The UK could pitch itself as a place rich US tech companies can buy top talent at low price. I have seen some (not many, to be honest) US tech companies open offices in the UK so they can pay half or less for staff, compared to what they'd pay at home. If Brexit goes as badly as it might, the pound could be even cheaper.
Because when tech companies come to places in the us they become gentrified and everything becomes expensive. In most cases tech companies coming to an area has a devastating effect as people who had lived in an area forever are forced out due to the insane spike in cost of living.
Because outside of financial services, there aren't that many highly profitable companies, Google or Facebook profitability levels are not common in Europe. Salaries have been rising though, and London salaries are twice or more than much of Europe.
I think there are lots of reasons, both sociological and economical, but my hunch is that demand for the most productive tech employees is lower since it's so easy to lean on American-produced innovations and services rather than build our own in the UK.
Consider that Azure, AWS, Google Cloud Platform, etc. are all huge in the UK, yet most of the work on them is taking place in the US. Ditto for Oracle, Office 365, the Google Suite and even consumer stuff like Craigslist, Reddit or Apple's services (that the UK never home produced something like Reddit continues to boggle my mind). Why pay for the best people in the industry to work in the UK when we can just stand on the shoulders of work being done in the US?
If you look at industries where the UK does take an innovative role like finance or bioinformatics, the salaries seem a lot more competitive, though are still not at US levels due to the UK's lower cost of living I guess.
¯\_(?)_/¯ That's not my experience of both places, and I've not found any data that supports London being as expensive as SF including https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou... - I've found it much easier to live in London on a budget than SF where you'd throw your personal safety and comfort into jeopardy by cutting too many corners.
Those numbers look quite wrong, I don't think they're comparing like-for-like.
For consumer goods it seems they're comparing a cheap UK supermarket to Whole Foods in SF, and for rents they must be ignoring square footage and/or using different definitions of city center to get those comparisons. I checked out rental prices in SF on a recent visit and found SF pretty good value compared to London.
I've lived in both SF (and Berkeley) and London. Accommodation in London zone 1 is a good bit lower than SF without the same level of competition. Accommodation further out is (overall) significantly cheaper than the BART accessible parts of Oakland and Berkeley with a drastically better public transportation setup. Pretty cool and inexpensive but (by London standards) not that accessible areas like Peckham are about as long of a commute into zone 1 as my Civic Center to Berkeley BART commute, and probably much shorter once you factor in the time spent waiting on platforms at before getting on and/or a connection at 19th Street/MacArthur.
It's actually possible for me, a not-especially-good junior/mid developer to consider living alone with a <40 minute commute in London; that seemed to be a no go for guys making far more than me in SF.
All that being said, I saved a stupid amount of money in SF working on intern level wages. If your goal is to slum it and accumulate money, London does not come close.
SF is a place to go and pile up money with a get out plan in mind.
Thanks for the input!
I haven't lived in London for long, but I found I had much more disposable income in SF, even compared to living in a non-London uk city.
Talking to people from around the US, it's just generally cheaper in other places in the US. Gas is cheaper, insurance, (non-SF)rent etc.
I was curious about this since it seems unlikely SF can be so much more expensive than London. When I looked into it a couple of months ago, I found zone 1 London rents are a fair bit higher than equivalent apartments in SF if you compare by square-footage and quality. I speculate that the idea SF is much pricier than London is caused by significantly lower standards/expectations for London.
Well it's needless to speculate, the variation is because London has the public transportation infrastructure to keep demand in prime areas under control. Wanting a large high quality apartment in zone 1 of London is a trio of luxuries that most people will happily compromise on, and they have the ability to do so without it being a big issue.
As far as space is concerned, in my experience one of the Bay Area's biggest problems was inefficient use of space in every which way possible. Even beyond the lack of usage of vertical space, every room I had was pretty huge, double bed, desk, room to do just about any kind of yoga I could think of and still a ton of extra on top of that. I'd have happily traded half of it for a few hundred off my rent.
I'd need to know what metrics are being used for quality (e.g. I'd take an absolute slum of a single room over sharing in prime apartment).
Probably the biggest is that the UK doesn't have the number of large tech companies in one place needed to push up wages. ARM is in Cambridge, Rockstar is in Newcastle, Dyson near Bristol. The only exception is in Banking where the salaries are much higher than the UK average (but still lower, as tech is views as second to other roles, not as the primary focus).
Other reasons are that the UK has a better social safety net. That to many people in many places in the uk there is no such thing as an engineer, if you work with computers you work in IT (and can you fix my laptop please?).
There is in many places (especially older companies with non-tech middle managers), also a management problem. You can't pay an engineer more than a (non-technical) middle manager, because the manager is (obviously) more important, as they can tell then engineers what to do. And all the engineers do is what management tells them to, so they're replaceable. This is obviously not a good environment for productive engineering, but explains why some companies see engineers as a cost centre rather than a revenue generating centre.
What's so interesting is that the same companies that do this will tell you that there is a very serious shortage of software developers. And they'll say this, with a straight face, with absolutely no mention of the pay, as if supply exists completely independently of demand.
It's not STEM supply pushing down the salaries. Japan has fewer per capita stem graduates than the US, with a highly developed technical economy, and dramatically lower engineer salaries than the US (with a GDP per capita roughly the same as the UK).
A virtuous circle of people who make a fortune investing in other people hoping to make a fortune in the hope of making their fortune bigger. Silicon Valley is the place where agglomeration economics kicked in for information technology. That’s not really surprising. It had to be somewhere. Film has Hollywood, Finance has New York and London, Chemistry has the Rhineland, high fashion has Milan, Paris, New York and London.
What’s special about Silicon Valley is that nowhere else comes close, that the minimum efficient scale for a great many software ideas is small, that it’s new, the addressable market is close to the entire global economy, and most importantly, they’re talent constrained, not capital constrained.
