[HN Gopher] Arm Announces Public Filing for Proposed Initial Pub...
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Arm Announces Public Filing for Proposed Initial Public Offering
Author : lultimouomo
Score : 299 points
Date : 2023-08-22 07:44 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.arm.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.arm.com)
| klelatti wrote:
| I think in many ways Arm is (or should be) a sort of large
| 'Mittelstand' [1] business. Long term focus, independence,
| customer focus etc are key to the success of this type of
| business.
|
| Trouble is, its success and its sector has given it a profile
| that attracts attention from the likes of Softbank who have other
| ideas. A company doesn't need to have a Nvidia like P/E ratio to
| be successful.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mittelstand
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Do people use P/E as a metric for company success? I find the
| Nvidia one of 223 or so just a gross perversion, no real
| success there. It's more about how irrational the average
| investor is now and how top heavy the SP500 is.
| berkle4455 wrote:
| I think it's a reflection of earnings potential. If nvidia
| can average 50% Y/Y earnings growth for the next 5 years, and
| stock price remains flat, that 223 falls to 30.
| gotstad wrote:
| It is a reflection of exactly that, but this completely
| dismissed all the risks: - Maybe new ml-tech is invented
| that does not require as heavy equipment. - Maybe AI does
| not grow as fast as expected. - Maybe a competitor comes
| along and pricing comes under pressure. - Maybe supply
| chain issues.
| phkahler wrote:
| You may be right. In that case they should offer a dividend to
| attract the kind of investors who are not necessarily looking
| for big gains in the stock price, but want a nice stable
| return. ARM was a growth stock for decades, but that phase is
| over for them.
| sofixa wrote:
| > A company doesn't need to have a Nvidia like P/E ratio to be
| successful.
|
| Absolutely true. Sadly nowadays, _especially_ in the US, and
| especially in tech, unless the company is growing like crazy or
| massive, it 's considered as insignificant and dimissed.
| vikramkr wrote:
| Dismissed by who? Dismissed by the media and public is one
| thing, but if you think investors are also dismissing them
| unfairly, that doesn't sound unfortunate at all. That sounds
| like an investment thesis.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _especially in the US, and especially in tech, unless the
| company is growing like crazy or massive, it 's considered as
| insignificant and dimissed_
|
| Maybe in Silicon Valley, were decades of totem disdain for
| anything resembling a business education is starting to take
| its toll. For anyone with a financial background, slow-
| growing profitable companies are most American industry. If
| you want to grow slowly (or barely at all), and want
| investors who like that, offer a dividend and price at a
| reasonable P/E.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| How are they "dismissed"? Are trading volumes or share prices
| for non crazy or massive companies too low?
| [deleted]
| kriro wrote:
| I'm pretty sure it's going to be one of these companies that I
| don't invest in for reasons that sound logical to me (a big part
| of the company just splitting in China basically rogue + my
| personal view that RISC-V will gain traction due to the licencing
| policies of ARM) that will do very well :D
| senttoschool wrote:
| During the height of the covid tech bubble, Nvidia offered to buy
| ARM for $40b. Right now, Softbank wants a $60b - $70b valuation
| when many tech stocks have lost 90%+ and some large caps have
| lost 30% - 50%.
|
| What justifies such crazy increase in value? Also, I believe
| Nvidia overpaid for the company regardless. Nvidia was willing to
| pay $40b because they want a world-class CPU design team to
| integrate their GeForce IP into SoCs and service chips.
|
| But a standalone ARM is not very valuable. The reason is that
| ARM's business model (licensing core designs and ISA) makes
| peanuts compared to Qualcomm, Apple, Intel, AMD, etc. In
| addition, ARM's biggest customers are also their biggest
| competitors. For example, Apple competes with stock ARM designs
| with Apple Silicon. Qualcomm will be competing with ARM designs
| via Nuvia chips. Ampere Computing just designed a custom ARM core
| of their own.
|
| When ARM only license the ISA (Apple Silicon, Nuvia, and Ampere
| One), they make peanuts. When they license ARM core designs, they
| make slightly more than peanuts.
|
| It's generally not a good business to invest in. I find it hard
| to justify the $60b - $70b valuation. No doubt Softbank will try
| to sell ARM as an AI company. It's not.
| kmlx wrote:
| > It's generally not a good business to invest in.
|
| i agree.
|
| > Arm reported $524 million in net income on $2.68 billion in
| revenue in its fiscal 2023, which ended in March
|
| i find the current valuation ludicrous, and it seems like it's
| pushed more by Softbank's Vision Fund than a firm grasp in
| reality.
| joelthelion wrote:
| If you think about it, should any of the major players buy
| ARM and shut it down to the competition, the other players
| would be in deep trouble (Samsung, Apple, AWS, Google all
| depend fairly deeply on ARM). That has the potential to drive
| valuation up a bit, no?
| kmlx wrote:
| zero chance of any regulators agreeing to this plan.
| senttoschool wrote:
| > _Arm reported $524 million in net income on $2.68 billion
| in revenue in its fiscal 2023, which ended in March_
|
| > _i find the current valuation ludicrous, and it seems like
| it 's pushed more by Softbank's Vision Fund than a firm grasp
| in reality._
|
| Just for comparison, AMD, which is still quite small, gets
| about $2b - $4b annual net profit. Intel, before their recent
| disaster quarters, had as much as $24b in annual net profit.
|
| $524m in net income is peanuts compared to the big boys. This
| is what I was saying in my original post. ARM is a more
| valuable company if they were acquired by Nvidia. As a
| standalone company, it's not that great. Again, a weird quirk
| of ARM is that their biggest customers are also their biggest
| competitors. This puts a cap on how much profit they can
| make. If ARM decides to raise licensing fees exponentially,
| which is likely not simple due to long-term contracts, then
| companies will seriously look to RISC-V.
|
| Because ARM is the smallest fish in the pond, it can't pay
| for the best engineers. The best chip engineers will go to
| AMD, Intel, Nvidia, Apple, Qualcomm, and startups. ARM is
| where these companies go to poach.
| t43562 wrote:
| If it was too successful on its own it wouldn't be in all
| those devices. Whether or not it has the best chip
| designers its ARM that has changed the world.
|
| It seems a bit like Linux to me - you could say Linus
| Torvalds is disappointing because he's not as rich as Elon
| Musk and yet one might argue both that he has done more and
| that if he had tried to get super rich out of it he would
| not have achieved so much because every effort to extract
| significant money would have lessened the breadth of his
| impact. People wouldn't have co-operated.
| MikusR wrote:
| ARM changed the licensing and now wants % of price of every end
| device sold.
| senttoschool wrote:
| If it's that simple, they would have done it a long time ago.
| In reality, many companies have very long-term contracts. For
| example, Apple may have an indefinite architectural license.
|
| I haven't looked into all their changes in detail but they're
| not just going to suddenly increase profit without their
| customers fighting back.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| Fortunately Apple and Samsung is grandfathered in.
| peoplearepeople wrote:
| They'll quickly find device manufacturers moving to riscv
| with that tactic
| cgeier wrote:
| It feels strange to call it in "Initial Public Offering" when the
| company used to be public ten years ago.
| phkahler wrote:
| IPO stands for "Infusion of Public Overspending". It's an
| _exit_ strategy for private equity and VC, so more of an ending
| than anything "initial".
| jwestbury wrote:
| Should it be an APO? Additional Public Offering?
| larvaetron wrote:
| SPO: Subsequent Public Offering
| offices wrote:
| It's just an IPO. The history doesn't matter.
| imadj wrote:
| It's a sequel
| scrlk wrote:
| F-1:
| https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1973239/000119312523...
| moconnor wrote:
| The "risks" section is pretty interesting, e.g.:
|
| "Arm China is 25% of our revenue, but we have no control over
| them, they have failed to pay us in the past resulting in us
| taking on additional costs to recover the money, also we have
| no way of knowing what they actually owe us and other than what
| they say, which has already been a problem"
| jrno639 wrote:
| ARM learning the hard way what "49% ownership in a joint
| venture" really means.
| user20230822 wrote:
| How do they manage IP if they have no control over them? I
| see a pretty big issue
| Havoc wrote:
| They don't. They're proper rogue and being China there
| isn't much you can do about it
| moconnor wrote:
| According to the filing they have extremely limited ability
| to influence them and yeah it is a big issue.
| meragrin_ wrote:
| I wonder if it would have been better for Nvidia to have
| bought ARM. Nvidia's cards might have been sufficient
| influence.
| NickC25 wrote:
| Which is terrifying - ARM's biggest risk in that regard
| is that ARM China can effectively shoot itself in the
| foot in the name of Chinese
| strategic/geopolitical/technological interests, and all
| their Chinese employees will have absolutely nothing to
| worry about.
| puzzlingcaptcha wrote:
| The "ARM China going rogue" story is so weird. Although
| supposedly Softbank restored control last year? [1] So I
| don't know where things stand at the moment.
|
| https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Caixin/In-Depth-How-
| SoftBa...
| ac29 wrote:
| >Although supposedly Softbank restored control last year?
|
| Nope, the F-1 addresses this: "Neither we [Arm] nor
| SoftBank Group control the operations of Arm China, which
| operates independently of us. "
| NickC25 wrote:
| the article says that Wu is effectively still on the job,
| and Wu's own LinkedIn page claims he's still the boss
| there.
|
| Having myself been part of a joint venture with the Chinese
| (in the education space), and having a Chinese employee go
| rogue, I only advise against western firms (even large ones
| with clout) from engaging in such ventures. The Chinese
| will take control by any means necessary and bleed you dry
| from the inside.
| [deleted]
| bunnie wrote:
| Total revenue: 2.679bb Gross profit: 2.573bb
|
| (page 18, FY2023)
|
| 96% gross profit margin? Ahh to be an IP licensing
| company....why would anyone invest in building physical things
| when there are opportunities like this out there! </s>
|
| edit: clarify _gross_ profit margin
| ppaattrriicckk wrote:
| Small correction:
|
| Net income: 0.524 bb
|
| So 19.6% profit margin. Still nice.
| bunnie wrote:
| I'm not an accountant, but I think I'm referring to gross
| profit margin [1], which is revenue minus cost of goods
| sold (which is small for an IP licensing company, any
| company that actually sells hardware will be a fraction of
| that).
|
| I think your math refers to operating margin, that's after
| they subtract all the operating overheads which are fixed,
| and not proportional to sales volume. In other words a 96%
| gross margin means they have virtually no friction to
| increasing sales.
|
| Compare to Intel statement [2], they have a 35.8% gross
| margin and a negative operating margin this year, which
| would be the apples to apples comparison against 96% gross
| margin and 19.6% operating margin in the F1.
|
| My read on the income line is they do a good job of
| 'spending money', but they are signaling that can be turned
| into things like dividends to shareholders once they IPO,
| perhaps by doing short sighted things like cutting R&D
| expenses and/or accounting tricks.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_margin
|
| [2] https://www.intc.com/news-events/press-
| releases/detail/1637/...
