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I think we can do alright in tech/AI and pharma (and perhaps other hard science startups). Plus boring but other multinational financial companies will do well here
Pharma yes, but tech/AI will be surely dominated by Silicon Valley, software engineers here get paid pittance in comparison to the states.
We are good at Fintech though, plus we are good and entrepreneurial investment. Bring back the £10m ER relief imo.
“Get paid a pittance” - I can see us becoming a back office for US firms in tech. The quality of skills is high and they can hire on the cheap relatively speaking.
We already are, I work as a self employed software contractor for companies in LA. I get paid well over 4 times what I could earn in the UK and a lot of my coworkers are also overseas. There is no incentive to work for a UK based company when you can earn LA salaries instead.
I normally work 1pm till 9pm, but that's for my own convenience more than anything. (I prefer having my free time in the morning). They have said that as long as I get the work outlined for the week done, they aren't too picky about the start and end times.
Once you adjust for cost of living and expenses we don't tend to have it isn't such a huge difference. Or it wasn't 9 years ago when I was offered a job on a good US salary, and did the comparison. Since then as far as I've seen cost of living (in the US) has increased drastically.
If you can contract for US wages in the UK, you are doing fantastically well, but if you can do that long term then it would be worth seriously considering moving to a cheaper country for a few years. I think Costa Rica had a good deal going for a while absolutely encouraging this.
Yeah mate, a lot has changed in the last ten years. You can get a good tech job in the states and live in a low cost of living area. Here, you're bound to London.
Also, the US economy has been doing great the last ten years, ours, not so much.
I work in London and live quite a way from it. Commute isn't \_too\_ bad.
Last time I was in the US (Jan), I was shocked at food prices, things had gone up a heel of a lot more since I was last there (a few years). I checked at the time with my US co-workers and people here who had been over for work or holiday, and pretty much everyone said the same.
For me - if I had gone over when I was offered a job I would literally be bankrupt now due to medical expenses (it was one of the things we calculated, because my partner and I are getting older). Even with the damn good health care plan it would have cost us a couple of years salary.
If I'd had the same offer back when I was in my twenties I'd have probably given it a go, but even if i were in my twenties now I wouldn't (an obvious lie, I wouldn't have been smart enough to do the actual comparison when I was in my twenties, and I'd have thought it was a good deal).
The thing is, you can get a decent tech job somewhere like Denver, where a senior scientist in Pharma can get $100k+ and here is at about £42k. The cost of living is cheaper in Denver than London, by far.
https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&country2=United+Kingdom&city1=Denver%2C+CO&city2=London
The 20-30 year olds are leaving, in droves.
Yeah Costa Rica is a good idea. If I’m lucky enough to be able to contract for a US company with their salary and I can work remotely then I’d work out of a country with no taxes. Save as much money as possible, invest etc so I can retire early
Microsoft recently pledged a considerable investment in London to progress their AI arm. I don't think it matters too much where is considered the main global hub.
Companies like Google Deepmind are also based in London.
With AI expected to grow considerably, places like London will benefit and likely play a vital role in the foreseeable future. Any considerably sized hub hosting these companies and technology will likely do well.
Hate to be boring, but it does still need good regulations though. From an R&D perspective that shouldn't be too intrusive. But from deploying AI in the UK Economy it does have to be regulated to protect people, which we're terrible at doing.
Not everyone in tech wants to be in California or work in the Valley cult(ure). Money isn't always the main motivator for where you work or what you do.
I think science will really suffer, we can't rely on EU scientists anymore because it's more difficult for them. Salaries in science are generally pretty crap so people like myself who have a PhD and are looking at rapidly declining quality of life in the UK want to go abroad. In biotech I generally see businessmen who don't know what they're talking about or doing largely taking massive salaries, the last startup I worked at is currently failing because of it.
>In biotech I generally see businessmen who don't know what they're talking about or doing largely taking massive salaries,
Not just in biotech...that seems to be everywhere. There's no real downside these days to blagging an MD role on promises you have no idea how to keep and milking it for all it's worth. Once the owners/shareholders start to cotton on you just move on to the next one and repeat...
Yup, listening to the CEO at my previously place was embarrassing. The man didn't even really have a surface level knowledge of the product they were trying to sell and then had the audacity to tell doctors they couldn't have a raise because "it's about responsibility, not education". Great for him because he was the least educated person in the company, yet paid 10x the majority of workers.
AI/ML no.
We are way behind, quoting Deepmind (Google) and Microsoft as some do are meaningless, they are US corporates, and intellectual capital can travel overnight (and often does... away from the UK).
Work in the field and over the last decade government funding has been absymal verging on negligent (look at UKRI it is a joke). Meanwhile US/China and even Russia are throwing billions into this *every year*.
80%+ of recent PhD's in ML/Stats etc. are leaving the UK... the brain drain is deeply worrying... government however doesn't give a shit and keeps digging that ditch.
That boat has long sailed.
Could have been saved as recently as a decade ago.. now no chance.
Which proves their point. UK government investment in sciences is abysmal. Just look at the joke that is ARIA as an example of the government trying to emulate the US in this area.
No chance with the tech / AI in the UK. Yes we do produce some tech unicorns once in a while but, all these tech startups have VC funding and they want to see an exit strategy. Unfortunately the main exit strategy for a startup in the UK is to be acquired by a bigger entity (usually from the US). Not many people are willing to back a UK company for 10+ years so that they can grow to be a MS, FB, Amazon etc..
There are a lot of UK med tech and biotech startups and SMEs that are using AI to facilitate things like drug discovery and personalised medicine so it would be cool if that takes off - needs waaaaay more investment though
Fintech, Law, Insurance, Finance, Professional Services etc. Areas that London excels at. The rest of the country doesn’t really have a USP vs any other generally developed area of the world.
Edit: should include Oxford and Cambridge, particularly in advanced pharmaceutical areas in the above.
We have pretty cutting edge military technologies being developed outside of London. They're a bit obscure to the general public, but we have a fair few avionics subsystems that aren't matched elsewhere.
The US stimulates it's economy by proxy so much by foreign aid packages, this is why we sell so many arms etc.
This will also come with this new commitment to defence spending, it's a proxy for spending in the local economy which should stimulate some growth. It just doesn't do anything to bring on new people into industries, allow them to flourish.
