Jimmy Wales: London Is Better For Tech Than "Dreadful" Silicon Valley 410
Mickeycaskill writes: Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has praised London as a tech hub, saying its cultural assets make it an ideal place to do business and superior to Silicon Valley as a place to live. “I meet people around London and they ask ‘when do you go back to San Francisco?’ assuming I’m here for a few days, but I live in London,” he said at the launch of Tech.London. “There’s always this bit of British self-deprecation about ‘oh well, things are so great in Silicon Valley’. But I can tell you, things aren’t that great in Silicon Valley. London has all these incredible advantages of a tech scene, but it’s also a place people want to live. Nobody wants to live in Silicon Valley – it’s dreadful out there. London is this incredible cultural city, it’s at the crossroads of the world. In the US you have San Francisco for tech, Los Angeles for movies and Washington for politics. In London you have all these things. It’s a great place to do business.”
Depends on your perspective and tastes (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Depends on your perspective and tastes (Score:5, Funny)
If you like "high culture", have money, and don't mind crowds then London is great. If you prefer other things not so much.
Oh come now. London has many more things to offer, such as pigeons.
Er, and dickheads www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmWN9VYZXfY .
Re:Depends on your perspective and tastes (Score:4, Informative)
don't forget CCTV. mustn't forget the omnipresent CCTV (roads, streets and buildings). also, you aren't allowed to withhold your passwords from police, there's even less police/secret services transparency than in the US of A; your kids will probably be taken away if you discipline them in public or if you go to a doctor with any kind of genital problem (UK children are not allowed to have genital problems).
oh and the sweaty armpits on tube (mmmm yummy), yobs who'll knife you if you complain about their loud music at night (wo'd ya say to mee?) and among the highest rent and property prices in the world. however, it's a good place to live if you're a member of any oppressed minority (race, sexuality, religion) as with so many minorities present nobody gives a shit about that anymore.
and if you happen to speak the most common language of london - polish, your life will be much cheaper (plumbers, carpenters, builders, car servicing, etc). the first thing you should do when you move to london is get a polish friend. i kid you not, they're 100x more useful than your local "citizen's advice bureau".
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Why is the parent modded Flamebait? Is there something inaccurate about his post?
Re:Depends on your perspective and tastes (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is the parent modded Flamebait? Is there something inaccurate about his post?
It's flamebait because it's xenophobic drivel, or do you really believe Polish is the most common language in London?
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If you want to order in restaurants, a working knowledge of Turkish is helpful. Polish is for tradesmen, such as the cable guy.
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It may not be the most common language, but it is probably one of the more useful second languages to know.
Much like Spanish is in just about anywhere urban in the US.
I've been to London exactly once, and I was probably served by more people with Eastern European (likely Polish) names than I was by people with actual English names. It was... odd... but not really surprising when I stopped to thing about it for a second. Just like in the US, it's the immigrants who are doing the service jobs.
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Having only spent a few days in London years ago, I don't know. Having grown up near Hamtramck, MI, which had the 2nd largest Polish population outside of Warsaw for any city back then, I was exposed to a lot of that, so maybe it was a dumb question.
Re:Depends on your perspective and tastes (Score:4, Informative)
The majority of CCTV is privately-owned and governed by the Data Protection Act of 1998. Disciplining your children by hitting them is illegal, as it's the last act of desperate, shitty parents. Kids can of course have genital problems - you are just making that up, obviously. It is a good place to live if you are a minority, as it's a very progressive place that doesn't give a shit about such petty bullshit. The Metropolitan Police and armed forces marching in the gay pride parade (in uniform, and officially sanctioned) is a good example of that.
The most common language of London is English (according to the 2011 census 77.9% speak it as their first language), but I guess that doesn't fit in to your "Polish invasion" narrative. Only ~1.9% of Londoners speak Polish as their first language, and many of those speak English.
But it seems you're not really interested in painting a more accurate picture of London...
Re:Depends on your perspective and tastes (Score:4)
it's a rhetorical device called hyperbole/amplification.
regarding the official child snatching, only Norway is known for having a more trigger happy social services. (no hyperbole here)
Re:Depends on your perspective and tastes (Score:4, Insightful)
The majority of CCTV is privately-owned and governed by the Data Protection Act of 1998.