| redtriumph wrote:
| in case, any one looking for F-1 (F1) for ARM, it is
| here.
|
| (S-1 is for domestic corporations and F-1 is for foreign
| ones)
|
| https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1973239/000119312
| 523...
| wslh wrote:
| RISC-V is in the prospectus as a risk. Good for RISC-V!
| phkahler wrote:
| >> RISC-V is in the prospectus as a risk.
|
| One option is to embrace it as an opportunity. ARM designs
| some pretty good CPU cores, so imagine they offered good
| RISC-V cores as well. RISC-V _can_ be free, but a lot of
| companies still license core designs.
| snvzz wrote:
| >ARM designs some pretty good CPU cores, so imagine they
| offered good RISC-V cores as well.
|
| This is the approach MIPS took. They deprecated their
| legacy ISA, embracing the industry-standard RISC-V.
|
| Problem is, ARM's management hasn't shown any signs of
| actually being capable of doing this. It would have to be
| replaced, and the business model would need a deep
| redesign.
|
| But everything hardware takes a long time. Can ARM survive
| until they have competitive RISC-V designs ready?
|
| I will not bet on that.
| RetroTechie wrote:
| There's another option:
|
| For a SoC (or bigger uC) include _both_ ARM & RISC-V
| cores. They can work side by side, be used as development
| platform for either, share memory or peripherals included
| in the SoC (or perhaps share different but overlapping
| subsets of those resources). Or a Big.Little style setup
| where the "Big" and "Little" are different ISA.
|
| Where utilising chip resources 100% is not _too_ important
| (like, in most applications), designers could simply work
| with the ISA cores they 're comfortable with. Switch use to
| the other cores, use the same peripherals.
|
| Would this be difficult to work with? Unlikely. Software
| support for such setups exists, suitable defaults / boot
| settings & go.
|
| At the very least this would get ARM foot in the door if it
| turns out RISC-V eating ARMs market share (which is already
| happening, be it limited scale so far). Or collect the 'ARM
| tax' for SoCs whose designers wanted RISC-V but don't mind
| including ARM as well.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I don't understand what ARM does.
|
| They have designed a processor architecture that is RISC-style.
| For some companies, ARM sells the design and others manufacture
| the chip. So what do Apple and Qualcomm get out of it, if they
| design their own architecture? Is apple tacking on proprietary
| extensions or instructions?
|
| Why didn't apple design a CPU architecture from the ground up ala
| RISC-V?
| snvzz wrote:
| Your confusion seems to have to do with microarchitecture vs
| ISA.
|
| An ISA is the Instruction Set Architecture, the interface
| between software and hardware.
|
| A microarchitecture is a hardware implementation of an ISA.
|
| RISC-V is an ISA.
|
| ARM is a company that has both an ISA (actually several, but
| their current is ARMv9) and a bunch of microarchitectures.
|
| Their business model is to license their IP:
|
| - They may license you a microarchitecture, so that you can
| include it in your chip's design.
|
| - They may license you the ISA, so you can implement your own
| microarchitecture for the ISA. Note that you can't then license
| your microarchitecture to others, that's ARM's sole privilege.
|
| RISC-V's instruction space has some room for custom extensions.
| Thus it can be adapted to find specific needs, without asking
| for permission nor opting out of the strongest software
| ecosystem which RISC-V is rapidly building.
|
| But while RISC-V is pretty good technically, enabling the best
| processors, what's most disruptive is that it is an open ISA.
|
| It means there's now an open market with RISC-V
| microarchitectures to license, from a range of vendors. There's
| also some open source microarchitectures.
|
| Microarchitecture licensing aside, there's an ecosystem of
| companies offering related services, such as helping you verify
| your designs, trace your code and so on.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| Interesting. As much as ARM-based processors are doing so well in
| the market, it's important to understand that ARM has specific
| licensing agreements with Apple, Samsung, etc. It is not so
| obvious that it will continue being a cash cow for many more
| years.
| tchaffee wrote:
| Well no one can predict the future but what's your reasoning
| that such an important technology partner to such massive
| companies will all of a sudden stop innovating and become less
| significant?
| flkenosad wrote:
| Intel was also an important partner to Apple at one point.
| tchaffee wrote:
| Intel is still around, still innovating, and still
| profitable. It has a lot more competition than in the past,
| but they are still a force to be reckoned with.
| grumple wrote:
| I expect that some of those companies will be interested in
| acquiring shares of the company to ensure their continued
| access and innovation.
| afandian wrote:
| "250 billion chips"
|
| I wonder how many of those are buried in landfill now.
| bloggie wrote:
| Certainly quite a few, there are ARM chips in single-use
| products such as COVID tests.
| mastax wrote:
| I remember there was a disposable COVID test that had an arm
| processor in it.
| tmoertel wrote:
| I think that the price of those tests was about $70 each,
| however.
| not_your_vase wrote:
| Many. And still, many more are bought up every year. Those
| small M0 and M0+ cost pennies... if you made all chopsticks in
| the world out of M0s instead of wood, it would be more cost
| effective lol
|
| (okay, _maybe_ this is an exaggeration, but these small things
| are pretty much everywhere... not even speaking about chips in
| other, more complex devices)
| afandian wrote:
| Well thank goodness for RoHS!
| KirillPanov wrote:
| Only the ones with locked^H^H^H^Hsecure bootloaders.
|
| In other words, nearly all of them.
|
| I've started calling it "Landfill Boot".
| Thev00d00 wrote:
| Bit of a downer for the UK to see them list in the US, I do
| understand they just want access to the most capital, but I find
| a shame LSE is not competitive for this kind of thing.
| Sealy wrote:
| Sadly the UK has a long history of sending its own tech
| industry abroad...
|
| It begun with the invention of the computer as we know it... -
| Charles Babbage,"Father of the computer", British - Alan
| Turing, "Father of modern computer science", British
|
| Then there was Margret Thatcher who decided the internet was a
| fad and wasn't worth investing in internet infrastructure in
| the country.
|
| Where did the multi billion (if not trillion by now) industry
| end up? Silicon Valley and elsewhere....
|
| Bravo UK... Bravo </sarcasm>
| gjvc wrote:
| _Then there was Margret Thatcher who decided the internet was
| a fad and wasn 't worth investing in internet infrastructure
| in the country._
|
| This seems unbelievable now, but the relevant reference is
| https://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/how-the-uk-
| lost...
| klelatti wrote:
| No fan of Thatcher, but she left power before the world-wide-
| web even left CERN.
| Lio wrote:
| True but the driver before the world wide web would have
| been cable TV over fibre to the home.
|
| She decided it was better to open the market to foreign
| cable TV providers and so barred BT from selling TV access.
|
| Without TV there was no driver for fibre investment.
|
| Where BT would have had a requirement to provide universal
| access to fibre, as with phone provision, Telewest and NTL
| just did geograhically limited roll outs of legacy coax and
| the rest is history.
| klelatti wrote:
| Fair enough, but I don't see how this supports her
| thinking the internet was a fad not worth investing in.
|
| Also it denies agency to those in power in the decades
| that followed. I mean did that decision bind the
| policymakers that followed when it became clear how
| important the internet really was?
| farseer wrote:
| Well you can't make all the right moves in history :) At
| least they got mercantilism right and built an effective navy
| to practically rule the world not so long ago.
| dazc wrote:
| Thatcher was replaced by a guy called Blair who saw the
| internet as the future worth investing in. Sadly he found
| another cause to throw money at.
|
| The mistake Thatcher made was to open up the telecoms market
| to competition at a time when the legacy provider (BT) were
| starting to build a high speed internet highway/backbone. In
| hindsight, this could indeed be considered an error but
| looking how BT have fared since, perhaps not?
| mattmanser wrote:
| A lot more mistakes made by Thatcher than that.
|
| We're now in the absurd situation where 4 out of 6 power
| generating companies are foreign owned and the Japanese own
| our chip manufacturer.
|
| All because of her policies that originally envisioned that
| the share holding would be by the British public, not
| foreigners.
|
| And the latest scandal is that our water companies are
| dumping ridiculous amounts of sewage into our waterways
| while giving out huge dividends. And there's nothing anyone
| seems to be able to do about it.
| dazc wrote:
| We've had a few Prime Ministers since Thatcher, was her
| reach so powerful that she could prevent them from doing
| anything about this?
|
| I recall Blair saying he regretted not doing enough about
| energy security when he was in power, I don't recall him
| blaming Thatcher?
|
| Brown expands nuclear ambitions (2008): The prime
| minister said that with oil prices soaring, it was time
| to be "more ambitious" for nuclear plans...
| http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7424158.stm
|
| There has been a long history of failure, by both sides
| of the political spectrum.
| gjvc wrote:
| _All because of her policies that originally envisioned
| that the share holding would be by the British public,
| not foreigners._
|
| This is the most charitable interpretation of events (no
| sarcasm intended[1]), and one I would like to believe,
| but greed is very powerful and leads people to evil, so I
| can well imagine various lobbying groups would have seen
| the easy mid-term money to be made from such sales.
|
| [1] "Never attribute to malice that which may be
| adequately be explained by incompetence."
| nelsonic wrote:
| Two reasons: NASDAQ values Tech higher than LSE and inclusion
| in the Nasdaq-100 will mean funds/indexes have to buy in which
| will boost the share price. This is the smart choice for
| Masayoshi Son to maximise ROI.
| glimshe wrote:
| Masayoshi Son is desperately needing to make some smart
| choices after making some of the biggest investment blunders
| in history through the Vision Fund... I agree this one is the
| way to play it safe with what could be the best investment in
| his life.
| twen_ty wrote:
| Why would anyone want to do a major IPO like this in Brexit
| Britain?
