I know a ton of IT firms which moved from Germany to UK because of less job protection there and less hassle to work 24/7. I wonder how they will react now for the upcoming price increases everywhere and probably UK leaving the EU.
I remember after joining a nameless company here in the UK and filling out all the paperwork. Someone from HR came over to me to explain I had missed filling out a form.
I asked which form and they replied the Working Time directive opt out. I explained that 48 hours was more than enough time to do my job and that I had deliberate not signed it. They looked at me confused and then went away. It annoys me when they assume you should fill it it like that though.
Yes. I had the same situation when starting a job a few years back... the managers just seemed confused that I'd bothered to take the time to understand what I'd meant more than anything. Guess they were just used to hiring people for their ability to follow instructions to the letter.
I would expect people to buy data centers and hardware by borrowing money. These loans should be denominated in British Pounds in Britain. So if anything, it seems like Microsoft should be getting a great deal since their debt is being inflated away.
No reason not to raise the prices if the market will bear it, but I wonder if Brexit is actually a great help to their short-term profit margin?
It's not just tech good which are getting ~20% price increases but general goods like food, DIY, curtain and everything really, as companies start restocking they have no choices but to increase prices.
The UK government has a lot of infra based on Azure. The MOD and NHS for starters.
Smooth. Very smooth. Another indicator that the rabid, vulgar libertarians in the Brexiteer ranks are more than happy to use Brexit to strain public services more in order to justify private services.
Man oh man am I glad to be paid in dollars working remotely for a US company right now.
And imagine the inducements they must have offered MS to build a datacenter here.
UK.gov actually has a semi-inhouse cloud called Crown Hosting that might win new business from Azure. They don't offer the functionality needed to produce an infrastructure that adapts to load but that doesn't matter - gov clients don't really get cloud and typically want static computer systems duplicating an on prem infrastructure without the support costs.
Apple raising prices too. Food is more getting more expensive. I wonder, maybe naively, if all of the consumer prices will go up (over?)-compensating for the change in GBP could we expect workers demanding higher salaries in the near future too?
Also, recently pound has gone up (from 1.11 against euro to 1.19 now). It's definitely not the pre-brexit state but imagine it slowly crawls up back. Would you expect the price increases, in some time, to roll back?
> could we expect workers demanding higher salaries in the near future too?
How?
The wedge is already driven between skilled professionals who can compete on the international market, and therefore have price-setting ability, versus people who have no market power and can be squeezed and threatened with the unemployment regime. Unskilled or marginal workers may end up starving.
No, this is the Greece effect. Trade balance has been terrible for years. Now the financial services industry is under threat. While there's a lot of negative things you could say about them, at least they've brought in foreign money to keep the accounts balanced. In order for the balance of trade to recover, imports have to fall. This means that the part of your living standards which depends on imports (including Azure) is going to fall.
Yeah I was going to put in my comment that it's likely this was decided long before Brexit, thanks for clarifying. In general though I feel that if we do start to see an increase in investment an expectation of decreased regulation is going to be the reason.
We've been in a period of very low inflation for the past 2-3 years, current inflation rate is about 1%, I'm guessing we might spike as high as 3% maybe from currency depreciation? It's not the end of the world.
It's likely to go much higher, because the UK imports a lot more than it produces.
And unlike countries that can export home-grown food and/or raw materials, most UK exports are the end of a long supply chain that starts outside the country.
So even on exports, its margins are a lot lower than those of countries that produce raw materials and food.
Brexit will make this worse.
The UK can't continue like this indefinitely (it's not the hegemon, like the US) because when you spend more than you earn you have to make up the difference by borrowing money or devaluing your own currency.
The consequences are predictable - prices rise, inflation rises, the cycle repeats, and eventually the economy breaks down altogether after sovereign default becomes a real threat.
At that point the UK will either have to go full North Korea, or will need to strip everyone of their savings, raise taxes - and will still need a bailout.
Having "taken back sovereignty" the country will be on the hook to the banks for decades.
The devaluation after brexit is no larger than the one after the financial crisis in 2008. In fact it's probably smaller I think. Inflation rose to 5% approx from a base level of around 2% and that's with oil being considerably higher than it is now. So your prediction of "The consequences are predictable - prices rise, inflation rises, the cycle repeats, and eventually the economy breaks down altogether after sovereign default becomes a real threat." didn't happen then, it likely won't happen now. Why? Because inflation due to currency fluctuations is different to the type of inflation caused by an economy overheating.
Hell the bank of england has been printing money for 5 years and if that didn't cause runaway inflation I don't see how the pound weakning somewhat is going too.
