More to come... Skype though wasn't strictly UK, has a huge engineering office in London. Microsoft just announce it will close it.
Some of the losses are inevitable. Even in San Francisco Bay Area a lot of titans has died/been acquired. The most fundamental metric is net new titans/value created. New Startups - old titans that are winding dow.
No ones knows what Brexit actually means (apart from the slightly pathetic "Brexit means Brexit" which we seem to be getting from the current prime minister)
Currently there seem to be two groups:
The Brexit Light group who want to preserve access to the single market with hopefully some concessions on free movements.
And the Hard Brexit group who see controlling migration as the most important thing even at the cost of losing access to the single market.
Whatever happens there is going to be a long period of uncertainty which could last for 5-10 years. Only once the dust has settled will we know what impact there has been on the economy and country.
Companies are going to be less likely to invest in the UK, before Brexit it was a logical choice to open offices in London, now it is not so clear cut.
It is also less likely that talented people from across Europe will be tempted to move to London. Pre Brexit the UK (in particular London) has been a very attractive place for highly skilled people, post Brexit those people are likely to choose a different capital city to call home.
My feeling is that Brexit will be very bad for London in the short to medium term.
It makes little different for computer programmers, as evidenced by the abundance of American (i.e. non EU) apps and services used throughout the EU.
It would make more difference for other industries, but "move to Berlin from London as a js dev" doesn't make much sense to me. I suspect some Berlin-based recruiters are just desperate and trying out a new tack to see if a bit of fear works better vs just advertising Berlin itself (which is a lovely city, mind you, I've thought about moving there in the past).
Non-British EU citizens, currently living in the UK/London could be very attracted by a move to Berlin. It would remove a large chunk of uncertainty from their future, regardless of industry.
As a British citizen currently living in another EU country, I have no idea what my official immigration status will be in a couple of years. My crystal ball shows me a future filled by paperwork and bureaucracy.
That would be the case if there were forced expulsions, which realistically would only occur if the EU did the same thing to Brits. It's a worst case scenario that everyone presumably wants to avoid (though the EU seems increasingly fanatical, so who knows what will happen).
> That would be the case if there were forced expulsion
No, I think phillc73 is spot on. Consider the case where Brits get EU visas (and vice versa), it's still a shit-tonne of paperwork for everybody involved. For companies, even without forced expulsion, other tech hubs are likely to be more attractive now as an EU base.
The problem is not the far-fetched possibility of mass expulsions: it's simply that, after Brexit, British citizens will likely need a work visa in order to work in the EU. And work visas for non-EU applicants are neither easy nor quick to get.
I guess the UK could propose to allow free movement of British workers to the EU, but the EU will demand in turn that European workers be allowed the same free movement to the UK (and stopping that was one of the main points of the Brexit vote, wasn't it?).
I'm am a Java/Scala dev in Berlin and get contacted by 2-3 recruiters a week for positions in Berlin or Germany. More often than not, they are from London based recruiting agencies. Big and medium sized companies:
* HERE (I work there, let me know if you want a referral)
* Amazon
* SAP
* Zalando
* SoundCloud
* Fyber
I probably forgot a few others and many smaller startups hiring Scala devs.
The tech landscape is different (not a lot of fin tech, no hedge funds, no algo and high frequency trading like in London) but the opportunities are plentiful.
Bullshit, London hasn't been a good place to live in at least 20 years. You just hung around because you were used to it. London as good things (lots of money, lots of entrepreneurial people), but being "nice to live" isn't one of them.
- crowded (streets, public transportation, roads);
- both of which leads to people being pushed to the outskirts and taking a lot of time to travel when you want to meet with friends;
Personally I got a bit tired of it, loved it in the first few years. Lots of money to be earned, and quite a lot of facilities, but for me I just grew tired of the place.
Travel time to meet with friends was a big one for me. My job was never in the centre, so I chose to live within 15 minutes cycling of work, in a pleasant and green bit of West London (Z3/4). That was fine when the fun things to do were in the centre, but a lot of them moved further away. That led to an hour's journey to see a metal band perform in Holloway, and then a 1½-2 hour journey home at night by bus, or £60+ for an Uber.
London has half as many licensed music venues as in 2004. ([1] says 35% less since 2007, I can't find where I read half.)
Also, I said I'd leave the UK if UKIP got more than 20% (or 25%, or something) in the 2014 European elections, and stood by my word :)
I know that some of these can be sorted by having an obscene amount of money... which I don't.
- insane rent. i'm living in a single bedroom
- poor quality of houses. i can hear the steps of my flatmates outside my rooms
- crowded: neighbourhood in london are either shit, or if they're not they're so crowded you can't do anything. you go to a coffee shop and every seat is taken or if it's not you have to seat between two guys. on the street you can barely walk, bump into people all the time, etc
- travel time: this just sucks my soul away. there is no casual meeting someone, meeting someone is always a taxing excursion.
- Here's one that I've never seen mentioned: is it just me, or is there an abnormally high amount of poserism in London? It's fucking posers everywhere, trying to show you how they know THE BEST place to eat THE BEST food and drink THE BEST wine. Who gives a shit? Is your life so uninteresting that you spend it thinking about food?
sigh. After brexit I've started learning german, so maybe I'll try Berlin next.
> "- Here's one that I've never seen mentioned: is it just me, or is there an abnormally high amount of poserism in London? It's fucking posers everywhere, trying to show you how they know THE BEST place to eat THE BEST food and drink THE BEST wine. Who gives a shit? Is your life so uninteresting that you spend it thinking about food?"