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| > Bit of a downer for the UK to see them list in the US
|
| I wonder to what extent the overarching business culture of the
| UK (which I'd categorise as being generally apathetical, if not
| hostile, to the engineering profession) might have anything to
| do with it.
|
| (...speaking as a former UK eng myself)
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| > I wonder to what extent the overarching business culture of
| the UK (which I'd categorise as being generally apathetical,
| if not hostile, to the engineering profession) might have
| anything to do with it.
|
| That's nothing to do with it - the company is only listing on
| NASDAQ - ARM has office all over the world but will still be
| based and managed in the UK along with most of its employees
| (engineers) like when it was owned by a Japanese company.
|
| Listing on the tech heavy NASDAQ rather than the LSE gives
| the company more access to investors that are likely to buy
| shares: retail, commercial, and hundreds of index trackers
| and funds - increasing the share price.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Are there really big capital inventors who will say "nope I
| don't work on that exchange"?
| boringg wrote:
| There are costs to working on different exchanges and out
| of country exchanges.
| dublinben wrote:
| Well, the fifth largest ETF in the US is the sharply
| named QQQ which exclusively follows the Nasdaq-100 index.
| Everything larger tracks a broader domestic index like
| the S&P 500.[0]
|
| Listing on the LSE relegates you to "international"
| funds, which make up a third or less of most portfolios.
| These have historically lagged US fund performance, quite
| significantly in the last ten years.[1]
|
| [0] https://www.etf.com/etfanalytics/etf-finder
|
| [1] https://www.morningstar.com/stocks/revisiting-case-
| internati...
| highwaylights wrote:
| Same. I think this is the correct answer.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| It can't be - sentimentality rarely gets in a way of a
| business-deal this big. But it might explain why ARM
| themselves (whether employees or shareholders, regardless
| of country) might not put too much effort into staying in
| the UK, I mean.
| Angostura wrote:
| The City is struggling post-Brexit
| sapiogram wrote:
| > which I'd categorise as being generally apathetical, if not
| hostile, to the engineering profession
|
| Any chance you could elaborate on this? Arm exists and is
| British, after all.
| bemusedthrow75 wrote:
| > Arm exists and is British, after all.
|
| Our current government is indifferent to this.
| DrBazza wrote:
| All modern UK governments have been largely indifferent
| on protecting British industry, and when they do it
| normally blows up in their faces. It's now a case of
| 'fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me'.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| Not entirely indifferent - they did intervene on
| national-security grounds in 2021:
| https://news.sky.com/story/government-intervenes-in-sale-
| of-...
| bemusedthrow75 wrote:
| I had forgotten about this, to be honest, but national
| security grounds is either what it says on its face or
| "what is the smallest amount of intervention we can do
| here to satisfy all those critics talking about something
| we don't understand".
|
| Our Prime Minister thought getting the Royal Mint to
| produce NFTs was a good idea. In 2022.
| scrlk wrote:
| UK engineering jobs typically have uncompetitive
| compensation.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| That's just the result, not the cause.
| sofixa wrote:
| Uncompetitive compared to?
| tchaffee wrote:
| Compared to the US. Dan Abramov who works for Facebook
| and is one of the primary engineers of the hugely popular
| React framework makes less than one of my junior
| engineers.
| progbits wrote:
| And when he gets sick gets free healthcare while your
| junior will go bankrupt. Compensation isn't comparable
| without comparing external costs and benefits.
| commonlisp94 wrote:
| > he gets sick gets free healthcare
|
| Free at the cost of a significantly larger portion of his
| salary in tax for his entire life.
| tchaffee wrote:
| The tax differences aren't that big, and they come with
| other nationalized services in addition to healthcare.
| Per capita healthcare costs in countries with
| nationalized healthcare can be 50% less than in the US.
| So you're getting much better value for your money when
| you pay taxes for that healthcare.
|
| https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-
| collection/health-...
| dom96 wrote:
| And as a FB employee gets private healthcare as a perk
| and would also get it in the US. The US comp is much
| higher than the UK's even taking into account healthcare.
| bemusedthrow75 wrote:
| But once he/she has a family (or just a pregnant partner)
| he/she is really handcuffed to the job by that perk, no?
| The risk of losing that cover makes it very difficult to
| make sensible life choices.
| tchaffee wrote:
| Is your claim that a Facebook engineer would have trouble
| finding a different job with high compensation and great
| healthcare? That's a bold and hard to believe claim.
| bemusedthrow75 wrote:
| This comes across as quite rude, TBH.
|
| But answering you on the merits: it's entirely possible,
| yes.
|
| For example, what if sensible life choices include moving
| out of state to a place where there is less tech
| industry? Just changing jobs can interrupt healthcare and
| cause costs. And the process of switching providers is,
| in the experience of a friend with a family with complex
| healthcare needs, sometimes so kafkaesque it might not be
| worth the risk.
|
| What if sensible life choices involve blowing the whistle
| or just being critical of the industry? Can you risk it?
|
| What if sensible life choices mean wanting to substitute
| time so your partner can go back to work? Does their plan
| match yours for the benefits you've both come to rely on?
|
| It's not unusual at all for people in all sorts of
| situations and on all sorts of incomes to effectively end
| up tied to a job by the security of specific features of
| a workplace health plan.
|
| Use your imagination before you just jump in and belittle
| an argument.
|
| I do wonder if people in the particular FAANG bubbles are
| just too young and healthy to understand that healthcare
| plans aren't just a tradeable, interchangeable perk: once
| you are really deeply using them, they can get a lot less
| interchangeable.
| tchaffee wrote:
| Sorry, but you gave no evidence that the average talented
| person would be handcuffed to a specific company as soon
| as they start a family. And you especially gave no
| evidence that they would "lose that cover". That was your
| original claim.
|
| > This comes across as quite rude, TBH.
|
| Sorry if you saw it as rude, but I was politely asking
| from my perspective. It's normal to ask folks for
| evidence backing up their claim when you don't find it
| believable. How could I have asked my question in a more
| polite way?
|
| > Use your imagination before you just jump in and
| belittle an argument.
|
| I did. And I failed to come up with an explanation based
| on my decades of work experience. Healthcare has never
| chained me to a job even when I had health problems.
| Pretty much every company offers a healthcare plan. The
| only thing that ever concerned me was becoming
| unemployed.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I have been buying health insurance that uses Blue Cross
| Blue Shield's network in the US, and in 4 different
| states with 4 different health insurance companies on
| east and west coast it did not seem to make any
| difference.
|
| I have bought them on healthcare.gov, and I have received
| them from employer, and it all seems to be
| interchangeable from my experience over the last 10+
| years.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| And what about long-term illness? If he fell ill for 1+
| year, would his salary and healthcare be guaranteed or
| would he go bankrupt?
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| All US employers I've worked for included disability and
| long-term injury insurance as standard benefits, in
| addition to always offering the best-tier health-plans
| (from non-profit insurers too). Unemployment insurance is
| another (legally mandatory) benefit that outshines
| whatever I'd get in the UK because it isn't considered a
| public-benefit (i.e. it's not the state or Feds paying it
| ("welfare" as yanks call it), it's still a insurance pool
| model where the payouts are proportional to your salary
| and not some arbitrary income limit the DWP set for the
| year, nor is means-tested or requires me to use-up my
| savings first - so in WA (
| https://esd.wa.gov/unemployment/calculate-your-benefit )
| I'd be getting about $4k/mo for 6 months, for comparison
| I quickly ran the numbers on benefits-
| calculator.turn2us.org.uk (there's no official UK
| calculator, wat) just now and got... PS300/mo - and
| that's only after I exhaust all my savings first. (To be
| fair, I could just purchase private unemployment
| insurance in the UK too, except I'd be paying for it
| myself out-of-pocket (though it might be a tax-deductible
| expense?) whereas in WA employers are required to pay
| into it at no cost to the employee, IIRC).
| tchaffee wrote:
| > long-term injury insurance
|
| It eventually runs out. The US healthcare system can
| eventually bankrupt you no matter how careful you are, if
| your health problems are serious enough.
| sgerenser wrote:
| I don't know about Facebook, but at other BigTechs we
| were offered very affordable short and long term
| disability plans. And if your income is low enough (e.g.
| laid off or fired), you qualify for ACA health plans with
| huge subsidies making it almost free.
| tchaffee wrote:
| > long term disability plans
|
| It eventually runs out. Medical bankruptcy is pretty
| widespread in the US.
| tchaffee wrote:
| That's is indeed where the US system fails. Overall
| though I think the risk reward ratio favors the US for
| young healthy engineers. Save up enough to retire at 45
| and then get yourself to a country with good nationalized
| healthcare.
| jkaplowitz wrote:
| Facebook very probably has a group long-term disability
| insurance policy which adequately its employees in that
| case. Google did when I worked there many years ago. Some
| supports might also come from Social Security Disability
| Insurance, Medicare, and loans or withdrawals from
| retirement accounts that are far better funded at
| Facebook US than at Facebook UK.
| tchaffee wrote:
| > long-term disability insurance policy
|
| It eventually runs out. Medical bankruptcy is pretty
| widespread in the US.
| m4jor wrote:
| [flagged]
| tchaffee wrote:
| I agree you need to consider total compensation. It's
| still not even close though.
|
| The company pays half the cost of excellent healthcare
| and the remaining payment is very affordable. Maybe in
| the case of a very serious long term illness you might go
| bankrupt, in which case the NHS these days is also not as
| much of a guarantee as it used to be.
|
| The risk to reward ratio is acceptable. Most healthy
| young people with talent are far better off working in
| the US and saving enough to retire at 45 years old. I say
| this as someone who would like it to not be true having
| loved living and working in the EU and UK for many years.
| But the numbers do not add up. It's especially sad
| because it results in brain drain. The saddest part of it
| is that there is no reason Facebook can't afford to pay
| the Dan Abramovs of the world the compensation they would
| get in the US. I'd like to better understand why the gap
| is so big.
| boeingUH60 wrote:
| What a silly, coping lie. A Facebook engineer in the US
| gets good private healthcare insurance.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| Hot-take: It's an emotional defence mechanism: on-the-
| whole the UK and US are far too similar and integrated
| that it's natural for middle-class Brits to larely
| consider themselves peers, and not near-peers, of their
| US counterparts - so when you have that view of yourself
| and your place in the world but then look at the stark
| the income disparity, you're going to comfort yourself
| with all of the bad things about the US (and the US' bad
| things are legion) - and invoking the egalitarian NHS
| happens because the UK gets its impression of the US
| healthcare "system" (industry?) from things like Michael
| Moore's _Sicko_ or Times columnists reporting on all the
| messed-up healthcare injustices that happen in the US -
| but there is a very real ignorance of what healthcare is
| like in the US when the system does actually work well
| for you.
|
| And if it isn't NHS vs. "doesn't &everyone* get medical-
| bankruptcy?" then it'll be about guns, or the death
| penalty, or overt racism in the south, or corporate
| america's excesses, or US foreign-policy, and so on.
| Because those are the things that Channel 4 will report
| on - but you won't see or read stories that upset
| anyone's feelings on their place in the world: and it
| works on everyone: I've already mentioned Guardian-
| reading types, but also and especially the Brexit-types:
| who still desperately want to believe the British empire
| could be brought-back because the Daily Express told them
| so.
| zarzavat wrote:
| As much as I like the NHS, it's pretty shit compared to
| the healthcare a Facebook employee would get in the US.
|
| Wait weeks to see a GP, long waiting times to see a
| specialist or for treatment, rationing of access to
| technology like MRIs, and a risk of dying in a hospital
| car park or corridor, or being killed by an overworked
| A&E doctor.
|
| Don't get me wrong, the NHS is great, I love that Boris
| Johnson got more or less the same care in St Thomas' that
| a homeless person would have received (perhaps a bit
| better).
|
| But on an individual level, the FB engineer in US
| certainly has better care available to them than one in
| the UK.
| tchaffee wrote:
| The one case where your argument fails is very serious
| illnesses where you can't continue to work. In the US you
| will end up with worse care.
