It’s been that way since the 1700s.
Benjy Franks said in his autobiography that the Brits thought he was a genius for being able to get so much work done.
His secret was that he waited till after work to start drinking.
All jokes aside, the less hyperbolic version of this is 100% accurate. I was just in Montreal for the weekend and we were talking to some locals; culturally, Canada isn't even *that* far off from America, but the biggest difference there (and just about everywhere else, including the UK) is work/life balance. Shit ton of full time job listings there were 35 hrs, for example. I did a month in Spain in high school and the siesta culture is real, so was an unemployment rate of close to 25% (and higher for young people!).
That's not to say no one works hard in any other country, but one of the main reasons that every other country views us as a bunch of pieces of shit is because our lives are consumed by work, and we don't put as much weight (no pun intended) into anything else. Especially in coastal areas where, for whatever reason, the "pace" of things is psychotically fast. That alone drives innovation.
That's also how China is catching up to us (and probably going to pass us), because they're willing to devote their entire lives to working, and the desire to be "successful" (which is viewed as success in your career) supersedes anything else in life both here and there.
Real talk tho, I work for an IDS/ACS company and my coworker drew the configuration we use for our servers on a napkin while he was out blackout drunk with me one night so don’t knock it haha.
That’s not it bro, worked for a British company for 25 years , the blue collar workers are some industrious folks. The problem lies with the white collar side. My fellow “white collar” co-workers and I would shake our heads at how they would make such a simple thing that we “do” each day so incredible complicated. Hierarchy and bureaucracy are there enemy.
I've worked in tech at senior levels in the UK, and really the biggest obstacle in my view is funding.
The UK is awful at funding tech companies, VCs are few and far between, and there's basically no funding $20M and up.
It's hard to get innovative but expensive projects off the ground as a result.
For the lower paying jobs id agree with this. I looked yesterday at my sick time and I have over 500 hours banked. Im pretty much never sick, and I'm probably an outlier. But god 500 hours of sick time, I might feel a big sickness coming on now that I think about it.
learn to schedule doc, dentist, optometrist appts during the day and take an hour longer.
You need to get those hours down cause in a real situation you can only use 40 hours in a row in most jobs. After that they will shift you over to "temp disability".
True story it happened to a coworker at a F500 company, and the coworker almost died in the hospital.
You arrested his grandpa, so that was cool
(he was a chiropractor that led the Technocracy movement in Canada, that wanted to replace elected leaders with technocrats... during ww2)
https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/longform/technocracy-incorporated-elon-musk/
This. The business environment in the US is just much less regulated letting companies do what they need to grow and innovate.
Also, risk. I live and work in the US for a UK-based company. They are a solid brand known worldwide, but they are incredibly afraid of taking risks. They like to try a lot of new things but rarely go all-in on making the investments and structural changes that really need to happen for something to really stick.
My experience has been that you can raise up to ~£3 million, there’s very few places to go if you want to raise anywhere between 3 and 50 million, and then if you need to raise big money, there’s money again (3i, Tiger, TPG, etc).
Which means start ups have a giant valley of death they cannot easily traverse.
There was some hope that Fintech could solve this problem, but Brexit screwed up all of the passporting, and the FCA is trying to kill off the rest of the interesting companies, so everybody’s moving to Continental Europe or elsewhere. Ireland is getting a little bump also.
The funding in the US is a result of successful tech companies. It's a virtuous cycle. US does have a lot of wealth. I would remember that Europe bankrupted itself fighting the World wars.
Agreed! It's also culture. In the US failure doesn't end your life, you will be given a job for your experience and a second chance. In the old world, no one will touch you after a business failure.
I can definitely see this. My wife is German and I'm American. In Germany you really aren't given much room, if any, for mistakes and taking individual risks. Americans thrive on that shit.
> In Germany you really aren’t given much room, if any, for mistakes and taking individual risks. Americans thrive on that shit.
Hence this subs existence 🤣
Just comes down to risk-taking, UK and commonwealth (Canada, AUS, etc.) investors like to fund things they have confidence in assessing risk properly - which is real estate. American VCs are cowboys, they don't care if it goes tits up if they can score a 1000 bagger. Truly the regards of finance.
I remember reading about this. Most of the companies that VCs fund fail but they hit a few home runs that off set the losses. Really similar to how a lot of people on this sub operate
OTOH, they are the cowboys of finance, the kind who understand complex derivatives and how to profit off them, think GS and JPM. Europe is like Merril Lunch, that got blown up.
the reason the UK has a huge banking sector is mostly due to history. when the empire was at its height, it was the hub of global finance. as the empire waned, they started getting into eurodollar trades (which are not euro for dollars, they refer to dollars deposited in banks outside the US). This is a huge market, and since the loans are in USD but aren't subject to US laws, they're used for all kinds of "grey market" activity. then you have the UK's tax regime- basically a dozen ex-colonies set up almost entirely for money laundering or tax evasion. (personally, this is why i think brexit was so important to rich people; they didn't want to be subject to EU tax rules.)
so you have a whole bunch of regular finance and markets, plus the eurodollar business, and you can add all that into the tax evasion / money laundering of place like jersey, gurnsey, virgin islands, cayman islands, etc. and you have a huge finance market. but that financing isn't like silicon valley financing, which looks for cutting edge tech to make money; uk finance is mostly about keeping rich people rich, and they do that very well.
Why would British banks/investment firms invest in the UK when there are other countries with much better track records? Capital isn't patriotic, it goes where it sees the best returns
Yup. Basically every creampuff with a degree wants to tax capital gains out of existence but don't understand that American liquidity is the reason why we do so well. If you're a startup with a reasonable game plan then you can get money here. If you go anywhere else then the VC's with have their hooks so far inside you that you won't be able to ever make a dime.
>There are a few reasons why the UK doesn't produce as many tech juggernauts as the US. Firstly, the UK has a much smaller population than the US, so there's simply less room for growth. Secondly, the UK economy is more focused on services and finance than manufacturing and technology. And finally, Silicon Valley in California has been hugely successful in attracting top talent from around the world, while London (the closest equivalent in Europe) hasn't been able to replicate that success.
The UK ebbed into the service industries extremely post Marshall Plan recovery before, and even more so after, they hit stagnation for the better part of the late 70's. Who knows, I think part of it is that the UK industrial base was also heavily dependent on overseas colonies pre ww2 (cheaper and.more plentiful access to raw.materials). Meaning that the UK had essentially hit peak industrial growth before the start of ww2 and was buyoed by the large trade benefits from colonies. This would result in post ww2, the repair of infrastructure and industrial plants, and the move away from war-time industy. Come to think of it, you would think, that had the British been able to spend like America did in public-private (military) post ww2 instead of focusing on recovery; that the tech innovations made during wartime could've been helped by a military industrial complex like the U.S. during the Cold War. I think the large being military expenditures post-war by the U.S., allowed said innovations to spur companies like Boeing, etc. And then years later silicon Valley. You have to remember that the British made innovations in radar, computers (Alan Turing), etc. that they could've edged out their own tech market. But having tens of billions of dollars to spend on military, and hence inject massive r&d into this young tech innovations os something the U.S. had plenty of and not the U.K.
That makes a lot of sense. I never really considered how much the Cold War had spurred massive government spending into all sorts of tech research. Thanks for your take.