I can see your other points - but this one seems kind of strange. I've not lived many places, but I'm pretty sure everywhere has people talking about the best restaurants, breweries, bars, etc. It's a part of culture - food and drink! It's a thing literally every human partakes in.
Beyond that - is your life so full of engagement and interest that you literally don't think about food? That just seems pretty exceptional to me. Not trying to judge - there's a reason that products like Soylent exist! Some people legitimately don't care, and I get that. But let other people enjoy whatever they want to - and try not to get upset if they share that with you (:
No, it's not full of engagement, I'm definitely not saying I have a nice life, at all. But I don't think about food, no. Very very uninteresting. And I can understand someone whose mentality is "you have to eat, might as well make it tasty". But some people it seems have nothing else in their life. And it's not just their food, it's also making sure that you know about their food. It can't be my imagination that people do this. You just need to look at instagram to see it's full of pictures that people take of their food. Ok, so maybe it's not specific to London, maybe it's just my bitterness.
Hah, I think I see where you're coming from. It's definitely universal - the people who have to put down what you're eating or doing because they did something SO MUCH BETTER last weekend or whatever.
Those people suck. People who pull out their phones to take a picture of their food rather than their company tend to be showing where their interest lies. Meh.
Lots of people like London. I'm not one of them, but then I don't like big cities. I would say my biggest gripe about London is the frequent transit failures. I literally can't remember the last time we didn't have someone come in an hour late because of some train/bus problems. My second biggest gripe is the frequent transit strikes ;-). If it's not busted, it's not running because management and workers are fighting with each other.
Especially if you are comparing London from 20 years ago, I would have to say that it is much nicer than it used to be. I lived in London 2 years ago and also 20 years ago. I remember 20 years ago coming home and literally being able to draw pictures on my arm with the grime that accumulated during the day. Blowing my nose always resulted in black snot coming out. The Thames was filled with garbage. Those days are mostly gone now. Hell, tours on the Thames is considered a fancy thing to do these days.
The things I think are not quite as nice (and I'll brace myself for the backlash)... Culturally the city is kind of confused IMHO. 20 years ago it was vaguely European, but really English when it came down to it. You could still get a decent Sunday roast in any pub in London at the time. Now it is decidedly multi-cultural. I think young people will definitely prefer the London of today, and I won't blame them, but personally I miss the London of times gone by. These days you have to go further afield to get more of an English cultural experience, IMHO. Not necessarily a bad thing, but like I said, there will be people who prefer one over the other.
Apart from the Sunday roast you mentioned, which incidently is available in the majority of pubs I've been to (I had a very nice one yesterday) what other parts of the "english cultural" experience are you missing?
That's pretty much it. English culture is extremely bland (unless you want to count the embarrassments that are binge-drinking and hooliganism which often go hand in hand...) hence why our national dish is curry. :)
Keep in mind that my experiences are based on my preferences. YMMV. But for example, 20 years ago the licensing laws were set up so that pubs were open from 11-2 and from 4-11. Usually in London, they had an exemption to allow them to be open between 2 and 4. There were some bars that were open past 11, but you needed a special license. Now bars and pubs that are open past 11 is the norm in London.
It also used to be that you would have chip shops and sandwich shops and cafes that would serve an english breakfast. Now you have chain espresso shops and ramen shops and sushi shops, etc (hey, I live in Japan and love Japanese culture, so I will stick to complaining about that so as not to appear racist ;-) ). When I'm back in London these days I have to go out of my way to find the kind of food that was around every corner 20 years ago.
As for pubs, chains like Weatherspoons (love them or hate them) have done a great job of maintaining and even improving certain things like the availability of real ale. They have worked hard to lobby for reduced prices for beer so that it is still (barely) possible to drink a decent pint and not go broke. But the good independent pub in London is a rare sight now, IMHO. 20 years ago the words "free house" actually meant something. Now you'll see "free house" on the side of Champions League football entertainment centre that serves nothing but InBev products.
These days the city never sleeps. It never has a day off. You can obtain any kind of food or experience you like, practically 24/7. You can easily find high quality European restaurants. You can drink fine wine in the shop on the corner. You can find italian fashions (and pay your entire salary on a single outfit). These are all great.
But it's hard to find a quiet neighbourhood pub. Piano singalong? Ha ha ha ha! Wait less than 30 minutes for a good english breakfast? Drink a finely crafted English pint with Fuggles and Goldings hops? Find a non-chain pub that serves bangers and mash? Eat a pickle and cheese sandwich (even on a train)? Be able to not be disturbed at all hours by rowdy drunks when you live near a pub? All of these things are getting harder/impossible to do because they have been supplanted by non-English culture. Which is fine in one way, but like I said, I miss London of 20 years ago.
> I remember 20 years ago coming home and literally being able to draw pictures on my arm with the grime that accumulated during the day. Blowing my nose always resulted in black snot coming out. [...] Those days are mostly gone now.
Watch out. The air is still polluted, and it's a significant cause of death in London. It's just a different type of air pollution, and you mostly can't see it.
Unequivocally agree, my quality of life has dramatically increased (both in terms of accessible talent surrounding me at work, and having something more than a shoebox to live in) once I reminded myself that all I was doing in London was paying my admittedly sizable income to other people and saving barely anything.
Travel, expensive and required
Rent, expensive and required
Socialising, expensive and not required, but needed.