|
| And let's hope the NHS problems are temporary. When I
| worked in London and the US ten years ago, I always
| preferred the NHS because the waiting times were shorter
| and the quality of care was much higher. I used the NHS a
| few weeks ago. It wasn't horrible and I got good quality
| of care within a reasonable time. But it's nothing close
| to how good it used to be so for the serious part of my
| care I went to the far better hospital in Brazil covered
| by my employer provided insurance.
|
| I would guess the NHS will change. Voters are unhappy
| with the reckless defunding of what used to be a national
| pride.
|
| The US does provide better care right now if you are rich
| or privileged enough to have a job that is in demand. But
| a well funded NHS is a far better system if the political
| will to get back to that exists.
| kriro wrote:
| There's "catastrophic injury/health" insurance in the
| U.S. You just don't get it by default. I did a bit of
| research into the topic in the past and my takeaway is
| that if you buy the right insurance packages you get
| pretty much the same coverage in the U.S. that you'd get
| here (Germany) except you have the option not to do it.
| From what I gather it's also not that much more
| expensive, I'd argue the quality of care in the U.S. is
| probably better (it's pretty high in Germany but the U.S.
| is probably the #1 in the world on average) and the
| service quality for someone with this kind of insurance
| package is better for sure (longer waiting times in
| Germany for certain procedures/issues for example). All
| of this is assuming you're lucky enough to have a decent
| job/salary (which we are as tech people).
|
| I guess it looks more grim for the "lower end of the
| spectrum" in the U.S.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > I would guess the NHS will change. Voters are unhappy
| with the reckless defunding of what used to be a national
| pride.
|
| I am not sure that is the case? The country seems to have
| a weird obsession with the NHS and seems to
| downplay/overlook its problems. Frankly even before its
| recent woes, I found it pretty shit compared to
| socialized healthcare in France.
|
| The _current_ state of the NHS should prompt riots, yet
| everyone seems complacent in seeing their literal
| lifeline being destroyed by greedy, incompetent & senile
| oligarchs.
| RhysU wrote:
| > ...very serious illnesses where you can't continue to
| work.
|
| In the US, if possible, carry long term disability
| insurance to mitigate this risk.
| sentinalien wrote:
| They're fairly competitive compared to the rest of the
| world. He is also working for a US company who could pay
| him more if they really wanted to. US salaries are high
| because the US has a glut of engineering jobs and is also
| a difficult place to immigrate to (generally requires you
| to have family ties or a job offer which is not easy to
| obtain when you might not be granted a work visa and
| won't realistically be able to start for about 6 months).
| If the US ever adopted a more lax immigration system in
| line with the UK, Canada, the EU etc I would expect US
| engineering salaries to drop.
| tchaffee wrote:
| > They're fairly competitive compared to the rest of the
| world.
|
| That's accurate. But what surprises me is how much in
| demand software engineers are globally and how little
| they get paid in most countries. It doesn't make any
| sense to me that Dan Abramov could more than triple his
| salary at Facebook just by being employed by the US
| branch. The value he provides to the company would in no
| way change.
| kriro wrote:
| In what world is the post-Brexit UK immigration system
| lax?
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| Compared to the US system of workers' visas, it's
| incredibly lax. Unless I'm misinformed. I haven't had to
| think about it much though, as I'm an Irish citizen and
| can come and go as I please.
| msy wrote:
| The UK has a long intellectual tradition which creates a
| steady stream of creative and capable engineers. Capital
| however is predominately held via inherited wealth and its
| controllers want rentier incomes with low risk. As a
| consequence there is low appetite for risky new ventures
| and those that want to undertake them mostly migrate
| elsewhere. What's left is a stock market dominated by
| octogenarian+ dianosaurs, a decaying rump of manufacturing,
| a finance sector that mostly makes its bread laundering the
| capital of the world's corrupt and corruptors and a tiny
| creative industry that clings on despite suffering through
| waves of either government neglect, or worse yet,
| government interest.
| bhewes wrote:
| But then they did Brexit and the island has to work
| again.
| deskamess wrote:
| Canada has many similarities. The inherited wealth is
| essentially banks and oligarchs. You pretty much have to
| be risk free to get any funding. Lots of window dressing
| and marketing to make Canada look good. If it were not
| for US companies (Cisco, Google, etc) the Canadian tech
| salary would be closer to Europe. Once you start living
| here you realize the truth about how much they value
| tech, protectionism, the incompetence of the telecom
| sector, stodgy banking and finance, poor education,
| unaffordable housing, and declining access to health
| (Ontario and stories from the Maritimes since health is
| provincial - cannot speak of Alberta/BC/etc).
|
| All subpar but the marketing and virtue signaling is
| great. A lot of 'make Canada look good' comes at the
| expense of Canadians.
| speed_spread wrote:
| Quebec has had a few wins over the years with massive
| indirect subsidies toward strategic industries, notably
| gaming and AI. Public money is spent to attract big
| players which hire a critical mass of talent which leads
| to more players moving in and eventually some private
| risk capital becoming available for startups pending to
| the needs of the big guys. Nothing comparable to the
| American VC system though.
| ckdarby wrote:
| I live in Quebec. It's all for show to prop Quebec up as
| a place to even do business in.
|
| There's nothing in the tech space that is worth even
| looking at twice in this province that isn't
| headquartered elsewhere. Most larger companies open up
| here just to tap into the potential talent that don't
| want to leave their home province and a lot of companies
| aren't willing to put in the effort of dealing with
| Quebec being the exception to everything.
|
| If you want to understand Quebec it really boils down to
| three points:
|
| - Protect French language - Protect culture - Have more
| children. This achieves 1 & 2 in a cycle.
|
| Things that are going well for the province, cheaper car
| insurance, cheaper housing, cheaper electricity, and
| subsidize daycare. Oh! This all ties back into our 3
| rules.
|
| All these advantages come at the cost of higher taxes,
| but that is apart of the strategy. Don't build wealth,
| but just provide enough for hope, dreams of having a
| family and rope as many into this to fulfil the 3 points.
| sofixa wrote:
| > Quebec has had a few wins over the years with massive
| indirect subsidies toward strategic industries, notably
| gaming and AI
|
| And aviation. The Bombardier C-Series is a very advanced
| plane, and the first modern plane developed outside of
| Boeing or Airbus (outside of the smaller regional
| Embraer). Sadly American protectionism was the final nail
| in the coffin for the programme, but Airbus is comitted
| to the Mirabel site and assembly line, so Quebec still is
| one of the top aviation hubs in the world.
| Fluorescence wrote:
| > Capital however is predominately held via inherited
| wealth
|
| Curious to see you prove that beyond an imagined
| stereotype. It's not as though we are in the first
| generation of US entrepreneurship and there is not a huge
| quantity of US inherited wealth in those VC funds. The
| founders of Intel, Apple, Walmart, Standard Oil etc. have
| all passed on. And on the other side, it's not like there
| haven't been a dozen generations since Norman lords
| chopping up all the land wealth. I think only one British
| billionaire is an aristo, the rest are business folk.
|
| People underestimate the effect of how wealth attracts
| wealth in terms of commercial hubs - money chases
| opportunity and opportunities chase money and they end up
| in the same place for all sorts of reasons. It's just a
| system effect rather than a consequence of higher virtues
| that some love grant themselves.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Hmm, maybe it will be fun to go through https://en.wikipe
| dia.org/wiki/List_of_British_billionaires_b...
|
| - Dyson: actually an innovator! Made many of the same
| criticisms of the UK lack of tech strategy. Promoted
| Brexit, which has made the situation worse by erecting
| barriers to a key UK market.
|
| - Ratcliffe: owns INEOS: oil refineries. Old school
| engineering? Or just provision of capital?
|
| - Hinduja: purchaser of Ashok Leyland, which became a
| huge success once unshackled from disastrous management
| of British Leyland. Counts as "engineering" but not
| "tech"?
|
| - Grosvenor, 7th Duke of Westminster: classic aristo
| landlord. Owns large areas of London.
|
| - Platt: hedge funds.
|
| ""The reality is that there is no willingness within the
| Eurozone to share wealth," he said. "In the United
| States, if California is having a really difficult time,
| the rest of the United States will send money to
| California. This is not the case in Europe." --
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Platt_(financier) ,
| perhaps a surprising advocate of redistribution
|
| - Coates: gambling. Counts as "tech startup" (bet365)
|
| - Bamford: heir to JCB, the excavator company.
| "Engineering". Brexiter, as a result of being sued for
| antitrust by EU
|
| - Branson: definitely self-made, across a large number of
| different companies. Space billionaire, closest figure to
| British Musk.
|
| - Currie: also INEOS. Almost no wp bio.
|
| - Reece: also INEOS. Almost no wp bio.
|
| - Cadogan, 8th Earl Cadogan: aristo. Dead.
|
| - Lewis: trader. Like Soros, profited from Black
| Wednesday. Under arrest in Manhattan.
|
| - Reuben: metals. Seem to have made a killing from 90s
| Russia.
|
| - Graff: diamonds. Looks like classic self-made from
| nothing story?
|
| - Calder: Jive records.
|
| - Morris: Home Bargains. Wildly successful discount
| shopkeeper.
|
| (you know who's NOT on this list? Anyone to do with ARM.
| Even Hermann Hauser appears to have only PS150m net
| worth)
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| > you know who's NOT on this list? Anyone to do with ARM.
| Even Hermann Hauser appears to have only PS150m net
| worth)
|
| I wonder if ARM's success, or rather, popularity and
| market dominanance, is because they (intentionally or
| otherwise) devalued themselves enough.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Indeed - they appear to be great engineers and terrible
| business-people.
|
| They have collected very little profit from their market-
| dominating IP.
| bemusedthrow75 wrote:
| They aren't terrible business people at all!
|
| If they collected much more profit from each device sale
| then they wouldn't _have_ market-dominating IP. Because
| they 'd have competitors who could undercut them.
|
| As it is, a tiny firm of people make an extremely good
| living off a margin that nobody in the business can
| really quibble with, and it has without conflict
| sustained them to do greater and greater work that has
| changed the world.
|
| You watch: ARM post-IPO will inevitably have to start
| squeezing more juice out of the market to give to
| greedier, more transactional, more activist shareholders,
| and this will fuck up the balance entirely.
|
| An ARM IPO isn't really going to be good for anyone, I
| think.
| fidotron wrote:
| Indeed. You can see in some of the comments here the
| American mentality simply could not have made ARM
| successful because they would have been too busy
| competing with their own customers. For ARM to take off
| and be trusted they had to knowingly leave valuable
| profit margins around for their customers to be able to
| take advantage of.
|
| The defining question is if the world is better off by
| having people play that game or the one where everyone
| tries to takeover everything all the time.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Microsoft minted many fortunes by leaving valuable profit
| margins around for third party developers.
|
| It's a longer game, so hopefully ARM employees still own
| some equity.
