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Comment by TorKlingberg | Hacker News Reader

I wonder what this will mean for the London tech scene. A LOT of people there are from other EU countries. I will affect the American giants too. Google and others have big development centres in London where it is easy to attract top talent from around Europe. They could re-focus to Ireland or Germany, but it will be harder to make people move there for a job.

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Google just opened new Headquarters @ Kings Cross (2 buildings 1 HQ + 1 for DeepMind) and Amazon was set to move into it's new HQ in liverpool street also.

I really wonder how happy they are after spending couple of Bln's considering the London real estate market now.

With any luck they all flee to Dublin or Edinburgh and we get a huge boost while England self-immolates.

Why the anger?

At a guess because during the referendum for Scottish independence from the UK the line was 'stay because otherwise you'll not be in the EU anymore'. So for the Scots to find themselves out of the EU now by force is probably not what they wanted to wake up to.

Personally, because my home (Scotland) is being dragged into this situation against its will.

If the English want to destroy themselves they're entitled to do so, but not drag the rest of us down with them.

Wouldn't it be great to have 3 more referendums for Wales, Scotland, Ireland to let them vote once more time? And then have them join the EU separately?

You mean "Northern Ireland".

yes though I also realise Wales actually voted out so it would just be N.I. and Scotland

Ah, so it's hitting you personally. Well as an American, I can relate. We don't always get the government we want.

You get to change government every 4 years. Scots are screwed for life against their will. Hardly the same.

Sometimes we don't get the government we want, but sometimes we get the government we explicitly rejected.

That's quite a stupid reason to be angry. I would hope that people living in UK would understand the meaning of democracy.

At a guess, they do. And democracy with 'simple majority required for huge changes' may not be the best recipe to get buy-in from those that are dragged along.

So I fully understand the anger, if it weren't for the recent Scottish referendum that would be a different situation, but that did happen and for the Scots this must be extremely bitter right now.

"majority rules" is often conflated with democracy.

40% of Scots voted to leave. I wouldn't talk about it like it's a single hive mind if I were you.

Which means greater majority of Scots wanted to remain compared to a much smaller majority of the whole UK that wanted to leave. If a 51% vote to leave is relevant enough to warrant the UK leaving the EU then a 60% vote to remain is relevant.

It's absolutely relevant, but it also means talking about the Scottish as if there are no eurosceptics there isn't reasonable.

Have you seen Braveheart?

Probably won't happen anything that have been said in the last hours, no rush to Berlin, Dublin, Frankfurt or Paris. The exit has 2 years ahead to happen, in this period there's time to make deals, agreements and keep almost everything like it's now, slowly changing what doesn't work. Moving people is really hard, plus London has a business mentality that is hard to find anywhere else in Europe on the tech/startup scene. Anyway, time will tell what's going to happen. Switzerland lived the exact same situation in the '90s with the fear of having companies and corporation leaving the country in favour of the EU, well, with a hard work and agreements, that have been avoided. I know not joining is far different from quitting, but still, predicting the outcome is absolutely impossibile, UK might become the hottest country for business as can fall and die, both scenarios are equally possibile.

Both scenarios might be possible, but how did you gain the certainty that both possibilities were equal?

As you mention Switzerland as an example. There was the Referendum to join the EEC in 92 which was lost. It took about ten years until the bilateral treaties with the EU were ratified. Also, I don't remember the nineties as a time, where the swiss economic boomed... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland%E2%80%93European_U...

Google's engineering HQ is in Switzerland, which isn't in the EU and also recently had a referendum to suspend freedom of (EU) movement.

A referendum that the government has yet to make a law since the EUs stance is that all bilateral contracts from the first round of negotiations hinge on the freedom of movement. After the EU statement things became all quiet on that front.

And a bit ironically, the EU declined to even negotiatiate with Switzerland, because any concessions would have helped the Brexit camp, and nobody wanted to risk a Brexit.

Google Opened a new Engineering HQ at Kings Cross in London.

Switzerland has an FMP agreement with the EU which is something that clearly the UK doesn't want hence the BrExit.

Had. Please re-read my post. The 2-year deadline for implementing the referendum is nearly up.

Yeah and we don't know what happened, Google made a strong move into the UK over the past 2 years and this year it opened a huge complex with a new HQ. It could've been just because of that and them not expecting a yes vote on the BrExit. That said tech companies never had many issues recruiting workers under Tier 2 general visas it's just more expensive for them. But you can bet your arse on the fact that none of the multinational corporations is happy now.

I'm still thinking about Amazon they are registered in Luxembourg over 40% of the items I order ship overnight from the mainland (France/Germany) a lot of things will have to change.

Why can't the UK have open borders to skilled immigrants and not so open to unskilled immigrants?

I do not believe the UK is going to crack down on tech engineers and phds that want to work in their country.

You can't be a member of the EU (or the EAA if i remember) and restrict immigration from other EU countries.

When the UK finally leaves then yes that could be how immigration is managed.

They may leave them open, but for an European engineer it just became a lot less attractive.

They will not want to, but right now those skilled immigrants can easily come here to work, however if there was a lot of visa work to sort out then they may choose Germany or France over the UK. For an employer in London such as google it means dealing with many visa applications from many countries whereas if they were based in frankfurt or Dublin then they just need to deal with visas for UK applicants.

Judging by today's discussion with friends one issue is that the UK looks very unwelcoming for immigrants like me now.

We won't make any rash decisions but I think my partner and me are going to leave medium term despite us having great and interesting jobs.

That's not a decision based on economics but on "soft" feelings.

> Why can't the UK have open borders to skilled immigrants and not so open to unskilled immigrants?

You would have the extra friction of proving to the UK government that you are skilled. There would probably be a requirement for formal education, so self-taught programmers are in trouble.

I admit I am speaking in my own interest here, as a Swedish person living and working in the UK. When I got a job here I just packed up my stuff and moved. I showed my passport to the border machine and that was it.

If I needed a skilled worker visa, I would probably have had to pay a certified translator to translate my diploma, send in both translation and original, and hope they send them back. Do the same thing for a dozen other documents. The employer would need to submit something, which may be fine for Google but harder for a startup. Then wait for months, because the home office has no incentive to be quick.

The UK (and the EU) programming salaries have been ridiculously low compared to the US for quite a while. In the US I can relatively easy get $100-140 per hour, $150+ with some luck. In the EU I mostly see jobs in the 80k euro range (senior web dev positions).

I hope this is going to change now.

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