Ask HN: UK Startups – Are You Thinking of Leaving the UK Because of Brexit?
UK Expat here living in Munich.
Anecdotal, but many companies here (startups and corps) are getting more and more CVs from EU staff of Tech startups in London. Not sure if it's the same in Berlin or other EU hubs. Also wondering if UK citizens would move over to gain extra rights of EU movement when here during the transition.
190 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 254 ms ] threadI think it's going to be a bit overblown. It's easier for EU tech employees to move their lives, than it is for London tech companies to up and move elsewhere. Because of this, I theorise that there will be an intermittent period where there will be a labor shortage in London, due to lack of EU workers to supplement the demand in London tech. This will balance out with time, with EU companies moving more of their offices out of London.
I think we have started to see this already, at my gig, we have found it quite difficult to get decent candidates through the door, and anecdotally a lot of our better candidates have been from the EU. We are about 50% Londoners, 30% EU, 20% World.
However, increased costs from complying with new legal systems and a shortage of skilled labour pushing up prices are two ways in which the average person will experience Brexit as a bad thing.
(Though personally I think the economic costs are not the most important aspects of Brexit.)
Once that has all died down hopefully there will be some Scottish Independence work or something :-)
Sadly I started contracting too late to get in on the Y2K bonanza.
Every time I go for a new role I get asked "Have you worked on a regulatory project before?" Er, where have you been? Have there been any non-reg projects in the last five years?
The difference between a team of 6 UK/EU devs living in London, vs. 6 EU devs remote working from Poland isn't that much. It's a little trickier to manage, but is cheaper in terms of living expenses and therefore salary.
So far from Brexit bringing back jobs to the UK, it'll just drive away anything that can be done remotely.
This means that the companies will probably still stay in London, but the jobs will go elsewhere.
In 2017, 14 injured and 3 dead due to terrorists according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in...
In contrast, 329 people were killed on French roads in June 2017 (3469 killed in 2016 total) (https://www.thelocal.fr/20170724/france-road-deaths-in-june-...)
Your risk assessment is v.poor.
The murder rate is less than a third that in the US and twice that in Germany. Are these really levels of threat that people worry about.
In the entire rest of the 21st century (2000-14, 2017), the total was 25 killed. 1980-99 only had 86 killed. Sure, you can pick the two single worst years to try and make your case but it's intellectually dishonest.
as a french, this is so overblown. You've got much more chance getting shot in the US than in France.
Recent stats give 7800 murders in the US (only by gunshot!) since the beginning of the year, vs 729 overall murders in France:
* https://www.planetoscope.com/Criminalite/1416-meurtres-par-a...
* https://www.planetoscope.com/Criminalite/1201-homicides-comm...
Falling from a ladder also kills more people than terrorism, right, but this is not what people are afraid of. Watch this to understand that we're talking about two different distributions: https://youtu.be/9dKiLclupUM?t=367
Terrorism SUDDENLY increases the odds of you being killed by it. And that is what - rightfully - scares people. Example: Before 9/11 the chances of being killed by terrorism was let's say 0.000000.....1%. After 9/11 the chance SUDDENLY increased a hundredfold. That change in probability never ever happened in the distributions of car-accidents, being shot in the US or falling ladders.
I'm quite happy living in the country - little chance of getting enriched by a truck of peace out here, fingers crossed.
Let me cite some numbers:
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/frequently-requested... "According to estimates from the 2013 ACS, the U.S. immigrant population stood at more than 41.3 million, or 13 percent, of the total U.S. population of 316.1 million. Between 2012 and 2013, the foreign-born population increased by about 523,000, or 1.3 percent."
According to https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/01/11/germany... the "mass immigration" to Germany in 2015 was about 890k, which with a baseline population of about 82 Million is less than 1.1%. And that was the peak, and has radically declined since then.
I don't have any numbers present right now, but I'm pretty certain that mass shootings in the USA have a higher death toll per capita than terrorism in western Europe.
