Slashdot Asks: Does Britain's 'Know Your Place' Culture Stifle Innovation? (yahoo.com) 137
Tom Blomfield, founder of Monzo, challenges the notion that Americans work harder than Europeans, attributing the U.S.'s economic edge to a culture of "positivity, optimism, and ambition" rather than sheer work ethic. He argues that the "know your place, don't get too big for your boots" mindset stifles innovation, whereas the U.S.' "American Dream" fosters a more dynamic start-up culture, making it easier for entrepreneurs to bounce back from failure. Fortune reports: Blomfield said the American dream wasn't a reality that a lot of people in the U.S. get to live, but it was one that a lot of them experience. "That idea that anyone can create anything if they try hard enough is so deeply American, and it's so antithetical to the British culture," he said. Blomfield was 28 when he co-founded Monzo in 2015. While he said people in the U.K. "looked at me like I was crazy" as he tried to get a banking license, he had a much more supportive reaction in the States. The Brit said his fellow countrymen were more inclined toward a "know your place, don't get too big for your boots" attitude that stifles innovation.
In Blomfield's view, this filters down to the career decisions made by the country's most promising university students. In the U.K., Blomfield says the most ambitious thing for students to do is work at a trading firm like James Street or a consultancy like McKinsey. Indeed, he suggests the default choice for PhD students in computer science is to join Goldman Sachs. In the U.S., meanwhile, Blomfield says he'll often get pitched start-up ideas by students from unexpected backgrounds, including English Literature undergrads. [...]
In April, Nicolai Tangen, the CEO of Norway's $1.6 trillion sovereign wealth fund, sparked a debate with his comments that there was a difference in the "general level of ambition" between U.S. and European workers, adding that Americans work harder. Blomfield said he had read data suggesting that the latter wasn't the case. But his thoughts do align with another of Tangen's points, namely that it is easier to start again in the U.S. if a business fails than in the U.K. Backed by the "American dream" ideal that Blomfield mentioned in his interview, the U.S. has long been more closely associated with entrepreneurialism and disruption than Britain, and Europe more widely. Since these comments were made last May (reprinted yesterday via Fortune), we'd like to open this up for a "Slashdot Asks" discussion. Do you think the "know your place" mindset Blomfield cited stifles innovation? How does it compare to the mindset in the United States or elsewhere? Any insights or examples to support your point are appreciated and will contribute to a more meaningful discussion.
In Blomfield's view, this filters down to the career decisions made by the country's most promising university students. In the U.K., Blomfield says the most ambitious thing for students to do is work at a trading firm like James Street or a consultancy like McKinsey. Indeed, he suggests the default choice for PhD students in computer science is to join Goldman Sachs. In the U.S., meanwhile, Blomfield says he'll often get pitched start-up ideas by students from unexpected backgrounds, including English Literature undergrads. [...]
In April, Nicolai Tangen, the CEO of Norway's $1.6 trillion sovereign wealth fund, sparked a debate with his comments that there was a difference in the "general level of ambition" between U.S. and European workers, adding that Americans work harder. Blomfield said he had read data suggesting that the latter wasn't the case. But his thoughts do align with another of Tangen's points, namely that it is easier to start again in the U.S. if a business fails than in the U.K. Backed by the "American dream" ideal that Blomfield mentioned in his interview, the U.S. has long been more closely associated with entrepreneurialism and disruption than Britain, and Europe more widely. Since these comments were made last May (reprinted yesterday via Fortune), we'd like to open this up for a "Slashdot Asks" discussion. Do you think the "know your place" mindset Blomfield cited stifles innovation? How does it compare to the mindset in the United States or elsewhere? Any insights or examples to support your point are appreciated and will contribute to a more meaningful discussion.
I Don't Know, But... (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know if it does or not. But the question did make me pause and think about British technology innovation. The first things that came to mind:
Bletchley Park. Thankfully, those women didn't know their place.
Commodore
Raspberry Pi
It's not a long list and I know it's far from complete. But, still some meaningful contributions from the World's 21st largest population.
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This short list, plus thinking about British innovations in the 19th century, makes me wonder if there's a time factor. Was British society more innovative at some times than at others? If so, what is that correlated with? (Find the correlation, then consider causality. I think 'lack of correlation does imply lack of causality'....)
