Software Industry Calls for More UK Government Support (reuters.com) 47
Britain's government has been urged to provide more support for the software industry with measures including tax incentives and talent visas. From a report: More than 120 industry leaders have called for government intervention to improve conditions for European software companies. Europe has long struggled to scale up homegrown tech companies as successfully as the U.S., with many startups forced to seek investment abroad as they scale up.
A new policy document -- published by industry body Boardwave and seen by Reuters -- highlights what it calls Europe's "dreadful" track record of scaling software companies, with one recent study showing only one software-focused firm, Sage, counted among Britain's top 100 publicly-traded businesses, compared to dozens in the U.S. Phill Robinson, Boardwave founder and a former executive at software giant Salesfore, shared the report with Britain's technology minister Michele Donelan last week, warning that mid-sized software companies had received little government attention compared to Big Tech firms and buzzy venture-funded startups.
A new policy document -- published by industry body Boardwave and seen by Reuters -- highlights what it calls Europe's "dreadful" track record of scaling software companies, with one recent study showing only one software-focused firm, Sage, counted among Britain's top 100 publicly-traded businesses, compared to dozens in the U.S. Phill Robinson, Boardwave founder and a former executive at software giant Salesfore, shared the report with Britain's technology minister Michele Donelan last week, warning that mid-sized software companies had received little government attention compared to Big Tech firms and buzzy venture-funded startups.
Talent visas but not in-house training (Score:3, Informative)
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Always just "learn on the job whilst the system is in production".
Re: Talent visas but not in-house training (Score:2)
You guys don't seem to realize that for a startup, time and budget are two things that are in very short supply. Not only that, but software developers have a strong tendency to be either nothing special at all, or very good. The former never really seem to improve much with time. Nobody wants to train somebody that turns out to be one of those, which means it's risky, and startups are already dealing with a lot of risk.
Besides, I think they're basically correct here. Overall, Europe is a distant third if y
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Look at the salaries for generally competent software developers of any experience level in the UK. Now look in the US. It's not hard to see why our industry lags in the UK.
Look at the tax system that applies to employees in the UK. The scale in effect has massive increases in marginal tax rates part way along the curve that mean it's not a progressive system, for no sensible reason. It's even worse if you have kids, when at some points on the curve a huge proportion of any pay rise never actually reaches y
Calling BS on talent visas (Score:1)
The economic and government policy argument for importing technology workers is that there is a shortage of technology workers in the UK / US / etc.
That's factually incorrect in both cases, there are many available talented and experienced workers. They won't take an underpaid job, have their immigration held by the whims of their employer for 3 years, and not seek a job elsewhere.
The tech companies want to lower wages by increasing labor supply, short and simple.
Nonsensical arguments about start-ups despe
Re: Talent visas but not in-house training (Score:2)
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Because a nation that large has much greater absolute numbers in the tail ends of pareto distribution of talent and skill.
I.e. they have massive amounts of people at the low end in terms of absolute numbers, and they have a massive amounts of people on high end as well. And they do invest in their high end much more relative to keeping low end up as opposed to many Western nations. Which leads to situation you describe, where low end of society is really badly off, but upper end of society is thriving so mu
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7-11 corporate office controls apu like an employee but makes so that he needs to take on all the risks of an owner with limited control and no OT pay.
He had to work an few full 72 hour shift on his own.
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This right there.
It's amazing how often I got hired for what I know (and learned on my own), for a multiple of what it would have costed to train someone who already existed. For some weird reason they have no problem hiring someone for six figures when training an existing person for four would do.
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Once you've trained that person for 4 figures, they will leave and go somewhere else that's offering them 6 figures.
The idea that you can train someone up and keep employing them on a lower salary than you can hire someone with the same skillset is quite insulting, people generally won't stand for this.
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There are ways to ensure a person has to stay for a while when you train them, it's all a matter of contracts. Mine stipulates that if my employer pays for my training, I have to stay around for 3-5 years (depending on how expensive it is) or I have to refund them.
Sure, one could argue that refunding may be financially more interesting than staying, but I guess that means that you should pay your workers more because if they can command a salary difference higher than the training cost, you would not have k
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Contracts that require an employee to pay back training costs are often unenforceable in practice.
If the employee quits, what are you gonna do? Sue them? It can cost $100k to fund a lawsuit. Even if you win, then what? Good luck collecting the judgment.
What if the employee doesn't quit but intentionally underperforms to engineer their firing? Recovering training costs will be difficult.
Hiring someone already trained in the skills you need is much easier.
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Quite simple: "Hey, competitor? The guy you shanghaied from us? Yeah, allow me to let you in on a secret, that guy bailed and stiffed us with the training costs. Just a heads up in case you plan to qualify them..."
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"You're welcome. Just ... make sure you don't train them any more. It's enough if one of us makes that mistake. Just use them 'til their skill are obsolete, then dump them."