>You have to remember that the British made innovations in radar, computers (Alan Turing), etc. that they could've edged out their own tech market. But having tens of billions of dollars to spend on military, and hence inject massive r&d into this young tech innovations os something the U.S. had plenty of and not the U.K.
How did the British treat Turing?? There's your answer. It's a conservative , old boy society. There are Britishers from poorer backgrounds who have to move abroad to be taken seriously because they aren't from wealthier backgrounds. OTOH, US will coollect all teh smart guys from the world.
Look up the Indian IITs, 80% of the class heads off to the US.
Honestly there’s tons of Indians at my company (70B market cap) and they’re all super smart. Even the guys located in India are all solid workers and smart. There’s so much talent and yes they all aim for Silicon Valley or Silicon Valley companies if they’re in tech.
I think another thing that isn’t mentioned is the salary differences. My UK counter parts get paid 60% of the salary of some in the Bay Area. The pay gap is so large you will see people move to the US. So the smart guy who could have started a tech company in the uk went to work in San Fransisco or Dubai for 2X the pay. The UK has amazing universities and those extremely bright students will chase the pay in the US.
And don’t forget the tax loopholes and executive compensation, all tied to stock market. It is all connected, the top people’s will stay on top in USA.
Because the US spent the 20th century spending large chunks of its insane military budget on tech innovation. The internet is a product of the US Department of Defense
Because your education system is class based and people think the school is more important than the person. I never knew about class ties until I met a person from the uk.
I tried explaining this to a pair of WASPy Chicago parents who were insisting their son (who planned to pursue engineering) NEEDED to go to an ivy league. It was at a ski hill, I was a bit boozy. Told em 'nah your college doesn't matter a hill of beans in STEM. Once you start working at that matters is if he can do the job. Brilliance will get recognized. He can go to UW Eau Claire and have a great career".
They were horrified.
It’s more gray for sure. But if a new grad comes in and shows great competency in his interview (rare but possible) it doesn’t matter what school they came from
College drop out here.
Literally the only company that has cared about my education after I got into the IT field was Hanesbrands. Even then, it was HR who cared, not my hiring manager (in other words, I got the job, as I was able to show I know what I'm doing).
When I'm interviewing candidates while within a company, I couldn't care less what school or certificate they have. Tell me what you know, and what you've accomplished with what you know.
Less then two years in a company in the US and I am already in a leadership position on track for management in the next year. Worked over seas most my life and no college. America likes intelligence, ability, and soft skills. Degrees will just get you in the door. I am thinking of doing a degree just to have on my CV but for now the company I work for is investing in me and I am on track for six figures thus year. Lived in Spain for 3 years prior to this, couldn't even get a bloody interview despite 15 years of work experience.
UK is worse but this absolutely happens in the US too. Stanford for example is a circle jerk of rich kid’s parents paying for them to go to grad school after a decade of paying for additional schooling - and then they end up in Silicon Valley jobs coasting for the rest of their life
Great schools definitely help you, and anyone who says otherwise is kidding yourself, and they should to be honest. and the few people who end up there who dont deserve it is a small enough number that its not a major drag on the system.
That said, talk to a british person or a indian person about how important school choice is and you'll learn just how lucky we are. By the time you're 3-4 years out of school your GPA is irrelevant and your school is more of a networking flag than a selected for item on your resume. That is an insanely impressive thing for a culture to achieve. Strangers judging strangers on current merit is a very productive thing, and if you havent worked outside the US you dont know just how rare it is.
This is 100% correct. School is good to get your foot in the door as a grad if you want to work for a FAANG company or some big name. But other than that, once you get a few yrs experience, you can literally go anywhere based on your actual competency. I have worked around a lot of ivy leaguers and they get treated exactly the same as me, someone that graduated from a B-tier school.
Parts? Maybe it's because I'm in a manufacturing state, but as far as I've ever seen, class means nothing unless you can back it up with $$$ and accomplishments.
Too much regulation.
Massive landmass, and population.
UK has limited strategic resources, whereas the U.S. is chock full of every resource it could ever need.
If you're from Europe it's better for your own personal interests to invest somewhere with less regulation. That way you're not negatively impacting on a social level but can still reap the rewards of unbound capitalism.
I think it might be culture too. All the companies I been with strive for innovation. At my current company we have monthly meeting on innovation, what can we automate, etc. and that’s just my team. We push to excel, and my current company isn’t even that big. Less than 1 billion in revenue
What?! You think behemoth companies pay tax in the UK. You’re joking right? They do what all these big companies do, they funnel funds through havens and claim they make no profits.
It’s actually economies of scale that prevent UK companies from being competitive in production and non service based Industries.
1.) Don't be an island
2.) Give corporations free reign
3.) Be the world's largest economy
4.) Leverage this by spending as much as you can by being in a deficit. Military spending, agriculture subsidies, innovation funding, welfare, police, common citizen relief services and more. The more you spend the more ways you can grow your economy despite what naysayers will say. Government spending = net good.
5.) Routinely engage in world policing and nation building.
Bruh the UK wrote the play book first why you trying to school a Englishman on his own strats
The real answer is simple. The Uk like most of Europe got rich af and got lazy.
Honestly, I personally think it's a combination of everything + WWII. Europe was left in disarray after WWII and the USA was spinning on all cylinders with no major mainland attacks to speak of. To add to that, all the computer know how from WWII just got thrown into the public sector where people kept innovating. You had IBM, then PCs, then Internet, then smartphones, then social media/information gathering, then AI from that information gathering; it's just on a roll.
Not sure why this got downvoted, it’s exactly it. Momentum is a hell of a force. Combine that with pro growth economic policies/populace used to working hard and you get an absolute powerhouse
It’s like RTS games like StarCraft. If one side gets their economy rolling unimpeded, it’s basically game over. Its sooo hard to catch back up because the growth is exponential.
I’m not sure this is exactly the truth as there are other nations that were also destroyed in the world wars and that were also economically/technologically behind europe in asia for example at the time with tech today that rivals / surpasses Europe.
Is it momentum or a disinterest from Europeans to compete in the tech arena with American/Asian firms?
There’s an obscene amount of wealth/intellectual knowledge in Europe and the fact that most people can’t name more then ASML or perhaps SAP is a problem that europe created it’s self.
Funny enough you could argue the USAs geography is similar to an island with a passive Canada to the north and Mexico to the south.
Any foreign country that was actually hostile and wanted to invade would have a tough time over the pacific or Atlantic.
Being an island isn’t a burden, it’s a blessing if you leverage it right lol
Add immigration to that list aswell…the smartest people from the world wants to work in us..mainly because of culture,salary and lifestyle…55% of unicorn startups in us have a immigrant founder(https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2018/10/25/55-of-americas-billion-dollar-startups-have-immigrant-founder/?sh=1c9bcea548ee) …i worked at a big tech company in multiple teams and alot of my coworkers were from top universities like iit’s in india or tsinghua, peking university in china.
The US is basically a giant positive feedback loop of an economy. We have the most wealth, which means we can invest the most, which means the best talent comes here, which means we produce the most innovation, which means we create more wealth, which means we can invest more…
Also, as far as universities… obviously Oxford and Cambridge are tier 1 world class, but the US has the entire Ivy League, plus technical schools like MIT, plus a bunch of top schools like Berkeley, Duke, Northwestern, Chicago, Georgetown, etc… and then on top of that each state has its own university system, each with multiple schools, each with their own research departments. And all of those schools do joint work with with the private sector and federal government.