Re:I Don't Know, But... (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know if it does or not. But the question did make me pause and think about British technology innovation. The first things that came to mind:
Bletchley Park. Thankfully, those women didn't know their place.
Commodore
Raspberry Pi
It's not a long list and I know it's far from complete. But, still some meaningful contributions from the World's 21st largest population.
The whole question is ludicrous. The modern age was born in "know your place" Britain. The Industrial Revolution. Modern Finance. Aviation. Computing. All had world-leading pioneers there. Most of the world's CPU's are now ARM, thanks to mobile phones. Where was ARM created? Ole Blighty. Second, the question assumes that there's no path of upward mobility for Britons. Again, ludicrous to the point of horseshit.
To the extent that Britain is being left behind by the US and China in technology, well, that's not a question of work ethic or innovation. It's a sheer question of size. But Britain still punches way above their weight class in technology, business, and culture.
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Re:I Don't Know, But... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is we have a lot of people who know the price of everything and the value of nothing, and who expect failure. It's hard to pinpoint exactly when the rot set in, but these days it's hard to innovate because we are too risk averse and too busy counting beans.
We are now in a rut that it's hard to break out of. Because we don't have a culture of innovation and of engineering, it's become harder to do projects successfully, leading to failures and budget over-runs that then further discourage those things. You can see it very clearly with infrastructure, where other countries are able to build things for a small fraction of the price that we pay, and on-time. The skills have been lost, and the supply of work is sporadic so everything is costed to get through the lean periods, and it's extremely hard to get projects started due to economic fears.
OH FFS (Score:2)
these people think Goldman Sachs is a nice place to work...
Norway they dont give a damn it's all about ambition not living wage the very antithesis to USA
BANKERs are not to be trusted they are the very definition of SCUM who is a failed estate agent who decided banking was more profitable
your mixing metaphors, in the USA its easy to walk away from debt, declare bankruptcy yet you can still start another business you cant do that legally in europe without a lot of effort so people are careful about defaultin
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Second, the question assumes that there's no path of upward mobility for Britons. Again, ludicrous to the point of horseshit.
Interesting. I will let the street urchins know that they too could become a Lord one day.
Know your place.
Re:I Don't Know, But... (Score:4, Interesting)
Bletchley Park.
biggest achievement was reimplementation of BOMBE received from Polish scientists.
Commodore
CBM? The Canadian company started by Polish Auschwitz survivor?
Raspberry Pi
Broadcom dev board company started by Broadcom director?
Did you try badly on purpose? :) UK is pretty much ARM and banking.
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Not at all. Aside from the fact that Bletchley improved the Polish Bombe with innovations such as the diagonal board, Colossus was a bigger achievement.
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The early history of computing is a good example of why the UK struggles with this stuff. We had Turing, we had arguably the first electronic computer, and certainly a great opportunity. But of course we didn't capitalize on it, and early efforts to build computers e.g. at Manchester University were not properly supported.
Interesting fact, the UK is the only country in the world to independently develop launch to orbit capability, and then abandon it.
Those great railways we built... We trashed most of them,
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It does not: it acts as a filter (Score:3)
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We're getting into sweeping generalizations involving many millions of people here, but I think there are pros and cons in both approaches. The whole commonsense, keep it simple, stupid, if it ain't broke don't fix it approach is good for making sure you don't do anything really dumb, but there's a danger of it leading to stagnation. Sometimes fixing something that isn't broken can be good if you improve it in the process. It's a question of finding the right balance.
But with America, to get there in the fi
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I don't know if it does or not. But the question did make me pause and think about British technology innovation. The first things that came to mind:
Bletchley Park. Thankfully, those women didn't know their place.
Commodore
Raspberry Pi
It's not a long list and I know it's far from complete. But, still some meaningful contributions from the World's 21st largest population.
ARM processors and Graphene. Those are just the big ones in Tech. The UK isn't that big in tech these days, biotech as well as heavy industry and materials (I.E. new coatings for ships, planes buildings). The UK just doesn't need to shout about it every 25 seconds.
Fair, it's a far cry from the day where any Navy that wanted to be competitive was buying British steam turbines... but it's not doom and gloom either. We still make world class naval engines (mostly gas turbines these days).
