Can the UK Create Something To Rival Silicon Valley?

An anonymous reader writes "Hoping to bring together ambition, creativity and energy in one place, the UK government hopes to grow East London so that we can benefit from the same sort of success that has been seen in California; jobs, tax revenue, highly skilled workers and takeovers. If it works, the country would massively benefit, with something to rival other established industries."

Comments

Re:But actually living in London is a challenge

[Fnkmaster]

As expensive as the Bay Area is relative to the rest of the country, it still pales in comparison to nice areas of London.

Re:No. They can't.

[IamTheRealMike]

Your summary of the article is stupid. None of those sentences are quotes. In fact the article states at the end that SVs great weakness is that it's a crap place to live, directly contradicting what you wrote. Here's an actual quote:

For all its power, Silicon Valley has a great weakness: the paradise Shockley found in 1956 is now one giant parking lot. San Francisco and Berkeley are great, but they're forty miles away. Silicon Valley proper is soul-crushing suburban sprawl.

Yes, yes it is. Having lived temporarily in the Valley and grown up in the UK, I'm pretty sure I don't want to live along the US-101. I'd do it if there was some really compelling reason, but otherwise no thanks - love the sun, hate the driving. Rents and property prices in London are absurd and most likely still a bubble, but other than that it's not a bad place to live at all.

Your other points (not quotes) are also pretty stupid. There are a ton of well educated people in London, as well as many Brits working for Silicon Valley based companies. The UK has a long history of computer science, you know about Bletchley Park, right? The BBC Micro? The government doesn't deserve any credit for it (the BBC does!) but there were a ton of people growing up in the 80s and 90s who had access to really good computers and lots of educational material about them. It certainly got me started. At 28 I'm now a senior engineer at Google (in Switzerland).

BTW I think it's really great that companies like Amazon, Facebook and the big G have set up shop in London. These companies are great at training people who can then develop the confidence and skills to go do their own companies (Facebook was practically made of ex-Googlers back in the day, don't know if it still is). Especially anything internet related that might scale up fast will benefit a lot from the pool of skilled workers these companies will attract and create.

Re:its called HUGE tax breaks for R&D

[TobascoKid]

My previous employer had a non compete clause, but then they were an American company (though they waived it when they moved our dev jobs out of the UK and made us redundant). My current employer (which is British) doesn't, and I don't remember any British company that I worked for having one.