Update: According to [1] the US has 30 death per 10k population per year from mass shootings. [2] finds 22 death from terrorism in Germany in 2016 noteworthy high, which equates to ... well, you don't even have to do the math to see how much lower it is.
[1] http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34996604 [2] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4052696/Germany-s-ye...
If you have an EU-passport, you can just move here and start looking for a job. If you can code, you can shoot me an email, and I can try to help. (I run coderfit.com, a tech-recruiting agency in Zurich)
Perhaps, for now. If hard trade barriers are in place soon that status will change dramatically.
Digital services are affected by other types of regulation though which won't really change as a result of Brexit (e.g. if you're a British online accounting company selling a version optimised for German companies).
I wish we could get rid of the whole rancid bunch of politicians, and hire some company to take care of it all with dignity.
I'm waiting to see what happens. It's already done a number on my relative wealth through the pound dropping, but just going to ride it out for a bit and see how dumb the govt. is in the negotiations.
As others have said, London is so ridiculously international and concentrated with tech experience and that eases my mind a bit, but if they do crash out and things go tits-up I'll seriously look at leaving.
The only people I know who have moved to Europe aren't in tech.
Brexit means I won't.
The median full-time job in the US pays around $45,000. That median person has no four year degree and is not living in a coastal city.
https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...
The data seems to be suggest that Boston is reasonably comparable to London[1]. This isn't my experience though.
[1]https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...
Internet and TV ~1.5x as expensive. Mobile phone plan ~2x as expensive. Simple things like fresh fruit and veg at least 1.5x. Utilities ~2x as expensive.
Although, that said, we can keep going down the line and look at cities like Raleigh or Austin where wages are not that much lower than here and prices are way lower. Definitely have been tempted by that at times.
In my experience however this does not translate to actually being twice as wealthy :(
And in the NHS, healthcare costs are paid via taxes, which means less take home money. So in fact, you'd expect UK wages to be higher to make up for it.
In fact, smart businesses will new open offices in UK (outside of EU), just to hedge their bets on the future. Buy low, sell high.
But isn't that what membership of the EU gives the UK today? So give up the membership, you give those up to. It's kind of the whole point of the EU.
Scary how people equate those, without understanding the (monstrous) difference.
All the things you list have either been already implemented in the EU, or their implementation is being actively discussed.
The gradual loss of sovereignty (the so-called "salami method") is also what prompted many people to vote for Brexit. Not everyone was a knuckle-dragging racist.
You appear to be reading different newspapers than I do. They are all reporting "forget it" to these options.
Where power originates with people, manipulating the general opinion is the ultimate source of power. Ever heard of "bank runs"? It's like a self-fulfilling prophecy -- once you manage to scare enough people, you can shape reality. Healthy banks fall. Threads like "Should I leave the UK because of Brexit?" pop up.
What I'm saying is there is (as in, must necessarily be) very little implications of "Brexit", technically speaking. What will really happen is all about what people's emotions make it to be, which are in turn shaped by whose PR prevails.
How (what mechanism) is this a necessity?
Bureaucracies are not productive enough to enact changes like Brexit in a short amount of time.
Europe will need to determine exactly the ruleset which they believe will apply to UK imports/exports, and it will be extremely costly and slow to make any significant changes, since whatever is decided will need to flow down to multiple agencies.
Consider, for example, the cost of rewriting lots of technology to support a new arrangement for the UK. Can it be done in 2 years, 4 years, 6 years in every single country that the UK trades with?
It will be easier to have arrangements to continue with what we have for now and then to grandfather in what already exists at some point.
(This is just my layman's perspective and it's based entirely on intuition so I could be completely wrong!)
On the contrary, it is necessary for the EU as a political project that there are negative implications of Brexit, and that those negative implications are perceived by everyone.
Those are pretty big "ifs," don't you think?
Being in the EFTA would mean continuing to obey EU legislation, continued freedom of movement and paying money into the pot, ie. everything the Brexit campaign was against.
So, no, those agreements will likely not remain in place. The EU wil not agree to give the UK all the benefits of EU membership without the costs.