| fidotron wrote:
| Where are these third party developers that made decent
| money and Microsoft didn't subsequently try to eat their
| piece of the pie?
|
| It is a repeated pattern and people are not stupid. (See
| also the Sherlock phenomenon with Apple). Valve, for
| example, have to invest in proton as the ultimate back up
| plan. For me personally that has proven quite helpful,
| but your initial business has to be wildly successful for
| you to be able to play defensive moves like that.
|
| This leads to a situation where mid sized companies are
| few in number and unstable.
| bemusedthrow75 wrote:
| > and Microsoft didn't subsequently try to eat their
| piece of the pie?
|
| That second part wasn't in the original claim, though.
| The parent comment is right. Sure, 21st century Microsoft
| has come for the utilities market, for the Lotus-to-
| Evernote market, etc., etc., but an entire software
| industry really did spring up in the eighties through to
| the early 2000s filling gaps in Microsoft software.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Oracle, SAP, Adobe, VMware, Intuit, AutoDesk, Activision
| Blizzard, Epic Games, Electronic Arts, just to list a few
| still surviving companies.
|
| Microsoft absolutely expands into areas it considers
| strategic profit or capability centers. E.g. office
| productivity, web browser, database, gaming, etc.
|
| But they, and especially early/smaller Microsoft
| (90s-00s), left a _ton_ of money on the table for the
| good of the platform. Because they realized they couldn
| 't do it all and be best-of-everything.
|
| The fact that Microsoft can deploy its level of resources
| (e.g. crush Lotus) when they decide to doesn't mean that
| they always decide to.
| fidotron wrote:
| > Oracle, SAP, Adobe, VMware, Intuit, AutoDesk,
| Activision Blizzard, Epic Games, Electronic Arts
|
| SQL Server, Dynamics, TrueType/Silverlight, Hyper-V,
| Microsoft Money, Softimage was owned by MS, Activision
| are in the process of being bought by MS, Epic and EA
| both compete with MS.
|
| In the case of the above Microsoft has tried to compete
| with, kill, or acquire all of them. That's using others
| to do the hard work of market discovery.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Indeed, Microsoft has offerings in many of these
| categories, one reason I specifically mentioned
| databases.
|
| And yet, these companies are all extremely large and
| healthy.
|
| Microsoft acquiring Activision Blizzard is a great
| example, because it speaks to the modern competitive
| landscape.
|
| Microsoft isn't "using others to do the hard work of
| market discovery." Activision Blizzard has a USD$72b
| market cap.
|
| That's a hyperscaled conglomerate attempting to buy a
| still-huge company.
|
| And if you want to suggest Microsoft's behavior is unique
| in that... I'd suggest we start with redressing the lax
| competitive laws that (a) make Microsoft feel it needs to
| do that to compete with its rivals & (b) allow Microsoft
| to buy Activision Blizzard.
| fidotron wrote:
| Those companies are only that big because of profit on
| non-Microsoft platforms, including these days the web and
| mobile. For example, Activision (founded to make Atari
| 2600 games) are being acquired because of their console
| and mobile properties - the value derived from the PC is
| there but relatively small and historic. The amounts
| Microsoft have burned trying to make money from gaming
| defy belief, instead they seem determined to destroy the
| viability of the market for everyone.
|
| One reason I am pessimistic about Arm's future is they
| will struggle to balance raising money for future needed
| R&D without creating the appearance of being too
| lucrative a target for a nVidia or SoftBank wanting to
| play monopoly. That is going to push people to RISC-V. I
| hope they manage to do something, but they're in for a
| rough time.
| bemusedthrow75 wrote:
| > For ARM to take off and be trusted they had to
| knowingly leave valuable profit margins around for their
| customers to be able to take advantage of.
|
| Exactly this.
| hnhg wrote:
| I would be surprised if many Brits know of ARM as a
| British success story. Ditto for Raspberry Pi or
| Deepmind. These things are just not celebrated, it seems.
| pjc50 wrote:
| If you ask people in the street to name a famous living
| British technologist, they might come up with Tim
| Berners-Lee or James Dyson, but they are never going to
| name Sophie Wilson.
|
| (I wonder what answers you would get?)
| frutiger wrote:
| Alan Turing (on the PS5 note) and Isambard Kingdom Brunel
| maybe?
| michaelt wrote:
| Alas pjc50 specified _living_ British technologists.
|
| I mean, Britain has many great technologists if you're
| willing to count the likes of Arkwright (died 1792),
| Babbage (died 1871), Watt (died 1819), Faraday (died
| 1867), Randall (died 1984), Bell (died 1922), Harrison
| (died 1776), Logie Baird (died 1946), Stephenson (died
| 1848) etc
|
| But some would say if a country's list of technology
| greats has so many dead people on it, perhaps that
| country's glory days are over.
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| PS50 pound note, william churchill is the one on the PS5
| note.
|
| This is burned into my brain. because I heard a joke when
| the redesign came out about him going from not being
| accepted by his country to not being accepted in Lidl.
| (PS50 notes are often refused in the UK for fear of
| counterfeit.)
| pjc50 wrote:
| Yes - hence the more interesting qualifier "living"
| bemusedthrow75 wrote:
| It is upsetting to me but you are right, they'd know
| Dyson. (I wish they would instead know the name Chris
| Duncan, the inventor of the Henry vacuum cleaner and
| while still a Brexiteer, a man who hasn't subsequently
| kicked dirt in the eye of the UK).
|
| They wouldn't remember Tim Berners-Lee's actual name but
| they would be able to say, the web guy. (Which is
| probably better for him when he goes shopping).
| pjc50 wrote:
| TBL was in the 2012 Olympic opening ceremony!
|
| But yes, few people who actually _build_ things, get to
| be famous public figures. Possibly due to being too busy
| to engage with the media nonsense or even worse social
| media nonsense.
| bemusedthrow75 wrote:
| He was indeed :-) But I suspect more people could
| recognise his charming unassuming face than remember his
| actual name.
| bemusedthrow75 wrote:
| A decent number of Brits know about the Raspberry Pi, but
| it is true to say that a hell of a lot more know what the
| BBC micro:bit is.
|
| None of them would recognise Eben Upton (except as Jason
| Statham)
| hnhg wrote:
| I cannot prove it, and this is entirely anecdotal, but my
| friends and I have observed it first-hand from VC
| dealings and friends in the right UK circles. Inherited
| generational wealth and class in my experience powers UK
| investment, particularly in the start-up scene, much more
| than in the USA. Of course, there are some exceptions I
| can think of in the UK but it is very much tied up with
| the class system there and understanding this makes life
| easier. The same situation affects other European
| countries to some degree, and many people I know have had
| to go to US VC firms to get funding. I have spent a lot
| of time working in all of these countries to some extent
| and the UK class system seems to be increasingly
| stifling. YMMV though.
| te_chris wrote:
| Absolutely. As others have alluded to: angels abound, but
| look at the pedigree of the associates and partners at VC
| funds based in London and it all falls into place. I
| assume it's because it's a relatively easy job that you
| don't need much talent for. Perfect for an intelligent
| but bored dauphin.
| scrlk wrote:
| So I need the correct "old boys" school tie and a pair of
| red trousers to get funded by UK investors? :^)
| Fluorescence wrote:
| Nah, the OP is talking bollocks. The angels I know are
| all middle/working-class entrepreneurs. There is no
| upper-class conspiracy holding people back, there just
| isn't much money. Non-Brits don't really understand that
| class is not money. Red trousers are closer to farmers
| than businessmen. If you are British and want to be a
| tech investor, you go to the US too.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > There is no upper-class conspiracy holding people back,
| there just isn't much money.
|
| I think the argument is that there _is_ plenty of money,
| it's just parked safely and quietly in property rather
| than investing in production or R&D. And not a
| "conspiracy" as much as the blank look the property
| investor class give you when you can't promise risk free
| leveraged 7% forever.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| I don't see how that is anyone holding anyone back?
|
| Why would you want to take funding from someone expecting
| no stress or hassle?
| pjc50 wrote:
| > Why would you want to take funding from someone
| expecting no stress or hassle?
|
| The important word here is "money". There isn't a surfeit
| of money available from more suitable investors.
| hnhg wrote:
| Thanks for the kind words. I actually agree a lot with
| what you say, and would just add my personal experiences,
| and be interested in learning more, but I don't think you
| established the tone for further conversation here.
| Fluorescence wrote:
| [flagged]
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| Make that knee-high grey shorts, a graze on your knee,
| and a Prefect following closely behind you with some
| implement of abuse.
| kalleboo wrote:
| And find a pig that catches your eye
| bemusedthrow75 wrote:
| Though even the rent-seekers ought to see some value in
| ARM.
| bartread wrote:
| > want rentier incomes with low risk.
|
| I don't know if I buy your point about inherited wealth
| but there is what I'd describe as a stifling culture of
| rentseeking that, if not actively encouraged is certainly
| tolerated and overlooked, at many levels of society, and
| across both businesses and public organisations. And once
| you become aware of it you start to realise how obnoxious
| and oppressive it is.
|
| We certainly don't lack for talent, but we're very good
| at suppressing or wasting it.
| hsjqllzlfkf wrote:
| "there is a culture of rent seeking" must be the
| understatement of the year. What the UK understands as
| "entrepreneurship" is buying property to rent. This is
| everyone from your grandma to the shiniest MBAs.
| bartread wrote:
| Aye. Nothing against housing associations that provide
| much needed social housing but the vast majority of
| private landlords[0], including AirBnB owners, are
| absolute parasites that have an entirely corrosive effect
| on communities and society as a whole. Indolent
| freeloading bloodsuckers.
|
| _[0] I 'm sure there are exceptions: in fact I know
| there are. There are always exceptions. 20-odd years ago
| for a while I shared a flat with a couple of guys where
| the private landlord deliberately charged far below
| market rent in order to be able to offer affordable
| accommodation to people who weren't well off. Good
| people, the family that owned that place._
| truckerbill wrote:
| You don't buy the point about a country with royal family
| that owns vast swathes of land?
| bemusedthrow75 wrote:
| No such point was made (regarding a royal family).
|
| Incidentally, the Royal Family themselves privately own
| 1/250th of the UK's land, and it is mostly not
| particularly valuable. Only about PS15bn.
|
| As a proportion this is only four times what the richest
| private landowner (the Emmersons) in the USA owns of the
| USA. And the Emmersons have come by their share pretty
| quickly by comparison, wouldn't you say?
|
| The Duke of Westminster (not a member of the royal
| family) has a physically much smaller (private) estate
| that is worth more than half of the royal estate.
|
| What the royal family own privately should not be
| confused with what the "Crown" owns. The Crown estate is
| basically owned and operated by the state.
| cjrp wrote:
| > As a proportion this is only four times what the
| richest private landowner (the Emmersons) in the USA owns
| of the USA. And the Emmersons have come by their share
| pretty quickly by comparison, wouldn't you say?