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"You're welcome. Just ... make sure you don't train them any more.
I've been in the tech industry for more than 30 years.
I've never had any tech company give me formal training.
They pay me for my skills. But obtaining those skills is my problem, not theirs.
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Get better employers, or negotiate better. I have an annual training budget at my disposal.
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One issue I've seen with training is that they don't want to give big salary increases afterwards. Once trained that person will be able to get more money elsewhere if they don't offer it. Why not offer it? They seem to think that other employees will be upset if they give free training and big salary increases to one of their colleagues. They'd rather avoid the whole mess by just hiring someone new.
The UK is a low wage economy by European standards. You can earn a lot more in the EU, if you can get there p
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For some weird reason they have no problem hiring someone for six figures when training an existing person for four would do.
1. People who lack the initiative and ambition to learn independently often aren't the best employees.
2. Once trained, the employee's salary will have to be raised to retain them. So it is more cost-effective just to hire someone with the needed skills.
You are responsible for your own career. Your employer isn't your mommy.
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1. It's less a lack of ambition and initiative, if my company doesn't want to invest in me, why the hell should I be invested in my company? Because if I train on my dime, I'll get the training I want that will provide me with the skills that I need to go somewhere else for greener pastures. If my company trains me, they can decide what they think will be useful for them and choose the training depending on their needs.
2. I dare say it's not more cost effective to hire outside. Yes, a better trained employe
Chronic under investment (Score:3)
The UK chronically lags on investment compared to OCED on the whole, both public and private sector, and we have an economy to match, i.e. in the shitter.
There are decades of structural and cultural issues here. Really the government needs to step up, but Sunak's useless and Starmer just wants to be a conservative so nothing much will change. Maybe if we keep not investing things will magically get better through the power of not spending money.
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Yep. There is no confidence in the UK economy or long term outlook, so it's hard to get investment in. Companies prefer to bumble along, rather than take chances on innovation.
Employees aren't encouraged to innovate much either, because the rewards simply aren't there. No big bonuses, no stock options, below inflation annual salary increases. It doesn't feel like it's worth the effort to go above and beyond.
Re: Chronic under investment (Score:1)
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We are but that's not the reason: they run deeper than that. The attitude is greedy and risk averse.
We all like to poke fun at silicon valley, with it's juicero's and theranoses and so on. But of course there are also a large number of massive, huge success stories. The reason is it's a place where venture capitalists are prepared to take risks (so yeah sure you get dumb stuff) and give the founders the incentive to succeed.
My experience of the UK is VC's will want you to be making a million in annual reven
Do we need it, though? (Score:4, Interesting)
Europe? (Score:1, Flamebait)
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>Does article mean Europe or the EU? Either way, the UK voted to leave the latter and is therefore effectively not part of the former.
By that logic, Switzerland and Norway are also not European. Kinda weird how all those really competitive and wealthy nations are "not European". Almost like you have a specific bias.
Re: Europe? (Score:2)
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I wasn't talking about companies struggling, but your very odd delineation of "Europe" where many of the most successful European nations are "not European" by your frankly insane measuring stick.
The whole premis is wrong (Score:4, Informative)
When competing and are hampered by an over regulated economy, the answer is not to add regulation to improve one industry but to change regulation to reduce barriers.
The issues discussed in the article apply to almost all industries. They are normally called growing pains.
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Over regulation like blocking useful employees from entering the country and doing work?
So... (Score:1)
These guys "More than 120 industry leaders have called for government intervention" aren't actually capitalists then, and I would say that they shouldn't hold leadership roles in any commercial enterprise.
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This would apply to every American corporation and their CEO.
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I would generally agree.
Any corporate leader who begs for government assistance when times are hard, isn't fundamentally a capitalist - they're inviting government involvement in their business. Further, they're stupid: who could possibly believe that 'involvement' would end when times turn good again?
No, if you insist government be as uninvolved as possible (low taxes, minimal regulation, etc) so you can be successful, it's pure hypocrisy for you to beg for government to come save you when things turn sou
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You apparently have this view of the business world as self-sustaining. I used to. Now, I understand that it requires constant tending by the government, along the lines of a top that you have to keep on spinning with your fingers to keep the revolutions up, so it doesn't fall over.
Laissez-faire capitalism never really worked like people wanted it to, but with the increasing complexity of modern society the idea completely broke down. People have expectations of full employment and no mass unemployment,
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I'm not the one modding your opinion down, which by the way is pretty egregious use of the "-1 Disagree" mod.
That said, I don't necessarily agree with you. The economy as it stands exists for a reason, and that reason is to maximize the welfare of as many as possible. Otherwise they get all pissy and rebel and no one has peace. When we lose the script on that, bad stuff happens like 1917 revolutions and such. I'm not against business owners who choose to invest a lot of time and effort into their busine