Tech Nation shutting down as UK government pulls key funding
sifted.eu
sifted.eu
That is absolutely wild.. 12m to a bank surely is pocket change. What possible justification did they give for that?
They gave the funds instead to Barclays incubator who is a for profit organization.
Meaning they will simply push and invest in what is currently making money and not unproven technologies and sciences.
This won't end well long term i feel.
The short version is that Barclays Eagle Labs project represented better value for the taxpayer because Barclays absorb the operational costs leaving the taxpayer's 12M to go wholly towards it's intended target. Tech Nation used some of the 12M to run it's self.
I'm no huge fan of Barclays bank (bad experience several decades ago, vowed to never touch them again), but they aren't "giving the money to the bank", it sounds like Barclays is taking over the contract to provide the service.
> [Barclays] will not, however, take over Tech Nation’s role administering the UK’s global talent visa. Tech Nation has notified the UK’s Home Office that its visa scheme will stop — though it will continue until then.
Kind of weird that Tech Nation is notifying the government that a visa program will stop. Does Home Office intend for another org to take over the role of administering tech applicants for the Extraordinary/Global Talent visa?
"the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) put Tech Nation’s contract up for grabs after growing concerned about its reliance on state money"[0]
"Barclays’ tech incubator Eagle Labs will use the government grant — which has been awarded for just two years — to launch new programmes to help tech companies"[1]
Q: In what sense did Tech Nation "administer" the global talent visa? It seems to be at https://www.gov.uk/global-talent - what did Tech Nation have to do with this?
[0] https://sifted.eu/articles/barclays-tech-nation-grant-fintec... [1] https://sifted.eu/articles/tech-nation-shutting-down/
When it comes to the UK, you can be sure that you will get lots of hyperbole and pretty minimal facts about this kind of thing. Not a year ago, the govt was getting criticized for creating "skilled visa schemes" for workers earning under ~£20k/year...yes, there are schemes for visas people earning over this amount too. Last year, 1m visas were awarded, this is the highest level ever.
In terms of startup funding: I believe there are now multiple multi-billion funds that are investing directly in startups, these funds even operate below the national level, Scotland has two directly run by the govt for example, local govt even has these, the govt announced today a multi-billion package for semiconductors, there are (I believe) currently three tax incentive schemes for startups.
It is important to understand that a change that is counter to this direction could just be because it is simpler to fold this kind of thing in to other services (this may just be me: I don't think having private companies involved in the visa award process is a good idea...just having Barclays do incubation is a good idea...and btw, private incubators usually have these relationships with banks too).
Of course, everything is still going to be placed within some weird narrative about "corruption" or Brexit...just UK things...
To get the visa you must first get an endorsement from a nominated organisation who's fit to judge your field (academia or research, arts and culture, or digital technology). Tech Nation did the endorsements for digital technology.
Once you have the endorsement from Tech Nation, the actual visa application done by Home Office is rather simple and is just 'rubber stamping' back in your home country.
Is it possible Tech Nation were a bit too happy getting their government funding, didn't devote enough time to thinking about diversifying their income, or the "value for money for the taxpayer" angle, then were surprised when the gravy train stopped?
I'd love to pick your brain if your open to that.
I enjoy living in the UK. The main thing that keeps me here is enertia - social circle and a (remote, but not async) job that I enjoy.
My initial move here was 100% a function of my age/stage in life. I do not regret moving here, and to be honest 'the current climate' doesn't really affect me that much.
You mistyped 'Tories'. Not that the Tory-lites (the other party) is any better.
“Our decision to make the Digital Growth Grant competitive brings the funding into line with the majority of government grants. Barclays Eagle Labs was successful because their application represented the best value for taxpayers’ money, will benefit the most startups and scaleups over the next two years, and was scored highest by an independent panel.”
Tories be tories.
But I should have been less pithy; his ancestry hadn't occurred to me, perhaps because I am an OCI myself.
p.s. what is his business background or his wife's inheritance?
My point is that he is a perfect synecdoche for his party: reflexively help establishment business and the donor class; ignore the small stuff that could grow large. And cutting anything that encourages immigration is important to the BREXIT wing of his party (which may be all that is left of it).
a company the UK government has outsourced part of the "tech talent visa" check to has lost its government funding
no reason it couldn't be done by someone else
the article also states the grant was for £12 million and 3000 people went through it
that's quite a lot of taxpayer money per visa to check someone's eligibility
Submitters: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
(Sometimes it's the site itself that changed its title, in which case of course it isn't the submitter's fault.)
> There exist what I call the ‘forever problems,’ policy challenges that Britain has faced for decades, known about for decades, debated and deliberated over for decades and yet the raging, fiery injustice that these challenges promote lingers and festers. [0]
The future is bleak for Britain with it's zombie government and feckless opposition, both devoid of ideas.