|
| If anything, I feel like the speed (or how recently the
| land was acquired) is actually in the Emmersons favour
| here. A generation or two ago somebody got wildly
| successful, vs. land being inherited because your 30x
| great-grandfather was Henry VIII.
| bemusedthrow75 wrote:
| Yeah. Swings and roundabouts though; most of the truly
| long-held property of the royal family has become the
| Crown estate, and over time the family has had to make
| much more of its income from that wealth due to the
| contraction of the Civil List.
|
| Charles himself will only have income from his estate
| (whereas his mother had income from the Civil List)
|
| What I meant to say is that in the blink of an eye,
| realistically -- in a couple of generations -- you could
| and probably will have a situation where a single land-
| owning family in the USA could end up with a very similar
| proportion of a _vastly_ larger country.
|
| It's probably in the nature of land-owning for this to
| happen: someone ends up with all of it, then can't
| maintain it, and it ends up being sold off or dispensed
| to the state, then sold off, reaccumulated, and the
| circle continues.
|
| And I think it's a mistake to see the royal family's land
| ownership as a source of power and influence.
| Unfortunately we give them the power and influence for no
| really good reason; the land is a side thing.
| usrusr wrote:
| "It's probably in the nature of land-owning for this to
| happen: someone ends up with all of it, then can't
| maintain it, and it ends up being sold off or dispensed
| to the state, then sold off, reaccumulated, and the
| circle continues."
|
| Realistically, once someone owns everything, they'd never
| _ever_ have to sell. Because they could just rent it out
| temporarily for the same price. Demand isn 't that
| flexible and in absence of other sellers, where else
| would a would-be buyer take their money?
| te_chris wrote:
| Excellent comments both yours and the one you replied to.
| Once you see it you really can't unsee it.
|
| The UK is a marvel that it manages to cultivate such an
| incredible creative scene in the shadow of the rent
| seeking mediocrity.
| usrusr wrote:
| From my continental Europe perspective I suspect that
| Americans will inevitably look at those inherited wealth
| structures through their assumptions of unbounded rent
| maximization, oblivious to a certain element of
| responsibility that will be far more present in
| Europeans, continental or not. "Only because you _can_
| squeeze out that penny doesn 't necessarily mean that you
| _should_ " is something that exists in most places that
| aren't the US. American wealth seems to have that siloed
| off into charity completely separate from how the money
| is made than others, "exploit hard/donate hard". I'm
| certainly not suggesting that everything is fine in the
| UK, but I do think that certain assumptions that are true
| in American will tint the picture quite considerably.
| ur-whale wrote:
| > Capital however is predominately held via inherited
| wealth and its controllers want rentier incomes with low
| risk
|
| You just described the capital markets in the entire
| western Europe, not just the brits.
| bemusedthrow75 wrote:
| But also the USA, probably.
|
| If you look past the tech bubble economies where the "new
| money" owners are, and into the world of physical assets,
| what you find is a constellation of families
| concentrating wealth, swirling around the central
| families of the 21st Century -- the Waltons, the Mars
| family, the Kochs, and so on down -- a power series of
| family wealth that has ordinary investors in the long
| tail.
|
| The USA is easily distracted by the vibrancy of the
| market-driven tech economy, and hoodwinked into ignoring
| the astonishing growth of private equity controlled by
| inherited wealth.
| pipo234 wrote:
| > a stock market dominated by octogenarian+ dinosaurs, a
| decaying rump of manufacturing, a finance sector that
| mostly makes its bread laundering the capital of the
| world's corrupt and corruptors
|
| Ah! Now I get it. That rhymes with companies like Shell
| and Unilever leaving the EU in favour of UK after brexit.
|
| (Not that Frankfurt, Milan, Amsterdam or Paris are known
| to be heavy investors in tech innovation, btw.)
| Lio wrote:
| Well Shell (and BP) are really likely to get sweetheart
| deals on North Sea oil from Rishi Sunak which might have
| swayed them.
|
| Now, I know what you're thinking, that that's just
| because both firms _coincidentally_ signed multi-billion
| dollar deals _coincidentally_ with Sunak 's family
| business, Infosys, to _coincidentally_ outsource all
| their IT jobs but I assure you that 's a mere
| _coincidence_.... probably. :P
| gswdh wrote:
| I'm not sure what that poster was referring to, however in
| my experience (as a brit), is that the UK is replacing any
| kind of industry into a service economy aka. people buying
| shit they don't need. You see this in a number of ways like
| the physical replacement of industrial areas into shopping
| centres or the fact the UK can't manufacture rail
| locomotives - the place where they were invented...
|
| Having said this, there is still a reasonable amount of
| industry in the UK, the UK is by far the best country in
| the EU to buy engineering supplies but I think this is a
| remnant of the past. Most of the major engineering
| companies in industrial estates are Asian or American
| owned, now.
| Matl wrote:
| > the UK is by far the best country in the EU to buy
| engineering supplies
|
| Germany has a far stronger industrial base still, I'd
| imagine if you want access to the EU you'd base yourself
| there.
| klelatti wrote:
| > the UK is by far the best country in the EU
|
| The UK is no longer in the EU. Quite a significant point!
| dazc wrote:
| I think a simpler answer is that for directors looking for
| a cash windfall the US markets are currently a more
| favourable choice.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| As it's 2am here, I'll rattle off assorted bullet-points in
| no particular order:
|
| * The UK's sudden deindustrialisation (1970s-1990s) was
| inevitable but foreseeable and yet still poorly managed by
| both political parties, IMHO: _my perception_ is Labour was
| more interested in propping up whatever heavy-industry
| remained rather than ease the UK into the future - and as
| for the Tories... probably best I say nothing there.
|
| * Even before deindustrialisation the overarching business-
| culture in medium to large businesses in the UK was, and
| still is, tied to the entrenched class system, insofar as
| the board-level positions, upper management, sometimes even
| middle-management, and many specialties like legal, are
| held by a kind of unofficial aristocacy that looks-out for
| each-other rather than what's best for the business that
| they run (let alone the country): some combination of Eton,
| Harrow, having read Classics at Oxbridge, you can see what
| I'm getting at. This alone explains how Boris Johnson won
| his party's leadership and remained in-office despite clear
| evidence of misconduct in office, and so on and so on.
| Nepotism is rife here: the middling, uninterested, types
| get to work at daddy's friends's firm if they can't get
| recruited by the banks when they do their milk-runs.
|
| * For reasons I haven't fully explored yet, despite the UK
| being the birthplace of the industrial revolution, and of
| so many inventions we still rely on today, and of great
| engineers like Isambard Kingdom Brunel - the engineering
| profession was never elevated to something Etonians would
| be interested in - it became a very middle-class
| occupation. That itself isn't a real problem as far as I'm
| concerned - the problem comes back to how the layers of
| management would be literally a class apart from
| engineering, and that class-divide results in engineering
| being excluded from management and leadership decisions,
| no-matter how central or critical engineering is to the
| company's identity or very purpose - for this reason you
| won't find many former-engineers being promoted to
| leadership or management or their experiences and inputs
| being valued: after all, _the board read Classics_ so _of
| course_ they know far better about how to run a successful
| business than a silly engineer from Lancs who plays with
| his funny slide-rule all day long.
|
| * Even in more progressive companies without the problem of
| aristocratic management it's difficult to get access to
| capital, especially for anything remotely risky.
|
| * A small, but still contributing point, that I feel
| matters slightly, is that different social groups in the UK
| tend to have differing mental pictures of what
| "engineering" even is: for many people (possibly even most
| people? maybe at least _oop north_...) they 'll tell you an
| engineer is someone who stokes the fire on a stream-train,
| or fixes their telly when it breaks - MAYBE a civil-
| engineer - while our preferred answer: "someone who solves
| problems" would probably be 3rd or 4th down on the Family
| Fueds survey screen. This is my perception and I hope I'm
| wrong. As an anecdote, I was in secondary-school and 6th
| Form during the last of the Labour years when the careers
| advice service ("Connexxions"[1]) was pushing a very
| egalitarian view of how careers, further-ed and higher-ed,
| and professional development should operate - I support
| their goals, but I feel they got the messaging wrong and
| misrepresented how many careers operated - for a solid
| example, I still have my A2-sized full-colour print careers
| guidebook (with lots of flashy photos to boot) we all got
| when we were 14 (15? 16?) which certainly contributed
| towards the perception that (excepting civil engineering)
| that "engineer" is just another word for "technician":
| while the book did do justice to civil and chemical
| engineering, it made no mention of software engineering or
| electronics engineering, while mechnical engineering was
| really under-sold to its readers, and electrical
| engineering was down-right misrepresented. Experiences like
| these are only going to put-off kids from considering
| engineering precisely at that age when they're thinking
| about what they want to do with their life.
|
| * More broadly, I don't think the UK really has many (any?)
| public-figures who are celebrated as engineering figures -
| in fact all, of the celebrities I know who have engineering
| backgrounds got famous for deciding to stop being an
| engineer: Rowan Atkinson (Mr. Bean) is an elctrical
| engineer who went to Queen's College, Carol Voderman did
| engineering at Cambridge, and so on - while the people I
| suppose we could be celebrating, like James Dyson, clearly
| act against the interests of the UK's engineering sector
| (he moved huge chunks of the company to Singapore). Yes, we
| have Rolls-Royce jet-engines, BAE Systems, and an
| assortment of luxury carmakers - but I'm convinced they're
| only still around because they are strategic national
| interests, and the UK government has had to bail them out
| of bankruptcy more times than we'd like, so excepting the
| defence sector, the UK has no real equivalent of NASA with
| which to inspire its young children, pre-uni students, and
| mid-career-shifters.
|
| * Another aspect that I think matters, even if only
| somewhat slightly, the attitudes of those-in-charge
| (regardless of their class background: Tory or Labour)
| towards people-on-the-spectrum and those adjacent to it
| (i.e. us) - it's a nebulous thing I can't pin-down easily -
| but until 6th Form I was under constant pressure to conform
| (because if you don't support any footy team at all then
| you must be a _right spesh_ ) - it starts right from
| Reception year in Primary. Of course this is not unique to
| the UK, I've heard the exact same stories told from people
| I know who grew up in Iowa or Idaho - but those states
| aren't exactly known for their engineering sectors either.
| This extends to an undercurrent of scepticism of things
| like ADHD; while paternalism and gatekeeping remain in the
| medical profession, especially in mental health (though
| things are definitely better than they were 20-30 years
| ago) - right down to the anti-trans crap Rishi Sunak is
| still pushing to deflect criticsm of 13 years of Tory rule,
| never mind it led to the murder of a teenage girl. At least
| David Cameron wasn't that bad.