I used to cycle to remove the travel aspect but it's absurdly dangerous. I can't even begin to describe how much better my life is now- My girlfriend wants to go back but that's just because "London is the best place in the world", she can't even cite examples. It's just because it's well known and has landmarks I think.
London has fantastic arts, music, literary, theatre scenes, both contemporary and classical. Many of its venues, galleries and museums are world leading institutions. The science & tech research groups at its top universties are doing really exciting stuff. It's filled with extraordinary people and fascinating architecture. The food is amazing, some of the best chefs from Europe and SE Asia come here to work. Also, it has Kew Gardens.
Yes Brexit has put many of these things at risk and taken a shine off their appeal for many. And yes you have to be relatively rich to have a spacious, comfortable home here, to cushion yourself from the awful public transport, and to partake of all the delights on offer. But someone who's actually lived here and can't cite one example of London's special attraction is sleepwalking through life.
Have you been to the Science Museum or Natural History museum recently? We took the youngest 2 yrs ago and were deeply disappointed. They're but a neglected shadow of their former selves.
The Manchester Museum of science and Industry, part of the Science Museum group (though only since 2012), is a far more rewarding experience.
It's fine, I don't care about any of "fantastic arts, music, literary, theatre scenes, both contemporary and classical". I'm quite good at entertaining myself, I guess.
I like cities, but don't like London, so, after a bit of travelling in Europe, I settled in Budapest. It has everything I like about being in a big city with almost none of the crap you get in London: great arts scene, festivals of one sort or another almost constantly, friendly people, excellent public transport, and, for a person who works remotely for an American company, housing is extremely inexpensive.
Have you ever been in Vienna? I'm asking because I absolutely love Vienna, and I was recently in Budapest, and it looks like Vienna but poor and decaying. It was a bit sad actually. I was wondering if anyone else has the same impression.
I think that's part of Budapest's charm. It is a little dilapidated and worn around the edges. But it's also a lot less expensive to live in than Vienna.
> My girlfriend wants to go back but that's just because "London is the best place in the world"
Exactly. My flatmate says this shit as well. He's someone who commutes 1.5hrs times two each day, and "London is the best place in the world". He doesn't do anything else with his life, because between a 9-5 and 3 hours of tube, the only thing you have energy for is watching tv.
I have come to the conclusion that people who say "London is the best place in the world" are small minded people disguising as worldly. My flatmate for example never lived anywhere else, but he knows London is "the best".
This is absolutely crazy to me. It takes 1.5 hours to commute from one side of London to another or does he live outside the city limits? How can you live INSIDE a city and endure such commute times.
It would be possible, for example living on the outskirts and working in a different outskirts.
I guessed a possible route, and stuck it in TfL's Journeyplanner: Uxbridge to West Croydon, takes 1½ hours now (22:00), a bit faster during the day, but add on some walking. (Driving is 70 minutes at night, probably closer to 1½ hours in the day.)
A journey like this would be uncommon, I doubt it's worthwhile for many people. And people living in the 90% of the city that's less-distant than either Uxbridge or Croydon will laugh, and say those places aren't "proper" London anyway.
For many niche hobbies it's the best place to do them (personal example: netrunner). It's probably the best place in the world for (english-language) theatre. Maybe you're someone who could easily adapt to German; I'm not, which makes London the best option by some way.
I dunno, if the UK can pull off smaller government then they might continue to be attractive to businesses chafing from the high regulations and taxes of the EU.
The EU doesn't control member country tax rates and most of its regulations are to harmonise products sold within the market - ie products would have to meet the regulations to be sold in the block no matter whether they are produced inside or outside the EU.
Other regulations affecting things like working hours or environment wouldn't necessarily be great for the UK to cut back on. These are designed to prevent beggar-thy-neighbour policies that turn into a race to the bottom in a zero sum game. It's better for everyone to agree to the same rules here, game theoretically.
And less freedom to hire people from the continent would just push up labour costs.
So personally I don't think there's any upside from Brexit here. That would have to come from somewhere entirely hypothetical, like significantly better trade deals than the EU currently has.
I don't know why you are getting downvoted. Worker protections like guaranteed holidays and unlimited sick days might be the first things to go "to remain more competitive", which is an obvious BS. The same with environment protections - someone made an argument to me, saying that EU is bad because it stops UK from fishing certain types of fish in the north sea......yeah, of course it does, because we were overfishing massively and in a decade there would be none left. Even if UK leaves EU that won't change - it's not like you can magically ignore environmental regulations when you are not part of EU, especially if we are talking about international waters.
saying that EU is bad because it stops UK from fishing certain types of fish in the north sea......yeah, of course it does, because we were overfishing massively and in a decade there would be none left
Errr, that's not true at all. What the EU said was that British fishermen can't fish British waters, but Spanish fisherman can overfish here as they please. Leaving the EU, whatever else it does good or bad, is a massive win for our marine ecosystem.
That's also not true at all - mostly because the North Sea is not "British waters". It's international waters, so if there is a quota for each member state to fish there, then sure, it can lead to a situation where British fishermen have already caught their allowed number of fish, but Spanish fishermen haven't.
I'm not sure ducking out of fishing regulation is good for any marine ecosystems.
If British fishermen weren't getting the best deal out of EU fishing quotas, then it can't have helped that the British representative on the EU Fisheries Committee was one Nigel Farage, who never turned up to represent them, but was still happy to use them for Brexit propaganda.
The EU very much wants to control member state tax rates, hence the recent Apple case and the VAT changes they made.
There are lots of EU regulations that are basically pointless busywork. Look at the cookie rules. Huge cost and expense to implement millions of warnings, no benefit, and their plan is to double down on them.