Oh thank God, now people can sleep securely, now that we know our precious data are in the hands of the private market.
Re:Depends on your perspective and tastes (Score:4, Interesting)
Come on guys, everyone knows the CCTVs are really there for CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN
Re:Depends on your perspective and tastes (Score:4, Insightful)
Disciplining your children by hitting them is illegal, as it's the last act of desperate, shitty parents.
I grew up with people who got to occasional well deserves swat on the butt, they are all pretty well adjusted. I see a lot more kids now who are psychologically screwed up because their parents are verbally abusive because they don't do any sort of corporal punishment. As with anything, excess is bad. And you can really screw up someone without ever laying a finger on them.
Re:Depends on your perspective and tastes (Score:4, Interesting)
Yup. If you are already very rich then London can be nice, but for everyone else it's just expensive and dirty. Property prices in particular are insane. Its' grimy, overcrowded and generally not a very nice place to live.
Not that Silicon Valley is necessarily much better, but if you are not obsessed with living in a "tech hub" then there are plenty of much nicer places to be.
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overcrowded? not too much. ever been to hong kong or bangkok?
of course, it's expensive.
but that's not too much of a problem for jimmy wales and his highly profitable business.
what was his high tech business again?. oh yeah... dang.. I thought he just last fall again marketed it as a charity that absolutely must have donations or it'll run out of money in 15 years......
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overcrowded? not too much. ever been to hong kong or bangkok?
Yeah. But it's the difference between ridiculously overcrowded and batshit friggin' insanely overcrowded.
Re:Depends on your perspective and tastes (Score:5, Insightful)
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Because they all still suck compared to face to face communication.
Re:Depends on your perspective and tastes (Score:5, Funny)
If you are already very rich then London can be nice
Incidentally, the Wikipedia donation campaign is currently underway.
Re:Depends on your perspective and tastes (Score:5, Interesting)
Someone I once worked with put it best regarding living in London, there are two groups of people, there are those who have lived there for a short time, i.e. only a year or two who think it's the best thing ever because they've not yet exhausted all the attractions, and then there are the people who lived there all their lives, and know that once the attractions are done, and you've eaten at all the cool places to eat, it's an incredibly shit city to live in. I suppose you're right, you can add the ultra-rich as a third category who will love it because they have the money to paper over it's problems (i.e. they can get their kids out of there and send them to private school, they have chauffeurs so don't have to deal with overcrowded transport, and they can have a country home to get some actual fresh air on weekends).
It's anyone's guess why Cameron chose London as the UK's tech hub, when London inherently writes off a good portion of the UK's population as willing candidates either because they can't afford to live there, or simply don't want to live in a shit hole. Cambridge was always the obvious choice, but there are other lesser considered yet far better choices too that have rapidly growing tech scenes that have developed naturally without need for government intervention to try and force it as London's "silicon roundabout" has (e.g. Bristol, Sheffield, Edinburgh).
Other capital cities like Ottawa and Wellington might not have as much upfront to do as London, but at least they're places you'd actually want to live if you had a choice and are the sorts of places you'd actually want to bring up children.
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Someone I once worked with put it best regarding living in London, there are two groups of people, there are those who have lived there for a short time, i.e. only a year or two who think it's the best thing ever because they've not yet exhausted all the attractions, and then there are the people who lived there all their lives, and know that once the attractions are done, and you've eaten at all the cool places to eat, it's an incredibly shit city to live in.
I moved from London to somewhere where I can walk to unspoiled moor land from my house and live in a 4-bedroom house at the same cost as a studio apartment in London and have no desire to move back. When I have to travel there for work (maybe a week each year) a single trip on the underground reminds me why I moved out.
That said there are some people who live in London and love it. I know people who can't imagine living somewhere where the nearest cinema is a half-hour's drive away and the nearest decent
Re:Depends on your perspective and tastes (Score:5, Funny)
I moved from London to somewhere where I can walk to unspoiled moor land from my house.
So you are saying London is nice and all, but you were really expecting moor?
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Is London where you developed or discovered your xenophobic streak, or did that happen after you moved to the countryside?
What's this based upon?
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I've visited London for 2 weeks, and while it was good to see it, my overall impression was that I wouldn't want to live there.