|
| * One of the things that Boris Johnson's government did
| while in power was to up-end the 6th Form examinations
| system - I'll admit I don't know all the details, but I
| understand his changed the system to be much closer to the
| (almost social-Darwinian) way things were when Boris
| himself was doing his A-Levels: where your final subject
| grade depends far more on how you do in your finals exams
| instead of continuous assessment/coursework, with no or
| very limited opportunities for resits, and removing choices
| like a-la-carte module selection - but it is exactly and
| only because of the flexibility afforded to me when I was
| at that age that my comorbid ASD+ADHD-addled brain was able
| to get into university (and a very good one at that),
| whereas I'm certain that I would not be able to manage
| today with that level of intense exam-prep in only a
| 2-month window - and without my degree I would not be able
| to qualify for the H-1B (where a BSc is an absolute
| requirement) and eventually get my US Green Card.
|
| * It is true that the UK does, actually, succeed in
| software in one crucial area: video games: Rockstar, DMA,
| Rare, Codemasters, Hello Games (No Man's Sky), just to name
| a few - but as others in this thread have remarked:
| successive UK governments, again, regardless of party, fail
| to give the sector the credit and support it needs and the
| UK's success here is in-spite of everything, not because of
| it. Crucially, the UK's games sector was built on the home-
| computer revolution of the 1980s - successive governments
| have had plenty of opportunities to repeat that success,
| but so far all I've seen is the 2016 BBC micro:bit project
| - which honestly felt like a gimmick than something to
| inspire kids with.
|
| * Things aren't all bad though: I'm happy to see things
| like Scratch being taught in primary-schools and A-Level
| Computer Science now being closer to undergraduate level
| than glorified-ICT than it was in my day - but these things
| won't address the larger social, cultural, and attitudinal
| issues at play here.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connexions_(agency)
| fact_check wrote:
| [flagged]
| iamflimflam1 wrote:
| [flagged]
| pjc50 wrote:
| Everyone forgets that ARM's success was built on Sophie
| Wilson.
| fact_check wrote:
| [flagged]
| pjc50 wrote:
| Goes all the way back to
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures and beyond.
|
| The UK has a great engineering tradition, especially from
| the Victorian and Empire eras, all the way up to WW2, but
| it seems that after that there was a dramatic and
| incredibly short sighted turn to economisation and avoiding
| investment.
|
| The absolute poster child for this was the UK space
| programme, which was cancelled just before the launch of
| its first rocket. The director of the programme decided to
| defy orders and launch anyway, on the grounds that
| everything was ready and he was in Australia. But this
| pervades everything. The TBMs for Euston HS2 have been
| bought, but are going to spend the next year buried doing
| nothing, because there's a persistent desire to cancel HS2
| _after_ most of the work has been done but _before_ any of
| the benefits are gained.
|
| Concorde somehow escaped cancellation multiple times. The
| UK developed its own nuclear reactor technology (Magnox)
| then gave up and let Electricite de France run everything.
|
| I've heard this complaint from several people in
| Cambridge's "startup" industry too. There are hardly any
| angel investors. The amounts of money available are tiny.
| Got an idea? Tough, you'll have to develop it in your own
| literal garden shed at your own expense. The local capital
| owners are far more interested in property, which doesn't
| require any thinking.
| paganel wrote:
| I'm not British, but it is my understanding that after
| WW1 and WW2 the money had just dried up when it came to
| capital-intensive projects. I've just finished reading a
| book [1] that explicitly mentions the lack of available
| money as a reason for the Brits having to give up their
| Sea Power status just after WW2.
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/Seapower-States-Maritime-
| Continental-...
| pjc50 wrote:
| This was certainly a real problem, as was the whole IMF
| rescue business in the 70s, but not across the whole
| postwar period. More could have been done with the oil
| wealth than turn it into a real estate boom, for example.
|
| Realistically the UK gave up sea power status sometime
| during WW2 when we were massively outbuilt by the US, and
| the collapse of imperialism as a ""business model"" took
| care of the rest by making us fall back on our own
| resources rather than simply taking them.
| rjmunro wrote:
| > Concorde somehow escaped cancellation
|
| Was that because it was owned by a government treaty with
| France? Neither country could cancel without the other.
|
| The final result was way overbudget and not a market fit,
| but a bunch of skills and technology went on to Airbus.
| DrScientist wrote:
| More likely there is just more capital available in the US
| markets - the Arm listing won't be small.
|
| A lot of US funds have restrictions as to how much they can
| invest outside the US.
| jacooper wrote:
| Why?
| DrScientist wrote:
| Not protected by US regulation and law.
|
| So if you are a US pension fund that has all it's funds
| in Nigeria ( to pick an example ) - can it be said to be
| safe under US law?
|
| Ironically the inverse problem EU countries have with US
| tech firms holding their citizens data - however it that
| case the response is generally 'la la la'.
| vasco wrote:
| https://www.investor.gov/introduction-
| investing/investing-ba...
| cowsandmilk wrote:
| > A lot of US funds have restrictions as to how much they
| can invest outside the US.
|
| I'm not sure that's relevant. ARM is listing American
| Depository Shares, so this is still usually viewed as an
| international investment.
| DrScientist wrote:
| Are you sure - I always thought the whole point of ADRs
| was to make foreign company shares available on the
| American markets?
|
| In fact the SEC says
|
| 'ADRs allow U.S. investors to invest in non-U.S.companies
| '
|
| https://www.sec.gov/investor/alerts/adr-bulletin.pdf
| spiralpolitik wrote:
| The fact that the UK government allowed ARM to be sold to
| Softbank in the first place speaks volumes for how much the
| UK government values engineering.
| t43562 wrote:
| The fact that they allowed Imagination Technologies to be
| sold to a Chinese company in this age of GPU powered AI is
| ......... even worse of an example
| duskwuff wrote:
| Imagination was sold in 2017, well before the AI boom.
| dvngnt_ wrote:
| at least you got healthcare or something
| [deleted]
| slowmotiony wrote:
| And you don't have one...? In that case I'd highly recommend
| you to get insured too.
| dazc wrote:
| Most people who can afford it do. We still come out and
| cheer for the national religion once in a while though
| since we are told repeatedly it is the envy of the world.
| tchaffee wrote:
| No the British news accurately reports on how bad it has
| become after over a decade of politicians defunding it.
| It's sad. When I left London a decade ago I had no reason
| to ever use my private insurance. NHS was excellent. Now
| I still use NHS when I visit but it not to the very high
| standards it used to be. And I have to sometimes use my
| private insurance. Everyone knows this and talks about
| it. I don't expect this to continue though. Most people
| want to return to a well funded and more functional NHS.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| The business enviroment is a lot better in the US, a friend
| just started a company there, got an unsecured 80k line of
| credit at 1.5% on a fresh LLC. This kind of thing doesn't exist
| in the UK. I know people who couldn't even get a 5k overdraft
| after 2 years in business (and profitable).
| drexlspivey wrote:
| Why would anyone lend to a new business at 1.5% when they can
| get 5% risk free ?
| commonlisp94 wrote:
| because it's the government on the other side of the loan
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| There has to be a catch. Maybe a teaser rate?
| masklinn wrote:
| Sounds like English banking has not changed much from 20
| years ago, when I needed to spend 3 months in the UK, had to
| have a uk bank account to rent a flat, but needed an English
| residence to open a bank account.
| mnahkies wrote:
| In terms of personal banking it's definitely gotten easier
| for new comers with the likes of Monzo and Revolut - I had
| no problem opening account on arrival. From what I've heard
| the high street banks have improved a bit in this regard
| too, probably in response to the challenger banks taking
| market share.
|
| Finding a place to rent on the other hand is still
| difficult, particularly without a history of renting in the
| UK
| noelwelsh wrote:
| Consumer banking has radically changed. I can't comment on
| needing a residence to open a bank account to get a
| residence, because although I ran into the same issue when
| I first came here it's been a long time since that was a
| problem for me. In other aspect personal banking is much
| much easier. Many banks allow you to open accounts online,
| for example.
| googamooga wrote:
| Yeah, and to prove your English residence you have to
| provide a paper bill from a utility company (water or
| electricity) with your name and address on it. Which adds
| another 3 month as those utility bills are on a quarterly
| basis. Crazy stuff...
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| And if it is a high demand area you need to look more
| spanky than all the other applicants: great jobs, rental
| references, no kids/pets, older couple prefered of sharers.
| In London you also need to make an offer on the spot.
| kranke155 wrote:
| That's definitely changed. I had little issues with this in
| 2015 using a letter of proof of employment.
| hawk_ wrote:
| I can confirm that it was the same at least ~6 years ago
| when I went through the same.
| ac29 wrote:
| > in the US, a friend just started a company there, got an
| unsecured 80k line of credit at 1.5% on a fresh LLC
|
| This almost certainly required a personal guarantee (the
| friend would have to promise to repay the loan in the case
| the LLC could not).
| _fizz_buzz_ wrote:
| Does it make a big difference where a stock is listed? ARM will
| still be headquartered in the UK.
| swarnie wrote:
| Not particularly, London isn't exactly known for its share
| trading anyhow.
| DiscoDays wrote:
| What does it mean that Arm is headquartered in the UK,
| practically speaking? What kind of a change would need to
| happen for, say, the Austin office to become the headquarter?
| phatfish wrote:
| If I remember one of the original conditions put on the
| acquisition of ARM by the UK gov was that HQ stays in the
| UK. So I doubt that will change. Can't say I'm familiar
| with the tangible benefits, but I assume is exposes ARM to
| UK law and regulation more than if the HQ was in another
| country. And retains some jobs in the UK.
|
| There must be some benefit for governments to make such a
| request.
| SillyUsername wrote:
| Well Mrs May f'ked that one up. It used to be on UK AIM (LSE)
| until she waved it through despite security interests and minor
| UK shareholders (i.e. me) not wanting to sell. Cue BoJo later
| grovelling to ARM once they actually realised they'd sold off
| one of the biggest UK IT companies and tried to get them back.
| nicechianti wrote:
| [dead]
| fidotron wrote:
| It is worth noting when ARM was public before (starting in
| 1998) it was listed on Nasdaq and the LSE in order to access US
| capital.
| blitzar wrote:
| You can not trade LSE stocks on zero commision US apps, thus
| you can not become a meme stonk.
| tomatocracy wrote:
| I don't think it's about lack of capital but higher valuations.
| For reasons which don't seem to be well understood, investors
| on US markets seem to be willing to bid higher multiples than
| investors on UK and most other markets.
| kypro wrote:
| More liquidity. No stamp duty on share purchases. Prices
| denominated in the world's reverse currency. Access to the
| largest market institutional investors.
| 3cats-in-a-coat wrote:
| Markets are more accessible and more popular to retail.
| Retail is stupid. Case in point: Tesla.
| TheFattestNinja wrote:
| I know this is probably not the cause, and maybe it's just me
| being a naive SJW, but in my view London's financial
| institutions lost 90% of their credibility capital recently not
| so much because of Brexit (which hit them too) but because of
| the whole LME Nickel trade rollbacks shenanigans. Yes I know
| LME != LSE, and I know it was a lose-lose situation, but they
| co-exist and as a person who is not into finance they share
| their credibility to an extent.