I’d also add the US military to the discussion. We spend something like a hundred billion per year on R&D just in defense spending. Obviously aerospace and ship building industries benefit the most, but there are still billions of dollars going into things like AI, material sciences, even biotech every year through the military.
And then there is the global reserve currency benefit we enjoy, which helps facilitate trade deals.
So, yeah, it’s just a giant positive feedback loop.
Because if I were to live there as a SWE / startup:
* I'd earn less
* I'd get taxed more (40% over 50k gbp, and 45% over 125k... bruh)
* The weather sucks, often cloudy or rainy if not summer -- talking about the weather is a national pastime of UK
* There's no geographic variety and less to do within the country vs a massive landmass like the US, not even including Hawaii & Alaska
* Less culinary and cultural diversity
* There's a lot more career and social mobility here, including flexibility on what companies to work for
> I'd get taxed more (40% over 50k gbp, and 45% over 125k... bruh)
The narrative about "high European taxes" is so funny sometimes... because Europe actually doesn't have (much) higher tax rates than the US (when you count both state and federal).
But what Europe *does* do is start those higher rates at a lower threshold. You can easily hit a marginal rate of 45% Federal+State+Payroll as a SWE in the states... but you're earning 4x as much before you do.
It's funny because Europe is taxing its median earners almost as much as its high earners, whereas the US taxes high earners much higher than median earners.
In 2022, it's 215k to hit 35%, and 540k to hit the highest 37% marginal brackets. Because of the higher thresholds, the total effective tax rate in the US is lower. E.g. a person in a no-income-tax state making 250k pays 69.9k or \~28% effective tax (*federal & payroll*). State income tax is [typically 5\~6%](https://files.taxfoundation.org/20230217151820/2023-state-individual-income-tax-rates-2023-state-income-taxes-by-state.png).
Let's translate that into GBP: 200,762 pounds. The tax I have to pay on this based on [https://www.tax.service.gov.uk/estimate-paye-take-home-pay/your-pay](https://www.tax.service.gov.uk/estimate-paye-take-home-pay/your-pay) is 78,419 pounds or \~39% effective tax.
\^This is if I'm even making the same amount, which I wouldn't be because tech salary in UK is less according to Glassdoor:
* avg **£68,026** in [London, UK](https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/london-software-engineer-salary-SRCH_IL.0,6_IM1035_KO7,24.htm) or $84,676US
* avg **$118,042** in [NYC, US](https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/new-york-city-software-engineer-salary-SRCH_IL.0,13_IM615_KO14,31.htm)
Idk how UK taxes work, but keep in mind there's a lot of deductions & credits when it comes to US taxes for those with diversified income & assets. I can claim that earning power is higher for us in the USA **and** in my personal experience/opinion, our QoL here is better than if I were in UK. The tech field here have great benefits that rival whatever pros you get with working in EU: I pay minimal health ins premium and have flexible PTO--been taking 6 weeks a year too.
Case In point
https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/141gibe/randomly_shooting_at_houses_in_new_orleans/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1
Taxes and regulations.
It is too expensive and too controlling to be able to innovate in the UK. The best that the UK can do is offer tax benefits to foreign companies, but by then, it’s too late to start one in the UK.
The US pays MORE for healthcare though! It’s system actually requires more money to operate and delivers only partial coverage that still costs vast amounts to those in need of it and still bankrupts people at end of life. I’d rather have paper stock worth less and public services that don’t make you have a mental breakdown.
Healthcare ain't free in Germany, it's just taken out of your paycheck like a tax so people never see the cost. You get 7.5% taken out of each paycheck and the employer also contributes 7.5%. Someone making €60.000 is paying €4.500 annually out of pocket for healthcare by default whether they use it or not. I have a HDHP plan through my employer and my yearly premium is like...$2,000. Just have to take control properly by saving up for those years when you may have to use it and hit the high deductible. At least I have the choice.
Good luck getting a real answer here… 2/3rds this sub is nothing but uneducated morons with an American Flag tattoo or truck sticker at this point. Their analysis of this topic will amount to hooting and hollering about freedom and 1776. Just understand one thing… 2/3rds of Americans are some of the dumbest fucks on earth, but the other 1/3rd make up for that which feeds the useless morons egos.
Trust me, that’s every country in the world.
The U.S. attracts some of the brightest minds from india and China, which is why everyone thinks Asians and desis are smart. But 2/3rds of their populations back home are also really dumb.
Too much regulation is correct. In USA you can work till you drop, which is what is needed To get a start up going. Wouldn’t be allowed in Europe pushing for 30 hour work weeks. Among many other things but that’s one of the reasons
It's not my fault you aren't just investing in Games Workshop, americans love that shit. I'm up 17% on it YTD.
Please continue printing plastic crack, thank you
1. Population
2. Salaries
3. Taxes
4. Funding
Imagine you're a nice company. Will you base yourself on a country that taxes you heavily and doesn't have easy access to capital, or a country that taxes you less and funds even the most stupid of startups? Then imagine you want to hire top talent. Will you find it in your country, or in the country with the highest wages and high population?
You guys have no humility. Europe literally thinks they're still relevant and can't accept the fact that they're not. You're like crack addicts for class and superiority but don't have any.
In short, Europe needs to accept the fact that they're not shit, hit rock bottom, and work their way back up.
This is Europe as a whole, a single entity. United, like USA. Instead you have a Europe with no single ideology, myth or cause to unite them. No single language. No single military. No single chain of command. There is no "European dream" like there is an American dream.
Now that you know that.. just imagine how insignificant the individual countries are?
- You're welcome we're here to save the day, America!
Here's the problem, the UK has a "tech hub" of our own in Cambridge but it just doesn't produce anything worth mentioning. And anything that does get produced gets sold off to America or remains private forever and therefore doesn't allow the average investor a chance to invest.
> anything that does get produced gets sold off to America or remains private forever and therefore doesn't allow the average investor a chance to invest.
This post is turning into a book, lol:
So one thing that makes Silicon Valley different is that a lot of VCs are former founders (or early employees) of successful startups. So there's this critical mass of institutional knowledge about both how to run a startup and how to pick startups to invest in. It creates this cycle where each round of founders funds the next an encourages them to dream big and go public in a spectacular IPO.
I think another factor is the lack of the class system, so founders think it completely reasonable to give early employees (the peasants) significant stock. Money isn't everything, but almost everyone prefers to have more money than less, and having stock that *might* be worth $10M one day motivates some people. So the best talent comes to Silicon Valley and you get a critical mass of the actual labor to make that happen (which makes hiring for a startup easier). That talent comes from many places, among them Cambridge.
**But probably the most important part** is that it's ok to fail. Startups fail all. the. fucking. time. in SV. It's not unusual for a senior SWE to have 5 defunct startups on his/her resume, and interviewers don't see that as a negative. At least they had the balls to go for it. Same thing for founders, when they're pitching their latest thing to VCs.
Ending a startup isn't a big deal, either. You lay off all the staff[1], sell the office stuff and move on. You don't have to give employees six months notice for each week they worked at the company.