Thanks, to me that is definitely the simple and obvious answer. It’s the one I come to as well viewing things from the outside. I do wonder if it’s too simplistic and appealing because it is so neat though.
would be interesting to know, people talk about SF only, but how salaries look in places like Phoenix or in states like Wyoming, Montana and Vermont ? are there any sw jobs there ?
I think what most people are missing in these comparisons is that London's tech market is hugely contractor oriented, and so it makes more sense to compare day rates. Finance in London pays typically £500-600 per day for average level frontend and backend work. There's the potential to earn much higher if you're good at what you do.
Most companies I know much rather have permies than contractors.
Pay tends to be quite a bit higher for contractors but without all the perks like pension contributions and leave that a permanent position has. However, as a contractor, you have more control over your life.
As a contractor, it's also easier to get exposure to different tech, rather than be stuck doing the same thing day in and out.
You can get similar salaries in other Tier 1 cities like Hamburg, Frankfurt, Düsseldorf or Berlin. Of course its different in small cities (except Walldorf or Wolfsburg), but you also have lower expenses. Its not as centralized as UK.
My experience has been with Polish, Ukranian and Hungarian programmes who are technically excellent, but very flaky.
They just disappear for weeks and then pop up again as if nothing happened. I don't know if it's a cultural thing like Indian programmers who always say yes even when they mean no, or I've just met unreliable ones.
Lot's of companies do that, but the UK is kind of a strange place to choose to do that. If you want cheap, go hire a team of 10,000 engineers in Penang (I'm looking at you Intel). If you want expensive, choose silicon valley. If you want 2nd tier, take a look at Canada. You can choose the UK, but why? Their time zone means you'll never be able to meet with them at the same time as your Malaysian and Californian offices. They're cheap - but no where near as cheap as the far east. And they've got a metric shit tonne of employment rights, which most US companies not only don't want the cost of, but also disagree with ideologically.
The timezone, whilst often being a negative, can also be a positive. If you need a service that is always up and supported, having three teams (GMT-8, GMT, GMT+8) is one of the best ways to do this. This puts the UK in the perfect place for a company needing this based in California.
Also there is a good overlap for companies based on the east coast to do hand over, which I believe is common in finance.
The employment rights in the UK are minor compared to most of the rest of Europe, and while you cant fire at will, it is easy to get get people out if you want to.
Tech multinationals are almost by definition 24/7 operations.
The UK for an American tech company is a large stable country within 1-2 hours of the timezone of the largest single market in the world and has a shared language and culture.
If you want to sell into Europe then Britain made sense...until the fuckwits voted for leave (yeah I'm bitter, they fucked over everyone my age and under).
> If you want to sell into Europe then Britain made sense...until the fuckwits voted for leave (yeah I'm bitter, they fucked over everyone my age and under).
I think this is where the 'Remoaner' labels come from.
You're right but 48% of us thought it was a terrible idea at the time and still haven't heard a good reason for leaving that doesn't involve vague patriotic ramblings.
Plus on top of that many of the pro-leave arguments have proved to be outright lies already ...and we still haven't even left yet.
48% who voted and don't for get many British citizens where denied a vote in a breathtakingly example of gerrymandering that would make a Sothern democrat blush.
oh and the Gross Incompetence of David Cameron in how they wrote the goddam question.
I found it strange that such a big decision was allowed to happen without a super-majority of some type. Why not have another vote and switch back, and then another? And I heard, but did not research, that technically the vote was not really binding in any case.
Good education and fully native speakers of English and a society that keeps "engineers and scientists" in their place so cheap also you save a lot on not having to provide heath care.
That is exactly what every multinational has been doing in the Third World for decades! Software developers in Tunisia, for instance, get paid 5k per year. If the salaries are enough to cover the cost of living then workers will be happy. 100k in SF is the same as 70k in London which is the same as 5k in Tunis.
Have been to our offices in Tunis, can confirm. Shit's grim, apparently their currency devalued 3-4x in the recent years, making everything absolutely dirt cheap, and their salaries worthless.
> 100k in SF is the same as 70k in London which is the same as 5k in Tunis.
Not really. Only some things are significantly affected by the local cost of living: rent, food, nights out for instance. Sure, they probably make up the majority of your spending, but CoL is almost irrelevant for
- Buying luxuries: a Porsche or an iPhone are nearly the same price everywhere in the world
- Going on vacation
- Savings, if you don't intend to stay where you currently live forever
Depending on your lifestyle, these categories could easily make up most of your income, in which case $5k per year is terrible even if it covers the CoL in Tunis.
Sure, maybe occasionally there are anomalies, with extreme price hikes for specific things in specific places. Right now iPhone X prices seem to be reasonably close everywhere (not-so-great-source: http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-iphone-x-prices-around-...).
I think this doesn't affect my point though, which is mainly that iPhones are just as expensive in generally cheap places.
I don't really trust that chart. Like all tech in Mexico, the iPhone X is 30% more than the US price. I was in the Telcel store in Guadalajara last week and it was 1400 USD as I'd expect.
"Luxuries the same price around the world" is just straight wrong. I don't know how anyone could think that who has lived in various countries, especially for American goods.
For example, no matter where I've lived in the world, it was 25%-50% cheaper to wait until I visited family in Texas to purchase new Levi's.
We gave up on trying to buy in Cambridge and moved north to Stamford, its just over an hour on the train (one stop past Peterborough) and about the same by car (if you avoid the worst of the rush hour, will be 45 min with the new road in 2020). Lovely here, much nicer then a villages near Cambridge and about the same time to commute!
House prices have been skyrocketing for ages already and it's helped by the fact that Cambridge is within commuting distance of London. There's no way your average senior dev could afford to buy a house in Cambridge at this point.