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On average, women are exactly as smart as men of course. But apparently the IQ distribution curve is flatter for men than for women, that is, there are more outliers for men than for women. So, men have more geniuses, but also more morons. From personal experience, I can believe that.
Re: Bletchley Park Women == Computers (Score:2)
I've always wondered if that difference in the shape of IQ distributions between men and women was real or some artifact of the sampling we don't understand.
I guess it makes sense evolutionarily right? One male can sustain an entire population of females if needed, so biologically there's more incentive to "roll the dice" with the male genome, for lack of a better metaphors.
But, sometimes good stories prop up bad analysis too. Interesting to think about in any case.
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And, of course....men and women tend to think differently from each other.
A large part of this is due to women, in general, having their thoughts and conclusions colored by emotion, whereas men are generally more logical and cold/calculating and emotion doesn't usually enter into the mix...at least not NEARLY as much as with women.
Re: Bletchley Park Women == Computers (Score:3)
Re: men are logical, not emotional (Score:2)
Today's men can't shut up about their emotions. A
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data is there (Score:2)
Re:data is there - so is equivocation (Score:2)
Americans work longer hours. There's no debate.
Well no, but does longer hours equate to higher quality or more productive
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NOPE they do less work per hour and are less productive but japan and most of APAC work longer hours
get a cluestick the world is not just EU and USA
Investment and risk (Score:3)
We all like to shit on Silicon Valley VCs and the completely inane things they have financed (Juicero anyone?). But the fact is the VC culture in America in general is prepared to take a lot of gambles on the off chance that things might get very big. It's very very obvious in hindsight which things are daft (and sometimes at the time, such as Theranos), but maybe selling books on the internet sounded pretty silly to many in 1994.
The UK venture culture is much, much more risk averse, and promising startups and companies with fantastic technology (RIP Reaction Engines) die of starvation or get bought up by large foreign companies.
It's not about making a thousand bets one of which might go mega multi billion, it's "oh when you're making a million in annual recurring revenue, we'll consider taking a controlling stake for a modest investment of a couple of million".
IME innovators in the UK don't lack for talent, ideas and skill, it's the business and venture side which lack ambition and a willingness to take risks.
So all this still born wankery about "silicon roundabout [not a roundabout anymore]", or "silicon Fen" or blad de blah there's another miss the point, that a few rando tech companies on a major road do not make an innovation center. You need the culture and cash for high risk high reward investments, and a workforce paid well enough to hop between startups on the off chance.
Oh also we pay engineers shit compared to America. That also doesn't help.
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While that's true it also is disingenuous to compare it to how hard people work. Yeah the culture of risk taking is better in America, but that's may be tied to innovation, America definitely also has a culture of living to work rather. The American Dream being to get rich above all else.
Contentness on the other hand is also correlated with happyness. Yeah Europeans don't get paid as much, they don't have a risk take culture, they don't chase those dollars and don't rush to make new businesses, they are too
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While that's true it also is disingenuous to compare it to how hard people work.
Not my intent at all, I was just referring to the different attitude towards investment and risk.
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While that's true it also is disingenuous to compare it to how hard people work.
Not my intent at all, I was just referring to the different attitude towards investment and risk.
Yes. For that sentence I was talking about TFS. It equates the concept of innovation with culture of over working, they are different concepts. But the concept of working and it's link to renumeration is there in your post and that triggered my response.
I don't think you can drive innovation by giving people a bigger pay check. My brain doesn't come up with better ideas due to a pay rise and I don't get better ideas by working longer. The rest of your post about risk aversion is definitely on point, but I t
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I agree that innovation and remuneration are not linked.
But I think what it does show is the value that business culture in this country places in technical subjects. There's plenty of whinging about lack of engineers, but that's at low pay. Engineers aren't seen as worth lots of money or worth training: they aren't seen as a good source of potential so people don't invest.
Also when it comes to money, yes it's very weakly linked, but not everyone can follow their passion: even, maybe especially when working
Regulatory Environment (Score:2, Insightful)
If the UK ever wants to grow again they must embark upon the second phase of what Brexit was supposed to allow them to do, as this is the path they chose. The path of aggressively deregulation of their economic system
Re:Regulatory Environment (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah yes, the lament of the Brexiter: it's not Brexit that's flawed, you're just not Brexiting hard enough.
