back
114 comments
As a Software Engineer in London I have noticed a gigantic push from recruiters to get some talent to move to Berlin after Brexit.

The sad thing is I now consider it a net gain to move, whereas before London was the best place to live.

Bullshit, London hasn't been a good place to live in at least 20 years. You just hung around because you were used to it. London as good things (lots of money, lots of entrepreneurial people), but being "nice to live" isn't one of them.
Lots of people like London. I'm not one of them, but then I don't like big cities. I would say my biggest gripe about London is the frequent transit failures. I literally can't remember the last time we didn't have someone come in an hour late because of some train/bus problems. My second biggest gripe is the frequent transit strikes ;-). If it's not busted, it's not running because management and workers are fighting with each other.

Especially if you are comparing London from 20 years ago, I would have to say that it is much nicer than it used to be. I lived in London 2 years ago and also 20 years ago. I remember 20 years ago coming home and literally being able to draw pictures on my arm with the grime that accumulated during the day. Blowing my nose always resulted in black snot coming out. The Thames was filled with garbage. Those days are mostly gone now. Hell, tours on the Thames is considered a fancy thing to do these days.

The things I think are not quite as nice (and I'll brace myself for the backlash)... Culturally the city is kind of confused IMHO. 20 years ago it was vaguely European, but really English when it came down to it. You could still get a decent Sunday roast in any pub in London at the time. Now it is decidedly multi-cultural. I think young people will definitely prefer the London of today, and I won't blame them, but personally I miss the London of times gone by. These days you have to go further afield to get more of an English cultural experience, IMHO. Not necessarily a bad thing, but like I said, there will be people who prefer one over the other.

Would you mind unpacking that further? I love living in London and would be keen to hear your grievances.
For many niche hobbies it's the best place to do them (personal example: netrunner). It's probably the best place in the world for (english-language) theatre. Maybe you're someone who could easily adapt to German; I'm not, which makes London the best option by some way.
Unequivocally agree, my quality of life has dramatically increased (both in terms of accessible talent surrounding me at work, and having something more than a shoebox to live in) once I reminded myself that all I was doing in London was paying my admittedly sizable income to other people and saving barely anything.

Travel, expensive and required Rent, expensive and required Socialising, expensive and not required, but needed.

I used to cycle to remove the travel aspect but it's absurdly dangerous. I can't even begin to describe how much better my life is now- My girlfriend wants to go back but that's just because "London is the best place in the world", she can't even cite examples. It's just because it's well known and has landmarks I think.

Just move to Cambridge! You get the perks of a great tech environment with the charms of a small English town!
I just moved there 2 months ago and enjoy it a lot more than Austin.
Could you post more details? I get offers from London, but not many from Berlin. Berlin has some startups, but not many big corporations.
I'm a (full stack javascript) contractor and have started getting a call a week asking if I would consider relocating to Berlin or Frankfurt.
What makes it a net gain now when it was not previously? (I'm not super informed about Brexit details)
No ones knows what Brexit actually means (apart from the slightly pathetic "Brexit means Brexit" which we seem to be getting from the current prime minister)

Currently there seem to be two groups:

The Brexit Light group who want to preserve access to the single market with hopefully some concessions on free movements.

And the Hard Brexit group who see controlling migration as the most important thing even at the cost of losing access to the single market.

Whatever happens there is going to be a long period of uncertainty which could last for 5-10 years. Only once the dust has settled will we know what impact there has been on the economy and country.

Companies are going to be less likely to invest in the UK, before Brexit it was a logical choice to open offices in London, now it is not so clear cut.

It is also less likely that talented people from across Europe will be tempted to move to London. Pre Brexit the UK (in particular London) has been a very attractive place for highly skilled people, post Brexit those people are likely to choose a different capital city to call home.

My feeling is that Brexit will be very bad for London in the short to medium term.

It makes little different for computer programmers, as evidenced by the abundance of American (i.e. non EU) apps and services used throughout the EU.

It would make more difference for other industries, but "move to Berlin from London as a js dev" doesn't make much sense to me. I suspect some Berlin-based recruiters are just desperate and trying out a new tack to see if a bit of fear works better vs just advertising Berlin itself (which is a lovely city, mind you, I've thought about moving there in the past).