Glasgow makes more sattelites than anywhere outside California, Dundee businesses created worldwide video game hits like Lemmings and Grand Theft Auto, and Scotland as a whole is leading the world in offshore renewables, in 2022 51% of FDI in wind power went to Scotland.
Creative Assembly (they do the total war games) are UK based.
Videogames could be something we really excel at over the next decade or so. It'll require investment though.
What? Are you serious?
"The rest of the country doesn't really have a USP" ???
Whisky exports - nothing to do with London.
Satellite manufacture. Nothing to do with London.
Or Aberdeen, otherwise known as the oil capital of Europe.
And as others have said, military manufacturing happens nowhere near London. e.g. BAE Systems which operate major factories in Lancashire, Cumbria, Portsmouth, Kent and Glasgow.
Aston Martin - Warwickshire
Ineos (petrochemicals) - Falkirk
The UK is indeed London centric but... nowhere else with USPs? Seriously?
I guess our thriving precison engineering/aerospace/high-end manufacturing industry that actually makes stuff based around the Midlands is just pointless compared to the mighty Professional Services in London.
The presence of global corporate HQ's in London suggests significant sums aren't generated locally, but absorbed from services commissioned and delivered abroad.
Ireland modifies its GDP to take that into account with Google, Facebook and Apple there. Would be interesting if an economist did the same for London, it's global HQ's to establish clearer domestic GDP figures.
Would also be interesting to get a better handle on how much London, at the heart of the UKs non-dom tax havens and wealth-management work, extracts from the UK regions and globally merely to dodge taxes owed at home and abroad.
Many significant and expensive legal disputes go to arbitration with UK legal teams . Pretty much all legal and business activity in the Middle East passes through London in some form
We won't lead in anything until government and industry address the terrible salaries being offered to anyone who isn't a board member or CEO.
I'm in IT. I'm seeing high level, senior IT Manager jobs being posted offering 30K to 35k.
These are high level technical roles, in medium to large companies, that should be 60 to 70K plus.
Then they wonder why they can't fill the roles!
I went through the interview process for the 'Head of Digital' (IT director, basically) at an organisation with \~800 employees. Salary was advertised as 'competitive', as they all are. After the interview I received an offer - fantastic - but with a salary of 29K - 31K. I actually told the hiring manager that there was no point even starting to negotiate because we weren't even in the same ballpark with regard to salary expectation.
£30K for the top IT role in an organisation of 800 people. Absolutely pathetic. For £4k less I could just be a Tesco delivery driver.
The impression I got was that IT was just a necessary evil and if they could get rid of it they would have. I asked a question along the lines of, "How do you currently leverage your digital infrastructure to meet your business goals?", and just got blank stares.
I suspect they actually just wanted a Roy/Moss/Jen style department and paid accordingly.
Been offered a role 2 weeks ago for a Senior Manager role (but not in IT, actually in the automotive industry). The role was at a manufacturing site and responsible for 150 people (one line of production out of 3 onsite). 3 stage interview, salary offered: £52k...
Our Head of IT is on 100k. 300-person engineering company, team of 7.
I recruited him, and most of his peers were earning the same for similar responsibility...
Green tech *should* be one. Look at how fast microgeneration like heat pumps and solar is improving. Look at what we're doing with water and wind at a larger scale.
We need to roll these technologies out on a massive scale ourselves anyway. That requires large-scale manufacturing facilities. It requires many more tradespeople with the skills to install and maintain the equipment. It requires R&D to produce future generations of more efficient and reliable equipment. It requires changes to our national infrastructure to support different patterns of energy generation/distribution/usage.
Much of the world is going to be in the same boat over the next 50 years and it's in everyone's best interests to keep the boat afloat. So if we're going to develop the skills and build the facilities anyway then why not invest in it heavily now so we can scale it up faster and build an export market as well?
Funny you should mention that, as there was a [big industry show](https://www.innovationzero.com/) in London yesterday and the day before, dedicated to green/net zero technologies.
I got to chat to a number of the companies there - including many start-ups - and was impressed by the variety of ideas on show. To be clear: everyone I spoke to already had funding, and while some hadn't produced anything yet, others already had prototypes or pilot experiments running. And all of these companies are based in the UK.
I don't know how this compares to what other countries are doing, but I like to think it bodes well for the UK to have all these interesting ideas being worked on. Obviously not all will succeed, but hopefully those that do will make some kind of a difference.
(Incidentally, the Chancellor, Energy Secretary, and Shadow Climate Secretary were all guest speakers, which I took to mean that people are taking this stuff quite seriously.)
Yeah the other day I was thinking about how many game studios the UK has working on well-known titles; best of all, they’re not all concentrated in London unlike most other industries and seem to be spread out across the UK.
Is Rockstar considered to be a British or American company? I know the umbrella company is based in NYC but arguably their most important studio is still in Edinburgh.
The most important studio is definitely rockstar north, it also predates the corporate holding company of rockstar in the US. I’d say it’s a British-American company, the games are mostly made here, but a lot of their corporate work is done in the US.
I know no one wants to hear this but many fields we work in conjunction with the Yanks. Green tech, military, healthcare are just a few. In all honesty, the UK/US are responsible for disproportionate amounts of industry, inventions and trade functions. Total of about 430 million people + some support from Germany, Italy and Holland. Do 80% of the world’s heavy lifting .
Outliers like India/China use what we create well enough and either add their spin or reproduce on scale. It's surreal
Research and innovation from UK/US collaboration will likely continue to be hugely impactful on a global scale. We just need to get better at monetizing, we have all the productive institutions anyone could need.
Class gap.
Middle class has basically been dissolved now because the working and lower middle class have been made so poor and the upper middle class has become so rich.
Essentially, nowadays to be middle class you need to be on £100k a year minimum after tax and overheads.
And I see all these high "average" salaries everywhere but that's because they are using the mean instead of the median... Essentially if me and my 4 nearest neighbours only earned £18,000 a year and our 5th neighbour earns a million a year then the mean or "average" (as they put it 🙄) is much closer to 1 million pounds than it is 18,000 pounds.
You couldn't live comfortably on 50k a year? I'm on 40k and I'm pretty damn comfortable.
Families are more expensive, but you have the combined power of two people then, which means you get the tax free allowance twice and can save on things like housing.
