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Beyond that, I believe that Europe’s (particularly Britain’s) negative cultural attitude towards sales is a major inhibitor to building tech champions on the sa

Beyond that, I believe that Europe’s (particularly Britain’s) negative cultural attitude towards sales is a major inhibitor to building tech champions on the same scale as the US or China. In my thirteen years of working in the UK, I’ve learnt that in British culture sales and selling is viewed negatively. The linked HBR article talks about self-promotion not sales. That seems quite different to me. And speaking from Cloudflare’s perspective our London-based EMEA sales team has been spectacularly effective. Early in Eigen’s history there were many London-based employees who prioritised technological purity over commercial success; it was almost fatal for us. However hard it is, the UK needs to transform its cultural attitude to sales. I think that’s a leadership issue not about “London”. The team we built in London was/is all about commercial success.

waihtis 5y ago
Personal anecdote - depends on where you are on the technology adoption bell curve. Innovative, a bit "out-there" things seem to be better received in the US.
KaiserPro 5y ago
London does sales well, if you want a sales office you open it in london. What it doesn't do well is spaff money indiscriminately at any old idiot with an idea. Even less so to someone with a crap idea. Despite the article author's claim, most of the startups in the generation that I joined (2018+) have focused on getting a decent business model, rather than hyper growth above all else. They also had to do much more with significantly less. There was less VC money sloshing about compared to the west coast, so we had to be very careful in how we optimised. To back up the point that John is making, "Technical purity" above all else is a symptom of leadership not explaining the business needs well enough. (or not putting in place an engineering team with enough pragmatism to translate business to tech. )
- jgrahamc 5y ago
  I mean, good luck to him moving his HQ to NYC etc. but if I were an employee in London HM The Queen's tea cup in Windsor would be shaking from the sonic boom after I lit the reheats on my CV.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - eganist 5y ago
    > I mean, good luck to him moving his HQ to NYC etc. but if I were an employee in London HM The Queen's tea cup in Windsor would be shaking from the sonic boom after I lit the reheats on my CV. I wish I lived in London just to use this expressive nugget of gold.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 5y ago
      Gold. The Epstein Drive[1] method of finding a new job. 1. https://expanse.fandom.com/wiki/Epstein_Drive https://expanse.fandom.com/wiki/Epstein_Drive
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - zeristor 5y ago
        As opposed to Jeffrey Epstein who everyone tries to get away from as fast as possible.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- iso1210 5y ago
  > What it doesn't do well is spaff money indiscriminately at any old idiot with an idea. That's what government's for
  - fmajid 5y ago
    No, the UK government requires you to have no clue (but be chums with a minister or Tory MP) before it spaffs torrents of money your way.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 5y ago
      It seems you are agreeing with the comment you replied to.
      - zdragnar 5y ago
        It isn't enough to be an idiot, you have to be an idiot with connections to get spaffed
        DeathArrow 5y ago
        >It isn't enough to be an idiot, you have to be an idiot with connections to get spaffed The first part I can manage. But how do I get connections?
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        rgblambda 5y ago
        Whenever I hear advice about using connections and networking, I always interpret that to mean "be born with the right relatives".
        mrep 5y ago
        It can be work connections too. My brother worked for a startup that got bought for a 150 million and he still connects with the old ceo whom I bet my brother could get funding from now if he had a good idea.
- barry-cotter 5y ago
  >Despite the article author's claim, most of the startups in the generation that I joined (2018+) have focused on getting a decent business model, rather than hyper growth above all else. > They also had to do much more with significantly less. There was less VC money sloshing about compared to the west coast, so we had to be very careful in how we optimised. With supporters like this the UK is in no need of enemies. It would be difficult to more pithily explain why the US is a better place to build a startup as a founder, or to explain why US startups have more money and so can pay their staff more.
  - DeathArrow 5y ago
    > It would be difficult to more pithily explain why the US is a better place to build a startup as a founder, or to explain why US startups have more money and so can pay their staff more. But it is really simple. In US they have a higher appetite for gambling.
    - nivenkos 5y ago
      And far more money. The US is just far wealthier than Europe.
    - barry-cotter 5y ago
      It's not gambling if you consistently make more money than the person who thinks they're being prudent. It's a better investent strategy.
      - Cederfjard 5y ago
        This is devolving into a discussion about semantics, but in my vocabulary at least, just because you have an edge doesn't mean you're not gambling. It's about the level of risk, and investing huge amounts of capital in hopes of funding a unicorn tech startup fits the bill, to me.
