Can the UK Create Something To Rival Silicon Valley? 395
An anonymous reader writes "Hoping to bring together ambition, creativity and energy in one place, the UK government hopes to grow East London so that we can benefit from the same sort of success that has been seen in California; jobs, tax revenue, highly skilled workers and takeovers. If it works, the country would massively benefit, with something to rival other established industries."
No. (Score:4, Interesting)
Look at what happened with the Raspberry Pi, import taxes pretty much sunk any possibility of building it in the UK.
But actually living in London is a challenge (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:A new wild west (Score:5, Interesting)
You mean like china, where all of those problems can disappear for a big enough wad of cash.
Is Silicon Valley Worth Imitating? (Score:4, Interesting)
The vast majority of SV ventures have been expensive failures. It's essentially a welfare economy subsidized by venture capitalists who prey on the ignorance of non-technical investors. The rare ventures that succeed tend to move out of SV. The vast majority of SV workers never get rich; they move elsewhere when they are past age 30 and are no longer welcome. SV puts out its hype about the virtues of "hard work", "two men in a garage", and "no government" -- though in reality, it's about knowing the right people, being in the right place at the right time, and making most of their money from government contracts. Most scientific advances happen outside of SV, and most successful high-tech businesses are based outside of SV. I would say that SV is just a mysique created by the banking industry.
The future of high-tech leans toward medicine. SV is not strong in medicine; they just have bubbly biotech start-ups that typically disappear within a year. The successful high-tech business of the future will depend more on interactions with non-IT people, but SV's homogeneous population places it at a disadvantage there. SV does not have large numbers of health care professionals, industrial technicians, or other types who would provide valuable input.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Interesting)
If I were the UK, I would not want to model anything after California.
Anything modeled after California is known to cause cancer in the State of California. But only slightly more seriously, there's a subtle distinction between comparing what happened in California with what happened to California. The company with the largest market capitalization of any on earth is located there. Ten years ago, The Company Which Must Not Be Named was barely a blip on anyone's radar. There are many success stories to come out of Silicon Valley, and understandably, many business-minded folks would like to replicate that success.
Unfortunately, they're suffering from a massive case of survivor bias [wikipedia.org]. It's true that silicon valley has birthed some of the largest, most successful tech firms out there. It's also true that the valley is littered with the corpses of failure. During the dot com bust, companies were erecting fences to keep creditors from repossessing the cars out of company lots. Silicon Valley's success story should be likened to another California success story: The California gold rush [wikipedia.org]. You can't discuss success without also discussing the odds of failure.
Many things coming together (Score:2, Interesting)
A lot of things have to come together to create a 'Silicon Valley'. 1. You need a university center of excellence (like Stanford University) that actively promotes the high technology business. They have (or at least had) leases on land in the Santa Clara Valley, and offered good rates to fledgeling technology companies. 2. You have to have an entrepreneurial spirit: this isn't some 'I just graduated from business school, now I want my million dollars' boob, you need someone who has an idea or a set of ideas, are willing to put in time and effort developing those ideas, and create things that people want. Some of that spirit comes from being highly creative, almost artsy, and that's a trillion light years from any business school 'follow the leader' types. 3. You need financial backing from people who can see things in the long term. All countries have banks, but most have banks that turn tail and run at the first sign of trouble. They don't want to backstop people for the long term. They are good at providing money when the company doesn't need very much (when the sun is shining they offer umbrellas), but then it turns cloudy or starts to rain, they want their money (umbrella) back. Many other countries have centres of excellence with an entrepreneurial spirit, but a crappy banking/financial system where there is no long term outlook. Companies in these countries fail, because the financial backing is lacking.
Right idea, wrong location (Score:3, Interesting)
If you want a "silicon valley" in the UK, don't target East London. Extend what you have and go for Reading [pronounce "REDDING"], which as it happens is already nicknamed "The silicon valley of the UK". Comfortably, Reading is already the home of many small unknown companies such as Oracle, Nvidia, Microsoft and Symantec.
Re:Why not in Cambridge? (Score:5, Interesting)
Nottingham has tried it several times already.
Highfields Science Park began as, and is still, a niche research facility owned and administered by the University of Nottingham. Its original commercial intent was as a supportive facility for tech startups.
The Lace Market quarter was renovated and equipped with facilities aimed at Dotcom startups. Failed. Most of the units now sit unused and unoccupied, and almost entirely owned by New College Nottingham and now used mainly for storage.
The Howitt Building was renovated much as the Lace Market was, as a springboard for tech companies. Has never had more than 25% occupancy. Owned and run as a secured building by the City Council, with the accompanying extortionate office rents.
The Island Business Park is currently occupied by the BBC, Experian, Capital One and the NHS. Little else, more than half the site is still undeveloped.
We're talking about the place where electron microscopes, CAT scanners, and several more of the most amazing medtech breakthroughs in history have been made. *Nobody* is interested in setting up shop there except Boots, Capital One, Experian and Games Workshop?? Makes me wonder why...
Re:Not being from the UK (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm an employer in the UK but lived in US for 5 years. UK's pretty good for employers really. You have to provide more time off (minimum of 5.5 weeks off per year) but that's offset by not having to provide health insurance. You have to be a bit more careful about firing people (if they've been with you more than a year) than fire-at-will states, but you're less likely to be sued for some random bullshit because people just don't pull that crap as much here. Compared to the rest of Europe -Italy:paperwork and regulations are horrendous, france:everyone is on holiday all the time, hungary: tax doubles your costs, etc.. the UK is very employer friendly.
I've never met the right sort of person. (Score:2, Interesting)
Countries from America to India have their fair share of excellent software engineers. Britain has a fair few excellent computer scientists.
But England has fuck all in the way of good software engineers.
We do pissant, easily outsourceable work - which is routinely outsourced.
British software engineers tend to be very uninterested in their discipline, i.e. engineering. They're either geeks who enjoy hacking or low level business types who just want a good job. And the ones who did well at university (who hasn't?) tend to be cunts about it, thinking this entitles them to respect even when they've not coded for shit in the real world.
And I say this as an British ex-software engineer who found that British engineers - but not foreigners coming to work in Britain - were often quite disappointing to work with. I don't often tip my hat to the American way, but US software engineering ethos is far nicer.
Re:its called HUGE tax breaks for R&D (Score:3, Interesting)
If any term in a no-compete is considered overly strict the court will just null they entire thing (they cannot reduce it to a reasonable level).
Posting AC for obvious reasons...
My current (US based) employer had me sign a non-compete when I was hired. I was a bit turned off, but it's been almost a year and I can honestly see why they did so now that I have heard all stories from previous developers who jumped ship, stole clients (some I am sure you've heard of), and moved across the street.
The one I signed stated something along the lines of a 50 mile radius being the area included, I don't recall. I thought that was a bit silly, considering that would require me to move if I wanted to change jobs.
A few months ago, there was a frivolous lawsuit brought against us by a former client that was backed by the developers that left and moved across the street. We won the case, but soon afterwards the official employment contract was amended to reduce the non-compete down to a 5 mile radius.
I am guessing the reason why was because the previous contract signed by the developers who left was not enforceable in court.
Fortunately, and especially is this niche of industry, developers are often quite incompetent at what they do, and we are routinely awarded new clients based on the fact that their previous developers built nothing but a shit product. Of course this means I inherit a lot of garbage, but it certainly keeps me busy enough.