If you had 4x your salary, wouldn't you be spending a lot on keeping up your house, and paying a lot of taxes for local amenities like schools? I don't understand how an area that affluent could be a ghetto.
I think he's saying that if he borrowed 4x his salary for a mortgage (which is the commonly cited figure as the max you can borrow), he could only afford a ghetto.
As someone who lived in Cambridge a while ago, Barcelona isn't much different in that regard. I have a theory that its all to do with fiat money, and it took 40 or so years for the effects to filer through.
There are trains actually running to King's Cross now? ducks
But seriously, if you want to know what the housing market in Cambridge is driven by, look at the new things they're building. The "affordable" housing is far beyond anyone doing a "normal" job who just wants to live locally, say a school teacher or a nurse at one of the hospitals. Even those of us lucky enough to work in the relatively well-paid tech sector mostly couldn't afford one of the new luxury flats or town houses that keep springing up near the railway station, some of which have seven-figure asking prices.
For those reading this in the US who might be used to SV wages in tech, earning enough over here to get a seven figure place almost certainly means that either you had a very successful exit already or you have an unusually well-paid gig probably down in London. No-one on anything close to normal salary or freelance rates in tech sectors can get that kind of mortgage, so otherwise if you didn't already own a place that you can trade up from, you're totally locked out of that high-end market. And yet people keep building whole estates of properties like that, and then trickling them onto the market over the next year or two to keep the prices high.
I find it quite depressing that having been entrepreneurial and even modestly successful by any normal standard, we would probably still have made more money if we'd just invested in buy-to-let property in Cambridge instead of starting our first business and then reinvested in growing the property portfolio since. The UK housing market (and our incentives for taking a risk and starting out on your own in business) are messed up.
There are also several towns and villages commutable into Cambridge with housing which is very affordable by South East UK standards, and certainly for anyone working in tech, even if that means braving horrible traffic on the commute in.
I moved to Edinburgh for this, which has worked well for me; although there's not a huge depth of job market especially in smaller companies. And the thing squeezing out locals in the city centre is .. AirBnB.
We sold a large flat in the New Town about a year and a half a go and a lot of the people who viewed were "investment" buyers - I must admit I didn't give any thought to what they would actually do with the property once they had bought it.
We sold to a family with young kids who wanted to live there - which I preferred.
> According to the recruitment website Hired, the average tech salary in London is $78,000 a year, versus $142,000 in Silicon Valley.
And this is one of the reasons for the brain drain that the mention before. Silicon Valley firms pay significantly more than the competition, and they are still paying almost half of what they do in the US.
It isn't only about money, but it would be naive to deny it's impact on people's decision on where to live and work.
In complete terms it's more like 3x that $78k figure.
The salary would be bad enough. The big US tech companies are nearly all publicly traded. So that $142,000 is really $250,000 or more in total compensation. The UK, and Europe more broadly, not only can't compete with the salaries, they can't compete with the ability to dish vast stock compensation thanks to the immense market caps that Google et al. have. If you're really great at something, Google can trivially give you millions of dollars in stock if it makes sense. What company in Britain can compete with that?
The skeptics will say something about healthcare in the US as a counter. The top 1/4 in the US have easy, fast access to some of the most elite medical care on the planet. And if you're making $142k in salary in the US, your healthcare is entirely paid for.
There are only two strong counters, one is that the quality of life can be very high in parts of wealthy Western Europe, and the other is cultural (preferring one culture over another).
My personal counter is that I just couldn't morally accept contributing taxes to a nation which:
- Exploits the poor and non-citizens
- Overthrows governments and bullies smaller countries
- Has only the most rudimentary social security system
- Does not really have a concept of healthy work/life balance. With little time off and none at all for people with newborns.
- Takes near-zero environmental responsibility
- Literally spies on the entire population of the rest of the world
...
That starts to rule out a lot of English speaking countries, including probably the UK.
I mean, in the UK alone you'd need to evaluate what, if anything, separates the modern British morals from the morals of the British Empire which was not a very nice organisation [1]. They technically didn't overthrow and bully, but that was because they conquered and colonised. I don't think the lineage of government institutions has changed that drastically.
The modern anglosphere (UK, Australia, US, New Zealand, Canada) are all part of the spying-on-everyone gig.
The social security system and environmental comments I'll grant you; but the reason for that is (ironically, given your comment) that people don't want to contribute taxes for it. Work life balance I have no comment.
[1] EDIT The stereotype I picked up was that a good foundation of modern British wealth was a bunch of things they 'found unattended' overseas. I gather the Indians still claim that some parts of British royal jewelry were stolen from them and should be returned with an apology.
> I gather the Indians still claim that some parts of British royal jewelry were stolen from them and should be returned with an apology.
Bit offtopic, but this is complicated. A lot of the jewellery were taken from present-day Pakistan (or were gifts from kings in that area) so it's not clear to which country they should be returned to.
The UK, alongside the US, overthrew a democratically elected government in Iran in 1953. This is not a point of contention, it's been openly stated by the CIA.
I genuinely thought the GP was making a joke until the bit about time off.
Even on a selfish level, the extra 2-3 weeks of PTO in UK is easily more important than the extra compensation in the US. What's the point of having more money if you are stuck in an office for more of the year and can only spend it on material goods? As you say, for women the difference in maternity leave is laughable.
> Eventually at Google US you get 5 weeks PTO, which is the same as in Google London.
Ah but you're cherry picking an example from one company, I am also not sure how long or what role you'd need to accrue that much PTO. In Europe most (all?) countries have a legal minimum of 3-4 weeks PTO in addition to public holidays, regardless of your job or time working.
> Plus Google has four more holidays in the US than in the UK.
I'm not sure what the definition of federal holidays is vs. public holidays in Europe, but a quick Google suggests US has 10 while the UK has 8 public holidays.
I'm specifically talking about what Google gives its employees for public holidays. And federal holidays are basically meaningless unless you, y'know, work for the feds.