      - chanc3e 5y ago
        There's a phrase in Europe. "Old money dies hard" And money in Europe is old, and hard fought for. We still have rich people who's families made their fortune in the 11th Century. Money in the US is new. And easily lost. The whole show is less than 250 years old. And that star is already on the wane.
- DeathArrow 5y ago
  >What it doesn't do well is spaff money indiscriminately at any old idiot with an idea. Different philosophies. In US you throw money at ten stupid ideas hoping that even nine will be dead, one will be successful and see extreme growth, making you very rich. It's more of a gambler's approach. I don't know if studies were made but I suspect US based startups who survive to see a large growth while in EU even the growth is small more startups are surviving. > most of the startups in the generation that I joined (2018+) have focused on getting a decent business model, rather than hyper growth above all else. With hyper growth at least you have the satisfaction of taking thousands of investors with you if you fall, while producing a big hole in the stock market and capture media attention. You will never be forgotten, you will have a several Wikipedia pages about you and also some legal investigations. Your name will be mentioned in bussines schools.
  - solatic 5y ago
    > It's more of a gambler's approach. Wrong. The cultural difference comes from differing appetites for risk. VC's aren't gambling on their portfolio companies, they expect each and every one of them to turn into rocket ships. If there's no potential to become a rocketship, they don't invest, simple as that. Stupid ideas don't get investment. That VCs understand that it is highly unlikely that each portfolio company will actually become a rocketship, just means that they appreciate that each investment in the portfolio carries high amounts of risk. Europe doesn't have the same appetite for risk.
    - raffraffraff 5y ago
      I can't say I agree with either of you 100%. For example, your statement that VCs expect each and every one of their investments to turn into rocket ships? Nah. If they don't know that a % of their portfolio will fail, then they're idiots. Also, FOMO. Any time there's a new hot technology, VCs soil themselves trying to get a piece of the action (AI, I'm looking at you). So they end up investing in start-ups that probably won't succeed (BUT IF THEY DO, RIGHT???) I definitely agree that it's all about appetite for risk. I'm not sure you disagree with each other fundamentally, you're just watching from different sides and wording it accordingly. Some people buy stocks for long term investment, some people short sell, and some bet their house on a hand of poker. I'm sure they would have a bar fight if you got them talking about risk appetite.
ed_balls 5y ago
I used to work for a startup founded by a few Brits. We had engineers in London, but no sales people, because of the culture. I was much easier to sell to Walmart than Tesco.
- busterarm 5y ago
  That's funny. I work at a public B2B tech company whose primary customers are in the retail space. Our main sales office for EMEA is in London and they're absolutely crushing it and always have been. They habitually convert more of their (albeit smaller) pipeline than North America does. Literally some of our best sales people are there in London. Sure there's some satellites in France and Germany because locals prefer locals, but Brexit hasn't changed a damn thing for us.
- Quarrelsome 5y ago
  like the author we're light on details beyond "the culture", "bad at sales". What does this _mean_ exactly?
  - ed_balls 5y ago
    slower sales cycles, more risk-averse.
  - hogFeast 5y ago
    It is everything. Customers too risk-averse, class boundaries still endemic (it is amazing the US tech companies went into this, Google/Facebook/etc. seem to have hired the Notting Hill set as soon as they came to London), companies too conservative about investing margin in sales, very relationship-driven sales culture (as opposed to product-driven) that is closed to "outsiders", reluctance to cold-call, etc. It is cultural because it can be anything else, do people from the UK have a different biology? No. I think if you look at politics in the UK, it is self-evident that the culture of the UK is not exactly entrepreneurial...unless you believe that a group of probably 30-50 people who went to the same school, went to the same university and largely studied the same course should rule the country...it is very weird.
eganist 5y ago
In fairness, Cloudflare's public perception as a disruptor already did Cloudflare's marketing for it in 2017 onward when y'all opened your London office; Eigen doesn't seem to have that advantage. I can imagine the sales landscape being a bit better with those tailwinds.
- jgrahamc 5y ago
  The 2017 date you mention is not correct. I was Cloudflare's first employee in London in 2011. Cloudflare went all in on London shortly thereafter and at one point 50% of Cloudflare engineering was in London and 50% in San Francisco. We had sales very early on in London covering EMEA. At the current time the London office is "full stack": engineering, operations, support, sales, legal, HR, finance, ...
  - eganist 5y ago
    Thanks; I googled it and the press was heaviest in April 2017 for a new London office, so this is a helpful correction for me. Though deeper inspection found 2013 (https://www.facebook.com/Cloudflare/posts/10151742549255432 https://www.facebook.com/Cloudflare/posts/10151742549255432), so I probably should've just googled harder. It also changes the equation substantially since the rest of my assumptions were based on 2017, though I wonder how much the environment also changed between 2011 and 2021, brexit aside?