Of course I realize that 2 weeks isn't nearly enough time to really get to know a city, but normally when visiting one of Europe's mayor cities on a two week vacation, I love it. And for some reason London didn't raise that feeling in me.
Naturally London has its amazing landmarks, but overall the city just didn't make me feel comfortable. The parks are not great, the city somehow fe
Re:Depends on your perspective and tastes (Score:4, Interesting)
I've visited London for 2 weeks, and while it was good to see it, my overall impression was that I wouldn't want to live there.
For example - I love New York City. I find it incredibly invigorating and inspiring. Awesome food, a great change of pace from my normal environment, and I like most of the people.
The maximum time I have been able to actually stay in the city is a week. But 6 months later I'm jonesin' for it again. The old "Love to visit, but don't want to live there" is hackneyed but true.
Re:Depends on your perspective and tastes (Score:4, Interesting)
I see your point... I'm actually left on the political side of things. But I'm not a huge fan of political correctness. And fact is, that there is alot of African immigration in Paris, the overwhelming majority of them are very poor, and it has a noticeable impact on the city.
I was quite shocked when I returned to Paris after a long time, and saw people lying on matresses on the streets, some living in tents, people constantly trying to sell me drugs in parks, shabby characters approaching you asking for money or cigarettes... 90% of these people are immigrants, they bring alot of poverty and it doesn't make the city any nicer.
That's just the way it is. It doesn't mean I hate immigrants, or that I'm a racist. It does mean that immigration is a problem that is being neglected in Europe and needs some serious attention.
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The problem in both London and Paris is the unvetted, uncontrollable stream of refugees pouring in from across the Mediterranean. These cities have no-go neighborhoods now, just like large American cities.
Europeans used to think of uncontrolled refugee influx as a Pig AmeriKKKa problem that would never happen to them, but we're all Arizonans now. Watch for France to elect a Joe Arpaio of its own.
Re:Depends on your perspective and tastes (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it almost never makes much sense, in any topic, to talk purely about the -is- state without taking the changes and developments into consideration that caused this state to be. Paris has changed considerably in the last 20 years. One of the most evident change is the increase in porverty, and this is caused in no small part by immigration.
Why should I not mention immegration as a cause of this development? And what is illogical about saying this?
In fact it is quite meaningful to make this connection, because it provides the information that the majority of French people are still quite well of and that the poverty mainly affects a fringe group of people due to their special circumstances. It tells us that the problem is not mainly the French economy, but the unusually high influx of unqualified laborers who can not find any jobs.
Re:Depends on your perspective and tastes (Score:5, Informative)
Londoner here. I grew up in Zone 4, left for ages and I'm now loving in Zone 2/3 border. It's neither the greatest thing ever nor the worst place ever. I'd rather live someqhere quieter and smaller and closer to the outdoors, such as Sheffield (never lived there but I'd love to).
Cambridge is prefereable too (I lived there on and off for a number of years),unless you hate cycling into the wind in every direction you go in. Los Alamos, or Santa Fe is probably where I'd live given the chance though.
Either way, London isn't "incerdibly shit" unless you stick to the central bits norf ovva river. If you want "incredibly shit", try Swindon.
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Los Alamos, or Santa Fe is probably where I'd live given the chance though.
I would recommend you give Albuquerque a chance (that's where I live). If you want less crowded, you can live in the east mountains (Tijeras, etc.) I live on the east side of the city, and I am 2 blocks from the foothill trails, and a 5-minute drive from the tram that will take you to the top of the mountain.
The cost of living is far, far cheaper than living in Santa Fe; and the coffee shops don't close at 7:00pm like they do in
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If you like "high culture", have money, and don't mind crowds then London is great. If you prefer other things not so much.
You don't live in the London I live in.
Though I'll grant you the crowds.
Re:Depends on your perspective and tastes (Score:5, Interesting)
Speaking as someone who moved to Silicon Valley from London...
Oh god, no, no one wants to be in London.
1) People in the bay area think it's expensive - no, London is expensive. Rents there can be up to 4 times rents in SF. The average is double SF.
2) Pay is lower in London, despite the place being more expensive.
3) The weather is fucking terrible.
4) The people are rude, and unfriendly. Sure, it's not as bad as Paris, but it's much worse than the bay area.