There may be other benefits to Brexit, but it will not be the case that Brexit will be good because the UK will negotiate a deal that, of itself, is better than the current deal the UK gets.
Not everything. For some people it was about symbolic sovereignty, or even about the legal structure.
Much more concerned about the possibility of the current Labour party gaining power actually.
To me, that's a higher threat than Brexit.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/19/marxis...
I can find plenty of descriptions of many politicians as Fascist (and usually better researched than this), doesn't mean most of them are.
"On 11 April 2009, he resigned his position after it emerged on a political blog that he and another Labour Party advisor, Derek Draper, had exchanged emails discussing the possibility of disseminating rumours McBride had fabricated about the private lives of some Conservative Party politicians and their spouses. The emails from McBride had been sent from his No. 10 Downing Street email account."
http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbli...
https://www.startpage.com/do/search?q=corbyn+marxism
It's lazy 'googling' about 'facts' that landed America with Trump.
By the way, using terms like "no reputable journalist" is called "Master suppression technique" or "domination technique" [1]. It is detrimental to having a fact-based discussion and generally seen as a cop-out for those who don't have real arguments to add to the discussion.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_suppression_technique
Sorry to do politics on HN but this post needed to be called out, none of these points are a combination of relevant and applying more to Labour than the Tories.
And now look where we are. I'm not sure your optimism is warranted. We're living in strange times.
Depends on whether the hearer likes or dislikes him.
Again - this is not new.
Any additional growth is mostly attributable to Obamaera policy (tho some short term juicing of markets has happened under Trump occasionally).
The only fudge that can work at the 11th hour is staying in the EU in all but name; there is no way the EU can agree to something non-disruptive quickly without risking it continuing on indefinitely, which means it needs to be almost identical to what went before. And I don't think the Tories can sell that to either the public or their own membership.
A mutually beneficial deal will never happen; the UK cannot come out of Brexit better than before. Any mutual benefit can only come after the UK has climbed out of a pit scary enough to put off any further risk of countries leaving.
If public opinion on Brexit changes, then it might be different. I don't see that happening yet though, and the risks all seem to be on the downside - painting the EU as intransigent and punishing.
I think it might. Polls on the subject have been tightening, and even showing signs of moving towards halting leaving[1].
I think as more of the leave voters die off (as they were predominantly older voters), and realisations about the actual real-world consequences of leaving filter through to the public consciousness, the process may be halted, softened, or reversed.
That's mostly conjecture (and hope, honestly) on my part, though.
[1] https://twitter.com/MSmithsonPB/status/918740988365074432
Compare with the situation of Greece. There was essentially very little change in the EU position, and Greece eventually realised they had no leverage and would be worse off outside the EU and had to acquiesce.
The only deals that have a chance of happening are "forget the whole thing, no Brexit" or maybe "Norway" (EEA including free movement, but no voting rights). "No deal" would be a disaster.
And if it's left until the 11th hour plenty of companies will have no choice but to avoid planning beyond that time. Like Ryanair pointing out that they can't take bookings without knowing what legal framework will be in place: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/07/11/ryanair-chief-mic...
Addendum: this article by Gordon Guthrie, Erlanger and former extremely minor politician, sums up the lack of choice: https://medium.com/@gordonguthrie/no-deal-wont-happen-e185f9...
Brexit is real, big players are feeling the pain.
Loyalty is hard earned, and easily lost. We've (the UK) decided to throw away people's loyalty.
Though the left tried to stifle this fact for years, it's now generally accepted that immigration has suppressed the wages of native British workers. Surely we should be more concerned about solving any skills shortage by training up the people that are here already? Or should we just throw them on the scrapheap and import cheap migrants? I don't often get roused to anger by debates like this but when it seems like immigrants are being privileged over native Brits it does seem like a pretty massive pisstake.
In addition, those Brexit fears are overblown. UK leaves EU and apparently it's doomsday. Did it ever matter to anyone who considered a move there, that US/Canada/Norway/Israel/Australia/NZ/Switzerland/.. has never been part thereof? Was it a consideration in your decision? I bet it was not.