| kristopolous wrote:
| Is there more global access to the US market? Does capital flow
| with less friction to it?
|
| What about indexes? If they qualify for NASDAQ or some other
| major index, there's some "mandatory" investment that gets
| triggered by a bunch of funds that do index tracking.
|
| I would presume where you choose to list is kind of a flag of
| convenience, like it is in maritime. It's probably not as
| irrelevant as to where things actually happen as flying the
| Liberian flag or incorporating in Delaware but I'd bet it's
| close.
| Galanwe wrote:
| > Is there more global access to the US market? Does capital
| flow with less friction to it?
|
| Yes, and yes.
|
| > What about indexes? If they qualify for NASDAQ or some
| other major index, there's some "mandatory" investment that
| gets triggered by a bunch of funds that do index tracking.
|
| NASDAQ is an exchange, not an index.
|
| The most prominent index on NASDAQ is the QQQ, the top 100
| stocks,market cap weighted.
|
| But this is the big boy playground, the smallest stocks in
| QQQ should have at least $400B marketcap. ARM by the most
| optimistic estimation should be 1/10th of that.
| throw0101b wrote:
| > _The most prominent index on NASDAQ is the QQQ, the top
| 100 stocks,market cap weighted._
|
| QQQ is an index fund:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invesco_QQQ
|
| That follows the Nasdaq-100 index:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasdaq-100
|
| There are other funds that track it too from companies
| other than Invesco.
| Galanwe wrote:
| Right, right, you're 100% correct.
|
| To further explain, in most financial jargon, one often
| call an index by its (historically) most traded tracking
| fund. That is, the NASDAQ 100 is often called the QQQ,
| the S&P 500 is often called "spider" (SPDR), etc.
|
| But you're 100% right, in a comment about vocabulary,
| jargon has no place.
| sgerenser wrote:
| Arm would definitely qualify for the Nasdaq 100 index. I
| don't know where you're getting the $400B market cap
| minimum, but the current index includes Zoom (19.7B),
| Walgreens (23.3B) and eBay (22.8B), among many other
| companies well below $40B (let alone $400B) market cap.
| Galanwe wrote:
| Damn you're right. I should have stayed in bed today.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Unstable currency.
|
| Unstable government.
|
| High tax.
|
| Questionable access to other markets.
|
| Questionable reliability when it comes to international
| agreements (which is pretty fucking vital to a company like
| AIM).
|
| It's sad (I'm a londoner) but the UK cannot blame anyone but
| our selves. We're just going through the national equivalent of
| a tantrum.
| SilverBirch wrote:
| It's been a topic for quite a while that UK regulations mean
| pension funds don't invest as much in equities and as a result
| there's not a huge amount of liquidity available to dump into
| stocks on the London Stock Exchange. They are working on trying
| to fix this though (slowly).
| physicsguy wrote:
| The irony of course is that this has been caused by
| regulatory induced de-risking of employer pension funds after
| a lot of them went bankrupt and left the government on the
| hook via the PPf
| amiga1200 wrote:
| I'm glad that RISC-V SBCs are starting to become usable.
| surajrmal wrote:
| Depends on what you mean by usable. If you don't need long term
| support, strong software ecosystem support, and performance
| parity, it's great. It'll be a few more years before everything
| comes together, but hopefully not too many.
| snvzz wrote:
| >If you don't need
|
| Reads like FUD, as you go on to list a bunch of items that
| RISC-V actually already delivers.
|
| Point per point:
|
| >long term support
|
| Is achieved via upstreaming drivers[0] and providing
| documentation[1], something that e.g. StarFive is doing much
| better than Raspberry Pi ever has.
|
| >strong software ecosystem support
|
| RISC-V is rapidly building the strongest ecosystem.
|
| >performance parity
|
| JH7110 SoC used in boards like VisionFive 2 provides CPU
| performance between Raspberry Pi 3b and 4, at much lower
| power consumption.
|
| TH1520 SoC used in boards like Sipeed Lichee Pi4A[2] provides
| performance above Raspberry Pi 4.
|
| Both SoCs provide faster GPU (JH7110 is 4x that of Pi 4,
| TH1520 is faster), better hardware video codec blocks,
| cryptography acceleration, faster memory interface, faster
| I/O outside of the SoC and otherwise better and more built in
| peripherals.
|
| Note: Raspberry Pi have been used as reference points as they
| are, by far, the most popular ARM SBCs.
|
| >It'll be a few more years
|
| As proven above, it's already there against the Raspberry Pi
| line.
|
| But next year it'll be better, as RISC-V will finally compete
| with the fastest cores available. This is based solely on
| what's already announced (Ascalon, Veyron, P570 and so on).
|
| RISC-V enables the best processors.
|
| 0. https://rvspace.org/en/project/JH7110_Upstream_Plan
|
| 1. https://doc-en.rvspace.org/index.html
|
| 2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37201754
| themiddleupper wrote:
| The RISC V fanboism is rampant here with bunch of them
| repeating their marketing slogan in the comments. There is
| nothing inevitable about RISC V. If anything it has lot of
| mountains to climb before it can be considered a challenge to
| the existing instruction set. It may or it may not do that.
| Being open does not automagically make it happen.
| snvzz wrote:
| >If anything it has lot of mountains to climb before it can
| be considered a challenge to the existing instruction set.
|
| That's not what ARM thinks[0].
|
| >There is nothing inevitable about RISC V.
|
| As it turns out, the decisions have long been made, and
| RISC-V has been chosen.
|
| 0. https://thechipletter.substack.com/p/risc-v-
| part-2-ambitious...
| brucehoult wrote:
| "Being open does not automagically make it happen."
| Absolutely true. Many many "open" things have never gained
| traction and have fallen by the wayside. It was a plausible
| argument about RISC-V in 2016. It is not in 2023, when it
| has already happened.
|
| Lots of companies have made their decisions, projects are
| kicking off -- for example Samsung just started porting
| .NET and Tizen to RISC-V for use in their future TVs and
| other products. LG similarly. It will take five years for
| the products resulting from that to emerge, but they are
| coming.
|
| The RISC-V ISA didn't even formally exist as a frozen spec
| a little over four years ago. Ratification in July 2019 was
| the starting gun for many to start projects. The results of
| that are just emerging in the last months -- the VisionFive
| 2, tne Lichee Pi 4A, the 64 core Milk-V Pioneer.
|
| A lot more things have gone into the pipeline since then,
| and will be emerging in the next two to three years. Things
| up to around Apple M1 performance ... from multiple
| companies.
| S_A_P wrote:
| I'm curious and haven't seen anything regarding the ip theft of
| ARM by (???). Didn't the Chinese arm of the business get taken
| over in some way? It made the news a few years back and nothing
| ever came out of it.
| nocoiner wrote:
| The Chinese subsidiary basically declared independence. Last I
| saw the two sides were at an impasse, and the Chinese sub was
| continuing to do its own thing - ARM parent appeared clearly to
| have the law and the facts on its side, but without the ability
| to enforce a foreign law judgment or get into an unbiased local
| court, what are you going to do?
|
| Forget it, Jake. It's China.
| justin66 wrote:
| From the recent FT article:
|
| _"Despite our significant reliance on Arm China through our
| commercial relationship with them, both as a source of revenue
| and as a conduit to the important [Chinese] market, Arm China
| operates independently of us," the prospectus warned, adding that
| Arm did not have any direct management rights or the right to
| representation on Arm China's board._
| manvillej wrote:
| and so we watch, 1 more tech company, approach its demise through
| the unending undereducated pressures of the market
| sschueller wrote:
| How long until Apple does a hostile takeover? /s
|
| I assume regulators would block a hostile takeover like they
| would a regular buyout if there are concerns regarding market
| power?
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| Why because afaik they have a master IP license in perpetuity
| to ARM designs and they can chop and change what they want -
| nothing is stopping them from diverging from ARM reference
| designs completely and retaining just the instruction set
| because it is useful to tool vendors and programmers.
| klelatti wrote:
| Ah, the Apple has a perpetual royalty free license meme.
| Almost certainly a myth.
|
| Very, very unlikely anyone would get a perpetual license that
| covers all future products just because they were a founding
| shareholder.
|
| I did some detective work on this a while ago for my
| newsletter (link in bio) from behind the paywall:
|
| > ... Apple and Acorn were paying royalty fees soon after
| they founded the company why should that change to grant
| Apple a royalty-free license at some point later?
| Havoc wrote:
| Aws seems more likely
| MikusR wrote:
| Apple with their special license couldn't care less about ARM.
| snvzz wrote:
| >special license
|
| This idea that they have a special license keeps getting
| thrown about.
|
| But nobody has ever been able to provide any proof or
| otherwise reference a believable source.
|
| Until proven otherwise, it's a myth.
| senttoschool wrote:
| Why would Apple ever want to own ARM? Their internal CPU design
| team is years ahead of the ARM team. Apple has an architectural
| license and doesn't care about ARM core designs.
|
| Quite honestly, ARM falling on its face hard is actually a
| benefit to Apple. That would mean that Apple Silicon and iPhone
| SoCs have less competition. Imagine if Qualcomm chips based on
| ARM designs are 5 years behind instead of the 2-3 years now.
|
| But the Nvidia + ARM combo made sense from a technical and
| strategic standpoint though.
| klelatti wrote:
| > But the Nvidia + ARM combo made sense from a technical and
| strategic standpoint though.
|
| Made sense for Nvidia. Not for other Arm customers.
| justin66 wrote:
| ...because seriously, how many of those customers could
| ever possibly _want_ to use Nvidia 's graphics or AI
| silicon? That stuff is never going to fly.
| [deleted]
| justin66 wrote:
| I mean, the law can govern these things, but it's true
| that preventing the merger was a certain way to prevent
| them. And ensure that ARM never have the capital needed
| to become much more than they are today.
|
| Nvidia dodged a bullet when the merger failed. ARM, not
| so much. I would be _delighted_ to be proven wrong about
| all this by ARM 's future success. Unless I succumb to
| the temptation to short the stock, in which case my
| happiness would be attenuated somewhat.
| Vogtinator wrote:
| > Their internal CPU design team is years ahead of the ARM
| team.
|
| Was. They're now at Qualcomm.
| orlp wrote:
| > Why would Apple ever want to own ARM?
|
| You answered your own question:
|
| > Quite honestly, ARM falling on its face hard is actually a
| benefit to Apple. That would mean that Apple Silicon and
| iPhone SoCs have less competition.
| senttoschool wrote:
| No I didn't answer my own question because a hostile
| takeover of ARM can cost $70b and it doesn't guarantee that
| ARM would fall on its face after the acquisition because it
| has long-term contracts.
| BooneJS wrote:
| The world is so dependent upon ARM's designs, yet their revenue
| is relatively small. Public companies are expected to grow year
| after year after year. It will be interesting to see how they do
| that without becoming a competitor to their customers. I wish
| them good luck!
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