5) It's impossible to get out of the city without travelling for multiple hours (while in the bay area it's typically 10-20 minutes to some open space).
Frankly, I'm very glad that the tech industry is all in the bay area, not in London.
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No, not really. You either like a city like New York or you don't. Most people don't. That why they avoid such megacities.
The whole lot of them are like that (SFO,LA,London,NYC,DC). They are nice to visit but you probably wouldn't want to actually live there.
Glamour cities just get a lot of attention because of media concentration.
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Re:Want tech? Go Africa, Latin America and Asia (Score:5, Interesting)
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london is the criminal financial capital of the world.
Kind of redundant, don't you think? ;-)
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Not really. Some criminals are actually nice people sometimes.
Re:Want tech? Go Africa, Latin America and Asia (Score:5, Insightful)
"I have investments in various countries from India to Kenya to Colombia, amongst other countries"
Well good luck with that, most people don't do that because of the massively high risk of losing it due to corruption. In Western markets you have a relatively high assurance that you can invest based on your understanding of the market and have your return fit your talent on predicting that.
You don't have that in the countries you list, in Kenya and India your investment is one corrupt government official away from being wiped out.
This is why dealing with corruption is such a big focus by politicians, and India is a prime example of this. 15 years ago we were told India would be a top 3 world economy alongside China and the USA. Instead it's still stuck at 10 despite having over 21x the population and drastically higher land mass and natural resources than the half way further up the ladder France. India is 142nd out of 189 in the ease of doing business index for this reason, and Kenya is 136.
Colombia does much better for sure at 34 however so is indeed a sensible investment - and probably will continue to grow as such now that things finally seem to be calming down in a possible more permanent way with FARC.
So whilst it looks good whilst things are going fine, like DRM corruption in countries like India and Kenya is one of those things that looks harmless until it fucks you, and then that's the end of your investment. They may pay off, but they're incredibly high risk.
Re:Depends on your perspective and tastes (Score:4, Informative)
London isn't cheaper than the Valley at all. Average house prices in central London are £5000 a square foot. Slightly further out they're around £1500 a square foot.
Compare that to the valley, where in the south bay they're around $1500 a square foot in central SF, and $1000 a square foot in the south bay. (note, different currencies, so the delta is bigger than it looks). London is both more expensive than the bay area, and they'll pay you less.
As far as urban sprawl goes... the Bay Area is far less sprawled than London. Even if you are in the centre of the largest spread of sprawl in the bay area (probably somewhere slightly west of the centre of San Jose), you're at most 20 minutes from open country side (by car). In London, in the centre, you're roughly 2 hours away, such is the size of the sprawl.
Even if you measure sprawl by the time it takes to commute, and assume a worst case in the bay area (living in Oakland, working at Apple is probably about the worst) - that's a 1 hour commute. That's a pretty short commute by London standards. More so, the commute in the bay area will have been done entirely on nice (not crowded) coaches, rather than over-crowded, not-air-conditioned trains and underground services.
Are there really people who love the urban sprawl that covers the entirety of Greater London?
Cue the flame war (Score:5, Insightful)
As everyone starts to insult where everybody else lives.
Re:Cue the flame war (Score:5, Funny)
As everyone starts to insult where everybody else lives.
You could at least tell us where, so we can insult your place intelligently.
Pfft. (Score:3, Insightful)
The silicon roundabout is mostly wishful thinking by artsy fartsy posers and politicos. The real tech innovation that does happen in the UK, happens despite [theregister.co.uk] all the good intentions, not because of it.
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Sounds about par for the course. It got so depressing that I stopped reading.
Despite all the effort, Old Street is a tech hub, and I work near by. There's a massive amount of fuss about it but none of the government schemes have any bearing on the tech startups working here in any practical sense. The main thing is that there's a dearth of reasonably priced co-working space in London that doesn't suck massive donkey balls (e.g. closing at 8pm!) and round Old St there are a few places which offer it. So of c
London's fantastic... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:London's fantastic... (Score:5, Informative)
Not quite...
A lot of the negative preconceptions around London are based on tales from people who are determined to cling to the city centre. I used to be one of them; living in a tiny, poxy flat in Zone 2 and paying through the nose for it.
