[KaiserPro]

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.

[notahacker]

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.

[goldcd]

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)

[fennecfoxen]

> 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.

[evgen]

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.

[vidarh]

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.

[rsj_hn]

> 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.

[vidarh]

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.