    - jgrahamc 5y ago
      Cloudflare's London office remains large and important. We've built up Lisbon as an alternative location in part to give folks a choice between London and a continental European city and in part because we are hiring so fast it's good to hire in multiple places.
      - exdsq 5y ago
        Why not just open to remote hiring across Europe then, rather than be location-dependent?
secondcoming 5y ago
> prioritised technological purity over commercial success; it was almost fatal for us. A leadership failure, exactly. I thought I understood how business worked until I joined a startup. It was eye-opening hearing how Sales people did their jobs and the pressures they were under. Personally, I'd fail at being a Salesperson, it's a special talent. If a business allows its tech team to dictate a "better late than never" attitude then it's quite likely doomed.
Terry_Roll 5y ago
I was going to cite the same section, but what the author fails to notice or mention is a massive amount of inflation circles the planet right now that has not been seen since the 70's, which is perhaps before his time, but he may have noticed being based in London the BBC's Faisal Islam has already dropped it into a report that the Bank of England is seeing 5% interest rates in 2022 with inflation remaining on its current trajectory! When money becomes tight due to things like inflation, selling becomes harder because people want quality because it adds value and this "London-based employees who prioritised technological purity over commercial success" is to put it another way, quality, which will hurt the competition. When money is cheap due to low interest rates, people throw it around like confetti, when money becomes expensive, we will see who is not wearing a swimming costume when the tide goes out. Helicopter Ben is at it again. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-59358070 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-59358070
- 0x4d464d48 5y ago
  "Helicopter Ben" I think you mean Papa Jerome "Money Printer goes BRRRRR..." Powell. At least Bernake had a cap on the balance sheet...
hogFeast 5y ago
The commercial culture in the UK is, generally, nothing like the US. You have companies with great products that refuse on principle to hire lots of salespeople. I actually can't think of a SaaS company that is as aggressive in investing in sales and marketing as you see on average in the US. And this is rational because the return on investment is usually very poor (fintech in the UK is probably the best example, supposed to be the "best of the best"...pretty much unanimously weak results/growth from companies that are largely British). Autonomy/Darktrace is a possible exception (they have a lot of US people tbf) but given what happened to Autonomy...the jury is still out. And CS courses in the UK have a very academic bent. This is a rather complex cultural point but, ultimately, it comes down to the teaching. What kind of things are prioritized, what kinds of things have value, and teachers in the UK value complexity for it's own sake (to give you an example, I studied somewhere that was doing AI research back in the 60s, was offered huge grants from military and corporates...all turned down, research stagnated, grad students all leave...the uni is feverishly trying to connect professors with funding now, all totally non-commercial nonsense...once this starts it is very hard to reverse). Also, using the example of a US-based company opening an office in the UK isn't very helpful. The UK has lots of US investment banks doing very well in the UK but only one home-grown investment bank (and that one has been taken over by people from the US, and isn't doing very well). There is a reason why this is the case. Companies that are based overseas in the UK tend to be different in fundamental ways from ones that aren't. In tech, the big problem is that the UK is largely used as an outsourcing hub (particularly in development) because there is no real commercial expertise (this isn't obvious to people in the London tech bubble, most of the tech industry in the UK still exists that bubble). The rest of the article is total nonsense but Britain has had these problems for decades. You see it in every industry, every part of the UK. Attitudes are slowly shifting but it is a very deeply embedded cultural thing (you actually see this in some British colonies, that is how deep it is).
- selimthegrim 5y ago
  >I studied somewhere that was doing AI research back in the 60s Edinburgh?
  - hogFeast 5y ago
seanbarry 5y ago
I recently had a massive American devops company's sales team on my case trying to sell me their product. It was obnoxious and put me off dealing with them entirely. When I insisted I was the wrong person they wanted me to hook them up with my CTO and tried to bribe me with Amazon vouchers. I'll take the British way over that any day of the week.
- vr46 5y ago
  Yeah, the whole blog post came across as anecdata-driven decision-making and "I want to be in NYC because London has driven me away" rather than the "we have determined that this company's HQ requires things only available in X". That thing being money, apparently. The circumstances he outlines are too general to be reasonable, and it makes for a bullish article but not a robust argument. Good luck to him and the company, but this smacks of running away from a problem only to discover that your baggage came with you.