I then took stock, realised that I was spending so much on being close to the centre and was so stressed out by the downsides (noise, antisocial behaviour, general crowding) that I wasn't actually enjoying the supposed benefits. So I bought a place - at a fairly reasonable price - in Zone 5 (and south of the river to boot). From stations within a few minutes walk of where I live, I can be at Victoria station in less than 20 minutes and London Bridge in less than 25. I also get a pleasant, leafy environment, a rock-bottom local crime rate and decent - albeit very mainstream - local shops and amenities. And I'm not exactly mega-rich... "reasonable middle-income" is probably the best description.
If you want to do the full on hipster thing of living in the middle of town so that you can cycle to work and walk to your local pop-up organic smoothie yurt before going window-shopping for hemp underwear, then unless you are rich, you will have no money, will live in squalor and your impressions of London will sour pretty fast.
If you want good access to the city's big employment centres and cultural highlights, then just conquer your snobbery about the outer Zones (a point-to-point ticket from Zone 5 doesn't cost much more than a Zone 1-2 travelcard) and going properly south of the river.
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I don't get why people want to live in cities - I really just don't understand it. For example:
By comparison, from my land in 25 minutes I drive past my neighbor's waterfall on the other side of my canyon, past the fjord, down between the mountains and the ocean and into town. You share a ride with little personal space with strangers in an underground tunnel.
I just
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By comparison, from my land in 25 minutes I drive past my neighbor's waterfall on the other side of my canyon, past the fjord, down between the mountains and the ocean and into town. You share a ride with little personal space with strangers in an underground tunnel.
Some of those strangers are interesting people. You can talk to a dozen different people, each with a unique perspective on the world, some of them quite insightful or funny, during lunch. And a completely different dozen on the way home from work.
I can understand why you'd enjoy some beautiful scenery and being 25 minutes from the next living soul, but it seems to me a little like the difference between reading "The Road to Character" and reading Slashdot.
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Re:London's fantastic... (Score:5, Informative)
Technically a fjord is a glacier-cut U-shaped valley with the bottom submerged. There are some in Scotland but none that I'm aware of in England.
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It would be helpful if you could state what town you live in and roughly what size/price your home is. Otherwise it's hard to tell how reasonable your claim that Zone 5 is affordable is, because Zone 5 is pretty large and some parts of it are cheap but shitty and other parts are expensive but as you describe (on the tube lines, low crime rate, leafy).
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From stations within a few minutes walk of where I live, I can be at Victoria station in less than 20 minutes and London Bridge in less than 25
When I lived in San Francisco I could drive to work including parking within fifteen minutes, and I worked half the city away. You're proud that you can walk to someplace where you can get more transit in longer than it took me to drive to work? Suddenly San Francisco looks a lot better to me.
Most of what's wrong with all of these cities would be solved with a good PRT system. Cars and cities don't mix. SF is worse for cars now than it was then. It might take me 25 minutes, now.
Seriously, 20 minutes' walk f
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I then took stock, realised that I was spending so much on being close to the centre and was so stressed out by the downsides (noise, antisocial behaviour, general crowding) that I wasn't actually enjoying the supposed benefits.
This reminds me of NYC. For lots of people, "living in New York" means living in Manhattan. But you do that for a few years, you get over it, and an awful lot of people realize that the other boroughs can be far more pleasant. After a while, Manhattan starts to look like a tourist trap filled with douchebags.
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That's another reasonable option and I have friends who do it. Hell, I spent 18 months commuting from Cambridge (close to 15 years ago now) and it wasn't too bad. Wouldn't be possible these days, though - Cambridge living costs are almost as nuts as central London now.
The only thing you have to watch for with the longer distance commuting is that you really can find yourself at the mercy of rail fair increases; some of the season ticket prices can get very steep indeed once you go beyond the London boundary
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Re:London's fantastic... (Score:4, Informative)
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Since when is London not an oppressive dystopian nightmare [flickr.com]?
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It's for understanding how much you'll pay for public transport, nothing more nothing less.
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Sorry - I should have explained this more than I did. The Zones are technically a part of the public transport charging system (for underground, buses and some rail services) and are arranged in a series of concentric circles. Most of the bits of London that tourists see are in Zone 1. As you get further out, you get more residential areas, as well as (in the outer zones), formerly free-standing towns like Bromley and Croydon which the London sprawl has swallowed over the years.
