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Comment by goldcd | Hacker News Reader

I work for a company head-quartered in one continent, listed on another and I work in a third (the UK) - and sales are based all over.

Not for one moment saying there aren't local issues/idiosyncrasies - but I'm unsure how moving your company solves them, and article seems to overlook all manner of problems:

Aren't you going to lose staff when you move?

Is everybody going to have to get up really early to talk to Europe?

Won't new employees cost more in NA?

i.e. Why not just hire a US based sales rep to sell to your US customers, in the style that works there? (and a native speaking, convervative, tech-enabled one for Germany etc)

Or just register yourself at a Missouri PO, list in the US, seek US investors etc?

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Well precisely

Moving to NYC/silicon valley is going to mean fishing in a very over fished pool. There is a reason why "meta", Google and amazon are expanding engineering over here and the wider EU: lots of (comparably) cheap talented labour.

Even if you don't loose staff, operating an engineering team over large distances is a challenge unless you know what your doing.

Given that he's blaming the engineers for concentrating on "technical purity" when I assume he was in charge, I suspect he's not really of the right mindset to be responsive enough to make the changes needed.

Still, best of luck. I look forward to the updates on progress.

Yes, there was a subtext of:

1) I'd like my company to be doing better ("what an innovative thought")

and

2) It isn't, because the engineers are trying to make the product better and sales can't shift it (but these two things definitely aren't connected and due to me not being in NYC which will magically solve these issues)

I don't know about his own mindset, but my first thought when he talked about attitudes towards sales is well of course you're hearing negative attitudes towards sales if you're in a company full of engineers with PhDs, nothing to do with Britishness

I mean, HN isn't British, and it's skewed towards people working for high growth companies in California, and yet because it's also skewed towards people whose mindset is engineering subthreads on sales are full of people with a negative view of salespeople, sales as a profession, sales as an organisational priority, products sold by enterprise salespeople etc.

> There is a reason why "meta", Google and amazon are expanding engineering over here and the wider EU: lots of (comparably) cheap talented labour.

Yeah, I moved from London back to NYC after Brexit and literally got a 100% raise. And London is well above the European average.

Post-covid (and with remote still the norm in many companies) the global market for high-talent employees has really leveled the playing field regarding compensation and packages. Where there might have been a 25-50% difference in a FAANG package between the bay area or NYC and London a few years ago it seems to be closer to 5-10% now if you know how to play the game. Junior people might be getting a bigger haircut on the difference, but for senior engineers and senior management in engineering/devops/sre it is a good time to be in the market over on this side of the pond.

Facebook recruiting in London feel about as desperate to fill their pipeline as Google did ten years ago these days.

London has many great qualities, but tech hiring here is also really challenging.

> Facebook recruiting in London feel about as desperate to fill their pipeline as Google did ten years ago these days.

I'd say it's more size than desperation. Yeah, recruiting in London probably gives you lower bang for the buck than tapping other labor markets. But once you reach a certain size, you're going to be recruiting in basically every market, since good people are a small proportion of the population and you have a huge need for good people.

For example, Google has had great success in hiring Serbian developers. They also hire developers in Brazil, Poland, Taiwan, Japan, Germany, France, etc - 40 different countries. To exclude England would be kinda weird. Facebook being a few years behind Google makes sense, and they'll end up in a similar position, basically hiring everywhere.

My impression of desperation from Facebook is admittedly anecdotal, but it's based on just how aggressive their recruiters currently are about repeatedly contacting people who have previously turned them down vs. the others. It's not really that they're that different from e.g. Google, more as an illustration of how tough the London market conditions can be even with deeper pockets than most startups.

Completely agree.

The grass is always greener, and moving to NYC will not come without challenges. However, post-Brexit UK is problematic on the skilled worker front for startups. Before, many European tech workers converged to London to work in startups (or ended up there). This seems to be happening much less now due to multiple reasons [0]. Overall, I think Brexit removed one of the main benefits of being based in the UK: being in that special EU English-speaking country that moves faster and better than the rest of the EU, yet, is part of it and greatly benefits from this setup. Now, you're left with Ireland, a beautiful country but probably hard to attract talents at scale in Dublin if you're not a big tech.

[0] purely subjective based on personal history. I'm currently working remote for a London-based startup and have the most challenging time hiring. It was easier pre-Brexit. I moved back to my home country in 2020, fearing the covid restriction x Brexit restrictions combo in the mid-term. The result of my (partly Brexit-induced) move is that my next gig will probably not be UK-based. I know I'm not alone in that situation, and I know we don't get CVs anymore from people ready to jump on the next plane to Gatwick to start a job in London. I wonder how many years we'll need to see this trend confirmed and who will be the real winners. Paris? Amsterdam? Berlin? Barcelona? All of them, hopefully!

Amsterdam will take the cream of the US based tech companies, Ireland will continue to be the ops centre for EMEA and Spain will continue to get most of the contractors.

Why do you think this, genuinely curious?

Well with Ireland and Spain, there's no change.

I think Amsterdam will get much of the London-based business because of their (relatively) lax labour laws (closer to UK) and the facility of the natives with English (important for relocating execs and their family).

There is a massive housing shortage in the Netherlands, isn't there? I agree on your other point but might be logistically complex and expensive v.s. Berlin for instance.

It won't be Germany, because of the labour laws, unfortunately.

Couldn't the UK just solve this problem by making it super easy for those people to get work visas?

Your best tech talent coming from Bucharest to London has always preferred to go to San Francisco if they could, but the EU made it so much easier to come to London. There's nothing about not being in the EU that prevents the UK from offering a similar deal.

What am I missing?

> What am I missing?

Perhaps the fact that Brexit was at least partially driven by xenophobia, and no politician will gain popularity by announcing "We are making it super easy for foreigners to come work here!" (and yes, even highly skilled ones).

Yes, I think the UK will end up carving exceptions everywhere they can to keep Brexit alive from a political standpoint, but dead from a practical sense. Right now, the fear of the unknown is what's most likely pushing people not to move to the UK anymore. In five years from now the situation should be clearer I'd say. I personally hope they'll open things up again but we'll see!

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