You would need to be extremely financially irresponsible to earn 100k+ and struggling to live a comfortable middle class life.
The numbers they give would still be a pretty ridiculous bar for being middle class. £8000 a month excluding taxes, rent/mortgage, bill, council tax, road tax, car insurance, NI?
Famly of 5, our food bill (we don't eat out) is > £900/month. We don't buy crap but nor do we buy expensive stuff. If your take home pay is less than £3k per househol, you will survive, but not live,
Does depend a lot on where you live. If you're in a city in the South (London, but also Cambridge, Oxford, Bristol, etc), and are trying to save for a house, 40k won't get you very far on a single Income.
Lol sounds like my bro in law. His dad literally paid for his university and gave him the entire deposit for his massive house. He earns about 80k and my sister earns the same if bot more.
Listening to them, you'd think they were one paycheck away from starving to death. Omg we have so many bills we sure can't pay for dinner, you got this right?
I asked what his monthly mortgage was, and it was literally just £900 between the two of them.
Literally, that guy will be talking about what a struggle life is and in the same breath tell you how his investment portfolio is tracking. Nice guy, though, but completely delusional.
Maybe it's because they never really had to fend for themselves all that much.
I think you're missing the wood for the trees here. OP is probably in London as well which is hugely expensive. The point being made here is that with the massive increase in stuff like the cost of housing, cost of education etc. The money required to live as comfortably and financially securely as someone 40 years ago is much higher than people think. 'Middle Class' people on £50k these days are usually financing their lifestyle through debt over the long term. That was unheard of before. Salaries have stagnated and £50k isn't what it used to be. A salary of £100k, single or combined, is a pretty reasonable projection if you're trying to compare apples to apples across the last half century.
You think that's just a UK thing?
The top 1% here own less wealth than the Netherlands, Austria, Denmark, Germany & of course over double what they do here in the US.
The top 10% here own less wealth than all the countries above along with Ireland, and then France being essentially the same. So the whole idea that the UK is a leading force in this is laughable.
16.7% of people in the UK earn less than 2/3rds of average median earnings. Thats the same as Germany & Aus, and better than SK & Canada.
And these are just first world countries with low levels of inequality.
Oh, and the mean average full time UK salary is £35,404 & the median is £34,900. Barely a difference & neither figures particularly low.
Wouldn't be an r/AskUK thread without the weird class obsession.
Just to put it in perspective, UK ranks 129 out of 178 in income inequality. Meaning we're more equal than the vast majority of countries. Where did you get the idea it was a UK exclusive thing?
Yep. A lot of people don't realise how much work we do in this sector with health and safety.
Mate of mine does this kind of job for Roll's Royce. One time he was showing me what his task was for the day...
Launching defrosted chickens into jet engines to test and improve their strength for bird strikes.
They even had an improvised chicken cannon.
What a job.
The UK can be a leading light in populist tabloid journalism. That is something we are too good at producing, and it explains some of the problems we have now. Less cynically, Britain still produces world-class scientists, and people at the cutting edge of technology. British people can still do this. But the question is whether or not we can capitalise on it.
Well it is more the fact that yes, the UK has a lot of problems but we are still a wealthy country with a high standard of living which a lot of people on Reddit benefit from. But if you read Reddit, apparently the UK is some 3rd world country about to collapse.
I’m just sick of the negativity.
What's going so well for people to be cheery about?
People are saying negative things because the UK is in a poor state compared to what it used to be, what it could be, and other developed countries. For no good reason. That's nothing to do with Reddit. The NHS is deteriorating, as is transport, policing, education, energy, housing, the environment, cost of living, trade... meanwhile the government is busy trying to breach human rights, deport people to Rwanda and going after trans people.
Advanced modular reactors. They're ready now and we're gonna need double our current power generated within the next 15 years, so yeahhh.....
scale this demand globally and that's a massive industry market potential
Biotech is the obvious one. The only real issue I see is the cost of living in Oxford and Cambridge which are the brightest hubs in Europe for research.
Offshore wind
Emissions reduction
Tech/AI
Finance
We already excel at all of these and they are certain to grow but there are near infinite amount of possibilities if we invest appropriately.
First world poverty.
Poor health outcomes with a PA/ACP led service
Cost of living crisis
Wealth and geographical inequality.
Any others to add to the list?
The UK needs to do a significant reality check. The promised farm subsidies haven't materialized, foreign goods are still cheaper despite new import taxes, etc.
Tech is a big one, in a lot of the good metrics we are somewhere around top 2-3 and I don't really think this is going to slow down any time soon, we are leveraging a good deal of that in to renewables and tech related to that, I'm hoping our millitary industry will continue to stay strong too, plenty of important projects going on with good potential for exports and at the very least I think recent events have proven that the free world needs more strength so regardless it's needed. I think if the government gets its arse in gear regarding renewables and tech we could not only stay a world leader but actually put it to super good use and export the technology even more.
Wage disparity. Class warfare. Police funding. Dressing up government propaganda as news. Billions of fraud committed within and against the MOD. Oh wait, you said in the future not right now lol my bad.
Movies, more and more production companies are using the UK for locations and studio work. We have a fantastic studio in Pinewood, we offer very attractive tax breaks to movie makers and we have a world class standard of acting talent, I'd love to see Pinewood create a sister studio in the northwest where we have incredible location opportunities, media city is here, we have great transport links.
They're creating a new movie studio in Sunderland over the next 5 or so years to be one of the biggest in Europe.
https://www.sunderland.gov.uk/article/30495/New-era-for-North-East-as-Crown-Works-Studios-backed-with-new-tools-given-to-the-region-in-the-budget
Education. We've always had some of the best Universities in the world, and there's no reason to stop.
Indeed with good media and distance learning strategy, there's no reason we can't massively scale that to be a worldwide source of education.
And this gives us revenue, it lets us develop our 'intellectual capital' because we can afford for really top flight researchers and professors, and we get a huge amount of 'soft power' from people who learn to appreciate British Culture indirectly.
At least, assuming we don't screw it up and spaff all the good stuff we have away.
Well done for being the first person to mention this. The Woodsmith Mine has the largest deposit of polyhalite on the planet, the deepest mine in Europe, the longest tunnel in Britain and will add £100bn to the economy over 50 years.