But while technically a means
Re:London's fantastic... (Score:5, Insightful)
London's fantastic if you're rich
Everywhere is fantastic if you're rich.
Silicon Valley is about the only place... (Score:5, Insightful)
Silicon Valley is about the only place you can have your startup fail, walk down the street a few blocks, and have a nice safe job to tide you over until you decide you need to do another startup (if you do). In other words, there's a job safety net that is not there elsewhere (the article as much as admits this, for London).
The other issue with any place other than Silicon Valley: Silicon Valley is where most of the VC's are located, and it's where most of the VC's prefer their companies be located, so that they have the option of an acquisition as an exit strategy for the companies they fund. Other locations, not so much.
Jimmy Wales has a pretty safe gig, which allows him to live anywhere he wants, without having to get more funding, and without having to worry about money too much at all, or about having to get another gig. So he can live anywhere he wants to live, and it's kinda OK.
I'm personally OK with London as a very nice place to live, if you've got a steady income, and so on. It's an amazing place. But I think you would have a difficult time getting Series A funding there, compared to a 15 minute drive to Sand Hill Road. To get some sense of the absolute importance of this:
http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/ar... [bloomberg.com]
Re:Silicon Valley is about the only place... (Score:4, Insightful)
Silicon valley certainly has a (well earned) reputation for high costs of living and/or painfully long commutes; but it has those in very large part because it has the features that are directly attractive and useful for tech workers and startups.
London is both more expensive and more expensive in large part because of demand from non-tech industries and people for various virtues important to them; but not terribly helpful for tech. If you think getting gentrified by Google's code monkeys is a problem, you'll love competing for real estate with City traders.
If you are willing to skip the specific advantages of Silicon Valley, there are plenty of options that aren't hideous cultural wastelands or still-smouldering post-apocalyptic sacrifice zones; but are also comparatively cheap, have great location and a lot of open space, or whatever your taste may run toward.
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This. The UK is not a good place for start-ups, investors are far too conservative. There is a show called Dragon's Den on UK TV - I think they have versions in other countries as it was originally a Japanese show - where people pitch their start-ups to investors. Many of them would have a few million thrown their way in the US easily, but most of them in the UK go away empty handed. The investors want to see profits up front before handing any money over, not like in Silicon Valley where you can be bleedin
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I think we Brits are culturally different from the Americans, which is (in part) why this is the way things are here. I'd say, as a general rule, most Brits don't want to be the next Donald Trump, Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates or whatever. They'd be happy to just carve out a nice living from a job they enjoy. As such, the 'killer instinct' that so many of the 'big' American business leaders demonstrate (or write books about) isn't something we have much of. As a result, if you haven't generated an
great place for the right people (Score:3, Insightful)
If you're rich and famous, London is a great place, with per square foot prices about four times what they are in SF. You get to hobnob with all the wealthy and influential people, and get really close to people with tons of money to throw around. Of course, you have to like the lousy weather in London. And you have to not give a shit that your wonderful, privileged London lifestyle is subsidized by hardworking Brits who will never get to enjoy it. I'm sure Jimmy Wales meets all those criteria.
Re:great place for the right people (Score:5, Funny)
I'm not sure that the people he's meeting are as happy with him as he thinks.
Sounds to me like a polite way of saying "It's it about time that you get the F* out of our country?"
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In London? Polite? Nah..... they would've meant something else.
I'll have what he's smoking (Score:2)
Ummm.... no. (Score:2)
Sorry Jimmy, I just got back from London a few days ago, back to Sili Valley where I have lived for almost 30 years. Living in London would make me hate life after about 6 months. Heck, after 3 days I was more convinced than ever that the American war for independence was a very smart move. I'll take Sili Valley over London any day.
Missed the point (Score:2)
Oh the tales you'll tell... (Score:2)
You can't not have culture, and honestly I would much rather live in Silicon Valley than in London. London is just as expensive as SV, and I guess if you're easily impressed by stuff just because it's man made and old, then that counts as 'culture'? London has two symphonies, which I guess is pretty nice, but also SF has one too and one is plenty.