Brexit has caused shit loads of red tape. Imports from and exports to Europe are still fucked. I now cannot easily buy machine vision cameras in quantity because I have to go through a UK distributor with limited stocks because EU ones can't be arsed (or aren't licensed) to sell them abroad. Previously I could buy from anywhere in the EU because they were obliged to sell.
And a fucking air pump got stuck in customs for a week because reasons.
In the UK businesses are entirely subservient to their government, especially local councils.
And the problem with businesses being beholden to the democratic process as opposed to controlling it is...?
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And the problem with businesses being beholden to the democratic process as opposed to controlling it is...?
People control the Democratic Process.
Businesses are People.
Therefore, Businesses control the Democratic Process.
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Businesses are a very particular kind of people. Much higher percentage of sociopaths and psychopaths.
It's like saying, "HOA's are people". People on HOA's are often narcissitic power hungry bully's. Not always... but more often.
Re:Regulatory Environment (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh yeah, this is right up there with Mitt Romney's brilliant observation that "Corporations are people, too!"
Yeah, sure they are.
It's like 3 fat cats at the top controlling thousands or tens of thousands of people below them, and also concentrating and controlling all the money their work produces.
That is pretty much the polar opposite of actual democracy, and a lot closer to a dictatorship or oligarchy, if you were to characterize it in political terms
In a similar way, the top 5% or 0.5% or whatever of the wealthy "businessmen" holding immense and grossly disproportionate sway over the democratic process isn't "democratic because they are people."
On the contrary, it is completely antidemocratic and in fact the very definition of corruption.
Here here (Score:2)
The U.S. has a "know your place" culture, too. (Score:5, Insightful)
The U.S. has a bit of a "know your place" culture, too. It just is applied less even-handedly. If you've ever been a woman in the c-suite, a man in nursing, an African-American in the rural South, a Hispanic in a lot of different places, etc., you have probably experienced it.
And yes, it almost certainly drives down ambition and reduces innovation. I see no reason why an internalized version of that way of thinking would not have the same effect.
Re: The U.S. has a "know your place" culture, too. (Score:5, Interesting)
Bletchley Park was an outlier incident in history that was forced to breakdown the barriers to push innovation. Otherwise it would have been a much shorter war. Unfortunately, afterwards there was a push to go back to the status quo on both sides of the ocean. Preferably the status quo before the suffragettes.
Tony Flowers, for example, with his East End cockney accent never had the same recognition or advantages as Alan Turing who was a homosexuel, but of upper class roots. Class defines who one is and will become.
It's easy to see in Britain, but America's tech leadership is much the same. It's called meritocracy, but it seems an awful lot of the tech leaders coincidentally come from wealthy backgrounds that are so privileged they can brag about dropping out of prestigious institutions to become innovators supported on their trust funds. That's what the American dream is my old boy.
After the war, the women were sent home. Today, there's far less freedom than what my mother and aunties described as life in the thirties.
It's a shame we didn't notice how American and British freedom provided the winning edge in World War 2 and failed to leverage this. Nazi women were Haus Frau trad Wives who stayed home leaving the factory work to slave labor done by the 'vermin'. The result was more people died making the V2 rocket than was killed by it.
America, inexplicably, totally missed this. Big time. As a result, it is no longer the home of truth, justice, and the American way. A line, coincidentally written by a Canadian.
There was a period in the seventies tech where the ideals of freedom progressed, but it was still pretty much limited to the upperclass outside of NASA and the military. And what wasn't, was destroyed or forgotten. For example, the works of British pioneer of Cybernetics, Stafford Beer whose Cybersun project was killed by the Chicago Boys. In America, the final nail in the coffin was rhe repeal of inheritance tax which led to today's oligarchy.
It's really no surprise that the false notion of meritocracy and natural genius is promoted by guys who were chauffered to daycare in Rolls Royces and inherited enough wealth to insulate them from any hunger beyond avarice.
America's class structure had been implemented and reinforced by the shittification of education promoted by unequal education descretely redlined by local tax base funding for schools and further reduced by all text books dictated by the Texas school board, the largest single purchaser. Something that gave them the position to dictate their narrow Texas jihadi-christian world view sweeping America today preaching freedom while enslaving their victims in chains.
