat. I've been chasing my tail for the last 6 years, just trying to keep my head above water financially. I'm a computer hardware engineer so the pickings are slim to none outside of the military-industrial complex, which pays shit outside of sales and executive management. Ended up at one of the big US semiconductor companies where I got paid 1/3rd of what my peers in the US earn, with similar expenditures. A starting salary of £26k... Barely broke £34k, plus a couple of grand in stock each year during my time there, while my US colleagues doing the same job get paid $120k+. That's with a good master's degree from Bristol, which is relatively prestigious.

I'm sure if I moved to London and focused on software engineering I could make more, but that shouldn't be the only route to wealth in this country.

I've spent so long trying to build out a minimum viable product in my spare time, so I can make my start-up dream a reality, but going through integration hell needs to take up all of your time, every day, for a long time, to get through the hurdles in any meaningful time frame. Every time I go back to it, I feel like I'm back at square one. 6 years of saving and I have zero runway to take this full-time to give it the time it needs.

What's embarrassing is that I discussed this with my colleagues, and they didn't quite fathom how fucked it is for young engineers in this country until I had the conversation with them. I was getting the same salary now as my mentor did when he was my age; in the early '90s. Wages haven't just stagnated. When adjusted for inflation, they shrank massively. That's not even considering the £60k of student loan debt I get hammered by every month.

Re: Taking Risk

#96

Post by dukeyukey »

LAC-Tech wrote: post #71
dan-robertson wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably because an ambitious young person in southern Europe would rather move somewhere like Zurich for higher pay rather than getting paid less in southern Europe? Who are those R&D centres going to end up hiring?

Europeans hate moving. They're not like the European diaspora, they will live within a days drive of Switzerland, all their life, and never even consider the concept of trying to make a life there to earn 2-5x as much.

Moving in Europe is not like moving in the US. Language is the big one ofc, but the cultures are vastly different compared to US states. That doesn't mean it not worth it, but it adds a layer of friction.

Re: Taking Risk

#97

Post by oblio »

sofixa wrote: post #38

I think this misses a big mentality difference between the US and most other developed countries. In the US, people like to exaggerate and boast. Everything is the best, biggest, etc. In the US, "new is always better". Doesn't matter if the new is just the old with an app (coworking, food delivery, taxi, hotels), or just a worse iteration of an already existing thing (all the crappy companies trying to reinvent worse…

> Hell, in France being a billionaire is seen as a negative thing in many social circles.

Well, purely socially, having a billion euros is kinda... bad? If you think about it, what do we call all other kinds of people that have a lot of 1 thing, more than they need or could possibly use within their lifetimes?

Hoarders.

It's not a positive term. It implies something being wrong in the head.

Now, an entrepreneur building a business that becomes worth billions and themselves having a new worth of a billion? Probably a different story, but as we're seeing more and more, power corrupts and most of these folks don't really stay in touch with reality 5-10+ years after they become so rich.

Re: Taking Risk

#98

Post by sofixa »

xnorswap wrote: post #59
sofixa wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the UK to go bankrupt is to be painted with indelible red shame dye Is it? Do people generally know when someone (personally, or in this case, since we're talking startups, their company) goes bankrupt?

It comes with an inability to do lots of things for 6 (I think?) years, including things like not having an overdraft and more importantly to this conversation, prevents being a director of a company.

Isn't this only for personal bankruptcy? If you have a limited company and it goes bankrupt, it's it that's bankrupt, not the owners. Or is the UK very weird in that regard and I'm reading gov.uk wrong?

Re: Taking Risk

#99

Post by dukeyukey »

xnorswap wrote: post #59
sofixa wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the UK to go bankrupt is to be painted with indelible red shame dye Is it? Do people generally know when someone (personally, or in this case, since we're talking startups, their company) goes bankrupt?

It comes with an inability to do lots of things for 6 (I think?) years, including things like not having an overdraft and more importantly to this conversation, prevents being a director of a company.

Where are you getting this from? You can definitely be the director of a company after bankruptcy (assuming you didn't try to deception or scams of course), and stuff like an overdraft or loans are up to the lending bank/company.

EDIT: Unless you mean personal bankruptcy, which you probably don't, but while you're under the bankruptcy order (~1 year) you can't become a company director.

Re: Taking Risk

#100

Post by poooogles »

oblio wrote: post #82
yobbo wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your future employer, friends and family will know. People in general don't keep track of other random people.

> Your future employer How will they know and why would they care, if we're talking about regular job postings?

You'd be ruled out of many FCA (financial conduct authority) regulated jobs for at minimum 6 years after.
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