Formula 1 and maybe all sports in general. We always do well but we don't have the dominance that we could have if we were a nation of high performance in all competitive multinational sports.
TV/Movies. I don’t know what/where our equivalent of Hollywood is (I guess just London?), but there’s all sorts of British TV and Movie constantly getting high viewership and ratings on streaming services and the like now.
We do OK backing tech startups up to Seed stage, but when it gets to investing significant amounts of money (at Series A funding rounds) we do significantly worse than the US and the rest of Europe. If we want to be the leaders in AI, blockchain, cyber etc. (all of which successive governments have stated they want the UK to be top dog in) then we need to look at significant backing for tech companies to not only find the next ‘tech unicorn’, but also to create a genuine UK ‘Silicon Valley’.
Jet Engines - RR Ultrafan is doing things the Americans can only dream of, they already make the most efficient large aero engine in the world. A company that is going places without a doubt. The Military engines are fantastic, they are so good, the US Air Force is Using BR700s in their B52 bombers and ordered 410 of them I believe! We have always been among the top in this area, but RR is about to dominate it.
1. Pharmaceutical Development
2. AI
(Pharmaceuticals Development)
Our pharmaceutical research as well as experimental forward thinking research, from vaccine creations to medicinal uses of psilocybin, are top tier. Pharmaceuticals are also going to be one of the few industries to truly prosper in the coming years unwavering in the changing market/geopolitical times we’re in (agriculture and defence are other examples). We have exceptional universities (in particular Cambridge and Oxford in this department) and capabilities with no reason not to double down on an ensure the UK is a leader in pharmaceutical R&D - Ideally: a Silicon Valley type approach to research, then productising into treatments and therapies as a major export for the UK and it’s citizens as opposed to also letting a lot of US companies buy up our research and patents
(AI)
Same for pharmaceuticals, cutting edge artificial intelligence is conducted here; DeepMind is born from the UK and with our resources both financially and academically there is no excuse not to double down on this too. Devise comprehensive yet open minded artificial intelligence R&D from both institutions and private companies, allowing the UK to actually remain as a meaningful player in the future we’re going to be in very soon
Significant investment should really be ramped up for university research and for funding for startups and infrastructure
The UK has for several decades now punched *massively* above its weight in pharma and life sciences. The only this isn't massive here, honestly, is the lack of any joined up plan from government to capitalize on our human resources in this field with big capital investments.
The nuclear industry is going through quite the renaissance and Britain is one of the leaders in a number of specific fields including fusion, space battery production, decommissioning & remediation, etc. We have quite an impressive capability that is only growing and with new reactors both big and small in development/commissioning, the government estimates we need about 123,000 people in the industry by 2030.
I think we’ll stick kick above our weight in creative areas- the arts, music, theatre and film:TV
Plus sport - The Premiership, Wimbledon, The Open will remain premier sporting events
If the government manages it correctly, a lot of this nuclear fusion stuff seems to have been quite promising. So with some serious investment and not just flogging the technology off to the highest bidder, I'm pretty sure the results could be impressive
Allowing half the population of the middle east to come here and get everything handed to them on a plate free of charge. While they complain all the time about how hard done by they are.
Premier league, acting, cheese, money laundering, creating new countries, TV, sarcasm, charity shops, niche technologies, house prices, stolen artefacts and a bunch of really nice people.
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I think we can do alright in tech/AI and pharma (and perhaps other hard science startups). Plus boring but other multinational financial companies will do well here
Pharma yes, but tech/AI will be surely dominated by Silicon Valley, software engineers here get paid pittance in comparison to the states. We are good at Fintech though, plus we are good and entrepreneurial investment. Bring back the £10m ER relief imo.
Second violin in a big orchestra is still a good job!
Yes very fair point!
“Get paid a pittance” - I can see us becoming a back office for US firms in tech. The quality of skills is high and they can hire on the cheap relatively speaking.
London is already becoming that to the US. Skills are here, same language, and salary is about half.
We already are, I work as a self employed software contractor for companies in LA. I get paid well over 4 times what I could earn in the UK and a lot of my coworkers are also overseas. There is no incentive to work for a UK based company when you can earn LA salaries instead.
Do you do US hours?
I normally work 1pm till 9pm, but that's for my own convenience more than anything. (I prefer having my free time in the morning). They have said that as long as I get the work outlined for the week done, they aren't too picky about the start and end times.
But if you wanted to change to 8-5pm do you think they really would be ok? I definitely wouldn't do us hours
You wouldn't start work 4 hours later if they offered you 4x salary?
Yeah but I've not seen any dev roles paying over £400k so 4x is a bit ott
Tech is very well paid here, it's just that the US is paid stupidly well
Once you adjust for cost of living and expenses we don't tend to have it isn't such a huge difference. Or it wasn't 9 years ago when I was offered a job on a good US salary, and did the comparison. Since then as far as I've seen cost of living (in the US) has increased drastically. If you can contract for US wages in the UK, you are doing fantastically well, but if you can do that long term then it would be worth seriously considering moving to a cheaper country for a few years. I think Costa Rica had a good deal going for a while absolutely encouraging this.
Yeah mate, a lot has changed in the last ten years. You can get a good tech job in the states and live in a low cost of living area. Here, you're bound to London. Also, the US economy has been doing great the last ten years, ours, not so much.
I work in London and live quite a way from it. Commute isn't \_too\_ bad. Last time I was in the US (Jan), I was shocked at food prices, things had gone up a heel of a lot more since I was last there (a few years). I checked at the time with my US co-workers and people here who had been over for work or holiday, and pretty much everyone said the same. For me - if I had gone over when I was offered a job I would literally be bankrupt now due to medical expenses (it was one of the things we calculated, because my partner and I are getting older). Even with the damn good health care plan it would have cost us a couple of years salary. If I'd had the same offer back when I was in my twenties I'd have probably given it a go, but even if i were in my twenties now I wouldn't (an obvious lie, I wouldn't have been smart enough to do the actual comparison when I was in my twenties, and I'd have thought it was a good deal).
The thing is, you can get a decent tech job somewhere like Denver, where a senior scientist in Pharma can get $100k+ and here is at about £42k. The cost of living is cheaper in Denver than London, by far. https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&country2=United+Kingdom&city1=Denver%2C+CO&city2=London The 20-30 year olds are leaving, in droves.