They didn't make VAT changes in the Irish case. They ruled that Ireland didn't apply its own laws fairly and with equal treatment. It's a highly contentious issue and is being appealed by Ireland, particularly since it's retrospective and involves a massive clawback. It makes the rule of law look shaky in Ireland. It's not likely to stand as is for that reason alone, IMO.
Some countries - particularly ones with larger economies - want to stop smaller economies undercutting their tax bases. The current laws mean that profits get taxed in the country where the company doing the sales is based. There is some talk of changing this so that the profit is more balanced based on where the sales are targeted. I think this is fair; this again comes under beggar-thy-neighbour common rules.
My sentence was perhaps overly hard to parse. It was a list of two things, related only by the general area of tax. Not that the Irish case is VAT related. Indeed it's not.
I was talking about the change to EU wide VAT rules that force sellers to charge VAT at the buyer rate not the seller rate.
Exactly. There is a difference between a EU political system and a EU free market as there is a difference between EU and EEA.
I havent heard a single person who are against the free market. But UK is split between some / most elite who dont want their nation to fell into others hand, the lower class who gets absolutely no benefits at all, ( They are poor with the free market, and they will STILL be poor if UK leave ), and basically the middle class who think money is the most important factor, and are willing to trade their nationalities for more money or higher standard of living.
I'm going to guess that requiring VAT be collected at the buyer's rate is the biggest law affecting small tech companies in Europe. What other EU regulations have a high negative impact on tech businesses?
A small electronic business is very hard (a la tindie) due to the vague onerousness of CE and the WEEE fees. RoHS is dumb but not too onerous in practice.
As I understand it, UL is not required for small devices that are not connected to the mains (while CE low voltage directive does apply), and UL module certification is sensible while CE requires a re-test. And there's no US counterpart to WEEE.
Misapplied cookie laws. Those notices only apply if you're using tracking cookies, not cookies in general. People incorrectly assume that any use of cookies requires the notice, when, in fact, most uses of cookies don't require the notice at all.
If literally an entire industry misapplies or misunderstands your regulations, that's a failure as a regulator.
But in this case I don't think people have misunderstood them. I think the distinction between "tracking" and "non tracking" cookies is one that exists primarily in the heads of government officials.
> If literally an entire industry misapplies or misunderstands your regulations, that's a failure as a regulator.
No, the issue is with the lazy, cack-handed way the cookie directive was implemented in UK law. Those obtrusive pop-ups aren't a requirement of the directive (which only requires consent, and doesn't specify how that consent is obtained), but of the UK's Privacy and Electronic Communications (Amendment) Regulations 2011. And, of course, regulation 6 is worded in just about the most confusing way possible.
OTOH, both the 2002 and 2009 directives have much clearer language, which is funny as they allow latitude to member states as to how they're implemented, and the UK chose the most awkward and intrusive method of implementing them as far as cookies go.
> I think the distinction between "tracking" and "non tracking" cookies is one that exists primarily in the heads of government officials.
No, there's a pretty solid line, but it's like the line between murder and manslaughter: intent. If you're using cookies to help autofill data the user would otherwise have to fill themselves, that's not tracking. If you're using cookies to provide some persistent state across pages (sessions, carts, &c.), that's not tracking. If you're using cookies to records a user's actions on the site, that's borderline, but as long as that data is anonymised and treated only as part of an aggregate, a solid argument can be made that's not tracking, but it might be good to inform the user anyway. Once you start targeting individual users, that's certainly tracking.
I'm not English, I don't live in the UK, but the approach and wording in this article bothers me.
Are these companies "sell outs" because they sold, or because they sold to foreign companies?
Shouldn't they be lauded as successes for having been sold in the first place? Is this part of the problem that the root of the article (as I see it) is actually talking about?
I believe the article is suggesting London or the UK, is hindered when trying to compete with SV or other similar start-up\technology based cities. That most companies (though the examples in the article aren't the greatest) are bought out or shifted off shore inhibits the UK from developing that scene further.
I'd suggest it's a little more complex than just starting a company and not selling out to a larger competitor. London is not Silicon Valley. Never has been and any opportunity to cultivate that type of culture within the city will surely be even more challenging with the Brexit?
But I digress. When the Brexit vote is enacted, I suspect we'll find business and investment into start-ups in the UK continuing to diminish in favour of EU based states or else where.
Actually. You could really say this about almost every industry in the UK with the exception of the Banking and Financial sector, they're all diminishing in favour of offshore? If they haven't already anyway? That's profound.
When it comes to exports and national GDPs perception and reality often rarely align.
Example: almost everyone thinks UK manufacturing has been in decline for decades. In reality when measured in absolute amounts the UK manufactures more than ever before. People think it's declined only because it employs fewer people (but still manages to make more). A more optimistic way to look at it would be to say that UK manufacturing has become wildly more productive than in the past.
So when you say they're "diminishing" you need to square that with the fact that the UK economy is actually doing pretty well, by European standards, hence the large migratory net inflows as people vote with their feet.
It does seem pretty odd. As a UK citizen, am I meant to feel proud of the existence of ARM for some reason? And presumably now I'm no longer allowed to use ARM chips because they've betrayed 'us'?
To be fair to Acorn, it was either that or fold. ARM weren't in the same kind of existential position, so there's that at least. Personally, I just think it's a bit of a pity.
The article doesn't go into the the substance of this topic, but I've learned a bit about the issue from talking to friends who work in government economic development roles here in Australia.