Contrast that with Europe, where running a company that closed or went bankrupt is a big fucking deal. I've heard horror stories about founders getting blacklisted after one unsuccessful startup. And not just from VCs, but from other jobs and their own bank. People aren't going to take risks if the consequences of failure are that high.
In other words, the "environment" in Europe is just all wrong if you want to have companies that are the result of big risky bets on unproven technology.
[1] They're working for a startup, so they already know there's a 90% chance of that happening when they sign up.
See also: https://steveblank.com/category/secret-history-of-silicon-valley/
In Cambridge? Christ, no wonder you're not making any money. See what happens when you just give all your money to all the indolent fourth sons of Dukes and Viscounts? Give 'em a million dollars and they'll spend it all on tea and crumpets and then wonder why they have nothing left over to pay the butler to clean up the dishes. The coddled have no drive, no chip on their shoulders, are uncreative and worst of all have no sense of humor. Move your tech hubs to Glasgow, staff the VCs with middle class East Enders and don't look back.
This post exhausts all the words I know in 'British'.
Half of your country has a reading age of a 12 year old, 70 million are clinically obese with the rest just fat, and you have almost 50million on food stamps. Add in the worlds largest prison population, at will employment/no maternity leave/ shocking holiday allowance, along with 60% having saved less than 5k (40% less than 1k), bought and paid politics, a few thousand shot school kids and just vast, vast amounts of deficit spending, then you end up with a pretty ugly picture.
Now, that doesn’t stop you from having an enviable tech industry, but that’s a very different conclusion from admiring or wanting to emulate the country as a whole.
Europe’s downfall is primarily laziness, with citizens benefitting from pretty extensive safety nets in terms of free healthcare, schools, great benefits (unemployment, housing, maternity, holiday), plus oodles of regulation which protects the individual from abuse by corporates or the state. That does make us a lot less inefficient, but inefficient doesn’t always equate to worse, when looking at the health of the whole nation.
We work our ass off, most of us don’t enjoy life and we’re obsessed with more more and more. But yes we are an economic powerhouse, when our economy tanks the worlds economy tanks. Many other countries tank and no one cares.
I’ve lived in both places and the answer is simple. It’s not money. It’s not level of intellect or peoples drive.
There is unlimited money everywhere, especially London. There is more drive in London than anywhere, it’s why London produces the best musicians.
I shit you nought, it’s the weather and the basic infrastructure of life.
Texas, California, New York….. these people aren’t more driven then UK talent. Look at fashion and art to see that.
These places simply have more desirable living conditions for people who are tech minded workers who want to work in a company of 10,000 tech minded individuals.
Space….. not over crowded…… big ass office, free food and drinks in the office cuz living is cheap…… the ability to get to and from work without London congestion charges…..
Like, fuck London mate…… it’s good for fashion, punk music, Camden, and a secret banking system.
But give me the New York skyscrapers and a great night life. Give me the California beaches and perfect weather. Give me the Texas mansions life for $300,000 and a pool and bbq……
And you will attract real talent who will work at your company.
You gotta be a sadistic alcoholic to love London. And that breeds art….. not Tech.
Good universities don’t mean shit, brother.
Also, a lot of our banks are on the verge of bankruptcy also. Dumbasses buying long term bonds when interest rates were near 0. “Too big to fail” let them burn
Easy when nearly everything is based on the US dollar and Fed money machine.
But in all seriousness, there’s a lot of rules and protections around those that start and take a lot of risk to innovate here… huge ecosystem of funding and others helping each other out. Size wise, it’s a benefit and attracts top talent not even based in the country. I read somewhere that like 80% of billionaires in the US aren’t even from here originally
Better motivation. If you're poor in the US you die either from hunger or disease (food costs money, and medical care costs a ~~metric~~ freedom ton of money). If you don't sell your soul for money and claw your way to higher net worth you will fall into the abyss. In the UK you have an ok social safety net, so even your rich aren't very motivated to get richer. They just sit in their castles and collect artifacts from other cultures.
The US is a business. A witty, sarcastic, manipulative adolescent who will ruin the world, but do so in style. It doesn’t have any regard for accountability, or worldly effects.
Im insanely jealous that the rest of the world doesn’t have to study every food product they buy to determine if it’s actually healthy or appropriate to consume.
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You know what the difference is between a dollar and a pound? I don’t dollar your mom
This is America right there.
Murica
>You know what the difference is between a dollar and a pound? I don’t dollar your mom Right on 69 upvotes. I'll leave it right here. .. Nice.
Same difference between jelly and jam
Nah, I totally jellied your mom.
I prefer discussing the differences between lentils and chickpeas
I've never paid $40 to have a lentil on my face..?
Underrated comment 😂
Its mum, not mom. Damn yanks. My mum deserves at least that much respect.
I dollar your mom, she insists I give the dollar before taking to pound town.
No dollar, no pound
What do you think me and the boys got this roll of 100 dollar bills for? We know the drill.
Because you go to the pub at noon and stay there until it's time to go home.
You somehow made that sound bad.
Well it sure doesn't pay for *"cosmetic"* dental care
Damn. Bruh went for the teeth. 😂
I think they already went on their own
Bruh they could start a dental company they would make billions if not trilllions in the uk💀
A dental tech company you mean...the slogan is " basically the Tesla of teeth" investors would pump it
Teeth with panel gaps?! How would that solve the problem?
Twethla💀
Use ai to fix dah teefs
It is if you're trying to make money.
Well, let's just go to the Winchester and let this all blow over
Now THAT sounds like a slice of fried gold.
It’s been that way since the 1700s. Benjy Franks said in his autobiography that the Brits thought he was a genius for being able to get so much work done. His secret was that he waited till after work to start drinking.
All jokes aside, the less hyperbolic version of this is 100% accurate. I was just in Montreal for the weekend and we were talking to some locals; culturally, Canada isn't even *that* far off from America, but the biggest difference there (and just about everywhere else, including the UK) is work/life balance. Shit ton of full time job listings there were 35 hrs, for example. I did a month in Spain in high school and the siesta culture is real, so was an unemployment rate of close to 25% (and higher for young people!). That's not to say no one works hard in any other country, but one of the main reasons that every other country views us as a bunch of pieces of shit is because our lives are consumed by work, and we don't put as much weight (no pun intended) into anything else. Especially in coastal areas where, for whatever reason, the "pace" of things is psychotically fast. That alone drives innovation. That's also how China is catching up to us (and probably going to pass us), because they're willing to devote their entire lives to working, and the desire to be "successful" (which is viewed as success in your career) supersedes anything else in life both here and there.
Real talk tho, I work for an IDS/ACS company and my coworker drew the configuration we use for our servers on a napkin while he was out blackout drunk with me one night so don’t knock it haha.
*Just me morning ritual*
This is why.
Just bring laptops with you. Like Starbucks!
That’s not it bro, worked for a British company for 25 years , the blue collar workers are some industrious folks. The problem lies with the white collar side. My fellow “white collar” co-workers and I would shake our heads at how they would make such a simple thing that we “do” each day so incredible complicated. Hierarchy and bureaucracy are there enemy.
Crazy because a company should focus on: 1. safety 2.streamlining 3.innovation 4.profit Sometimes 4>1 if your boss is a true American lol
Closing time, open all the doors And let you out into the world
This is the real reason.