"Eventually" but to get to that point you have to endure years of getting half the time off that a burger flipper gets in McDonalds UK. Honestly it's a bit humiliating.
The more limited time does suck, but on the other hand the huge amount of money makes it way easier to retire earlier, so you can have more time off in the long run if you want.
I don't keep track of people's vacation time that closely. When I transferred to Google Munich though I didn't notice a change in work life balance, other than having more vacation.
I work for Twitter in the US and I took 7 or 8 weeks last year, including taking off all of November. We also get 20 weeks paid parental leave (either mother or father) and it includes adoptions and same-sex couples.
Don't get me wrong, I'd much rather be a five eyes member than not - but I think it's naive to think any of the member states are innocent of the majority of these statements.
- Defends the global liberal world order and upholds free trade through spending half it’s budget on a military which protects the entire continent of Europe.
Russia's strategic nuclear capability dwarfs that of any country in the EU. The Russian armed forces aren't what they used to be, but without the backing of the US, Russia's conventional military threat to the EU is also serious.
They're not that cheap. Russia spends about 230 billion USD annually, and spends about 10 billion on nuclear weapons. That's more than any country other than the USA.
>They're not that cheap. Russia spends about 230 billion USD annually, and spends about 10 billion on nuclear weapons. That's more than any country other than the USA.
Where are you getting these numbers? I really doubt that Russia is spending 1/5th their GDP on the military. Wikipedia says it's $69 billion, which is more than order of magnitude below NATO [0], [1].
230 billion USD is, according to Wikipedia, Russia's annual spending (not just military spending). I can see how that figure could have been interpreted as referring to military spending in the context of my post, but that's not what my post actually said.
The figure of $69 billion overall military spending seems consistent with the 10 billion figure I gave for Russian spending on nuclear weapons.
I got that figure from here: http://www.icanw.org/the-facts/catastrophic-harm/a-diversion...
The figures are a bit old and I accidentally used the older of the two. But unless they're way off, it's true that Russia is spending more on nuclear weapons than any country other than the US. It's also spending more than France and the UK combined (France and the UK being the only European countries with a strategic nuclear capability).
Besides all that, the idea that nukes are somehow the cheap option for Russia is pretty nuts when you consider that Russia still maintains a fleet of ballistic missile submarines -- an expensive hobby by anyone's standards. You could pay for lots of conventional weapons with the money spent on that. They're even building shiny new ones: https://thediplomat.com/2017/06/russia-to-launch-its-deadlie...
Calling them "Upper Volta with Missiles" was a bit harsh - they do spend a larger percentage of their GDP then most European countries but with such a small economy I'm not sure it makes much difference. After all - nobody feels particularly threatened by Canada.... (which has a larger GDP).
>by far the cheapest way of them being considered a major power
Cheap compared to what alternative? It's not clear what you mean by this. They're spending a fat chunk of their military budget on nukes, they're spending far more on nukes than they need to spend just to be a nuclear power (since they're maintaining all three delivery options), and they're spending more on nukes than any other country except the US.
>they do spend a larger percentage of their GDP then most European countries but with such a small economy I'm not sure it makes much difference
Just check the figures. Russia's military budget is a bit higher than the UK or France's. Russia generally ranks 4th or 5th in the world for military expenditure.
>. After all - nobody feels particularly threatened by Canada...
Because Canada doesn't have nukes or anything like the same military budget. You seem to be confusing GDP with the level of military threat posed. They're only loosely related.
Russia's nuclear capacity? How is that relevant? The UK alone has 215 nukes (just checked wiki), so yeah maybe Russia could kill all of us and we'd only kill 90% of them but past a certain threshold additional nuclear weapons are irrelevant.
My last post as HN is supposed to be better than this kind of nationalistic -swinging but I think the idea that Europe is reliant on US for protection is pretty absurd. Multiple nuclear states, you can't just assume that all of our nukes are faulty (and nor would anyone else). Nor would they be unable to maintain them without the US if relationships soured so far. We lease them from US companies because we are (historically!) allies! Similar level of standing military as the US, which could be ramped up above given larger population and GDP.
There's a fair statement: "US contributes unfairly much to NATO"
And a completely mental statement: "Europe is dependent upon the US for protection"
That's supposing that the weapons work as advertised. The UK is entirely reliant on Trident for its nuclear deterrent, and it is reliant on support from the USA to maintain Trident. If Trident turns out not to work very well (which is entirely possible), or if relations with the USA sour, or if ballistic missile submarines turn out to be easier to detect and/or more vulnerable than expected, then the UK could very well not have an effective nuclear deterrent.
>you can't just assume that all of our nukes are faulty (and nor would anyone else)
No, but you also can't assume that we have enough nuclear capability to successfully respond to Russian first strike. No-one really knows how well the relevant systems will work. France is the only other EU country with any significant nuclear capability.
There are also Germany, Italy, other states which have nukes through NATO. If the US is serious about withdrawing from NATO then the nuclear capability of these states would end up being completely independent from the US, and EU has the tech and money to scale their nuclear capacity up to any necessary level.
They're the US' nukes but this is all predicated on NATO which was previously assumed. If US withdraws from NATO then they won't get to keep nukes in Germany, so they either lease them or withdraw them.
I think the two important points are that 1. Europe has the capacity to build and sustain a massive nuclear arsenal 2. They already have enough to usher in the apocalypse for anyone who invaded them including Russia. 500 vs 3000 is kind of irrelevant when you could already kill millions upon millions. 3. Some of the seeming reliance of Europe on America for nukes is by choice and a consequence of the previously rock-solid alliance. In the event of the breakup of that alliance the independent capacity of Europe to summon the apocalypse would be a lot more obvious
>500 vs 3000 is kind of irrelevant when you could already kill millions upon millions.