The balance they're trying to strike is between attracting foreign investment vs losing companies via foreign acquisition.
Foreign investment (along with export revenue) is great, as it creates jobs, grows ecosystems, increases demand for the currency, etc.
Foreign acquisition is not so great, as the jobs/expertise/ecosystems and export revenue are lost.
Of course, if the founders/early investors go on and invest their returns in new local companies, then that's a good thing, but is perhaps beyond the scope of what governments are able to measure (or generate PR from).
I have no strong opinions about how sensible this attitude from governments is; I just know that's how they think, at least in Australia, and probably in the UK too.
The issue is that these companies were doing really well, got acquired as a result, but then mostly shrivelled to nothing. Let's hope ARM doesn't get cursed that way...
Well, no, they weren't. With the exception of ARM that genuinely is doing very well, quite a few of the others sold out because they weren't doing well. In the case of SwiftKey it sounds like they were losing money and decided to double down on it by giving it away for free and then charging for things nobody cared about!
SwiftKey's problem is that they had a tiny window of time after inventing it where they could have charged lots of money to power users before the Android team just included their invention in the core product. Apparently they were unable to capitalise on that time and ended up selling to Microsoft who now gets to fund their loss-making product. Although I loved SwiftKey as a product, business wise I'm not sure that's a loss for the UK.
I think that the main part of the problem is the sales are to foreign companies.
Many companies tend to focus efforts in their home countries and there's always a risk that a foreign acquisition will see its operations downsized in their native country and moved either to the home country of the acquiring company or to a low-cost cost location.
Also from a tax perspective, foreign companies don't generate as much revenue for the British government, so every time one is purchased by a foreign company that's more long term tax revenue lost.
In comparisons between the US and Europe, you often hear the argument that Europe doesn't have a Google, Apple or Microsoft. But how can you build one if every promising start up gets bought up by a foreign company?
I am surprised it does not mention Psion. With better management we could had iphone 10 years earlier. Psion Series 5 has no replacement even after 19 years (keyboard, display, battery life..)
I'd say most netbooks or tablets replaced it for all of those things now... But you're right that Psion were super innovative. More important than their series 5 hardware was the operating system. EPOC was a 32bit embedded OS long before anyone else was doing them. It was nice to program for and dealt with multiprogram which even the first iPhones didn't think about.
32-bit EPOC became very popular (for a while) as Symbian, but the "nice to program for" aspect was definitely lost in Symbian's heavy-handed multi-vendor committee approach to software design.
Sorry, but Sinclair was never a potential titan. His problem was always he was happy to shave off 50% of the capability to save 10% of the cost. Tho' this is a mentality that is all too common in the UK - just look at our defence procurement.
A real story would be that of De Havilland and the Comet airliner - Boeing and Airbus should never have existed, the UK had that market sewn up until the government of the day blew it...
Shaving cost was a good goal when computers were still too expensive for the average home though. Another notable one was what could have been an IBM competitor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LEO_(computer) .
Britain was a great innovator back when individual inventors could manage a project, they never seemed to transition into corporate innovation though.
But the firm got unstuck when it tried to enter the business market. Its Sinclair QL was designed to outperform IBM's PCs, but its tape-based Microdrive storage was unreliable and the British company did not offer the kind of telephone support the corporate sector required.
His failure wasn't in terms of price but of price/performance.
Lyons didn't have the money to build the next machine needed to compete, so sold their 50% to EE, the other shareholder. EE were one of the companies merged to form ICL, who for 15 or 20 years were an IBM competitor and doing pretty well until at least the early 80s and the first connections with Fujitsu.
It's one of the biggest things I've noticed since moving here (London) 18 months ago from Auckland. NZers aren't exactly known for long-term foresight, but business people in the UK take short-term, reactive thinking to a whole other level - my friends from NZ and AU who work here all have similar experiences too.
Anecdote of course, but I really think so. I feel like short-term thinking is cultural here - look no further than Brexit. It's a really litigious business culture too, everyone sues everybody over the stupidest things as everyone is insured so it just gets handled by your insurance company. My GF is a lawyer, and she can't believe how little they consult legislation - because they just sue or write clauses for everything instead. It's pretty different to back in Australasia.
In my personal experience, British business people have tended to favour the shitty, short-term-but-get-cash solution over doing things properly as well. Not at all a unique concept, but picking the easy way out seems to be much more common to me.
Yes. I grew up with a ZX Spectrum which I loved dearly, so it pains me to say it, but Sinclair didn't really deserve to be "titans". Their machines were kludges with corners cut, pre-order money taken from the public when they didn't even have a working prototype, and Sir Clive was disdainful of the gaming market which made his machine successful and tried to move away from that instead of embracing it.
Some of the corner-cutting was ingenious (the calculator where the power pulses just often enough for the screen and memory to stay on, allowing a watch battery to be used for a more slimline design) and some of it less so (iirc the same calculator displays 8 digits but is only accurate to 3 significant figures...)
Bit harsh to say they "blew it" with the Comet when they got a fully functional commercial jet airframe programme going five years before anyone else but suffered because they were first and didn't really understand metal fatigue. It's not as if being a huge player in the early jet age and having a better aircraft than the later Comets saved privately-held Douglas from financial struggles and eventually being folded into Boeing either.
Was DeepMind 'lost'? It was bought by Google, but it's stayed in the UK (even if it might have made more sense to be folded into Google Brain) and iirc the founders are very keen that it stay in London.
