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by fidotron
4300 days ago
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The tax break thing is a mess, simply because as the UK (and to a lesser degree France) discovered the EU prevents any member state from being able to compete with the likes of Canada, or the provinces of Canada, on this front. This is why the "cultural test" becomes important, but in the case of Scotland where the great videogame export is GTA while one Glasgow based episode sounds possibly amusing it's not the foundation for longevity. The other aspect of this is outside of defence and finance the UK tech sector took an absolute hammering over the last decade. You have the odd success story like ARM, but the games industry in north America is crawling with a disproportionately high number of Brits (and French people). In Montreal you could even tell when Realtime Worlds (makers of Crackdown based in Dundee) closed down thanks to the sudden influx of Scots. It is said that Scotland's greatest export is the people. On immigration policy I tend to think Scotland has the right idea, and rather than it being feared in the rest of the UK they should embrace it too. The raw problem is really one of housing shortage, and embracing skilled people coming in while dealing with housing is a far healthier idea than pulling up the drawbridge. Perversely if Scotland stayed within the UK and the UK did enact that policy Scotland's people deficit would most likely remain. Ultimately though an independence vote will create an investment situation with all the appeal of Detroit. The fun part is that narrowly rejecting independence won't be much better, and in the long run could be even worse. |
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I'm actually doing (early-stage) interviews with a number of companies in London and elsewhere. The visa situation for a US national hoping to work in the UK is obnoxious: assuming you've signed up to be eligible to sponsor people already (~8 weeks and a thousand pounds or so) you then do a little dance with an overly-tailored job description to demonstrate you can't hire someone locally after N weeks, pay another thousand pounds or so on the visa application, wait an additional ~6 weeks for processing, hope you get approved (quotas are falling dramatically) and if not, well, maybe you could to an inter-company transfer after a year of working for them elsewhere. Big companies benefit disproportionately while startups try to avoid the complications. Could be worse, though: it could be like the US.
In a place like Amsterdam or Berlin I'm given to understand that you can hope for a straightforward and relatively cheap approval process with very short turnarounds (on the order of two to four weeks) and much higher likelihood of getting the requisite approval.
Having access to a functioning tech industry in English-language friendly Scotland with low barriers to immigration would be awesome -- but then again, by the time it happens I'll probably either have married the girl or moved back to the US. :)