[0] - https://www.oxfordstudent.com/2022/07/11/the-fall-of-a-natio...
https://medium.com/eudaimonia-co/welcome-to-dickensian-brita...
https://eand.co/brexits-three-years-old-how-s-it-going-catas...
https://eand.co/britain-has-officially-lost-its-mind-5c21851...
There are many other articles regarding the UK and what went wrong in his publication.
One major fault of Umair is that he thinks that the US and the UK and its Western European satellites are 'the world' or 'the civilization'. Hence he agitates about 'the civilization collapsing'. He misses the fact that its not the civilization collapsing - its the randian Angloamerican countries who handed over everything to private profiteers...
Here in the Bay it seems there's a constant interest from British nationals to move to America (judging by the volume of applications we get). But I've never heard anyone interested to do the reverse.
Top destination for UK nationals in Academia was... the US [0].
[0] http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/tech-careers/the-global-bra...
Either way London is still one of the best European cities for tech.
The fact remains UK has one of the best university systems and best opportunities for skilled work outside of the US. Yeah the Tory gov is trying their best to destroy the country but this kind of institutional bias is hard to wreck. It's very similar to the US - which has an amazing university system that continues to prop up the economy over the long term, despite how destructive/insane the government policies are.
I'd also argue that for lots of immigrants, things like the NHS and general safety net make the UK far more appealing than the US. Also if you're from a former British colony, it feels a lot more familiar - so you see large numbers of south/south east asian nationals who prefer to immigrate to the UK over the US.
On top of all that, it can also be significantly harder to get a visa to live in the US.
1: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn06...
In 80s and early 90s Punjabi movies and songs "Inglaand" may have been popular, but since the 2000s "Kaneda" has the goto choice.
Most South Asians you tend to see now are there for educational tourism and will eventually move to Canada or back to India, or are from business/political backgrounds looking for a backup passport should they be prosecuted for crimes (eg. Nirav Modi, Lalit Modi, Vasundhara Raje Scindia, Vijay Mallya), though even the US ranks higher for them but they wouldn't be allowed in the US due to background checks or past criminal records (eg. Lalit Modi's attempted stint as a coke dealer at Duke). That said, they definetly send their families to the States. For example, Amit Shah's sisters live in Schaumburg IL and Imran Khan's sis is in the Tri-Valley.
In the UK, “Asian” (in common vernacular) usually refers to descendants of India/Pakistan/Bangladesh/Nepal/etc.
In the US, “Asian” usually refers to descendants of Chinese/Japanese/Korean/Vietnamese/Thai/Filipino/etc.
What pops into my mind is that the US is closer to what you would call east Asia than it is to India, and, of course, Britain has particularly strong historical ties to India/Pakistan etc. So that might also be a factor.
Still, there must be many reasons why asylum seekers in Calais are trying to get to the UK, when they passed through a number of EU countries first.
US is the greatest place for entrepreneurship and changing the world. Nothing even comes close.
There is a tangible difference in the air.
I don't think you realise how hard it is to move to the US for work.
Speaking as someone with experience of both UK and US immigrant work visa systems in the software industry, the US provides significantly more visa options and paths to permanent residency, especially to folks who didn't come to the country to study first. It doesn't help matters either that in most cases equivalent software roles pay better in the US too.
The UK for years could often rely on EU migration (freedom of movement rules etc) to a large extent to provide for its migrant workforce needs. Brexit closed this avenue completely and the UK hasn't yet built an immigration system remotely appropriate for its needs to replace it, and efforts to do so are of course hugely politically contentious.
let's not start on the nightmare called h1b.
yeah current cost of living in the uk, is kinda fucked but us isn't faring better. if you only look at raw salary number then yeah US is ahead, but once you start factoring other things - uk / us are on par.
The "other things" aren't what they once were either - I'd take my US private health care over the current state of the UK's NHS any day of the week right now. The wait times for even basic treatments are insane, and thats before we consider the wider state of the UK economy and public services.
> you will have your skilled visa in about 2 weeks depending on the country.
You can't really generalize like this in my experience - there are so many individual factors - just where you were born is going to affect how long your visa takes in many countries. The systems also vary enormously, from opaque hard to navigate like UK/US to open points based like Canada or Australia etc. It takes far longer than two weeks just waiting for an H1B decision result too in most cases.
That alone is a big reason people move to countries other than the US for tech work. An empoyer can wait a month or two for a visa to come through, they can't wait years. I'd love to work in the US, but it needs multi-year planning and for lots of stuff out of your control to line up.
Or does the applicant have to navigate the visa process themselves?
(I'm a Brit who's always had one eye on the US... becoming two eyes lately.)
Yes, I'm one of those people you're talking about.
H1-B is the most common for tech workers, unfortunately due to quotas it can be pretty hard to get. Even if you get the job, your petition could be denied randomly because there were too many applications for the year.
The alternative if you're not married is to get your GC through your marriage if you have a US partner.