Fortunately, hubris only gets you so far. And it's kinda important to recognise some of the most important innovation in tech such as Linux and open source originated in Finland, a society that actually lives and cultivates actual meritocracy.
The future is always somewhere else. America and Britain have adopted the worst of each other in many ways. It will likely prevail in the long run, but can't really say it's the best or when the wheels will come off. Interesting times as they say.
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You see clearly. Nice.It must be very frustrating.
Re: The U.S. has a "know your place" culture, too (Score:2)
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Anyone who uses the nonsense description "African-American" has just lost the argument, whatever that was.
In the rural South, yeah, probably.
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All racial categorizations have issues when you break things down to edge cases. You've done nothing here other than let us know you're a right wing culture warrior as your picking and choosing of which terms offend you is telling.
Don't have you have a movie to review bomb?
Re:The U.S. has a "know your place" culture, too. (Score:4, Insightful)
"You've done nothing here other than let us know you're in the woke cult and your picking and choosing of which posts offend you is telling.
Anyone who uses the nonsense description "woke" has just lost the argument, whatever that was.
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Gotcha. You get so bothered when called on your made up nonsense you have to lash out with nonsense cult of Trump gibberish words.
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Right, I'm the dribbling loon when youre the one who gets upset about half century old terms for black Americans.
Tell me again why "African American" is so offensive to you. Hearing you try to claim it has problems no other racial category or term has so you can justify your right wing idiocy is funny to me.
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There is already a term for *black Americans*.
Maybe even you can guess what it is.
What is offensive is not your new woke term per se, but that you think everyone has to start using your new woke term, because
You whine and whine and whine until everyone does what you want.
Then fashion changes again and now we have to use another term.
Fuck. Off. You Stupid Woke Cunts.
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There is already a term for *black Americans*.
Maybe even you can guess what it is.
Welcome to reality where it is not at all unusual for a thing to have multiple names. "Sneakers", "Gym Shoes", "Trainers", "Tennis Shoes". All perfectly valid names for the exact same thing for instance.
Out of curiosity though, do you pitch a fit as you've done here every time you run into this common occurrence or does it only come up when it agrees with your far right politics?
What is offensive is not your new woke term per se, but that you think everyone has to start using your new woke term, because ... nothing.
Oh right, "African American", which predates conservatives complaining about anything and everything they dont like being "woke" b
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But anyone who points out the stupidity of the phrases you hateful woke force us to use is "far right".
THAT'S WHY YOU LOST.
THAT'S WHY WE GOT TRUMP.
Dribble on. loon.
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We got Trump because you had to change your branches from master to main? Are you retarded?
Sorry to break this to you but we got Trump because Biden got economic problems. Incumbent parties all over the world are having a hard go of it because of the global inflation that came up during Bodens term in office. It has nothing to do with your dumb shit culture war which was ongoing in 2020 when Trump lost.
But let's get back to the topic at hand. So why does "African American" trigger you? The reasons you've al
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Funny, I don't recall having done any of those things. Surprising you'd find most of those enough to make you so angry though. They're all pretty much nothing.
But lets stop changing the topic. What exactly is triggering you about the term "African American"?
Re: The U.S. has a "know your place" culture, too. (Score:2)
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Are people surprised to meet the "African-American" Elon Musk?
*shrugs* I suppose if he wants to call himself that, he can. He'll probably get a lot of glares, but...
Do the majority of US residents call themselves "European-Americans"?
A decent number of people have called themselves Irish-Americans and German-Americans. Not sure about other nationalities. So same sort of deal, just continental instead of per-country, which is probably a good thing etymologically, because other than Morocco and the Republic of South Africa, I don't think any country in Africa from even a hundred years ago still has the same name (though a few now hav
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A lot of American's have called themselves Italian-American, Polish-American, etc. for a long time one ever had any problem with this until people started saying African-American. Drive in any of the suburbs in America and you will see a lot of these clubs. And they all have these countries flag's proudly waving on the buildings.
On my first reading, I thought you meant the club of people who didn't like the term "African-American", and I thought you were referring to the flag that's red with a blue X bordered by white with white stars on top. :-D But yeah, a lot of folks have a second national identity.
For the record white people in Africa have never called themselves African. They always referred to themselves as Europeans.