waihtis 5y ago

Personal anecdote - depends on where you are on the technology adoption bell curve. Innovative, a bit "out-there" things seem to be better received in the US.

KaiserPro 5y ago

London does sales well, if you want a sales office you open it in london. What it doesn't do well is spaff money indiscriminately at any old idiot with an idea. Even less so to someone with a crap idea. Despite the article author's claim, most of the startups in the generation that I joined (2018+) have focused on getting a decent business model, rather than hyper growth above all else. They also had to do much more with significantly less. There was less VC money sloshing about compared to the west coast, so we had to be very careful in how we optimised. To back up the point that John is making, "Technical purity" above all else is a symptom of leadership not explaining the business needs well enough. (or not putting in place an engineering team with enough pragmatism to translate business to tech. )

jgrahamc 5y ago
I mean, good luck to him moving his HQ to NYC etc. but if I were an employee in London HM The Queen's tea cup in Windsor would be shaking from the sonic boom after I lit the reheats on my CV.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- eganist 5y ago
  > I mean, good luck to him moving his HQ to NYC etc. but if I were an employee in London HM The Queen's tea cup in Windsor would be shaking from the sonic boom after I lit the reheats on my CV. I wish I lived in London just to use this expressive nugget of gold.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 5y ago
    Gold. The Epstein Drive[1] method of finding a new job. 1. https://expanse.fandom.com/wiki/Epstein_Drive https://expanse.fandom.com/wiki/Epstein_Drive
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - zeristor 5y ago
      As opposed to Jeffrey Epstein who everyone tries to get away from as fast as possible.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
iso1210 5y ago
> What it doesn't do well is spaff money indiscriminately at any old idiot with an idea. That's what government's for
- fmajid 5y ago
  No, the UK government requires you to have no clue (but be chums with a minister or Tory MP) before it spaffs torrents of money your way.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 5y ago
    It seems you are agreeing with the comment you replied to.
    - zdragnar 5y ago
      It isn't enough to be an idiot, you have to be an idiot with connections to get spaffed
      - DeathArrow 5y ago
        >It isn't enough to be an idiot, you have to be an idiot with connections to get spaffed The first part I can manage. But how do I get connections?
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        rgblambda 5y ago
        Whenever I hear advice about using connections and networking, I always interpret that to mean "be born with the right relatives".
        mrep 5y ago
        It can be work connections too. My brother worked for a startup that got bought for a 150 million and he still connects with the old ceo whom I bet my brother could get funding from now if he had a good idea.
barry-cotter 5y ago
>Despite the article author's claim, most of the startups in the generation that I joined (2018+) have focused on getting a decent business model, rather than hyper growth above all else. > They also had to do much more with significantly less. There was less VC money sloshing about compared to the west coast, so we had to be very careful in how we optimised. With supporters like this the UK is in no need of enemies. It would be difficult to more pithily explain why the US is a better place to build a startup as a founder, or to explain why US startups have more money and so can pay their staff more.
- DeathArrow 5y ago
  > It would be difficult to more pithily explain why the US is a better place to build a startup as a founder, or to explain why US startups have more money and so can pay their staff more. But it is really simple. In US they have a higher appetite for gambling.
  - nivenkos 5y ago
    And far more money. The US is just far wealthier than Europe.
  - barry-cotter 5y ago
    It's not gambling if you consistently make more money than the person who thinks they're being prudent. It's a better investent strategy.
    - Cederfjard 5y ago
      This is devolving into a discussion about semantics, but in my vocabulary at least, just because you have an edge doesn't mean you're not gambling. It's about the level of risk, and investing huge amounts of capital in hopes of funding a unicorn tech startup fits the bill, to me.
    - chanc3e 5y ago
      There's a phrase in Europe. "Old money dies hard" And money in Europe is old, and hard fought for. We still have rich people who's families made their fortune in the 11th Century. Money in the US is new. And easily lost. The whole show is less than 250 years old. And that star is already on the wane.
DeathArrow 5y ago
>What it doesn't do well is spaff money indiscriminately at any old idiot with an idea. Different philosophies. In US you throw money at ten stupid ideas hoping that even nine will be dead, one will be successful and see extreme growth, making you very rich. It's more of a gambler's approach. I don't know if studies were made but I suspect US based startups who survive to see a large growth while in EU even the growth is small more startups are surviving. > most of the startups in the generation that I joined (2018+) have focused on getting a decent business model, rather than hyper growth above all else. With hyper growth at least you have the satisfaction of taking thousands of investors with you if you fall, while producing a big hole in the stock market and capture media attention. You will never be forgotten, you will have a several Wikipedia pages about you and also some legal investigations. Your name will be mentioned in bussines schools.
- solatic 5y ago
  > It's more of a gambler's approach. Wrong. The cultural difference comes from differing appetites for risk. VC's aren't gambling on their portfolio companies, they expect each and every one of them to turn into rocket ships. If there's no potential to become a rocketship, they don't invest, simple as that. Stupid ideas don't get investment. That VCs understand that it is highly unlikely that each portfolio company will actually become a rocketship, just means that they appreciate that each investment in the portfolio carries high amounts of risk. Europe doesn't have the same appetite for risk.
  - raffraffraff 5y ago
    I can't say I agree with either of you 100%. For example, your statement that VCs expect each and every one of their investments to turn into rocket ships? Nah. If they don't know that a % of their portfolio will fail, then they're idiots. Also, FOMO. Any time there's a new hot technology, VCs soil themselves trying to get a piece of the action (AI, I'm looking at you). So they end up investing in start-ups that probably won't succeed (BUT IF THEY DO, RIGHT???) I definitely agree that it's all about appetite for risk. I'm not sure you disagree with each other fundamentally, you're just watching from different sides and wording it accordingly. Some people buy stocks for long term investment, some people short sell, and some bet their house on a hand of poker. I'm sure they would have a bar fight if you got them talking about risk appetite.