I've worked in tech at senior levels in the UK, and really the biggest obstacle in my view is funding. The UK is awful at funding tech companies, VCs are few and far between, and there's basically no funding $20M and up. It's hard to get innovative but expensive projects off the ground as a result.
They also pay engineers shit money in the UK
This is the main reason why America gets all of the top talent from India
Which also makes the US much more attractive for the talent to move here. Just don't get sick badly, or at all.
nah, if you're an engineer moving to the US for a nicer paycheck that job is going to include health insurance
For the lower paying jobs id agree with this. I looked yesterday at my sick time and I have over 500 hours banked. Im pretty much never sick, and I'm probably an outlier. But god 500 hours of sick time, I might feel a big sickness coming on now that I think about it.
learn to schedule doc, dentist, optometrist appts during the day and take an hour longer. You need to get those hours down cause in a real situation you can only use 40 hours in a row in most jobs. After that they will shift you over to "temp disability". True story it happened to a coworker at a F500 company, and the coworker almost died in the hospital.
US tech workers get good health insurance. Tech workers in Silicon Valley get gold-plated health insurance.
Def get way better health insurance as an engineer in the us than most healthcare in europe
Exactly this in Canada as well
We sired half an Elon Musk and couldn't keep him here.
Murica
You arrested his grandpa, so that was cool (he was a chiropractor that led the Technocracy movement in Canada, that wanted to replace elected leaders with technocrats... during ww2) https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/longform/technocracy-incorporated-elon-musk/
Your regulators' block exits (acquisitions) to larger companies and make running a company hell. Just fucking move to the US.
This. The business environment in the US is just much less regulated letting companies do what they need to grow and innovate. Also, risk. I live and work in the US for a UK-based company. They are a solid brand known worldwide, but they are incredibly afraid of taking risks. They like to try a lot of new things but rarely go all-in on making the investments and structural changes that really need to happen for something to really stick.
My experience has been that you can raise up to ~£3 million, there’s very few places to go if you want to raise anywhere between 3 and 50 million, and then if you need to raise big money, there’s money again (3i, Tiger, TPG, etc). Which means start ups have a giant valley of death they cannot easily traverse. There was some hope that Fintech could solve this problem, but Brexit screwed up all of the passporting, and the FCA is trying to kill off the rest of the interesting companies, so everybody’s moving to Continental Europe or elsewhere. Ireland is getting a little bump also.
The funding in the US is a result of successful tech companies. It's a virtuous cycle. US does have a lot of wealth. I would remember that Europe bankrupted itself fighting the World wars.
It's a result of more risky undertakings too though. US has more of a I can do it frame of mind.
Agreed! It's also culture. In the US failure doesn't end your life, you will be given a job for your experience and a second chance. In the old world, no one will touch you after a business failure.
I can definitely see this. My wife is German and I'm American. In Germany you really aren't given much room, if any, for mistakes and taking individual risks. Americans thrive on that shit.
> In Germany you really aren’t given much room, if any, for mistakes and taking individual risks. Americans thrive on that shit. Hence this subs existence 🤣
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Just comes down to risk-taking, UK and commonwealth (Canada, AUS, etc.) investors like to fund things they have confidence in assessing risk properly - which is real estate. American VCs are cowboys, they don't care if it goes tits up if they can score a 1000 bagger. Truly the regards of finance.
I remember reading about this. Most of the companies that VCs fund fail but they hit a few home runs that off set the losses. Really similar to how a lot of people on this sub operate
Minus the home runs
minus the capital and expertise and the connections and the experience. i mean, what have the Romans ever done for us?
It’s that same attitude that made the US so good at producing movies. Doesn’t matter if 9 movies lose $20 million if the 10th one makes $300 million.
We love to see it
OTOH, they are the cowboys of finance, the kind who understand complex derivatives and how to profit off them, think GS and JPM. Europe is like Merril Lunch, that got blown up.
so thats why british food hasnt evolved since colonial days.... freaking beans and marmite on toast what the fuck....
the reason the UK has a huge banking sector is mostly due to history. when the empire was at its height, it was the hub of global finance. as the empire waned, they started getting into eurodollar trades (which are not euro for dollars, they refer to dollars deposited in banks outside the US). This is a huge market, and since the loans are in USD but aren't subject to US laws, they're used for all kinds of "grey market" activity. then you have the UK's tax regime- basically a dozen ex-colonies set up almost entirely for money laundering or tax evasion. (personally, this is why i think brexit was so important to rich people; they didn't want to be subject to EU tax rules.) so you have a whole bunch of regular finance and markets, plus the eurodollar business, and you can add all that into the tax evasion / money laundering of place like jersey, gurnsey, virgin islands, cayman islands, etc. and you have a huge finance market. but that financing isn't like silicon valley financing, which looks for cutting edge tech to make money; uk finance is mostly about keeping rich people rich, and they do that very well.
Why would British banks/investment firms invest in the UK when there are other countries with much better track records? Capital isn't patriotic, it goes where it sees the best returns
China just steal everyone tech lol They copy but innovation not a strong point
Yup. Basically every creampuff with a degree wants to tax capital gains out of existence but don't understand that American liquidity is the reason why we do so well. If you're a startup with a reasonable game plan then you can get money here. If you go anywhere else then the VC's with have their hooks so far inside you that you won't be able to ever make a dime.
July 4, 1776
Everything before was a mistake
"Oh look, a clock. We don't have *those* in America..."
This just brought a tear to my eye🫡…Or is it the rotting onions in the Wendy’s dumpster I’m posted next to🤔
>There are a few reasons why the UK doesn't produce as many tech juggernauts as the US. Firstly, the UK has a much smaller population than the US, so there's simply less room for growth. Secondly, the UK economy is more focused on services and finance than manufacturing and technology. And finally, Silicon Valley in California has been hugely successful in attracting top talent from around the world, while London (the closest equivalent in Europe) hasn't been able to replicate that success.
The UK ebbed into the service industries extremely post Marshall Plan recovery before, and even more so after, they hit stagnation for the better part of the late 70's. Who knows, I think part of it is that the UK industrial base was also heavily dependent on overseas colonies pre ww2 (cheaper and.more plentiful access to raw.materials). Meaning that the UK had essentially hit peak industrial growth before the start of ww2 and was buyoed by the large trade benefits from colonies. This would result in post ww2, the repair of infrastructure and industrial plants, and the move away from war-time industy. Come to think of it, you would think, that had the British been able to spend like America did in public-private (military) post ww2 instead of focusing on recovery; that the tech innovations made during wartime could've been helped by a military industrial complex like the U.S. during the Cold War. I think the large being military expenditures post-war by the U.S., allowed said innovations to spur companies like Boeing, etc. And then years later silicon Valley. You have to remember that the British made innovations in radar, computers (Alan Turing), etc. that they could've edged out their own tech market. But having tens of billions of dollars to spend on military, and hence inject massive r&d into this young tech innovations os something the U.S. had plenty of and not the U.K.
That makes a lot of sense. I never really considered how much the Cold War had spurred massive government spending into all sorts of tech research. Thanks for your take.