Yeah, though I do feel like Musk might be the type of person who would do it just to p**s people off, though. :-D
What an utter crock! (Score:2, Insightful)
Piketty tried this one too.
Others have pointed out the modern examples that make the lie of this thesis.
What the US has that is perhaps less in the UK/Britain... A certain ruthlessness.
Europen cultures seem to think about things like "If I CAN do this; Should I?"
Europe still has unions. The US destroyed collectivism action in favor of ruthless personal gain.
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The US has always been a promoter of "rugged individualism"....
We've never really been about the collective, at last not our main push in society.
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If you fail to understand the full sweep of history, not just your memory of it, you can come to that conclusion.
"We must all hang together or we shall certainly hang separately"
-- a quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin
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I'm not saying we don't ever come together, unite for a collective reason, in times of emergency....we do.
Times like 9/11....WW2...American Revolution as you alluded to.
But again, these are only in times of emergency in our country...but outside of those rare, but important events....i
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The US destroyed collectivism action in favor of ruthless personal gain.
Not quite. It was the ruthless pursuit of personal gain that destroyed the unions. They were corrupt as fuck. Some unions seem to have survived, but most of them aren't worth very much as they can't stand against the full might of the US Government supporting the owners of businesses.
Social Structure (Score:5, Interesting)
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The ambition of the typical person was to get into the upper classes and do nothing useful.
I'm confused. Isn't this the same complaint we make about American CEOs?
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Re:Social Structure (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that the thing that has held back innovation and economic growth in England (and possibly Europe) is class culture. Someone from the lower or middle class would create a business. They would send their sons off to Oxford or Cambridge to become gentlemen and that was the end of the family business. No business dynasties like the Fords or the DuPonts. The ambition of the typical person was to get into the upper classes and do nothing useful.
There was innovation in England during the industrial revolution, at a time which class was arguably more prominent than it is now.
The wealth of a country is no doubt in part due to innovation, but England's wealth may have been more thanks to an enormous empire.
Now I understand that there is a certain resistance in the US to admit the existence of class - part of the whole culture of optimism is the framework of the American Dream, and an egalitarian society - but as one example, surely the racial divide in America, with its influence on opportunity is just as consequential as any class divide in Europe. Likewise, Trumpism has been described as the rising of a disgruntled underclass...
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Certainly, there is racial prejudice in the US, but it is not classed based. If you are one of the groups that are discriminated against, it does not greatly matter if you are dirt poor or a millionaire, you will still be on the receiving end. Of course, rich people have more recourse, but the discrimination is still there. A classic example from the old days was that Sammy Davis Jr. could perform in Vegas at hotels, where he was not acceptable as a guest. There is still an issue, but it has gotten better, at least up till now. I have no idea where this country is currently headed.
I take your point that racial discrimination is not the same as class discrimination, but your comment made me wonder about the difference. A class system can mean that a person with talent can be held back simply by being born into the wrong class. That surely has some equivalence in a society with racial discrimination.
I understand your concern about the direction of the US, but whatever the current direction I can't help but admire a country that carried out the mission to put a man on the moon. In my op
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In a word? No. (Score:2)
We just happen to have tons of venture capital floating around because the US refuses to shore up its safety net by taxation and other wealth distribution methods. Add to that a culture that sees most people as disposable labor to exploited and sure, you get a lot of stock market unicorns. All of these ideas come from universities and research centers and increasingly those are completely underfunded while tuition skyrockets as government takes away more and more support for public schools.
Do these companie
Regulatory oversight differences? (Score:2)
Is the difference in entrepreneurship also a function of the different regulatory approaches?
I'm just a slashdot commenter, not an expert by any means on either nation, but my general understanding of American model vs the European model is that the USA has a more explicitly literal regulatory model. Basically, X is against the law if and only if the law clearly says you cannot do X. If you do X+1 or X-1, you can get away with it because the various regulatory bodies have to make a calculation of their odds
I.e. if it isn't nailed down steal it (Score:2)
On a good day the US approach means good ideas are able to develop and come to fruition. On a bad day it means that there is no trust that a reasonable expectation that isn't codified in law will be respected, and laws multiply to try to regulate what in a sane country would be obvious.
We are led by donkeys (Score:5, Interesting)
When I worked for a UK based company they took too long to let people go.