No, it's not. The reason for having thousands of warheads is not to blanket the earth in a nuclear apocalypse. It's to have enough failsafe and fallbacks that you are guaranteed to destroy the opposing force's arsenal before they can hit you. 5 missiles at once can be trivially intercepted. 500 missiles at once is unstoppable. The first exchanges in a nuclear salvo would be aimed directly at each other's silos. The vast majority of research in nuclear weapons today is in penetration capability of hardened targets (which systems like the UK's Trident do not possess) not widespread killing of civilians, and whoever maintains a superior capability in this respect will have the upper hand in any negotiation.
The whole point behind building nuclear defence systems was to render the risk of consequences from a first strike too grave to attempt it, not to achieve perfect balance between the city-eradication potential of the respective nuclear powers. Nobody is about to evaluate how well Trident works in practice by launching a first strike on London.
For all of Trident's limitations, it is impossible to argue with a straight face that the current US executive's desire to maintain the liberal world order and free trade (hahahaha) offers the UK a more reliable defence from threats against UK interests.
>Nobody is about to evaluate how well Trident works in practice by launching a first strike on London.
Let's hope not.
>not to achieve perfect balance between the city-eradication potential of the respective nuclear powers.
The UK's nuclear deterrent consists of one or two Trident submarines active at any given time which carry 8 Trident missiles each. (They can carry up to 16, but don't at the moment.) Don't be under the impression that the UK can deploy anything like its full stockpile of warheads in the event of a nuclear conflict.
>it is impossible to argue with a straight face that [...]
You're reading some kind of political slant into my comment that just isn't there. I'm not a fan of the current US administration.
I'm reading the political slant into the comment upthread I quoted from; not really sure why we're engaged in the tangent of questioning the adequacy of Trident if you acknowledge it's a better deterrent than the present "Special Relationship" (and an expensive one paid from our taxes). The UK's non-operational stockpile means ample capacity to expand upon the currently operational missile stock in the event of a ratcheting up of tensions, and frankly if there's a hostile leader who considers even 8 nuclear missiles to be insufficient deterrent, the UK faces bigger problems than lack of retaliatory capacity.
Trident is (and is widely acknowledged to be) about the bare minimum required for a semi-credible nuclear deterrent. It's just about enough to make a country like Russia think twice. Probably.
The deterrent provided by the US is not the special relationship, but the US's enormous nuclear arsenal, which it probably would deploy against Russia if Russia launched a nuclear attack against the UK. They would do the same if Russia launched a nuclear attack against any NATO power, so the special relationship doesn't really come into it.
As I said above, it is difficult to argue with a straight face that Putin will be less concerned by a direct threat to his eight largest centres of population than the possibility a US executive far less enthusiastic about NATO than cordial relations with Russia might choose to sacrifice its citizens to escalate that threat. Not even if one believes in the uniquely British conceit that our bilateral relations are more special still.
None of which has any real bearing on whether the UK might be a more or less unpalatable place to live than the US for political reasons anyway. :-)
Huh? It's not at all difficult to argue with a straight face that Russia would take into account the likelihood of a massive retaliation from the US if it launched a nuclear attack on another NATO country. Again, the special relationship has nothing to do with it.
You can't seriously be saying that the Russians are now confident that they would receive no nuclear response from the US if they decide to, say, nuke Paris, just because Trump is in power.
The UK's Trident missile system is not dependant on the US for launch control[0]. All the other what ifs you've mentioned are the same for both sides.
The thing about nuclear war is that you can't attach the UK without attacking France. What's more, you can't attack Russia without attacking the UK and France. In a nuclear winter we all die. Everywhere.
It's like letting of a hand grenade in an elevator. You can throw it at the guy in the corner if you like, you're still going down too.
>The UK's Trident missile system is not dependant on the US for launch control[0]
I didn't say that it was. But we do depend on the USA for maintenance and support. The independent all-party Trident commission concluded that the deterrent could not be maintained for more than a few months if the US were to withdraw cooperation: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/defence-and-security-blo...
>All the other what ifs you've mentioned are the same for both sides.
No, because Russia and USA have the nuclear triad. The UK only has one method of delivery. France has two.
You've already ruled out any 'five eyes' countries (United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and New Zealand), much of Europe (for similar reasons), China, Russia (okay, these literally break all of them), Japan and South Korea (work/life balance), almost all of the middle east, much of South America, much of Africa, etc.
Maybe one of the Nordic countries avoids these issues. Maybe.
It's the unexpected things that get you, though. I had to have a few emergency room visits for rabies shots, and ended up paying about $1500. I don't really know how to measure how "good" my insurance was, but I was working at a university in MA, so I expect the policy was at least decent.
(The rabies vaccine is very expensive. The theoretical cost of the treatment, which the insurance company theoretically paid, was about $30,000.)
Funnily in the UK with the NHS it's again the unexpected things. In this case it's paying for parking, it adds up quick, especially if your'e visiting someone who's in hospital for a while.
This incident happened a couple of weeks before I was due to move back to the UK. The NHS gave me my final rabies shot for free at my GP's surgery. I walked there, so I didn't pay parking, but I'm guessing it would have cost less than $1500.
It's a measure of the success of the NHS that people complain about paying to park to go visit someone getting free at the point of us socialized healthcare.
And if I break a bone, or my partner breaks a bone, there's _no_ copay. I can certainly think of things I'd rather do with $80 than pay for the privilege of claiming on insurance.
Not to mention that marginal tax in the UK is 40% income tax for 45k+ (45% over 150k) + 2% national insurance which is actually more marginal tax than SF, the highest taxed state in the US. Of course UK has the NHS fee healthcare, but if you're pulling $200k+ in SF you probably have medical benefits too.
For that additional £20k in gross salary, your take home pay only increases by £8k, so the _marginal rate_ for each additional pound in that bracket is 60%.