ed_balls 5y ago

I used to work for a startup founded by a few Brits. We had engineers in London, but no sales people, because of the culture. I was much easier to sell to Walmart than Tesco.

busterarm 5y ago
That's funny. I work at a public B2B tech company whose primary customers are in the retail space. Our main sales office for EMEA is in London and they're absolutely crushing it and always have been. They habitually convert more of their (albeit smaller) pipeline than North America does. Literally some of our best sales people are there in London. Sure there's some satellites in France and Germany because locals prefer locals, but Brexit hasn't changed a damn thing for us.
Quarrelsome 5y ago
like the author we're light on details beyond "the culture", "bad at sales". What does this _mean_ exactly?
- ed_balls 5y ago
  slower sales cycles, more risk-averse.
- hogFeast 5y ago
  It is everything. Customers too risk-averse, class boundaries still endemic (it is amazing the US tech companies went into this, Google/Facebook/etc. seem to have hired the Notting Hill set as soon as they came to London), companies too conservative about investing margin in sales, very relationship-driven sales culture (as opposed to product-driven) that is closed to "outsiders", reluctance to cold-call, etc. It is cultural because it can be anything else, do people from the UK have a different biology? No. I think if you look at politics in the UK, it is self-evident that the culture of the UK is not exactly entrepreneurial...unless you believe that a group of probably 30-50 people who went to the same school, went to the same university and largely studied the same course should rule the country...it is very weird.

eganist 5y ago

In fairness, Cloudflare's public perception as a disruptor already did Cloudflare's marketing for it in 2017 onward when y'all opened your London office; Eigen doesn't seem to have that advantage. I can imagine the sales landscape being a bit better with those tailwinds.

jgrahamc 5y ago
The 2017 date you mention is not correct. I was Cloudflare's first employee in London in 2011. Cloudflare went all in on London shortly thereafter and at one point 50% of Cloudflare engineering was in London and 50% in San Francisco. We had sales very early on in London covering EMEA. At the current time the London office is "full stack": engineering, operations, support, sales, legal, HR, finance, ...
- eganist 5y ago
  Thanks; I googled it and the press was heaviest in April 2017 for a new London office, so this is a helpful correction for me. Though deeper inspection found 2013 (https://www.facebook.com/Cloudflare/posts/10151742549255432 https://www.facebook.com/Cloudflare/posts/10151742549255432), so I probably should've just googled harder. It also changes the equation substantially since the rest of my assumptions were based on 2017, though I wonder how much the environment also changed between 2011 and 2021, brexit aside?
  - jgrahamc 5y ago
    Cloudflare's London office remains large and important. We've built up Lisbon as an alternative location in part to give folks a choice between London and a continental European city and in part because we are hiring so fast it's good to hire in multiple places.
    - exdsq 5y ago
      Why not just open to remote hiring across Europe then, rather than be location-dependent?