Yeah Costa Rica is a good idea. If I’m lucky enough to be able to contract for a US company with their salary and I can work remotely then I’d work out of a country with no taxes. Save as much money as possible, invest etc so I can retire early
Microsoft recently pledged a considerable investment in London to progress their AI arm. I don't think it matters too much where is considered the main global hub. Companies like Google Deepmind are also based in London. With AI expected to grow considerably, places like London will benefit and likely play a vital role in the foreseeable future. Any considerably sized hub hosting these companies and technology will likely do well.
Hate to be boring, but it does still need good regulations though. From an R&D perspective that shouldn't be too intrusive. But from deploying AI in the UK Economy it does have to be regulated to protect people, which we're terrible at doing.
Not everyone in tech wants to be in California or work in the Valley cult(ure). Money isn't always the main motivator for where you work or what you do.
I think science will really suffer, we can't rely on EU scientists anymore because it's more difficult for them. Salaries in science are generally pretty crap so people like myself who have a PhD and are looking at rapidly declining quality of life in the UK want to go abroad. In biotech I generally see businessmen who don't know what they're talking about or doing largely taking massive salaries, the last startup I worked at is currently failing because of it.
>In biotech I generally see businessmen who don't know what they're talking about or doing largely taking massive salaries, Not just in biotech...that seems to be everywhere. There's no real downside these days to blagging an MD role on promises you have no idea how to keep and milking it for all it's worth. Once the owners/shareholders start to cotton on you just move on to the next one and repeat...
Yup, listening to the CEO at my previously place was embarrassing. The man didn't even really have a surface level knowledge of the product they were trying to sell and then had the audacity to tell doctors they couldn't have a raise because "it's about responsibility, not education". Great for him because he was the least educated person in the company, yet paid 10x the majority of workers.
AI/ML no. We are way behind, quoting Deepmind (Google) and Microsoft as some do are meaningless, they are US corporates, and intellectual capital can travel overnight (and often does... away from the UK). Work in the field and over the last decade government funding has been absymal verging on negligent (look at UKRI it is a joke). Meanwhile US/China and even Russia are throwing billions into this *every year*. 80%+ of recent PhD's in ML/Stats etc. are leaving the UK... the brain drain is deeply worrying... government however doesn't give a shit and keeps digging that ditch. That boat has long sailed. Could have been saved as recently as a decade ago.. now no chance.
DeepMind was a UK startup bought out by Google.
Which proves their point. UK government investment in sciences is abysmal. Just look at the joke that is ARIA as an example of the government trying to emulate the US in this area.
No chance with the tech / AI in the UK. Yes we do produce some tech unicorns once in a while but, all these tech startups have VC funding and they want to see an exit strategy. Unfortunately the main exit strategy for a startup in the UK is to be acquired by a bigger entity (usually from the US). Not many people are willing to back a UK company for 10+ years so that they can grow to be a MS, FB, Amazon etc..
Better than nothing! A shame some of them have to be acquired far too cheap but it's still a net good thing
There are a lot of UK med tech and biotech startups and SMEs that are using AI to facilitate things like drug discovery and personalised medicine so it would be cool if that takes off - needs waaaaay more investment though
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Fintech, Law, Insurance, Finance, Professional Services etc. Areas that London excels at. The rest of the country doesn’t really have a USP vs any other generally developed area of the world. Edit: should include Oxford and Cambridge, particularly in advanced pharmaceutical areas in the above.
We have pretty cutting edge military technologies being developed outside of London. They're a bit obscure to the general public, but we have a fair few avionics subsystems that aren't matched elsewhere.
The US stimulates it's economy by proxy so much by foreign aid packages, this is why we sell so many arms etc. This will also come with this new commitment to defence spending, it's a proxy for spending in the local economy which should stimulate some growth. It just doesn't do anything to bring on new people into industries, allow them to flourish.
Glasgow makes more sattelites than anywhere outside California, Dundee businesses created worldwide video game hits like Lemmings and Grand Theft Auto, and Scotland as a whole is leading the world in offshore renewables, in 2022 51% of FDI in wind power went to Scotland.
> Lemmings, Minecraft, and Grand Theft Auto Lemmings and GTA yes. Minecraft No.
Oh just checked, from Stockholm, always thought it was Dundee for some reason
4J studios in Dundee did the Minecraft port for consoles.
Creative Assembly (they do the total war games) are UK based. Videogames could be something we really excel at over the next decade or so. It'll require investment though.
Username doesn’t check out, shouldn’t you be bigging up Wales?
What? Are you serious? "The rest of the country doesn't really have a USP" ??? Whisky exports - nothing to do with London. Satellite manufacture. Nothing to do with London. Or Aberdeen, otherwise known as the oil capital of Europe. And as others have said, military manufacturing happens nowhere near London. e.g. BAE Systems which operate major factories in Lancashire, Cumbria, Portsmouth, Kent and Glasgow. Aston Martin - Warwickshire Ineos (petrochemicals) - Falkirk The UK is indeed London centric but... nowhere else with USPs? Seriously?
Birmingham and the Midlands is the centre for logistics in the UK, and industry worth over £150bn, it's called the Golden Triangle
Brum also has a centre for curries, the Balti Triangle
Which oddly leaves me with the vindaloo ring.
Son...thats what winning feels like!!
Is that mostly UK or is it world leading?
There are companies based in Birmingham that are world leading in the field of transporting goods from Manchester to London.
Haha so we just keep giving up on the rest of the country
I guess our thriving precison engineering/aerospace/high-end manufacturing industry that actually makes stuff based around the Midlands is just pointless compared to the mighty Professional Services in London.
Amazing the perspective of some people
Leeds is very insurance heavy. More insurers and brokers than you can shake a stick at. I think it's the biggest insurance hub outside of London.
Canary Wharf was centrally planned and facilitated by Government. It wasn't organic.
The presence of global corporate HQ's in London suggests significant sums aren't generated locally, but absorbed from services commissioned and delivered abroad. Ireland modifies its GDP to take that into account with Google, Facebook and Apple there. Would be interesting if an economist did the same for London, it's global HQ's to establish clearer domestic GDP figures. Would also be interesting to get a better handle on how much London, at the heart of the UKs non-dom tax havens and wealth-management work, extracts from the UK regions and globally merely to dodge taxes owed at home and abroad.