Ok, but doing a rough calculation using https://goodcalculators.com/us-salary-tax-calculator/, you'd pay about the same percentage of tax in total from a 160k USD paycheck in California. So the level of tax is not radically different.
If you go up to 200k USD compared to 150k GBP, then you get to keep about 66% of it in California and about 60% in the UK. That's a difference that's quite easily lost in the noise when you consider differences in overall cost of living, healthcare, etc. etc.
I've found that Americans have a very fixed perception of America having low taxes and Europe having high taxes. But taxes in the UK are really not that much higher (except VAT in comparison to sales tax).
But taxes in the UK are really not that much higher (except VAT in comparison to sales tax).
Of course that depends a lot on which taxes you look at.
For total personal income taxes for an employee on salary, the highest marginal rate (ignoring the odd 60% band at £100k-120k) is currently 47%, and you reach that when your salary passes £150k.
If you go independent and start getting paid through a limited company and then paying yourself, the highest marginal tax rates are effectively about 50% if you pay out through dividends or 54% if you pay out through salary.
And then people wonder why we don't see more successful entrepreneurial types setting up new companies so they can take on bigger projects and create more jobs... I mean, who wouldn't want to pay thousands more in taxes for the same original revenue earned by their work, and take on a bunch of extra paperwork filing and other statutory obligations, while simultaneously losing out on a bunch of statutory employment rights and protections?
But at level you quite often get a jump over that - also at that level you can make full use of the various tax reduction perks.
Employee share saves, 20K ISA, Salary Sacrifice into pensions, EIS at up to 1,000,000 a year for 30% tax relief SEIS is 50% relief but only 150k a year oh and their is VCT another 200k per anum at 30%.
And you pay as much property tax as a lower middle class person does in the states.
> The top 1/4 in the US have easy, fast access to some of the most elite medical care on the planet. And if you're making $142k in salary in the US, your healthcare is entirely paid for.
There is nothing surprising in the fact that the top 25% earners have access to healthcare. The point of public healthcare is to make sure that the remaining 75% will not get indebted to barely survive.
What would worry an European worker would be :
- What would happen to my (and eventually wife's and kids') access to healthcare if I lose my job ?
- What if I want to start a business ?
- What if I want to go back to college ?
- What if I have to take care of a family member full-time ? Who protects me and this member ?
I am sure US medical care is very elite but what I also see is that a very large part of people who fell into poverty in the US did so because of unexpected health problems that would be taken care of in most European countries.
EDIT: Parent edited while I was writing this but I let my original post for the sake of the argument
I think you misunderstood my question, sorry if it was not clear : What kind of healthcare do I have in those situations ?
In most of Europe you have access to very good healthcare with no conditions attached. You get covered in all those situations. Of course if you are a young single tech worker with no health issue this does not feel important but accidents happen, illness happens.
I mean it is great that the US is 2nd for being pro business but being in pre-brexit UK, Germany or France don't harm your business prospects. I worked for smallish French companies (~20 employees) whose customers were mainly Americans it never seemed that it was a problem.
I mean you propose
> Most companies pay for your college, or if not the entire term, at least 2 years. You could also go to one of our excellent community colleges for peanuts.
Here if you manage to join our very best engineering schools you get paid for attending. The rest is not higher than 1000$ and the most expensive schools are business school with tuitions of at most 20k$/year. We also have online courses. And degrees are less and less important everywhere in the western world. I am a college dropout and it never hurt my career in Europe
Or you say
> Outside of the heavily taxed Northern European countries, not many countries in Europe take care of you and your family member full time outside of some fringe benefits
For the sake of the argument, let's assume that as you say it is not that common in EU. The good thing here is that neither you nor your family member will have to pay absurd amount of money for healthcare and as I said above
> "a very large part of people who fell into poverty in the US did so because of unexpected health problems that would be taken care of in most European countries."
"medical debt is the No. 1 source of personal bankruptcy filings in the U.S., and in 2014, an estimated 40% of Americans racked up debt resulting from a medical issue."
I (personally) don't believe that a country can be a meritocratic society if getting ill at a bad moment in your life requires you to take "that extra 30% of your income you are not taxed, and opening up a high-yield portfolio for a rainy day" to pay healthcare bills that are way higher that in Europe.
I mean even without healthcare insurance whether public or private : A surgery at the hospital I was born in cost 1660,43 €. Any surgery. They have a price for what they call "Costly Specialty", it is 2734,85 €. So you are not European or you don't have any healthcare insurance, this is the worst case scenario for you here. We can do the comparison for almost every treatment and even without insurance it is ridiculously way cheaper because of the bargaining power a state who provides healthcare to millions of people have vs big pharma.
The thing that you seem to miss with your high salaries (here in tech) is that you spend a lot of money paying people with high salaries (here health professional) so they can pay back their excessive college debt, that allowed them to pay some the most expensive universities in the world.
And this pattern is everywhere when you deal with american knowledge economy including 150k$ tech workers who most likely have an education related debt. How indebted fresh graduates are supposed to live in one of the most expensive area of the world and to pay off their debt without this kind of salaries ? Now compare that to a debt free engineer at 75k$ living in Berlin whose only future debt "risk" is a mortgage
And if it really was an issue this same person could close the gap in revenue by becoming a freelance or working for a Swiss or Luxembourgian company as a remote or trans-border employee since we have a free-market with freedom of movement across more than two dozen countries.
So I don't say that to convince you that you need public healthcare and public education nor that EU is better. I try to make you understand that in reality an European engineer with a "75k$ in EU vs 150k$ in US" kind of choice will not care because in the end it is the same thing. In the end US and EU have quite different economies, very different social structures and very different labor laws. Labor markets take all of that into account into the wages.
