Tech developer quits UK saying Brexit has ‘killed’ his business | Hacker News Reader

Tech developer quits UK saying Brexit has ‘killed’ his business

amp.theguardian.com

18 pointsrbanffy26 comments

I'd be willing to bet his business failed and Brexit is a handy scapegoat.

Amazing that this was even published mind, there's so little here.

He named it. The pound dropped eating his margins. So he moved to a better place with a stronger currency and culture. He will not be the only one, almost everyone will be fleeing soon.

He works internationally, the drop in pound means he would have been earning more as the pound dropped. Surely he's going to have to put his prices up, which could have been his solution anyway?

I'm sure the real reasons are political rather than financial.

He’d be earning more if paid in some other currency and spending in pounds.

He’d be earning less — as the article mentions — if earning in pounds and paying out (to subcontractors) in other currencies.

I don't see how changing country makes any difference? He'll have to put up the price for his existing UK customers to cover the costs of his overseas staff

> I'm sure the real reasons are political rather than financial.

He did say he's originally from Yugoslavia. Since the Brexit vote, the UK has become a lot more hostile to immigrants. That can certainly be a good reason to leave too.

Good. All empires fall.

I guess the budget ran out on this article. They really based the whole oped on 1 guy?

The Guardian has always had lazy reporting and lax editing. The articles on the Snowden leaks were written based on a single high school dropout's fanciful interpretation of the documents, without any input from domain experts.

It is sad to see what The Guardian has become.

I don't mind their leftist optics, my problem with them is that they have been publishing unbalanced, poorly researched/uncorroborated articles.

Long way from the Guardian of the Snowden days.

> they have been publishing unbalanced, poorly researched/uncorroborated articles.

So exactly like The Guardian of the Snowden days, which got PRISM ridiculously wrong by not interviewing anybody who had a clue. Worse, they never issued a correction, instead doubling down on the original story.

So, essentially came to the UK to be prosperous. At the first hint of potential harder times he leaves, rather than try harder to contribute. Brilliant...

Scotland. Northern Ireland. Wales. Did the lower operational costs and anti-Brexit sentiment of these regions not occur to him or did journalistic bias force the author to write 'UK' rather than 'London'?

Wales voted to leave by about the (UK) national margin.

It's beggars belief, they have the lowest immigration numbers of all the UK and some of the most funding from the EU.

Disinformation was rampant in Wales. Many of my Welsh friends were aware of massive ad campaigns from the Leave campaign in their areas.

A good few places in Wales are struggling under the current government austerity, and blaming the EU was an easy scapegoat to sell to the misinformed.

Disinformation was rampant in England too. British tabloids have a long history of blaming the EU for the weirdest made-up stuff, as well as for unpopular laws from the UK government, while the government loves to take credit for popular measures from the EU.

Contrary to the disinformation campaign, the British people chose what they thought is best for them. I'm just glad that democracy is strong and respected there.

Well, yes and no. It's certainly better than some places, but it's clearly very vulnerable to disinformation campaigns, and the government's unwillingness to put this to a vote is causing chaos. It appears a small group has used the situation to take control of the future of the country and steer it into a direction nobody wants, and is now denying the people a vote on the mess they're making.

The people already voted. There was a clear understanding that that vote was the one and only. There wouldn't be a vote at every step. Britain is a representative democracy and the representatives deal with the details.

There was not a clear understanding what the vote was about. There contradictory promises being made about what a Brexit would mean. It would mean saving tons of money that wasn't there, staying in the common market for goods and services, yet somehow leaving the common market for labour, except maybe not when it benefitted Brits. The whole campaign was a bunch of lies, and those lies are what informed the people's vote.

There was absolutely nothing clear about what a Leave vote would actually mean. It makes every sense in the world to hold a new, more honest vote once that has become clear. It's a betrayal of democracy to plunge the country into such an ill-advised and irreversible direction based on a single, poorly defined and poorly informed vote.

People are more xenophobic in places where they see less immigrants.

Compare the Brexit heartlands of Essex and Kent to London.

He is quitting the UK, regardless of your semantics

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