Law is an interesting one, I may be naïve but surely law is specific to the country
Firms in London specialise in global law matters.
A lot of countries around the world have law based on ours, so our global law firms have somewhat of a competitive advantage.
Hooray for the Empire imposing common law systems
Many significant and expensive legal disputes go to arbitration with UK legal teams . Pretty much all legal and business activity in the Middle East passes through London in some form
I'd imagine Scotch is unmatched globally in terms of economic value per litre
Edinburgh's also in the top 6-8 financial centres in Europe.
Nottingham University is one of the forerunners in nanotechnology.
The Arts and sport
We won't lead in anything until government and industry address the terrible salaries being offered to anyone who isn't a board member or CEO. I'm in IT. I'm seeing high level, senior IT Manager jobs being posted offering 30K to 35k. These are high level technical roles, in medium to large companies, that should be 60 to 70K plus. Then they wonder why they can't fill the roles!
I went through the interview process for the 'Head of Digital' (IT director, basically) at an organisation with \~800 employees. Salary was advertised as 'competitive', as they all are. After the interview I received an offer - fantastic - but with a salary of 29K - 31K. I actually told the hiring manager that there was no point even starting to negotiate because we weren't even in the same ballpark with regard to salary expectation. £30K for the top IT role in an organisation of 800 people. Absolutely pathetic. For £4k less I could just be a Tesco delivery driver.
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Seems like a HR mistake. I can't imagine anyone suitable going oh damn son that salary sounds lit. Sign me up kid!
The impression I got was that IT was just a necessary evil and if they could get rid of it they would have. I asked a question along the lines of, "How do you currently leverage your digital infrastructure to meet your business goals?", and just got blank stares. I suspect they actually just wanted a Roy/Moss/Jen style department and paid accordingly.
The most recent Junior Developer I hired is on £37k, IT Director for £31k is exactly how you get shitty management.
Last org I was in was the same size had the Head of IT on 66k and I thought that was taking the piss
Been offered a role 2 weeks ago for a Senior Manager role (but not in IT, actually in the automotive industry). The role was at a manufacturing site and responsible for 150 people (one line of production out of 3 onsite). 3 stage interview, salary offered: £52k...
Our Head of IT is on 100k. 300-person engineering company, team of 7. I recruited him, and most of his peers were earning the same for similar responsibility...
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Green tech *should* be one. Look at how fast microgeneration like heat pumps and solar is improving. Look at what we're doing with water and wind at a larger scale. We need to roll these technologies out on a massive scale ourselves anyway. That requires large-scale manufacturing facilities. It requires many more tradespeople with the skills to install and maintain the equipment. It requires R&D to produce future generations of more efficient and reliable equipment. It requires changes to our national infrastructure to support different patterns of energy generation/distribution/usage. Much of the world is going to be in the same boat over the next 50 years and it's in everyone's best interests to keep the boat afloat. So if we're going to develop the skills and build the facilities anyway then why not invest in it heavily now so we can scale it up faster and build an export market as well?
'its in everyones best interests to keep the boat afloat' apart from the people sinking it in their own interests.
It’s almost like you’re suggesting we need a national green energy company…
Funny you should mention that, as there was a [big industry show](https://www.innovationzero.com/) in London yesterday and the day before, dedicated to green/net zero technologies. I got to chat to a number of the companies there - including many start-ups - and was impressed by the variety of ideas on show. To be clear: everyone I spoke to already had funding, and while some hadn't produced anything yet, others already had prototypes or pilot experiments running. And all of these companies are based in the UK. I don't know how this compares to what other countries are doing, but I like to think it bodes well for the UK to have all these interesting ideas being worked on. Obviously not all will succeed, but hopefully those that do will make some kind of a difference. (Incidentally, the Chancellor, Energy Secretary, and Shadow Climate Secretary were all guest speakers, which I took to mean that people are taking this stuff quite seriously.)
The UK is pretty good in video game development and might be able to maintain its stand over the next ten years
Yeah, we've a good legacy and a few sane policies i.e. gov't's VGTR scheme that help keep us competitive in that dept.
Yeah the other day I was thinking about how many game studios the UK has working on well-known titles; best of all, they’re not all concentrated in London unlike most other industries and seem to be spread out across the UK. Is Rockstar considered to be a British or American company? I know the umbrella company is based in NYC but arguably their most important studio is still in Edinburgh.
The most important studio is definitely rockstar north, it also predates the corporate holding company of rockstar in the US. I’d say it’s a British-American company, the games are mostly made here, but a lot of their corporate work is done in the US.
AI, Fintech, Financial Services, Higher Education, Scientific Research, Pharmaceuticals, Motor Sports, Football, Data Analytics, Military Equipment …
I know no one wants to hear this but many fields we work in conjunction with the Yanks. Green tech, military, healthcare are just a few. In all honesty, the UK/US are responsible for disproportionate amounts of industry, inventions and trade functions. Total of about 430 million people + some support from Germany, Italy and Holland. Do 80% of the world’s heavy lifting . Outliers like India/China use what we create well enough and either add their spin or reproduce on scale. It's surreal
its actually good to hear this
Research and innovation from UK/US collaboration will likely continue to be hugely impactful on a global scale. We just need to get better at monetizing, we have all the productive institutions anyone could need.
Class gap. Middle class has basically been dissolved now because the working and lower middle class have been made so poor and the upper middle class has become so rich. Essentially, nowadays to be middle class you need to be on £100k a year minimum after tax and overheads. And I see all these high "average" salaries everywhere but that's because they are using the mean instead of the median... Essentially if me and my 4 nearest neighbours only earned £18,000 a year and our 5th neighbour earns a million a year then the mean or "average" (as they put it 🙄) is much closer to 1 million pounds than it is 18,000 pounds.
You do not need to be on £170,000+ salary to live a comfortable middle class life, that's obsurd.
On your own? Sure, you couldn't probably do it on 50 or 60 grand. It will need to be double with a family.
You couldn't live comfortably on 50k a year? I'm on 40k and I'm pretty damn comfortable. Families are more expensive, but you have the combined power of two people then, which means you get the tax free allowance twice and can save on things like housing. You would need to be extremely financially irresponsible to earn 100k+ and struggling to live a comfortable middle class life.