Yes, it was a very big part of my decision when moving to London that I didn't need a Visa to work here, contrary to the country I was residing in before.
Yes it was a big part of my decision that I was free to change job, that I wasn't linked to an employer, that I didn't need to renew said visa it every X year, that my spouse could work with the same rights as me, etc.
UK leaving the EU isn't the main problem. UK leaving the EU in such a bizarrely unstructured and chaotic way without any plan in place is the problem.
What happens to EU citizens living the in the country that wants to leave, and vice versa? What kind of international agreements and contracts should replace what the EU provides? What about obligations to retirement funds of (former) EU employees?
There's a myriad of other questions to discuss, and given the number of states involved, two years is a very short time frame to settle them.
The reporting I heard about the current brexit negotiations might be biased, but I get the impress that the British government doesn't even seem to have well-defined positions on most of these issues, which slows down the negotiations.
The problem isn't so much that the UK is leaving the EU but that the current government as well as other prominent Brexit figures don't have the foggiest idea how they're going to proceed. They have neither vision nor plan (other than "strong and stable", whatever that's supposed to mean) and that's quite a bit unsettling.
The UK hasn't been conducting its own trade negotiations for decades now. They neither have the time nor the personnel required for having trade agreements in place by the time the UK is supposed to leave the EU if everything goes according to plan. It's not even clear if the UK can - as is commonly stated - easily fall back to WTO rules in case no agreement comes to pass because while the UK is member of the WTO that membership currently is contingent on its EU membership.
So, while Brexit might not spell doomsday for the UK this completely haphazard approach of dealing with it doesn't exactly bode well either.
Sounds exactly what my current government (Merkel) is successfully doing for years now.
The difference is that all those countries have lots of international agreements that make trade and travel rather easy.
The UK doesn't have that many international contracts with other EU states directly, because such matters have been handled by the EU. A "hard" brexit would throw back such matters by more than twenty years, and concern many of UK's most important trading partners.
This has been reiterated since day one. EU citizens will have a right to stay and UK Gov will do absolutely everything they can to see that through. The only reason they cannot put it to paper yet is they are waiting for reciprocacy from the EU. Once the EU agrees to provide UK in EU with exactly the same rights as the UK is offering them, it will go down in law.
There is so much bluster and threats from all sides. It takes a bit of digging and close examination to see what really is being said and offered.
Will EU do this though? Seems strange to allow UK both to be in and out of the EU at the same time.
You have it the wrong way around. The EU negotiation team proposed for all EU nationals (EU in the UK, and UK in the EU) to keep the same rights first, and the UK replied with a much worse deal.
1. No certainty that our customers will remain here or that they'll keep buying. We're seeing larger customers slow down spending.
2. No certainty that we can hire the right people from wherever we need to.
3. Little hope that the government will act in a pragmatic, pro-business manner (in fact, red-tape and the corporate tax burden is all but certain to rise for anyone who's not a large multi-national). HMRC (the tax man) are on some crusade to impose some MTD (Making Tax Digital) program and some other disasters on business, tightening up rules on the use of independent contractors, etc. This is not the government showing flexibility, this is the government going about business as usual whilst squabbling over what Brexit means and leaving the economy unattended.
I don't understand how any of that can be considered contentious especially as it's been pushed back to beyond April 2019 for roll out?
Asking your average market stall trader or a small retail shop to now require that they keep their management accounts up-to-date quarterly (when at the moment it needs to be done annually and the average accountant charges several hundred ££) is why its contentious.
Edit: here is a short summary from CIoT: https://www.tax.org.uk/policy-technical/technical-news/makin...
I feel London's a bit like Rome or Athens in as much as were a rich elite living off the back of a massive pool of slave labour, or cheap imported labour in this case.
Brexit is only going to have a short term effect on the tech sector, we'll still let highly skilled labour in and probably give them generous tax incentives to stay personally and at a corporate level.
Thinking like that will make you a wise investor.