What I really think is that Jimmy is just talking shit and probably couldn't really explain what he means when he says 'culture', beyond the usual american garbage
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I've spent a good deal of time in London and live right down the road from San Francisco. Don't get me wrong, San Francisco is a great city and I love spending time in it but you clearly don't know what you're talking about. London is a major economic and cultural hub, the capitol of what was a globe spanning empire dwarfing anything that has followed it in influence and significance, a current major fincial hub, the current capital of one of the most influencal and wealthy countries in Europe, home to immi
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There isn't a large theater scene in Silicon Valley. And it's geographically huge, with very little public transit, so getting places from the place you can afford to live is impossible unless you also have a car. It's not a major convention center, either. So in cultural terms it is comparable to Akron with hippies and gay culture. The Valley's also got less interesting politics (question time in a Westminster-System country is roughly 500 bajillion times more interesting then anything you can see in a US
It's not just a matter of taste, there's rent too (Score:3)
My view on this, not being involved in the VC/startup/look_at_me_I'm_an_entrepreneur scene, is that there is a lot of political will to turn some of London into a technological hub, hoping that the money and innovation from Silicon Valley can be reproduced here. The trouble is... London is not cheap as SV used to be when it turned itself into an attractive place for techy companies to set up shop.
A garage in London is not a place to build the new consumer electronics giant, it is a place that is rented for hundreds or even thousands of pounds per month.
I think it's all great that people want more development and growth from high tech, but the "Silicon Roundabout" is not a place where universities, ambitious people with ideas and office space are all in an ideal state suited for new industry to bloom. The Silicon Roundabout is just north of the City of London, the place where there's only mature, cash rich companies and the Bank of England. It's more of a brand that costs a lot of money to join rather than being an organic growth phenomenon.
I'd much rather see the new tech hubs turning up away from London, so that all the techy smart people are not wasting their initial funding on paying extortionate rents and are actually doing what current day teach allows you to do: work from wherever suits you. As a nice side effect, new train routes could get more passengers and overcrowded London routes could get some relief.
Re:It's not just a matter of taste, there's rent t (Score:5, Informative)
Note to Americans:
The "City of London" is about a square mile. It's the most downtowney square mile anywhere, and is home to London's finance industry. What you think about when you think about London is called the "Greater London Authority." So this guy is talking about a British government initiative to create a Silicon Valley type space near the most expensive Real Estate on the continent.
There're actually places in the Greater London Area where rent is reasonable. They're not near the Square Mile.
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It's cheaper than the City, but still not the place to build machines or to have a growing team. I'd say companies need to go to the outside of Cambridge, Oxford, Northampton, Milton Keynes, any place more than 100Km from London to get a warehouse + office space that can be considered affordable. The talent pool will be different but you might get enough people who already moved away from the big city.
Never again.... Standard of living not great.... (Score:2)
You arrive and you do all the tourist stuff in the first few weeks (musicals, theatre, dining out).... but after that it just is not worth it.... prices are high, living standards low (small cramped expensive apartments, going out expensive, etc.). I lived there for 1 year and 1 day. I harped that it was not a place that I wanted to live forever... and my PM a proud brit took exception to it to a certain extent. Only when
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Your PM?
Which of Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, and John Major has moved to Australia?
Berlin (Score:2)
Shameless plug for Germany.
Though I do not have personal experience working/living in UK, over the years met lots of people who were simply orgasmic after the move from UK to Germany. Especially the London with its outrageous rent prices.
Munich is good place too. And if you are in the financial software, Frankfurt am Main is the place to go.
Much better living standards than the UK in general and London in particular.
The language in large cities in general is not a problem too. Some companies (esp in
London born & bred (Score:5, Interesting)
Every international city has it's own characteristics but ultimately they all share 2 common things, a unique cultural 'vibe' / identity (the style of the buildings, the food you can eat there etc) and 1 other thing: tourism.
London is unique in the fact that it has everything from every place you could ever imagine. London evolved as a series of smaller villages ("hamlets") that all had their own unique characteristics that slowly grew to merge together. Combine that with the British empire and the way the country was in essence founded over many centuries of immigration and pooling of resources from every corner of the world and you have one big melting pot of culture where you can pretty much see, do, buy, eat anything you want to.
They say if you're bored of London you're bored of life, in 30 years I haven't seen everything and I was born here, so how anyone could ever see everything in a week, 2 weeks, month, year I have no idea, you can't call it shit, you're just in the wrong part of London.