I take it they were talking about London or something
The numbers they give would still be a pretty ridiculous bar for being middle class. £8000 a month excluding taxes, rent/mortgage, bill, council tax, road tax, car insurance, NI?
You're being generous, I take it they are delusional.
Famly of 5, our food bill (we don't eat out) is > £900/month. We don't buy crap but nor do we buy expensive stuff. If your take home pay is less than £3k per househol, you will survive, but not live,
Does depend a lot on where you live. If you're in a city in the South (London, but also Cambridge, Oxford, Bristol, etc), and are trying to save for a house, 40k won't get you very far on a single Income.
I earn 60k before tax in London and I'm FAR from middle class style of life. Feels like I'm a student.
Then you need to change something. I'm also on 60k in London and live a very comfortable middle class lifestyle.
No way you need to be on over £100k to be middle class, that is just completely out of touch.
His poor working class company director father only earned a mear £60k when he was growing up. Please have sympathy for his struggles 😔
When he started his company he had but two things in his possession: a dream... and six million pounds. ([IT crowd](https://youtu.be/ejfYttZCnps))
Lol sounds like my bro in law. His dad literally paid for his university and gave him the entire deposit for his massive house. He earns about 80k and my sister earns the same if bot more. Listening to them, you'd think they were one paycheck away from starving to death. Omg we have so many bills we sure can't pay for dinner, you got this right? I asked what his monthly mortgage was, and it was literally just £900 between the two of them. Literally, that guy will be talking about what a struggle life is and in the same breath tell you how his investment portfolio is tracking. Nice guy, though, but completely delusional. Maybe it's because they never really had to fend for themselves all that much.
I think you're missing the wood for the trees here. OP is probably in London as well which is hugely expensive. The point being made here is that with the massive increase in stuff like the cost of housing, cost of education etc. The money required to live as comfortably and financially securely as someone 40 years ago is much higher than people think. 'Middle Class' people on £50k these days are usually financing their lifestyle through debt over the long term. That was unheard of before. Salaries have stagnated and £50k isn't what it used to be. A salary of £100k, single or combined, is a pretty reasonable projection if you're trying to compare apples to apples across the last half century.
You think that's just a UK thing? The top 1% here own less wealth than the Netherlands, Austria, Denmark, Germany & of course over double what they do here in the US. The top 10% here own less wealth than all the countries above along with Ireland, and then France being essentially the same. So the whole idea that the UK is a leading force in this is laughable. 16.7% of people in the UK earn less than 2/3rds of average median earnings. Thats the same as Germany & Aus, and better than SK & Canada. And these are just first world countries with low levels of inequality. Oh, and the mean average full time UK salary is £35,404 & the median is £34,900. Barely a difference & neither figures particularly low.
Wouldn't be an r/AskUK thread without the weird class obsession. Just to put it in perspective, UK ranks 129 out of 178 in income inequality. Meaning we're more equal than the vast majority of countries. Where did you get the idea it was a UK exclusive thing?
Renewables in the UK is already huge and can get much bigger
Look out, here come all the doom and gloom posters
Aerospace.
Yep. A lot of people don't realise how much work we do in this sector with health and safety. Mate of mine does this kind of job for Roll's Royce. One time he was showing me what his task was for the day... Launching defrosted chickens into jet engines to test and improve their strength for bird strikes. They even had an improvised chicken cannon. What a job.
The UK can be a leading light in populist tabloid journalism. That is something we are too good at producing, and it explains some of the problems we have now. Less cynically, Britain still produces world-class scientists, and people at the cutting edge of technology. British people can still do this. But the question is whether or not we can capitalise on it.
Child poverty Increasing mental and physical health problems in people of all ages. Decriminalisation of all crimes due to a lack of police.
Tell me you’re permanently online, without telling me.
Yeah child poverty is really bad here compared to say, Mozambique.
Given how wealthy the UK is compared to Mozambique, it’s a piss poor comparison to make.
A world-leading force in child poverty should probably involve having more child poverty than most other countries, for a start like.
This guy daily mails
I started my main comment by saying that the UK really excels in populist tabloid journalism. Lots of people seem to be still living in the 1980s.
Ah reddit, a bunch of middle class people complaining about how bad their lives are.
Ah the old, “that person has some money, they better not care about anyone else or that will make them a hypocrite” line….
Well it is more the fact that yes, the UK has a lot of problems but we are still a wealthy country with a high standard of living which a lot of people on Reddit benefit from. But if you read Reddit, apparently the UK is some 3rd world country about to collapse. I’m just sick of the negativity.
What's going so well for people to be cheery about? People are saying negative things because the UK is in a poor state compared to what it used to be, what it could be, and other developed countries. For no good reason. That's nothing to do with Reddit. The NHS is deteriorating, as is transport, policing, education, energy, housing, the environment, cost of living, trade... meanwhile the government is busy trying to breach human rights, deport people to Rwanda and going after trans people.
This person has never lived in an LEDC
Advanced modular reactors. They're ready now and we're gonna need double our current power generated within the next 15 years, so yeahhh..... scale this demand globally and that's a massive industry market potential
Obesity
Potholes
World leading waiting lists to see a health care professional.
Biotech if we can keep our unicorns from leaving. I fear fintech innovation will move outside of Europe to India, China and US.
General decline.
Corruption and tax evasion?
Government corruption...oh wait a minute....
Biotech is the obvious one. The only real issue I see is the cost of living in Oxford and Cambridge which are the brightest hubs in Europe for research.
Offshore wind Emissions reduction Tech/AI Finance We already excel at all of these and they are certain to grow but there are near infinite amount of possibilities if we invest appropriately.
First world poverty. Poor health outcomes with a PA/ACP led service Cost of living crisis Wealth and geographical inequality. Any others to add to the list?
It should be Higher Education. It’s already one of our biggest industries but the government is determined to destroy it.
Yup this is a significant one - higher education and university research. Research in the NHS too. But chronically undervalued by the government.
The UK needs to do a significant reality check. The promised farm subsidies haven't materialized, foreign goods are still cheaper despite new import taxes, etc.
corruption
Crisp butty
NIMBYism 🫠
Tech is a big one, in a lot of the good metrics we are somewhere around top 2-3 and I don't really think this is going to slow down any time soon, we are leveraging a good deal of that in to renewables and tech related to that, I'm hoping our millitary industry will continue to stay strong too, plenty of important projects going on with good potential for exports and at the very least I think recent events have proven that the free world needs more strength so regardless it's needed. I think if the government gets its arse in gear regarding renewables and tech we could not only stay a world leader but actually put it to super good use and export the technology even more.