Now for the stock there can be an important difference, I always had shares in my previous companies and I know that big companies give some too. I don't know if FAANG gives stock in EU. I doubt that we have many EU companies that gives as much stock but more importantly I doubt that there are many company anywhere in the world including in the US whose performance in stock exchanges is as good as FAANG's
There's also the holiday, or rather lack of it - there are many things about the UK I could grumble about, but every other Anglosphere country seems to have worse annual leave.
they're not included, but employment contracts tend to be written as X days off + all bank/public holidays (as employers generally close their offices on bank/public holidays)
the guarantee of 5.6 weeks paid holiday doesn't guarantee when they are taken, as long as you receive at least 5.6
I've always received 6.6 weeks, some of which my employers request I take on bank/public holidays.
the other big difference is in the UK I've never even heard of anyone even feeling remotely pressured into not taking their full entitlement (in fear of being labelled a slacker)
We give our staff anything between 25 days to 30 days paid holiday. In addition they receive 8 paid bank (aka public) holidays a year. So that's a total of between 33 and 38 paid days off.
> Sure, but most tech companies will give you them anyways
I've yet to see any private employer in the US that gives employees every public holiday applicable in their jurisdiction; heck even public employers often don't, as federal government doesn't give state holidays in the location and state and local agencies often don't give all federal holidays.
> There are only ten federal holidays. If you are working in the states, you get most of not all of them.
MLK, Washington's Birthday, Labor Day, and Columbus Day are particularly frequently not granted by private employers. Columbus Day and MLK are each not given by some nonfederal public employers (to my knowledge, a non-overlapping set.)
I know from previously working there that Microsoft gives all public holidays. When I started you had floating holidays you could take for some (MLK, Columbus etc) but now all are given. Wouldn't be surprised to learn it's the same at Google, FB et al.
25 plus public holidays is normal though can be more I started on 30 at part of Relex - you also in start ups you often get an extra day on your holiday.
Civil servants also get a privilege day - it used to be two half days Queens Birthday and Maundy Thursday
Maybe in the right subsections. But 10 days for the first 2-3 years is very common and many companies argue they need consistency across staff.. then others offer you more or infinite vacation then give you a manager from hell with absurd deadlines to make sure you don't take any.
It's much nicer to live in a country with clear employment laws. (Particularly since not everyone around you will work in tech.)
If you've seen places that offer 10, then 15 is by definition not the bare minimum. In my experience, most places offer 10 days, and often it's PTO (combined vacation + sick leave).
My girlfriend accidentally moved from the UK to California because when her parents paid for her to visit, she didn’t have enough money saved up to come back afterwards. I’m visiting her next week, and sure, if there was an emergency we could sort something out… most people aren’t that lucky.
> My girlfriend accidentally moved from the UK to California because when her parents paid for her to visit, she didn’t have enough money saved up to come back afterwards.
That sounds a lot like an immigration violation, if she wasn't a US citizen to start with.
Also we get 2-3x more holiday, and sick days don't come from your holiday allowance. And the hours are shorter. I work 40 hours a week for very good pay (for the UK). Previous job was 37.5 hours.
I know a lot of Google US employees who work 40 hour weeks (plenty who work more but usually by choice), their sick days don’t come out of their vacation allowance at all, and after 4 years of working there they get 5 weeks of vacation per year on top of 12 days of paid holidays.
Even Amazon employees do pretty well, getting 2 weeks paid time off + 1 week of "personal days" (de facto vacation days) in year 1, then that goes up to 3 weeks PTO + 1 week of personal days starting year 2 IIRC.
I know a UK google employee who is a new college grad and gets 5 weeks of vacation per year on top of 8 bank holidays. And their salary is higher than most US Google new grads.
They are working at a US company, but at least they are still paying UK taxes and contributing to the UK economy.
I'd love to hear what sort of job a UK new grad would get at Google that would pay them more than their US equivalent. Every data point I've ever seen has shown Google UK employees are paid a lot less.
I think typically UK google employees make less than SV but also significantly more than most software jobs in the UK. The guy I know is really good and did research in undergrad related to a niche Google is interested in.
Ah, the usual "I do it because I want to do it, there's just so much work to do and it's not going away, you know how it is in this position, you can't never really disconnect"
The advantage of the UK's take on stock options is the tax man wont try on tax you on money you never had and their is much less opportunity to get screwed out of stock - you must get the same stock - multi class share listings are not looked on kindly and can get you kicked of the UK indices.
My mate made 125k on 5 years worth of stock options at BT and that was open to all staff - oh ad that's mostly tax free.
>There are only two strong counters, one is that the quality of life can be very high in parts of wealthy Western Europe, and the other is cultural (preferring one culture over another).
> And if you're making $142k in salary in the US, your healthcare is entirely paid for
Not even close to true.
I was making about that much and had insurance and we were billed multiple thousands of dollars for a bog standard pregnancy/delivery. Sure, if I was not insured at all, it would have probably been hundreds of thousands--who knows? Anyway, I've never seen a health insurance policy where your health expenses were "entirely paid" for.
>> Silicon Valley firms pay significantly more than the competition,
I'd say another major factor here is that the UK market significantly undervalues talent, compared to the US, Australia and other markets I've heard of. It may be better than continental Europe, but it's pitiful compared to the money in other countries.
Which is why I'm a contractor now, salaries for permanent work in London are not comparable to work in the US, and outside of London they are just plain derisory.
Very much so though the market is super hot now I just took a job locally on Monday (no godam commute on the shit show that is thames link ) and thought I did well to get 5K bump.
since then I just got pitched a 100,000 K euro Job in Portugal (flat 20% tax!!!!) and a £60K one in London maybe I jumped to soon.
No (or little) commute is always a big positive, even if the salary isn't as good as it could be. I'm commuting Southampton->London at the moment and it's pretty awful. OTOH the money is good and I expect to take a few months off next year, so it's worth it for now.
I worked in AU around ten years ago. I don't remember salaries coming anywhere near the UK or US. I'd love to know if things are better now.