It took a year to see "the guy who goes out for a walk" get fired. When 4 of the 7 main developers gave notice, on the same day, they should have shut down the US office for the project. Within 2 months another lead dev and the lead devops left.
The devops left because he was supposed to be able to hire 1-2 more devops. When he asked for budget to set up CI in the cloud, he was denied and spent the next few months figuring out how to use AWS for the runners on the free tier and looking for another job. When he left, no one could fix it, they gave us the budget right away for the runners in the CI system
It took over 6 months to start closing things. Management was too busy doing boarding school pranks like carrying a real life poo emoji to upper management when there was bad news. Wankers.
It was easily the worst place for management I ever worked.
The US coworkers were good. They fired one guy when he had cancer probably because they didn't understand the US Heath system (which is fair, but they should figure it out. I brought him in to my current company within a year when he was able to work again and he's still here 5 years later
Re: We are led by donkeys (Score:2)
Does UK have employment contracts like many European countries? U.S. is largely at-will employment, so hiring/firing is relatively easy. Employment contracts definitely put a roadblock in front of both.
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They didn't care to learn about the US employment system.
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Does UK have employment contracts like many European countries? U.S. is largely at-will employment, so hiring/firing is relatively easy. Employment contracts definitely put a roadblock in front of both.
I only have indirect experience so can't comment on whether it's actually because of an employment contract, but there are certainly barriers to firing someone. Generally you need a paper trail showing that you've made attempts to address specific areas where the individual is not meeting performance requirements, and given them opportunities to improve while providing targeted feedback on where they are or aren't improving. And that's in the private sector.
It's a lot of overhead for a manager compared
Know your what? (Score:3)
I live in the UK and work in software, and I've never come across such an attitude from anyone. All I know are ambitious people who would always help you if they can, and they would learn how to help you, just for you, if they can't.
That's for those 'inside the system' (Score:2)
The question is about wider issues of openness to challenge, change and the really unorthodox approach. As IT staff we're used to change, but in institutions that have no such expectation, it's far more of a drag.
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My first thought was the headline should have been "Do Americans have the first clue about Britain or any kind of British culture" and I refer you to Betteridge's law of headlines. They're stuck in some 1950's Hollywood version of Victorian England... Britain is 4 distinct nationalities (English, Irish, Welsh and Scottish) and amongst those there are distinct individual cultures
The entire summary misses a point (Score:5, Insightful)
No one ever askes what the underlying reason that Americans work harder than Europeans is, it really doesn't matter. Whether it's culture, ambition of the American Dream, the end is really the same. Americans live to work. Europeans work to live.
Take a look at the Netherlands. A typical American will balk at what the average engineer earns there, especially given the high cost of living. But what people don't realise is that when you have laws in place that give workers a social safety net, protect workers from being fired at will, mandate that part time work weeks don't come with a reduction in benefits, you suddenly see people working only enough to actually go out and enjoy their actual life. 4 day workweeks are really common there. The average hours worked per week is 29 hours. 61% of people work part time. And even before the pandemic hit, 39% of the workforce worked from home.
The American Dream is to make money all else be damned. If you're not rich you're not happy.
The European Dream is to go to the pub. Easily achievable which is why everyone's happy. Which is what I intend to do lunchtime tomorrow, on a day Americans would refer to as a "working day".
Work harder? (Score:3)
Considering that pay does not keep up with inflation, as well has a distinct lack of labour rights, of course Americans work harder.
It's nothing to be proud of course
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In America success is measured in dollars. In European success is measured in personal happiness. There's a reason why in Europe many people are content with not working hard - and in fact many opt to work part time. That isn't universally true of course Europe is a big place with lots of cultures, but it seems to be true of north-western nations anyway.
Perhaps the UK needs a new slogan to inspire (Score:3)
The "American Dream" has served as a good marketing slogan for the U.S.. Maybe that's what the UK needs -- some catchy slogan to inspire a new generation of entrepreneurs. But realistically, regardless of your race or social class in the U.S. (or any other country): most big dreamers aren't going to succeed. Only a very few will. Just as most new business ideas will fail. That's not being cynical; that's just the truth and reality. The "American Dream" has done a great job masking over these realities.