I want us to build tables and shit again
Consulting.
We could build a really good arms industry, with the industrial north and midlands, but its extremely unlikely.
First world poverty?
Wage disparity. Class warfare. Police funding. Dressing up government propaganda as news. Billions of fraud committed within and against the MOD. Oh wait, you said in the future not right now lol my bad.
Movies, more and more production companies are using the UK for locations and studio work. We have a fantastic studio in Pinewood, we offer very attractive tax breaks to movie makers and we have a world class standard of acting talent, I'd love to see Pinewood create a sister studio in the northwest where we have incredible location opportunities, media city is here, we have great transport links.
They're creating a new movie studio in Sunderland over the next 5 or so years to be one of the biggest in Europe. https://www.sunderland.gov.uk/article/30495/New-era-for-North-East-as-Crown-Works-Studios-backed-with-new-tools-given-to-the-region-in-the-budget
Education. We've always had some of the best Universities in the world, and there's no reason to stop. Indeed with good media and distance learning strategy, there's no reason we can't massively scale that to be a worldwide source of education. And this gives us revenue, it lets us develop our 'intellectual capital' because we can afford for really top flight researchers and professors, and we get a huge amount of 'soft power' from people who learn to appreciate British Culture indirectly. At least, assuming we don't screw it up and spaff all the good stuff we have away.
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Cuntyism, cronyism, and complaining
We can be the NO1. LOOSERS in Europe.
Backtracking.
Commercial drone flight technology (if it wasn't for the CAA)
They are going to start mining this top notch fertiliser here soon, so there's that.
Well done for being the first person to mention this. The Woodsmith Mine has the largest deposit of polyhalite on the planet, the deepest mine in Europe, the longest tunnel in Britain and will add £100bn to the economy over 50 years.
Leading the way globally in self driving mobility scooters.
Knife crime
Formula 1 and maybe all sports in general. We always do well but we don't have the dominance that we could have if we were a nation of high performance in all competitive multinational sports.
Hahahahaha
TV/Movies. I don’t know what/where our equivalent of Hollywood is (I guess just London?), but there’s all sorts of British TV and Movie constantly getting high viewership and ratings on streaming services and the like now.
Immigration 😂
Language, we can all go to Asia to teach English...
We could probably export our workers to nations such as Poland to cut asparagus in their fields
We do OK backing tech startups up to Seed stage, but when it gets to investing significant amounts of money (at Series A funding rounds) we do significantly worse than the US and the rest of Europe. If we want to be the leaders in AI, blockchain, cyber etc. (all of which successive governments have stated they want the UK to be top dog in) then we need to look at significant backing for tech companies to not only find the next ‘tech unicorn’, but also to create a genuine UK ‘Silicon Valley’.
Jokes and rants aside, I think it's well developed in consulting and financing services aimed towards energy transition and renewable energies
Jet Engines - RR Ultrafan is doing things the Americans can only dream of, they already make the most efficient large aero engine in the world. A company that is going places without a doubt. The Military engines are fantastic, they are so good, the US Air Force is Using BR700s in their B52 bombers and ordered 410 of them I believe! We have always been among the top in this area, but RR is about to dominate it.
1. Pharmaceutical Development 2. AI (Pharmaceuticals Development) Our pharmaceutical research as well as experimental forward thinking research, from vaccine creations to medicinal uses of psilocybin, are top tier. Pharmaceuticals are also going to be one of the few industries to truly prosper in the coming years unwavering in the changing market/geopolitical times we’re in (agriculture and defence are other examples). We have exceptional universities (in particular Cambridge and Oxford in this department) and capabilities with no reason not to double down on an ensure the UK is a leader in pharmaceutical R&D - Ideally: a Silicon Valley type approach to research, then productising into treatments and therapies as a major export for the UK and it’s citizens as opposed to also letting a lot of US companies buy up our research and patents (AI) Same for pharmaceuticals, cutting edge artificial intelligence is conducted here; DeepMind is born from the UK and with our resources both financially and academically there is no excuse not to double down on this too. Devise comprehensive yet open minded artificial intelligence R&D from both institutions and private companies, allowing the UK to actually remain as a meaningful player in the future we’re going to be in very soon Significant investment should really be ramped up for university research and for funding for startups and infrastructure
Depression
The UK has for several decades now punched *massively* above its weight in pharma and life sciences. The only this isn't massive here, honestly, is the lack of any joined up plan from government to capitalize on our human resources in this field with big capital investments.
The nuclear industry is going through quite the renaissance and Britain is one of the leaders in a number of specific fields including fusion, space battery production, decommissioning & remediation, etc. We have quite an impressive capability that is only growing and with new reactors both big and small in development/commissioning, the government estimates we need about 123,000 people in the industry by 2030.
Recovery, hopefully.
Small nuclear reactors for submarines and ships.
I think we’ll stick kick above our weight in creative areas- the arts, music, theatre and film:TV Plus sport - The Premiership, Wimbledon, The Open will remain premier sporting events
Legal, Finance, IT and Software, Military Developments, High-end Manufacturing, Food.
Islamic terrorism.
If the government manages it correctly, a lot of this nuclear fusion stuff seems to have been quite promising. So with some serious investment and not just flogging the technology off to the highest bidder, I'm pretty sure the results could be impressive
Cheese. We're _really_ good at cheese here in the UK, and there's some excellent ones that are made here.
High skilled emigration. And low skilled immigration.
Material science, carbon nanotubes could be a big one.
Kettering will be the supreme Weetabix manufacturer coz it has the worlds only Weetabix factory
Queuing.
Immigration
Allowing half the population of the middle east to come here and get everything handed to them on a plate free of charge. While they complain all the time about how hard done by they are.
Terror attacks
Motorsport engineering… the same as it is right now.
hopefully road resurfacing.
String Theory
Benefits
Hopefully revolutions?
Premier league, acting, cheese, money laundering, creating new countries, TV, sarcasm, charity shops, niche technologies, house prices, stolen artefacts and a bunch of really nice people.
Trippy uppy pavements?