Actually, nothing, since no-one knows what the post-Brexit world will look like, and even if they did, Article 50 takes 2 years.
Sorry, but Sinclair was never a potential titan. His problem was always he was happy to shave off 50% of the capability to save 10% of the cost. Tho' this is a mentality that is all too common in the UK - just look at our defence procurement.

A real story would be that of De Havilland and the Comet airliner - Boeing and Airbus should never have existed, the UK had that market sewn up until the government of the day blew it...

Shaving cost was a good goal when computers were still too expensive for the average home though. Another notable one was what could have been an IBM competitor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LEO_(computer) .

Britain was a great innovator back when individual inventors could manage a project, they never seemed to transition into corporate innovation though.

Bit harsh to say they "blew it" with the Comet when they got a fully functional commercial jet airframe programme going five years before anyone else but suffered because they were first and didn't really understand metal fatigue. It's not as if being a huge player in the early jet age and having a better aircraft than the later Comets saved privately-held Douglas from financial struggles and eventually being folded into Boeing either.
Yes. I grew up with a ZX Spectrum which I loved dearly, so it pains me to say it, but Sinclair didn't really deserve to be "titans". Their machines were kludges with corners cut, pre-order money taken from the public when they didn't even have a working prototype, and Sir Clive was disdainful of the gaming market which made his machine successful and tried to move away from that instead of embracing it.

Some of the corner-cutting was ingenious (the calculator where the power pulses just often enough for the screen and memory to stay on, allowing a watch battery to be used for a more slimline design) and some of it less so (iirc the same calculator displays 8 digits but is only accurate to 3 significant figures...)

"shave off 50% of the capability to save 10% of the cost"

I thought UK defence procurement policy was to double the cost and reduce capability by 50%.

I do think the UK is very short-termist.
I am surprised it does not mention Psion. With better management we could had iphone 10 years earlier. Psion Series 5 has no replacement even after 19 years (keyboard, display, battery life..)
I'd say most netbooks or tablets replaced it for all of those things now... But you're right that Psion were super innovative. More important than their series 5 hardware was the operating system. EPOC was a 32bit embedded OS long before anyone else was doing them. It was nice to program for and dealt with multiprogram which even the first iPhones didn't think about.
I'm not English, I don't live in the UK, but the approach and wording in this article bothers me.

Are these companies "sell outs" because they sold, or because they sold to foreign companies?

Shouldn't they be lauded as successes for having been sold in the first place? Is this part of the problem that the root of the article (as I see it) is actually talking about?

The article doesn't go into the the substance of this topic, but I've learned a bit about the issue from talking to friends who work in government economic development roles here in Australia.

The balance they're trying to strike is between attracting foreign investment vs losing companies via foreign acquisition.

Foreign investment (along with export revenue) is great, as it creates jobs, grows ecosystems, increases demand for the currency, etc.

Foreign acquisition is not so great, as the jobs/expertise/ecosystems and export revenue are lost.

Of course, if the founders/early investors go on and invest their returns in new local companies, then that's a good thing, but is perhaps beyond the scope of what governments are able to measure (or generate PR from).

I have no strong opinions about how sensible this attitude from governments is; I just know that's how they think, at least in Australia, and probably in the UK too.

It does seem pretty odd. As a UK citizen, am I meant to feel proud of the existence of ARM for some reason? And presumably now I'm no longer allowed to use ARM chips because they've betrayed 'us'?
I think that the main part of the problem is the sales are to foreign companies.

Many companies tend to focus efforts in their home countries and there's always a risk that a foreign acquisition will see its operations downsized in their native country and moved either to the home country of the acquiring company or to a low-cost cost location.

Also from a tax perspective, foreign companies don't generate as much revenue for the British government, so every time one is purchased by a foreign company that's more long term tax revenue lost.

The issue is that these companies were doing really well, got acquired as a result, but then mostly shrivelled to nothing. Let's hope ARM doesn't get cursed that way...
I believe the article is suggesting London or the UK, is hindered when trying to compete with SV or other similar start-up\technology based cities. That most companies (though the examples in the article aren't the greatest) are bought out or shifted off shore inhibits the UK from developing that scene further.

I'd suggest it's a little more complex than just starting a company and not selling out to a larger competitor. London is not Silicon Valley. Never has been and any opportunity to cultivate that type of culture within the city will surely be even more challenging with the Brexit?