secondcoming 5y ago

> prioritised technological purity over commercial success; it was almost fatal for us. A leadership failure, exactly. I thought I understood how business worked until I joined a startup. It was eye-opening hearing how Sales people did their jobs and the pressures they were under. Personally, I'd fail at being a Salesperson, it's a special talent. If a business allows its tech team to dictate a "better late than never" attitude then it's quite likely doomed.

Terry_Roll 5y ago

I was going to cite the same section, but what the author fails to notice or mention is a massive amount of inflation circles the planet right now that has not been seen since the 70's, which is perhaps before his time, but he may have noticed being based in London the BBC's Faisal Islam has already dropped it into a report that the Bank of England is seeing 5% interest rates in 2022 with inflation remaining on its current trajectory! When money becomes tight due to things like inflation, selling becomes harder because people want quality because it adds value and this "London-based employees who prioritised technological purity over commercial success" is to put it another way, quality, which will hurt the competition. When money is cheap due to low interest rates, people throw it around like confetti, when money becomes expensive, we will see who is not wearing a swimming costume when the tide goes out. Helicopter Ben is at it again. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-59358070 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-59358070

0x4d464d48 5y ago
"Helicopter Ben" I think you mean Papa Jerome "Money Printer goes BRRRRR..." Powell. At least Bernake had a cap on the balance sheet...

hogFeast 5y ago

The commercial culture in the UK is, generally, nothing like the US. You have companies with great products that refuse on principle to hire lots of salespeople. I actually can't think of a SaaS company that is as aggressive in investing in sales and marketing as you see on average in the US. And this is rational because the return on investment is usually very poor (fintech in the UK is probably the best example, supposed to be the "best of the best"...pretty much unanimously weak results/growth from companies that are largely British). Autonomy/Darktrace is a possible exception (they have a lot of US people tbf) but given what happened to Autonomy...the jury is still out. And CS courses in the UK have a very academic bent. This is a rather complex cultural point but, ultimately, it comes down to the teaching. What kind of things are prioritized, what kinds of things have value, and teachers in the UK value complexity for it's own sake (to give you an example, I studied somewhere that was doing AI research back in the 60s, was offered huge grants from military and corporates...all turned down, research stagnated, grad students all leave...the uni is feverishly trying to connect professors with funding now, all totally non-commercial nonsense...once this starts it is very hard to reverse). Also, using the example of a US-based company opening an office in the UK isn't very helpful. The UK has lots of US investment banks doing very well in the UK but only one home-grown investment bank (and that one has been taken over by people from the US, and isn't doing very well). There is a reason why this is the case. Companies that are based overseas in the UK tend to be different in fundamental ways from ones that aren't. In tech, the big problem is that the UK is largely used as an outsourcing hub (particularly in development) because there is no real commercial expertise (this isn't obvious to people in the London tech bubble, most of the tech industry in the UK still exists that bubble). The rest of the article is total nonsense but Britain has had these problems for decades. You see it in every industry, every part of the UK. Attitudes are slowly shifting but it is a very deeply embedded cultural thing (you actually see this in some British colonies, that is how deep it is).

selimthegrim 5y ago
>I studied somewhere that was doing AI research back in the 60s Edinburgh?
- hogFeast 5y ago

seanbarry 5y ago

I recently had a massive American devops company's sales team on my case trying to sell me their product. It was obnoxious and put me off dealing with them entirely. When I insisted I was the wrong person they wanted me to hook them up with my CTO and tried to bribe me with Amazon vouchers. I'll take the British way over that any day of the week.

vr46 5y ago
Yeah, the whole blog post came across as anecdata-driven decision-making and "I want to be in NYC because London has driven me away" rather than the "we have determined that this company's HQ requires things only available in X". That thing being money, apparently. The circumstances he outlines are too general to be reasonable, and it makes for a bullish article but not a robust argument. Good luck to him and the company, but this smacks of running away from a problem only to discover that your baggage came with you.