They missed Imagination[1], which seems to be suffering from (allegedly) poor management decisions at the moment, but is the hardware behind the graphics in many mobile phones.
The difference is they did turn down acquisition offers from Apple and Intel, a few years ago.
However they're not doing so well as an independent company atm. Many of the most experienced engineers are getting poached by Apple these days (has some informal no-poaching agreement come to an end?)
Acquiring the smoking remains of MIPS for $100m wasn't exactly a moment of management genius. It might have been better for them if they had been acquired and the current management had been given golden goodbyes.
The BBC is funny like that, they latch onto companies that they worship (e.g. Apple, Google, ARM, Flickr) and ignore all the others in the same sector. I suspect they see no further than the products their own staff use, or more cynically, individuals there are positioning themselves for lucrative job offers they hope will come rolling in...
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 119 ms ] threadSome of the losses are inevitable. Even in San Francisco Bay Area a lot of titans has died/been acquired. The most fundamental metric is net new titans/value created. New Startups - old titans that are winding dow.
The sad thing is I now consider it a net gain to move, whereas before London was the best place to live.
Currently there seem to be two groups:
The Brexit Light group who want to preserve access to the single market with hopefully some concessions on free movements.
And the Hard Brexit group who see controlling migration as the most important thing even at the cost of losing access to the single market.
Whatever happens there is going to be a long period of uncertainty which could last for 5-10 years. Only once the dust has settled will we know what impact there has been on the economy and country.
Companies are going to be less likely to invest in the UK, before Brexit it was a logical choice to open offices in London, now it is not so clear cut.
It is also less likely that talented people from across Europe will be tempted to move to London. Pre Brexit the UK (in particular London) has been a very attractive place for highly skilled people, post Brexit those people are likely to choose a different capital city to call home.
My feeling is that Brexit will be very bad for London in the short to medium term.
It would make more difference for other industries, but "move to Berlin from London as a js dev" doesn't make much sense to me. I suspect some Berlin-based recruiters are just desperate and trying out a new tack to see if a bit of fear works better vs just advertising Berlin itself (which is a lovely city, mind you, I've thought about moving there in the past).
As a British citizen currently living in another EU country, I have no idea what my official immigration status will be in a couple of years. My crystal ball shows me a future filled by paperwork and bureaucracy.
No, I think phillc73 is spot on. Consider the case where Brits get EU visas (and vice versa), it's still a shit-tonne of paperwork for everybody involved. For companies, even without forced expulsion, other tech hubs are likely to be more attractive now as an EU base.
I guess the UK could propose to allow free movement of British workers to the EU, but the EU will demand in turn that European workers be allowed the same free movement to the UK (and stopping that was one of the main points of the Brexit vote, wasn't it?).
* HERE (I work there, let me know if you want a referral)
* Amazon
* SAP
* Zalando
* SoundCloud
* Fyber
I probably forgot a few others and many smaller startups hiring Scala devs.
The tech landscape is different (not a lot of fin tech, no hedge funds, no algo and high frequency trading like in London) but the opportunities are plentiful.
- pollution;
- poor quality in most housing;
- small apartments (shoeboxes really);
- high rents and difficult to buy;
- crowded (streets, public transportation, roads);
- both of which leads to people being pushed to the outskirts and taking a lot of time to travel when you want to meet with friends;
Personally I got a bit tired of it, loved it in the first few years. Lots of money to be earned, and quite a lot of facilities, but for me I just grew tired of the place.
London has half as many licensed music venues as in 2004. ([1] says 35% less since 2007, I can't find where I read half.)
Also, I said I'd leave the UK if UKIP got more than 20% (or 25%, or something) in the 2014 European elections, and stood by my word :)
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/oct/20/save-londons...
- insane rent. i'm living in a single bedroom
- poor quality of houses. i can hear the steps of my flatmates outside my rooms
- crowded: neighbourhood in london are either shit, or if they're not they're so crowded you can't do anything. you go to a coffee shop and every seat is taken or if it's not you have to seat between two guys. on the street you can barely walk, bump into people all the time, etc
- travel time: this just sucks my soul away. there is no casual meeting someone, meeting someone is always a taxing excursion.
- Here's one that I've never seen mentioned: is it just me, or is there an abnormally high amount of poserism in London? It's fucking posers everywhere, trying to show you how they know THE BEST place to eat THE BEST food and drink THE BEST wine. Who gives a shit? Is your life so uninteresting that you spend it thinking about food?
sigh. After brexit I've started learning german, so maybe I'll try Berlin next.
I can see your other points - but this one seems kind of strange. I've not lived many places, but I'm pretty sure everywhere has people talking about the best restaurants, breweries, bars, etc. It's a part of culture - food and drink! It's a thing literally every human partakes in.
Beyond that - is your life so full of engagement and interest that you literally don't think about food? That just seems pretty exceptional to me. Not trying to judge - there's a reason that products like Soylent exist! Some people legitimately don't care, and I get that. But let other people enjoy whatever they want to - and try not to get upset if they share that with you (:
Those people suck. People who pull out their phones to take a picture of their food rather than their company tend to be showing where their interest lies. Meh.
Also a huge drug problem.
Especially if you are comparing London from 20 years ago, I would have to say that it is much nicer than it used to be. I lived in London 2 years ago and also 20 years ago. I remember 20 years ago coming home and literally being able to draw pictures on my arm with the grime that accumulated during the day. Blowing my nose always resulted in black snot coming out. The Thames was filled with garbage. Those days are mostly gone now. Hell, tours on the Thames is considered a fancy thing to do these days.