>You have to remember that the British made innovations in radar, computers (Alan Turing), etc. that they could've edged out their own tech market. But having tens of billions of dollars to spend on military, and hence inject massive r&d into this young tech innovations os something the U.S. had plenty of and not the U.K. How did the British treat Turing?? There's your answer. It's a conservative , old boy society. There are Britishers from poorer backgrounds who have to move abroad to be taken seriously because they aren't from wealthier backgrounds. OTOH, US will coollect all teh smart guys from the world. Look up the Indian IITs, 80% of the class heads off to the US.
Honestly there’s tons of Indians at my company (70B market cap) and they’re all super smart. Even the guys located in India are all solid workers and smart. There’s so much talent and yes they all aim for Silicon Valley or Silicon Valley companies if they’re in tech.
They have been treated well by US tech scene, so credit where credit is due.
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South Korea and Japan come to mind. There are other countries with strong tech scenes.
kaizen is actually an American idea learned by the Japanese from the US. it's no coincidence that both countries were rebuilt by the US.
I think another thing that isn’t mentioned is the salary differences. My UK counter parts get paid 60% of the salary of some in the Bay Area. The pay gap is so large you will see people move to the US. So the smart guy who could have started a tech company in the uk went to work in San Fransisco or Dubai for 2X the pay. The UK has amazing universities and those extremely bright students will chase the pay in the US.
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And don’t forget the tax loopholes and executive compensation, all tied to stock market. It is all connected, the top people’s will stay on top in USA.
ur mom is billion pound company
Boom. Roasted
*mum It’ll help them understand better if you use their language
TBH it's because yall drive on the wrong side of the damn road.
Because the US spent the 20th century spending large chunks of its insane military budget on tech innovation. The internet is a product of the US Department of Defense
We literally raced the Soviet Union to space a century ago. We’ve been throwing money at tech like our lives depend on it.
I was under the impression Al Gore invented the internet using his whale saving powers.
The only correct answer on here
Because your education system is class based and people think the school is more important than the person. I never knew about class ties until I met a person from the uk.
I hate how true this is. There are parts of the US where merit is all that matters and class/formal education can take back seat.
Especially in technical fields. No one cares if you came from MIT or Iowa state if you’re an engineer, as long as you can do the job.
I tried explaining this to a pair of WASPy Chicago parents who were insisting their son (who planned to pursue engineering) NEEDED to go to an ivy league. It was at a ski hill, I was a bit boozy. Told em 'nah your college doesn't matter a hill of beans in STEM. Once you start working at that matters is if he can do the job. Brilliance will get recognized. He can go to UW Eau Claire and have a great career". They were horrified.
As someone who foolishly paid to go to Iowa State I want to be offended… but I paid to go to Iowa State so… I get it.
ISU is a legitimately good engineering school, I don’t see any issue
I mean y’all sing Sweet Caroline at football games😬
Bum bum bum Good times never felt so good
As someone that works in tech I wish it were this way, but it's a little more gray than this lol
It’s more gray for sure. But if a new grad comes in and shows great competency in his interview (rare but possible) it doesn’t matter what school they came from
College drop out here. Literally the only company that has cared about my education after I got into the IT field was Hanesbrands. Even then, it was HR who cared, not my hiring manager (in other words, I got the job, as I was able to show I know what I'm doing). When I'm interviewing candidates while within a company, I couldn't care less what school or certificate they have. Tell me what you know, and what you've accomplished with what you know.
Less then two years in a company in the US and I am already in a leadership position on track for management in the next year. Worked over seas most my life and no college. America likes intelligence, ability, and soft skills. Degrees will just get you in the door. I am thinking of doing a degree just to have on my CV but for now the company I work for is investing in me and I am on track for six figures thus year. Lived in Spain for 3 years prior to this, couldn't even get a bloody interview despite 15 years of work experience.
This may be true for lower prestige jobs but don’t act like an MIT degree doesn’t set you up for a different caliber of paycheck over Iowa State.
UK is worse but this absolutely happens in the US too. Stanford for example is a circle jerk of rich kid’s parents paying for them to go to grad school after a decade of paying for additional schooling - and then they end up in Silicon Valley jobs coasting for the rest of their life
Great schools definitely help you, and anyone who says otherwise is kidding yourself, and they should to be honest. and the few people who end up there who dont deserve it is a small enough number that its not a major drag on the system. That said, talk to a british person or a indian person about how important school choice is and you'll learn just how lucky we are. By the time you're 3-4 years out of school your GPA is irrelevant and your school is more of a networking flag than a selected for item on your resume. That is an insanely impressive thing for a culture to achieve. Strangers judging strangers on current merit is a very productive thing, and if you havent worked outside the US you dont know just how rare it is.
It really depends on the industry. Nobody gives a shit which medical school I went to.
Looks like we have an osteopath here
This is 100% correct. School is good to get your foot in the door as a grad if you want to work for a FAANG company or some big name. But other than that, once you get a few yrs experience, you can literally go anywhere based on your actual competency. I have worked around a lot of ivy leaguers and they get treated exactly the same as me, someone that graduated from a B-tier school.
Parts? Maybe it's because I'm in a manufacturing state, but as far as I've ever seen, class means nothing unless you can back it up with $$$ and accomplishments.
USA USA USA
King George III set you on this path.
Too much regulation. Massive landmass, and population. UK has limited strategic resources, whereas the U.S. is chock full of every resource it could ever need.
If you're from Europe it's better for your own personal interests to invest somewhere with less regulation. That way you're not negatively impacting on a social level but can still reap the rewards of unbound capitalism.
Not too long ago British empire was ruling the world and now you are asking this question. What changed?
Colonial holdings and the riches that come with it are gone. That wealth should have been reinvested but 2 world wars will drain some of that for sure
Two world wars in 30 years.
Smaller Navy?
Smaller peepee
I think it might be culture too. All the companies I been with strive for innovation. At my current company we have monthly meeting on innovation, what can we automate, etc. and that’s just my team. We push to excel, and my current company isn’t even that big. Less than 1 billion in revenue
Because y'all tax the crap out of anyone who halfway makes money, so anyone that could innovate comes here to do it.
What?! You think behemoth companies pay tax in the UK. You’re joking right? They do what all these big companies do, they funnel funds through havens and claim they make no profits. It’s actually economies of scale that prevent UK companies from being competitive in production and non service based Industries.
Individuals man
1.) Don't be an island 2.) Give corporations free reign 3.) Be the world's largest economy 4.) Leverage this by spending as much as you can by being in a deficit. Military spending, agriculture subsidies, innovation funding, welfare, police, common citizen relief services and more. The more you spend the more ways you can grow your economy despite what naysayers will say. Government spending = net good. 5.) Routinely engage in world policing and nation building.
Bruh the UK wrote the play book first why you trying to school a Englishman on his own strats The real answer is simple. The Uk like most of Europe got rich af and got lazy.
Because the Brits may have invented but Americans have perfected the play to such degree it's literally an art.
Honestly, I personally think it's a combination of everything + WWII. Europe was left in disarray after WWII and the USA was spinning on all cylinders with no major mainland attacks to speak of. To add to that, all the computer know how from WWII just got thrown into the public sector where people kept innovating. You had IBM, then PCs, then Internet, then smartphones, then social media/information gathering, then AI from that information gathering; it's just on a roll.
