Does Google see UK developers as unimportant? | Hacker News Reader

Does Google see UK developers as unimportant?

blog.alsutton.com

18 pointsAl_Sutton21 comments

I imagine it's the same that caused Yahoo to move it's developer day away from London, London is horrendously expensive if you want to hold a large tech event. We're talking in the million dollar range (to get conference facilities, get internet line, insurance, get food & drink), not to mention it's expensive for attendees to travel and stay there.

I stayed in a 4 star hotel in Berlin last year for €30/night, for a similar hotel in London you'd be paying 5-10x that price.

If you're living in London traveling to Berlin isn't a big deal, travelling to London from anywhere else is a much bigger deal.

Cities or towns that want to host conferences work really hard to make them attractive to conferences. (See the work done by local authorities/venues @ http://wiki.linux.org.au/Ctte/LCA_Bid_Guidelines) Maybe the value proposition just isn't there for London with everything else they've got going on?

edit: I remembered Yahoo had to hold a London hack day in some kind of stadium (to get enough capacity); the roof was struck by lighting and opened letting water in. Video of the incident http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acUEvkMu2xM

The problem is the accomodation for the attendees, Google/whoever might get a good deal on the facilities but if none of your attendees can afford to go then what's the point?

For the cheapest "chain" hotel in London (Travelodge) you're still looking at between £75-£110 a night

There are a bunch of Developer Advocates that are based in Google's London office. They do fairly regular office hours at London's TechHub space, work with UK teams, and in general are active in the city/country.

So while there might not be big formal events this year in London, there's a lot more day-to-day availability and involvement.

I'm not sure I agree at all, there's about 6 or 7 UK based Google developer advocates, around a quarter of all the EMEA based Google developer advocates.

http://code.google.com/team/

So while we don't get the big Google conferences here, we do get the ability to meet with these guys reguarly if we want to.

For example, Paul Kinlan works a couple of days a week in an co-working space in Liverpool, if you want to speak to him, you can just arrange to drop by. I'm sure there's people in other countries who'd kill for that kind of access.

http://doesliverpool.com/press-releases/does-liverpool-provi...

Compared to London, Berlin is less expensive, better food, has more fun stuff to do, better weather, better accessibility, vastly more attractive women, and less of a police state. I'm sorry they are so offended but London just isn't all that much fun to visit.

I think Berlin is a great choice - better than London. Berlin is developing and changing quickly and seems to be setting the scene for a perfect startup hub: lots of bright young people and cheap offices (cheap everything relative to the rest of europe) meanwhile London is primarily a financial district, not engineering.

Immigration laws could be a reason. There are plenty of expat developers spread around Europe, for whom, it's much easier to travel to any city in Germany than apply for a UK visa. Arguably, this process is about as complicated as obtaining a US visa.

Are Schengen visas really easier to obtain?

Yes, but for people already working in any Schengen country, they don't need another visa to travel to Germany.

I wonder if the negative attitude of so many Britons towards Europe might play a role (for bigger, non-local events).

Anyway, at a practical level:

- No Euro, and higher prices

- No Schengen

- An island at one extremity of Europe

Do Google even have any offices in the UK? It seems some tech companies have just forsaken the UK altogether.

They have an engineering office in central London.

http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/jobs/uk/

[Edit: Guess how I found that!]

With duckduckgo.com ?

By reading the OP :-)

> [London] is home to Googles second largest engineering center outside the US

-- and it links to the UK job offer listing.

The guy spends a lot of time comparing populations. The US has five times the population the UK does of English-speaking monoglots - perhaps they want stronger ties with polyglot developers?

Addressing one of the specific points in the post, I have to wonder, how much of a language barrier is there really for an anglophone in Berlin?

As a silly little English-only American, I spent a good chunk of the last year in Taipei, and didn't do too bad. When you really needed someone who spoke reasonable English, they were usually around. I'd think it'd be a lot better in Berlin, especially if you're just hanging around hotels and nearby businesses used to dealing with international clients.

IT people in Berlin speak very good English. Most of the "mistakes" they make are common German-to-English mistakes that you will automatically correct in your head after hearing them a few times.

The question is whether the work language is English or not. If people find it easier to discuss problems in their native tongue, then that is where you will miss out. And these discussions may be some of the harder conversations to follow.

I’d be interested to hear what people think is the reason for Google holding events in Berlin, Paris, and Barcelona, and nothing in the UK

Tired of poms whinging?

"The Nile ain't just a river in Egypt."

Hey, weren't there some poms looking for the sources of the Nile a couple of centuries ago? Any luck with that?

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