But I digress. When the Brexit vote is enacted, I suspect we'll find business and investment into start-ups in the UK continuing to diminish in favour of EU based states or else where.

Actually. You could really say this about almost every industry in the UK with the exception of the Banking and Financial sector, they're all diminishing in favour of offshore? If they haven't already anyway? That's profound.

Source: ex-pat from the UK

Edit: words, additional statements.

Of course they should be lauded for being a success, but that doesn't change the fact that having headquarters is good for a country/city.

Because that's where the corporation pays most of its taxes (usually), and that's where the most interesting jobs are going to be.

In comparisons between the US and Europe, you often hear the argument that Europe doesn't have a Google, Apple or Microsoft. But how can you build one if every promising start up gets bought up by a foreign company?
I suppose they are "sell outs" in a sense that Apple, Microsoft and Google are not.
Softbank is a cellular phone company not a competitor to ARM... And Softbank said it will double head count and keep the offices in the UK.

I guess any sell out is termed "lost".

They missed Imagination[1], which seems to be suffering from (allegedly) poor management decisions at the moment, but is the hardware behind the graphics in many mobile phones.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagination_Technologies

The BBC is funny like that, they latch onto companies that they worship (e.g. Apple, Google, ARM, Flickr) and ignore all the others in the same sector. I suspect they see no further than the products their own staff use, or more cynically, individuals there are positioning themselves for lucrative job offers they hope will come rolling in...
The difference is they did turn down acquisition offers from Apple and Intel, a few years ago. However they're not doing so well as an independent company atm. Many of the most experienced engineers are getting poached by Apple these days (has some informal no-poaching agreement come to an end?)
More to come... Skype though wasn't strictly UK, has a huge engineering office in London. Microsoft just announce it will close it.

Some of the losses are inevitable. Even in San Francisco Bay Area a lot of titans has died/been acquired. The most fundamental metric is net new titans/value created. New Startups - old titans that are winding dow.

I think they missed the most of important of all, DeepMind.
Was DeepMind 'lost'? It was bought by Google, but it's stayed in the UK (even if it might have made more sense to be folded into Google Brain) and iirc the founders are very keen that it stay in London.
DeepMind is mentioned in the section about SwiftKey.
Autonomy being on the list is a little weird - given that it appears to have been all smoke and mirrors.
Last.fm is still an amazing resource thanks to its listening statistics that I participate in.
As an EVE player this headline made me feel a bit uneasy.
I doubt they would be pimp fit though.
Unfortunately the UK couldn't innovate faster than others could steal
I dunno, if the UK can pull off smaller government then they might continue to be attractive to businesses chafing from the high regulations and taxes of the EU.
The EU doesn't control member country tax rates and most of its regulations are to harmonise products sold within the market - ie products would have to meet the regulations to be sold in the block no matter whether they are produced inside or outside the EU.

Other regulations affecting things like working hours or environment wouldn't necessarily be great for the UK to cut back on. These are designed to prevent beggar-thy-neighbour policies that turn into a race to the bottom in a zero sum game. It's better for everyone to agree to the same rules here, game theoretically.

And less freedom to hire people from the continent would just push up labour costs.

So personally I don't think there's any upside from Brexit here. That would have to come from somewhere entirely hypothetical, like significantly better trade deals than the EU currently has.

Yeah because that's the root of all our problems, too large government and 'chafing' regulations.

Quite the opposite IMO.

I'm going to guess that requiring VAT be collected at the buyer's rate is the biggest law affecting small tech companies in Europe. What other EU regulations have a high negative impact on tech businesses?
It will be interesting to see how quickly this post will disappear from the front page of HN ( especially when SF wakes up)

Edit: My comment is relevant. How relevant is the UK tech scene in the world ? one measure would be HN ranking during the day.

Edit: 08:49am (BST) - position (2)

Edit: 09:19am (BST) - (2)

Edit: 09:24am (BST) - (11)

Edit: 09:29am (BST) - (14)

Edit: 09:34am (BST) - (15)

Edit: 09:39am (BST) - (20)

Edit: 09:49am (BST) - (22)

Edit: 09:54am (BST) - (25)

Edit: 09:59am - 10:19am (BST) - (27/28)

Edit: 10:24am - 10:29am (BST) - (26)

Edit: 10:34am (BST) - (28)

Edit: 10:44am (BST) - (31)