Not sure why this got downvoted, it’s exactly it. Momentum is a hell of a force. Combine that with pro growth economic policies/populace used to working hard and you get an absolute powerhouse
It’s like RTS games like StarCraft. If one side gets their economy rolling unimpeded, it’s basically game over. Its sooo hard to catch back up because the growth is exponential.
I’m not sure this is exactly the truth as there are other nations that were also destroyed in the world wars and that were also economically/technologically behind europe in asia for example at the time with tech today that rivals / surpasses Europe. Is it momentum or a disinterest from Europeans to compete in the tech arena with American/Asian firms? There’s an obscene amount of wealth/intellectual knowledge in Europe and the fact that most people can’t name more then ASML or perhaps SAP is a problem that europe created it’s self.
Bingo! Also everyone except pretty much the US got bankrupted during WWII. USA power is still ahead because of that.
>1.) Don’t be an island *Japan has entered the chat*
Funny enough you could argue the USAs geography is similar to an island with a passive Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. Any foreign country that was actually hostile and wanted to invade would have a tough time over the pacific or Atlantic. Being an island isn’t a burden, it’s a blessing if you leverage it right lol
>Being an island isn’t a burden, it’s a blessing if you leverage it right lol Someone didn't play Sim City as a kid.
Dont forget island of Taiwan which literally powers the western worlds entire digital revolution.
Add immigration to that list aswell…the smartest people from the world wants to work in us..mainly because of culture,salary and lifestyle…55% of unicorn startups in us have a immigrant founder(https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2018/10/25/55-of-americas-billion-dollar-startups-have-immigrant-founder/?sh=1c9bcea548ee) …i worked at a big tech company in multiple teams and alot of my coworkers were from top universities like iit’s in india or tsinghua, peking university in china.
For all it’s faults, America still having “streets of gold” to immigrants looking for a better life makes me a tad Patriotic :,)
6) Force everyone to use your currency for international trade
Not everything… just the little things… like oil.
capitalism baby!! if only we had more we would have more inventions already
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You have a king, lol.
good point
Because you use the metric system
UK used both systems lmao. They’re confused
Give them an inch and they take a kilometre.
They literally use liters and miles together
The speed limit is 60 liters per mile.
The US is basically a giant positive feedback loop of an economy. We have the most wealth, which means we can invest the most, which means the best talent comes here, which means we produce the most innovation, which means we create more wealth, which means we can invest more… Also, as far as universities… obviously Oxford and Cambridge are tier 1 world class, but the US has the entire Ivy League, plus technical schools like MIT, plus a bunch of top schools like Berkeley, Duke, Northwestern, Chicago, Georgetown, etc… and then on top of that each state has its own university system, each with multiple schools, each with their own research departments. And all of those schools do joint work with with the private sector and federal government. I’d also add the US military to the discussion. We spend something like a hundred billion per year on R&D just in defense spending. Obviously aerospace and ship building industries benefit the most, but there are still billions of dollars going into things like AI, material sciences, even biotech every year through the military. And then there is the global reserve currency benefit we enjoy, which helps facilitate trade deals. So, yeah, it’s just a giant positive feedback loop.
And NVDA wanted to buy ARM limited, but your regulators said fk off 
Because if I were to live there as a SWE / startup: * I'd earn less * I'd get taxed more (40% over 50k gbp, and 45% over 125k... bruh) * The weather sucks, often cloudy or rainy if not summer -- talking about the weather is a national pastime of UK * There's no geographic variety and less to do within the country vs a massive landmass like the US, not even including Hawaii & Alaska * Less culinary and cultural diversity * There's a lot more career and social mobility here, including flexibility on what companies to work for
Keep going I’m almost there 🇺🇸
> I'd get taxed more (40% over 50k gbp, and 45% over 125k... bruh) The narrative about "high European taxes" is so funny sometimes... because Europe actually doesn't have (much) higher tax rates than the US (when you count both state and federal). But what Europe *does* do is start those higher rates at a lower threshold. You can easily hit a marginal rate of 45% Federal+State+Payroll as a SWE in the states... but you're earning 4x as much before you do. It's funny because Europe is taxing its median earners almost as much as its high earners, whereas the US taxes high earners much higher than median earners.
In 2022, it's 215k to hit 35%, and 540k to hit the highest 37% marginal brackets. Because of the higher thresholds, the total effective tax rate in the US is lower. E.g. a person in a no-income-tax state making 250k pays 69.9k or \~28% effective tax (*federal & payroll*). State income tax is [typically 5\~6%](https://files.taxfoundation.org/20230217151820/2023-state-individual-income-tax-rates-2023-state-income-taxes-by-state.png). Let's translate that into GBP: 200,762 pounds. The tax I have to pay on this based on [https://www.tax.service.gov.uk/estimate-paye-take-home-pay/your-pay](https://www.tax.service.gov.uk/estimate-paye-take-home-pay/your-pay) is 78,419 pounds or \~39% effective tax. \^This is if I'm even making the same amount, which I wouldn't be because tech salary in UK is less according to Glassdoor: * avg **£68,026** in [London, UK](https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/london-software-engineer-salary-SRCH_IL.0,6_IM1035_KO7,24.htm) or $84,676US * avg **$118,042** in [NYC, US](https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/new-york-city-software-engineer-salary-SRCH_IL.0,13_IM615_KO14,31.htm) Idk how UK taxes work, but keep in mind there's a lot of deductions & credits when it comes to US taxes for those with diversified income & assets. I can claim that earning power is higher for us in the USA **and** in my personal experience/opinion, our QoL here is better than if I were in UK. The tech field here have great benefits that rival whatever pros you get with working in EU: I pay minimal health ins premium and have flexible PTO--been taking 6 weeks a year too.
Less likely to get peppered with bullets whilst out buying your groceries, though
Case In point https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/141gibe/randomly_shooting_at_houses_in_new_orleans/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1
US attracts the best talent
We just built different
So why not just short the UK market
Taxes and regulations. It is too expensive and too controlling to be able to innovate in the UK. The best that the UK can do is offer tax benefits to foreign companies, but by then, it’s too late to start one in the UK.
It's the cost of free Healthcare
The US pays MORE for healthcare though! It’s system actually requires more money to operate and delivers only partial coverage that still costs vast amounts to those in need of it and still bankrupts people at end of life. I’d rather have paper stock worth less and public services that don’t make you have a mental breakdown.
Healthcare ain't free in Germany, it's just taken out of your paycheck like a tax so people never see the cost. You get 7.5% taken out of each paycheck and the employer also contributes 7.5%. Someone making €60.000 is paying €4.500 annually out of pocket for healthcare by default whether they use it or not. I have a HDHP plan through my employer and my yearly premium is like...$2,000. Just have to take control properly by saving up for those years when you may have to use it and hit the high deductible. At least I have the choice.
It's the teeth.
How's your freedom of speech in the UK?! If the game is rigged, who's gonna play?
Good luck getting a real answer here… 2/3rds this sub is nothing but uneducated morons with an American Flag tattoo or truck sticker at this point. Their analysis of this topic will amount to hooting and hollering about freedom and 1776. Just understand one thing… 2/3rds of Americans are some of the dumbest fucks on earth, but the other 1/3rd make up for that which feeds the useless morons egos.
Trust me, that’s every country in the world. The U.S. attracts some of the brightest minds from india and China, which is why everyone thinks Asians and desis are smart. But 2/3rds of their populations back home are also really dumb.
