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> In reality, a startup could be based comfortably outside of London where the cost of living and the cost of operating are a lot cheaper No. There are virtua
by allegory 12y ago
> In reality, a startup could be based comfortably outside of London where the cost of living and the cost of operating are a lot cheaper
No. There are virtually no skilled people outside perhaps London, Cambridge and Oxford. I know, as I've had to try and recruit people outside those areas. It's virtually impossible to find anyone who is a) good and b) not self-employed and quite happy about staying that way. Even the M4 corridor is a hopless vacuum of talent these days.
Best place is suburban London or no office if you want to cut costs.
One of the cool things about the M25 area though is there are lots of skilled immigrants from South Africa, the Ukraine and India who are considerably better than us natives (I'm native to the UK).
As for the city, it's not somewhere I'd work again.
- Nursie 12y agoI'm not London based and I don't think the rest of the UK is a wasteland. Evidently neither do some huge tech firms (e.g. IBM Hursley) That said I am a contractor and you'd have to pay six figures to tempt me permanent...
- allegory 12y agoHursley is mostly a contractor pump these days or "Rational Rats" as we call them. Spot on with the 6 figures comment. It's the place to be :)
- lotsofmangos 12y agoThere are virtually no skilled people outside perhaps London, Cambridge and Oxford. That's total horseshit.
- rjsw 12y agoThe comment that you are replying to did qualify the statement by saying that they were looking for employees not self-employed contractors.
- lotsofmangos 12y agoFair enough. The idea that all the people employable outside London, Cambridge or Oxford are all self-employed contractors who are not interested in salary positions is also total horseshit.
- allegory 12y agoIt's not hard finding people; it's hard finding quality people because they've all moved to London for the salary or are self-employed. When I say quality, I mean people who can pick up anything we throw at them and pick the right tech for the job rather than be tied to a tech platform, not Joe average ASP.Net webforms or Kate average Oracle monkey. We need people who pick the tools for the job, not factory pressed programmers. Also have you tried hiring anyone anywhere in the UK that can actually write C? Totally damn impossible even offering £120k.
- justincormack 12y agoThey do exist. The finding people process is very broken. Can guarantee there will be quite a few C programmers at the conference I am organizing http://operatingsystems.io/ http://operatingsystems.io/
- Nursie 12y agoWell if you need a C contractor and my general level of snark hasn't put you off, in this thread or others on HN, feel free to get in touch with david.hicks@starnose.net I'm not saying I'm perfect, but I have been pretty shocked at the standards I've encountered since I left big blue and decided to go it alone a few years back.
- lotsofmangos 12y agoI know a few people who write very good C and they all live outside London. Only one of them makes anything near £120k though.
- walshemj 12y agoBut most of them will commute to London out side of some really niche centres of excellence and non of those would be areas that tech crunch covers eg RBR and the other F1 teams near Mk and say Hybrid air vehicles out at Cardington
- tomelders 12y agoAre you a recruiter?