The things I think are not quite as nice (and I'll brace myself for the backlash)... Culturally the city is kind of confused IMHO. 20 years ago it was vaguely European, but really English when it came down to it. You could still get a decent Sunday roast in any pub in London at the time. Now it is decidedly multi-cultural. I think young people will definitely prefer the London of today, and I won't blame them, but personally I miss the London of times gone by. These days you have to go further afield to get more of an English cultural experience, IMHO. Not necessarily a bad thing, but like I said, there will be people who prefer one over the other.
It also used to be that you would have chip shops and sandwich shops and cafes that would serve an english breakfast. Now you have chain espresso shops and ramen shops and sushi shops, etc (hey, I live in Japan and love Japanese culture, so I will stick to complaining about that so as not to appear racist ;-) ). When I'm back in London these days I have to go out of my way to find the kind of food that was around every corner 20 years ago.
As for pubs, chains like Weatherspoons (love them or hate them) have done a great job of maintaining and even improving certain things like the availability of real ale. They have worked hard to lobby for reduced prices for beer so that it is still (barely) possible to drink a decent pint and not go broke. But the good independent pub in London is a rare sight now, IMHO. 20 years ago the words "free house" actually meant something. Now you'll see "free house" on the side of Champions League football entertainment centre that serves nothing but InBev products.
These days the city never sleeps. It never has a day off. You can obtain any kind of food or experience you like, practically 24/7. You can easily find high quality European restaurants. You can drink fine wine in the shop on the corner. You can find italian fashions (and pay your entire salary on a single outfit). These are all great.
But it's hard to find a quiet neighbourhood pub. Piano singalong? Ha ha ha ha! Wait less than 30 minutes for a good english breakfast? Drink a finely crafted English pint with Fuggles and Goldings hops? Find a non-chain pub that serves bangers and mash? Eat a pickle and cheese sandwich (even on a train)? Be able to not be disturbed at all hours by rowdy drunks when you live near a pub? All of these things are getting harder/impossible to do because they have been supplanted by non-English culture. Which is fine in one way, but like I said, I miss London of 20 years ago.
Watch out. The air is still polluted, and it's a significant cause of death in London. It's just a different type of air pollution, and you mostly can't see it.
Travel, expensive and required Rent, expensive and required Socialising, expensive and not required, but needed.
I used to cycle to remove the travel aspect but it's absurdly dangerous. I can't even begin to describe how much better my life is now- My girlfriend wants to go back but that's just because "London is the best place in the world", she can't even cite examples. It's just because it's well known and has landmarks I think.
Yes Brexit has put many of these things at risk and taken a shine off their appeal for many. And yes you have to be relatively rich to have a spacious, comfortable home here, to cushion yourself from the awful public transport, and to partake of all the delights on offer. But someone who's actually lived here and can't cite one example of London's special attraction is sleepwalking through life.
The Manchester Museum of science and Industry, part of the Science Museum group (though only since 2012), is a far more rewarding experience.
Perhaps find somewhere quieter, like a small or mid-sized town, in Britain, Germany, or elsewhere.
Exactly. My flatmate says this shit as well. He's someone who commutes 1.5hrs times two each day, and "London is the best place in the world". He doesn't do anything else with his life, because between a 9-5 and 3 hours of tube, the only thing you have energy for is watching tv.
I have come to the conclusion that people who say "London is the best place in the world" are small minded people disguising as worldly. My flatmate for example never lived anywhere else, but he knows London is "the best".
I guessed a possible route, and stuck it in TfL's Journeyplanner: Uxbridge to West Croydon, takes 1½ hours now (22:00), a bit faster during the day, but add on some walking. (Driving is 70 minutes at night, probably closer to 1½ hours in the day.)
A journey like this would be uncommon, I doubt it's worthwhile for many people. And people living in the 90% of the city that's less-distant than either Uxbridge or Croydon will laugh, and say those places aren't "proper" London anyway.
Other regulations affecting things like working hours or environment wouldn't necessarily be great for the UK to cut back on. These are designed to prevent beggar-thy-neighbour policies that turn into a race to the bottom in a zero sum game. It's better for everyone to agree to the same rules here, game theoretically.
And less freedom to hire people from the continent would just push up labour costs.
So personally I don't think there's any upside from Brexit here. That would have to come from somewhere entirely hypothetical, like significantly better trade deals than the EU currently has.
Errr, that's not true at all. What the EU said was that British fishermen can't fish British waters, but Spanish fisherman can overfish here as they please. Leaving the EU, whatever else it does good or bad, is a massive win for our marine ecosystem.
If British fishermen weren't getting the best deal out of EU fishing quotas, then it can't have helped that the British representative on the EU Fisheries Committee was one Nigel Farage, who never turned up to represent them, but was still happy to use them for Brexit propaganda.
There are lots of EU regulations that are basically pointless busywork. Look at the cookie rules. Huge cost and expense to implement millions of warnings, no benefit, and their plan is to double down on them.
Some countries - particularly ones with larger economies - want to stop smaller economies undercutting their tax bases. The current laws mean that profits get taxed in the country where the company doing the sales is based. There is some talk of changing this so that the profit is more balanced based on where the sales are targeted. I think this is fair; this again comes under beggar-thy-neighbour common rules.
I was talking about the change to EU wide VAT rules that force sellers to charge VAT at the buyer rate not the seller rate.