I think you’re being generous. It’s more like 80% vs 20%.
Because your government don't have acces to extraterrestrial technology like the states have. Laugh if you want but that's the truth
The US stock market is killing it, isn't it? I wish I had invested earlier.
Too much regulation is correct. In USA you can work till you drop, which is what is needed To get a start up going. Wouldn’t be allowed in Europe pushing for 30 hour work weeks. Among many other things but that’s one of the reasons
It's not my fault you aren't just investing in Games Workshop, americans love that shit. I'm up 17% on it YTD. Please continue printing plastic crack, thank you
1. Population 2. Salaries 3. Taxes 4. Funding Imagine you're a nice company. Will you base yourself on a country that taxes you heavily and doesn't have easy access to capital, or a country that taxes you less and funds even the most stupid of startups? Then imagine you want to hire top talent. Will you find it in your country, or in the country with the highest wages and high population?
Because you're not in more debt than every GDP in the world combined
You guys have no humility. Europe literally thinks they're still relevant and can't accept the fact that they're not. You're like crack addicts for class and superiority but don't have any. In short, Europe needs to accept the fact that they're not shit, hit rock bottom, and work their way back up. This is Europe as a whole, a single entity. United, like USA. Instead you have a Europe with no single ideology, myth or cause to unite them. No single language. No single military. No single chain of command. There is no "European dream" like there is an American dream. Now that you know that.. just imagine how insignificant the individual countries are? - You're welcome we're here to save the day, America!
Here's the problem, the UK has a "tech hub" of our own in Cambridge but it just doesn't produce anything worth mentioning. And anything that does get produced gets sold off to America or remains private forever and therefore doesn't allow the average investor a chance to invest.
> anything that does get produced gets sold off to America or remains private forever and therefore doesn't allow the average investor a chance to invest. This post is turning into a book, lol: So one thing that makes Silicon Valley different is that a lot of VCs are former founders (or early employees) of successful startups. So there's this critical mass of institutional knowledge about both how to run a startup and how to pick startups to invest in. It creates this cycle where each round of founders funds the next an encourages them to dream big and go public in a spectacular IPO. I think another factor is the lack of the class system, so founders think it completely reasonable to give early employees (the peasants) significant stock. Money isn't everything, but almost everyone prefers to have more money than less, and having stock that *might* be worth $10M one day motivates some people. So the best talent comes to Silicon Valley and you get a critical mass of the actual labor to make that happen (which makes hiring for a startup easier). That talent comes from many places, among them Cambridge. **But probably the most important part** is that it's ok to fail. Startups fail all. the. fucking. time. in SV. It's not unusual for a senior SWE to have 5 defunct startups on his/her resume, and interviewers don't see that as a negative. At least they had the balls to go for it. Same thing for founders, when they're pitching their latest thing to VCs. Ending a startup isn't a big deal, either. You lay off all the staff[1], sell the office stuff and move on. You don't have to give employees six months notice for each week they worked at the company. Contrast that with Europe, where running a company that closed or went bankrupt is a big fucking deal. I've heard horror stories about founders getting blacklisted after one unsuccessful startup. And not just from VCs, but from other jobs and their own bank. People aren't going to take risks if the consequences of failure are that high. In other words, the "environment" in Europe is just all wrong if you want to have companies that are the result of big risky bets on unproven technology. [1] They're working for a startup, so they already know there's a 90% chance of that happening when they sign up. See also: https://steveblank.com/category/secret-history-of-silicon-valley/
In Cambridge? Christ, no wonder you're not making any money. See what happens when you just give all your money to all the indolent fourth sons of Dukes and Viscounts? Give 'em a million dollars and they'll spend it all on tea and crumpets and then wonder why they have nothing left over to pay the butler to clean up the dishes. The coddled have no drive, no chip on their shoulders, are uncreative and worst of all have no sense of humor. Move your tech hubs to Glasgow, staff the VCs with middle class East Enders and don't look back. This post exhausts all the words I know in 'British'.
Half of your country has a reading age of a 12 year old, 70 million are clinically obese with the rest just fat, and you have almost 50million on food stamps. Add in the worlds largest prison population, at will employment/no maternity leave/ shocking holiday allowance, along with 60% having saved less than 5k (40% less than 1k), bought and paid politics, a few thousand shot school kids and just vast, vast amounts of deficit spending, then you end up with a pretty ugly picture. Now, that doesn’t stop you from having an enviable tech industry, but that’s a very different conclusion from admiring or wanting to emulate the country as a whole. Europe’s downfall is primarily laziness, with citizens benefitting from pretty extensive safety nets in terms of free healthcare, schools, great benefits (unemployment, housing, maternity, holiday), plus oodles of regulation which protects the individual from abuse by corporates or the state. That does make us a lot less inefficient, but inefficient doesn’t always equate to worse, when looking at the health of the whole nation.
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Blame the monarchy.
We work our ass off, most of us don’t enjoy life and we’re obsessed with more more and more. But yes we are an economic powerhouse, when our economy tanks the worlds economy tanks. Many other countries tank and no one cares.
I’ve lived in both places and the answer is simple. It’s not money. It’s not level of intellect or peoples drive. There is unlimited money everywhere, especially London. There is more drive in London than anywhere, it’s why London produces the best musicians. I shit you nought, it’s the weather and the basic infrastructure of life. Texas, California, New York….. these people aren’t more driven then UK talent. Look at fashion and art to see that. These places simply have more desirable living conditions for people who are tech minded workers who want to work in a company of 10,000 tech minded individuals. Space….. not over crowded…… big ass office, free food and drinks in the office cuz living is cheap…… the ability to get to and from work without London congestion charges….. Like, fuck London mate…… it’s good for fashion, punk music, Camden, and a secret banking system. But give me the New York skyscrapers and a great night life. Give me the California beaches and perfect weather. Give me the Texas mansions life for $300,000 and a pool and bbq…… And you will attract real talent who will work at your company. You gotta be a sadistic alcoholic to love London. And that breeds art….. not Tech.
Good universities don’t mean shit, brother. Also, a lot of our banks are on the verge of bankruptcy also. Dumbasses buying long term bonds when interest rates were near 0. “Too big to fail” let them burn
Easy when nearly everything is based on the US dollar and Fed money machine. But in all seriousness, there’s a lot of rules and protections around those that start and take a lot of risk to innovate here… huge ecosystem of funding and others helping each other out. Size wise, it’s a benefit and attracts top talent not even based in the country. I read somewhere that like 80% of billionaires in the US aren’t even from here originally
It comes with some downsides. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows.
BAE systems crying right now
Better motivation. If you're poor in the US you die either from hunger or disease (food costs money, and medical care costs a ~~metric~~ freedom ton of money). If you don't sell your soul for money and claw your way to higher net worth you will fall into the abyss. In the UK you have an ok social safety net, so even your rich aren't very motivated to get richer. They just sit in their castles and collect artifacts from other cultures.
The US is a business. A witty, sarcastic, manipulative adolescent who will ruin the world, but do so in style. It doesn’t have any regard for accountability, or worldly effects. Im insanely jealous that the rest of the world doesn’t have to study every food product they buy to determine if it’s actually healthy or appropriate to consume.
Money, everything goes where the money is. Pay, funding, liquidity.