Like simple example, and leaving the rest of the article aside, notice which companies the UK goes cap in hand to ask for help whenever they have a tech problem they want solved, and notice that **none of those are UK companies** www.ft.com/content/438f... - ThreadSky

pwnallthethings.bsky.social • 23 days ago

Like simple example, and leaving the rest of the article aside, notice which companies the UK goes cap in hand to ask for help whenever they have a tech problem they want solved, and notice that **none of those are UK companies** https://www.ft.com/content/438f421c-ca4e-4201-b450-33bbd2e0c5aa?shareType=nongift

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seanrobbins.bsky.social•23 days ago

I take your point, those 3 in particular are recognisably the 'Big 3' cloud providers (Azure, AWS and GCP), it would not be unique to the British to be dependent on them. They are all American, which is wider issue with the cloud itself.

A British owned large cloud provider would be ambitious.

pwnallthethings.bsky.social•23 days ago

It's not just cloud tho. There's not many large UK-owned tech firms of any variety, and the ones that do exist are often subsidiaries of foreign-owned groups

pwnallthethings.bsky.social•23 days ago

And notice also that the great programmers who go and work for those companies might stay in the UK, but also if they are mobile and their careers are going very well, that dynamic drives them to move to the US

zoesomelastname.bsky.social•23 days ago

And for the many Europeans who would never move to the US and want a European social model, the UK is pretty close to the bottom of the list there too

pwnallthethings.bsky.social•23 days ago

The EU has some real problems of its own supporting a domestic tech sector, but they're for the most part not /worse/ at it than the UK

zoesomelastname.bsky.social•23 days ago

Ah sure, I meant in terms of quality of life stuff like public services

pwnallthethings.bsky.social•23 days ago

The UK might want to believe it is the tech center of Europe, but the boring fact is that most very senior tech folks are not looking to relocate to the UK for its amazing tech opportunities. They may want to move there for other reasons, and that's fine. But it's not a major tech attractor.

evilbrasil.bsky.social•22 days ago

Some of those other reasons are a rich cultural life, an industry where we are actually competing at a global level, one of the biggest we have, but luckily the government has plans to sacrifice that to US tech giants too.

pwnallthethings.bsky.social•23 days ago

And I don't mean this in a "boo UK" sense; these are choices by the UK government. They could make other ones.

zoesomelastname.bsky.social•23 days ago

I very much mean it in a boo UK sense 😅

progpk.bsky.social•22 days ago

There was a time, 20 years ago, when I wanted a science/tech job in the UK as I was ready to leave the US. 3 years ago, I retired early to Spain instead, and I have been glad that I didn't get to the UK.

maaikeverbruggen.bsky.social•23 days ago

People want to move to the UK (within Europe) cause they speak English there and it helps with integration and their partner finding a job. And guess what the UK government has made extraordinarily difficult? Their partners finding jobs

maaikeverbruggen.bsky.social•23 days ago

The only people i know who moved for IT jobs to the UK got jobs at UK branches of US companies

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