I havent heard a single person who are against the free market. But UK is split between some / most elite who dont want their nation to fell into others hand, the lower class who gets absolutely no benefits at all, ( They are poor with the free market, and they will STILL be poor if UK leave ), and basically the middle class who think money is the most important factor, and are willing to trade their nationalities for more money or higher standard of living.
But in this case I don't think people have misunderstood them. I think the distinction between "tracking" and "non tracking" cookies is one that exists primarily in the heads of government officials.
No, the issue is with the lazy, cack-handed way the cookie directive was implemented in UK law. Those obtrusive pop-ups aren't a requirement of the directive (which only requires consent, and doesn't specify how that consent is obtained), but of the UK's Privacy and Electronic Communications (Amendment) Regulations 2011. And, of course, regulation 6 is worded in just about the most confusing way possible.
OTOH, both the 2002 and 2009 directives have much clearer language, which is funny as they allow latitude to member states as to how they're implemented, and the UK chose the most awkward and intrusive method of implementing them as far as cookies go.
> I think the distinction between "tracking" and "non tracking" cookies is one that exists primarily in the heads of government officials.
No, there's a pretty solid line, but it's like the line between murder and manslaughter: intent. If you're using cookies to help autofill data the user would otherwise have to fill themselves, that's not tracking. If you're using cookies to provide some persistent state across pages (sessions, carts, &c.), that's not tracking. If you're using cookies to records a user's actions on the site, that's borderline, but as long as that data is anonymised and treated only as part of an aggregate, a solid argument can be made that's not tracking, but it might be good to inform the user anyway. Once you start targeting individual users, that's certainly tracking.
Quite the opposite IMO.
Are these companies "sell outs" because they sold, or because they sold to foreign companies?
Shouldn't they be lauded as successes for having been sold in the first place? Is this part of the problem that the root of the article (as I see it) is actually talking about?
I'd suggest it's a little more complex than just starting a company and not selling out to a larger competitor. London is not Silicon Valley. Never has been and any opportunity to cultivate that type of culture within the city will surely be even more challenging with the Brexit?
But I digress. When the Brexit vote is enacted, I suspect we'll find business and investment into start-ups in the UK continuing to diminish in favour of EU based states or else where.
Actually. You could really say this about almost every industry in the UK with the exception of the Banking and Financial sector, they're all diminishing in favour of offshore? If they haven't already anyway? That's profound.
Source: ex-pat from the UK
Edit: words, additional statements.
Example: almost everyone thinks UK manufacturing has been in decline for decades. In reality when measured in absolute amounts the UK manufactures more than ever before. People think it's declined only because it employs fewer people (but still manages to make more). A more optimistic way to look at it would be to say that UK manufacturing has become wildly more productive than in the past.
So when you say they're "diminishing" you need to square that with the fact that the UK economy is actually doing pretty well, by European standards, hence the large migratory net inflows as people vote with their feet.
The balance they're trying to strike is between attracting foreign investment vs losing companies via foreign acquisition.
Foreign investment (along with export revenue) is great, as it creates jobs, grows ecosystems, increases demand for the currency, etc.
Foreign acquisition is not so great, as the jobs/expertise/ecosystems and export revenue are lost.
Of course, if the founders/early investors go on and invest their returns in new local companies, then that's a good thing, but is perhaps beyond the scope of what governments are able to measure (or generate PR from).
I have no strong opinions about how sensible this attitude from governments is; I just know that's how they think, at least in Australia, and probably in the UK too.
SwiftKey's problem is that they had a tiny window of time after inventing it where they could have charged lots of money to power users before the Android team just included their invention in the core product. Apparently they were unable to capitalise on that time and ended up selling to Microsoft who now gets to fund their loss-making product. Although I loved SwiftKey as a product, business wise I'm not sure that's a loss for the UK.
Many companies tend to focus efforts in their home countries and there's always a risk that a foreign acquisition will see its operations downsized in their native country and moved either to the home country of the acquiring company or to a low-cost cost location.
Also from a tax perspective, foreign companies don't generate as much revenue for the British government, so every time one is purchased by a foreign company that's more long term tax revenue lost.
Because that's where the corporation pays most of its taxes (usually), and that's where the most interesting jobs are going to be.
A real story would be that of De Havilland and the Comet airliner - Boeing and Airbus should never have existed, the UK had that market sewn up until the government of the day blew it...
Britain was a great innovator back when individual inventors could manage a project, they never seemed to transition into corporate innovation though.
But the firm got unstuck when it tried to enter the business market. Its Sinclair QL was designed to outperform IBM's PCs, but its tape-based Microdrive storage was unreliable and the British company did not offer the kind of telephone support the corporate sector required.
His failure wasn't in terms of price but of price/performance.
It was too expensive for a home computer and too much of a toy for a business: between two chairs.
Is it really worse? In Australia is see nothing but short term thinking, a lot of it is driven by parent companies in the UK and US.
In my personal experience, British business people have tended to favour the shitty, short-term-but-get-cash solution over doing things properly as well. Not at all a unique concept, but picking the easy way out seems to be much more common to me.
I thought UK defence procurement policy was to double the cost and reduce capability by 50%.
Some of the corner-cutting was ingenious (the calculator where the power pulses just often enough for the screen and memory to stay on, allowing a watch battery to be used for a more slimline design) and some of it less so (iirc the same calculator displays 8 digits but is only accurate to 3 significant figures...)
Edit: My comment is relevant. How relevant is the UK tech scene in the world ? one measure would be HN ranking during the day.
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I guess any sell out is termed "lost".
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagination_Technologies