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True, but:
1) There are things like availability of venture capital (depending on where you are located) in the US that make it easier for startups to at least give it a shot
2) The failure rate for startups is around 90%, so you are not likely to be successful without experiencing a lot of failure and not being deterred by it. I'm an ex-Brit now living in the US, and there does seem to be a cultural difference here - someone in the US attempting multiple startups and failing, is going to be regarded positive
So having known a few Brits (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think the problem is "know your place" I think the problem is Britain is basically in a permanent recession that you don't notice because London boosts the GDP so much. Decades of thatcher-like economic policy has left them a blasted out Detroit style post-industrial society. They have a more robust safety net and a proper medical system so it's not as noticeable as say living in actual Detroit.
America just has more money and we still have something of an empire so it's not quite as noticeable over here. We also have a military industrial complex pushing at least some innovation still. Although we gutted The university system that does all the basic research and we are eventually going to run out of research that can be monetized. It's one of the many ticking time bombs we're all just kind of pretending isn't a thing because we're busy with moral panics over here.
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Decades of thatcher-like economic policy has left them a blasted out Detroit style post-industrial society.
I live in the UK. What you posted is nonsense.
Bankruptcy laws (Score:2)
A primary original reason was the U.S. forgiving bankruptcy laws vs other countries nasty bankruptcy laws ... plus debter's prisons.
i believe this.. (Score:5, Interesting)
im from the uk, started my own business, became a millionaire through hard work and a bit of luck..
the disdain i get from my parents is sickening, for not following the traditional path of university, career, retire.
i wasn't sure what i was experiencing or why but definitely the summary describes it well, as well as the attitude from friends i grew up with. my dad still thinks i dream too much.
Slashdotters avoiding the obvious as usual... (Score:2)
1. "Know your place" might as well be rephrased as "be a sheep"
2. UK has 65ish million people, to the US's 350ish million
The relationship of individualism and ambition, to innovation....should be pretty clear.
The Empire was built on 'Know Your Place' (Score:3)
I'm actually living and born here (Score:2)
I'm a Brit and have no knowledge of this "know your place, don't get too big for your boots" culture that is spoken of.
However, I'm also not an entrepreneur, so something only they experience?
When it comes to the people like Musk, or Bullish people, we expect them to act within the law for societies benefit.
Thus we tax the sh*t out of them :D
We don’t like big corporations as, well, they tend to try and skirt around the rules of playing nice. They also are a big risk to large swathes of people when th
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Tesla has 141,000 employees....That's 141,000 people that have livelihoods because of Musk. That's 141,000 tax revenue generating salaries because of Musk.
Nobody is holding a gun to their heads.
You're so proud that you "tax the shit" out of the wealthy...but that's why they shrug their shoulders, and say "fuck it, why bother". Why would they strive to create new things, if they're just going to be further punished for it? How are they supposed to create new things, if you take a significant amount of res
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Does Musk force people to buy the cars or is there some sort of demand for EVs that causes those jobs to exist to service the demand?
Is....this....supposed to be some sort thought-provoking counterpoint?
I guess we should all just sit around waiting for jobs to magically sprout into existence, for products that haven't been developed yet.
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or he can go to BestBuy and get a sledgehammer and I'll hint to him over the phone how he could use it to gain entry
Best Buy doesn't really have the selection of sledgehammers that they used to.
Eh? (Score:2)
English Lit grads (Score:3)
Here's a startup idea from an English Literature grad: "If we make a hot air balloon big enough, we can use it to fly to the moon."
Innivation? Stifling? (Score:2)
Where do you get this crap from? Most innovative environment on the planet is on the island. Only office admin staff can come up with such nonsense.
Re: Innivation? Stifling? (Score:2)
Good thing we're not as INNOVATIVE as this...
"
Trump on Monday ordered the Army Corps of Engineers to release billions of gallons of water from two reservoirs in California's Central Valley after deadly wildfires in Los Angeles in January.
Trump had claimed California withheld water supplies that could have made a difference in fighting the fires, which the state's Governor Gavin Newsom and other officials disputed, CBS reported.
The water was released into a dry lakebed more than 100 miles (160km) away from t
Re: Innivation? Stifling? (Score:2)
Ok, there WAS brexit, so USED TO BE as innovative as Trump...
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Laws reflect culture, because when they don't, you get changes in government, either through elections or through revolution.