I've lived North, South, East and West and I live in Chiswick [wikipedia.org] as of the past 2 years, down the road from where I was born, I wouldn't want to live anywhere else now. There are parts of London I hated living in (especially East London), but each area is so drastically different from another there's always somewhere that will suit someones personality.
The same applies to every other city I've visited, Amsterdam for example is an awesome city in the centre, go to west Amsterdam though and it's a completely different place, it's a fucking shit hole. Does that make Amsterdam shit? No, it doesn't.
Contrary to what people think we're a very chatty city and we do talk to people (it's true everyone's always in a hurry though), all too often people rely on tour guides and manufactured tourism maps to direct them to the usual crap instead of telling you to go off the beaten track, the best way to see a city this size is by asking someone who's from here.
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Relatively difficult to get a work visa for the UK (Score:5, Informative)
Relatively difficult to get a work visa for the UK:
http://www.visabureau.com/uk/i... [visabureau.com]
You aren't going to get a Tier 1 unless you are an Olympic athlete, Linus Torvalds, or Craig Venter, etc.. Cap is 1,000/year.
You could *possibly* get a Tier 2, if you already had a job offer from a UK company. Cap is 20,700/year.
Intra-company transfers for an existing employer (e.g. IBM), limited to a year if you are making £40,000/year; call it $63,500 at todays exchange rate; this is generally not hard for someone employed by IBM, actually; I have a friend who went to the UK for IBM on one of those, and got her MBA at Oxford (IBM also paid for that, since it was business related).
If you have money (£200,000 for the business, plus your own living expenses), and can start a viable business, a Tier 1 (Entrepreneur) Visa is an option. It has to employ 2 EEA people, or you get kicked out after 2 years.
If you have *lots* of money (£1million), you can get an investment visa; you are not permitted to work any other job, other than managing your investments. I believe this means you can not do international consultancy or remote management of other assets. This is basically similar to the U.S. EB-5 "millionaires visa", by which you are able to (effectively) buy a U.S. green card if you are rich enough, and willing to pump a $750K or $800K house price up to $1M in the outer Sunset in SF (it's basically the reason real estate prices are so high in SF: 5,100 home sales in the Bay area this way each year, 1/3 go to 1,700 EB-5 visa winners, with the remaining 8,300 EB-5's going to other areas of the U.S. and inflating housing prices there, instead. Hint: it's not gentrification that's doing it.
Tier-3 you can't get (program is suspended); it's for things like swinging a hammer and other labor which is considered unskilled.
Tier-4 is a student visa; you aren't allowed to work more than 10 hours a week in most cases, generally granted for only one year, requires 15 hours/week study, you must agree to go home after, as a condition of the visa. This is probably not what you want.
Tier-5 is a temporary work visa with a sponsor; mostly, this is the artist/entertainer visa, but can also be for charity workers and things like Mormon missionaries. If you want one of these, your best bet is to run away and join the circus. :)
So basically: a heck of a lot less opportunity to go to the U.K. from the U.S. than the other way around.
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As you say, not everyone is the same. I have zero interest in theatre or great restaurants. Skye sounds way more appealing to me. Having to work in London in bad enough, living there would be my worst nightmare,
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- Berlin is a city designed to scale, the transportation infrastructure is 100x better then in London
While I share your opinion that Berlin is a better place to be than London, you must be kidding about this part.
Well, it depends. Theoretically, or on the rare occations when all trams are functional and running as they should, it really -is- good and you can get around to almost everywhere pretty well.
Unfortunately the trams are a mess and practically every time I'm in Berlin trams are breaking down and sections of the line are closed due to technical failures.
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In IT you don't need German. English is more then enough. Even though the average salaries are a bit lower then in London you still get much better overall life quality. A pizza during lunch break costs 4 EUR here, a monthly public transport ticket around 80EUR, a decent flat outside of mitte (60m2) goes for 600-700 EUR.
I mean, yeah you might get by but aren't you missing out on actually living there? If you can't read / speak / interact with people without forcing them into your language? There is more to living in a place than cheap pizza.
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There is also doner kebabs and sausages.
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Only if you are a hipster. Berlin seems to be hipster capital of the world.
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So, can someone list a few of the innovations that have come out of the London area in the last ten or twenty years? It's a serious question...I don't know.