I wouldn't say the UK market particularly undervalues talent, in the city at least. Most of my peer group are on a day rate of 800-900 which (assuming you take 5 weeks of holidays) would translate to at least USD 248k gross. Chatting to our traders they are pretty jealous of our 9-5 hours, 2 hour lunch breaks and relaxed dress code.
You have to recognise, surely, that even for London those rates are exceptional?
The vast, vast majority of salaried software guys make far less than that, especially outside of the capital. Hell, I pull in about 75% of that much and consider myself very fortunate as a contractor. And I see ads and 'opportunities' all the time for experienced people in the 40-50k range.
About 8 years ago I moved from London to Western Aus and was immediately earning (as a permanent employee) in the six figure range, when AUD and USD were at parity. In London, doing the same job for the same company, I had been on less than £50k.
people do not think about it rationally.
The money you earn in SF is mostly not your money, its the landlord's money.
You can work in London, live outside the M25, and have 35 minutes commute time, in a train, and pay reasonably normal rent/mortgage.
I am not sure if you can live outside SF and work in SF and spend less than 4 hours commuting eveyday.
I've just received two offers one for permie £100k and £700/day for a contract, I'm pretty certain I would be left with more money here that I would in SF even if im on $180k.
Being in SF with family/kids is a game over I guess.
This is just not true, I live outside SF and have kids and own a single family home. My pay here has exponentially gone up over the last 5 years, especially if you account for RSUs and so has my wife's. We are also able to change jobs every two years that results in decent pay increases. I also made a ton of money selling my previous home, and sit on a massive equity on my current home. There is a reason things cost a lot here. Because people can afford it.
So you owned a previous home, presumably before the real estate has rocketed, and your wife is also in the tech industry...
If I want to move now and I do not own a home neither have millions to fork, and my wife is not in the tech industry...
also its not clear how bad your commute time is.
Not sure where outside SF you can live and still be able to commute everyday without being 4 hours on roads a day... there is no public transportation in the us
Why would you chase people from Universities who have high salary expectations when you have the internet? It is beyond me. Developers storm remote positions, yet the industry is super slow with adoption.
I don't doubt that the parent wasn't being absolutely comprehensive in the scope of their answer, but surely you appreciate that direct communication in person is.. well, at the very least 'efficient'?
I can't believe you're actually wanting a source for this, lol
> but surely you appreciate that direct communication in person is.. well, at the very least 'efficient'?
No, I don't. I believe written communication is far more efficient. Cavemen talk. Writing is the greatest technology we've ever invented. Forget all your latest devops crazes, you can't do anything useful without writing.
Look, I work alone and find some situations best described by writing down long and comprehensive emails - but if you're going to accuse face-to-face contact as being 'caveman talk' I'm sorry but I'm going to wonder if your empathic or social intelligence is somehow dialled down.
My life experience tells me that there are vast tracts of productivity that are served very well by direct collaboration with other humans.
> accuse face-to-face contact as being 'caveman talk'
I said it's caveman technology, which is surely indisputable. In my experience it's thoroughly inefficient for discussing technical matters. That's probably why not much technology was developed before writing.
Is the insinuation not the same? It comes across as somewhat derisory, whether intended or not.
What amuses me about this exchange here is how even in 'collaborating' through writing, at least four individuals aren't able to meaningfully describe what they really intend. The internet, writ black and white, polarises and makes nuance absolute and all hope of sense is lost! :)
For what it's worth, I do appreciate where you're coming from - there's no forelorn dread I feel more than the suggestion of a completely superfluous face to face meeting... .
- ed
Also, I have to repeatedly remind friends and family, as well as business contacts, that the best and most assured way to get in contact with me is to send me an email. It has been for nearly 20 years now. Always!
> I believe written communication is far more efficient.
Categorically wrong. Two examples:
1) Years ago I was moving out of a shared house and looking for someone to move into my room. One person in particular would only communicate via email about coming to view the room. Consequently days elapsed before we'd got a final arrangement that could have been sorted out with a 10 minute phone call, despite having my number, and me having theirs. Then, when I took half a day off to wait in for this person to visit, they missed the appointment. When I checked my email it turned out they'd emailed me a few minutes before they were due to turn up to tell me they weren't going to make it. Again, despite having my phone number. Already irritated by their behaviour this obviously left me fuming.
2) Just the past few days I've been dealing with an "urgent" support incident where the two people involved have been exchanging emails for three days: a conversation that could be easily accelerated with a call.
In both these cases direct synchronous communication is the key: this might be face to face or on the phone, or a video call, but in no way is written communication more efficient.
I disagree. Yesterday I was trying to organise a visit to a luthier for a guitar repair. He told me to phone him, so I phoned, he didn't answer. I left a voicemail, and he phoned me back 15 minutes later, I missed him. On the third attempt, we spoke. I explained what I had written in the email, and he told me that I should call in with the guitar. Overall, it took ~20 minutes of back and forth to resolve an issue that could have been answered in the reply where he told me to phone him.
If you phone me, you are likely to call me at an inconvenient time and interrupt what I'm doing. If you send me an email, and I'm free, I'll respond immediately. If I'm in the middle of something, I'll respond when I'm finished what I'm doing.
Writing is great for one-way communication. If you actually mean to collaborate, if you don't know what you don't know and what to ask the other person, in-person communication is way more efficient.
And it turns out if you're solving nontrivial problems as a software team, you're talking is more of the collaborative kind than the one-way-information-distributing kind.
I'm not trying to argue or convince anybody, just answering the question from the HR perspective (I spend ~20% of my time hiring engineers in a large multinational company). Every large company has internal data overwhelmingly showing that you want to jam as many people in one place as possible. Of course there's physical limits (real estate, talent pools, cost of living), so you are constantly making a trade-off between paying a premium (more rent, higher salary) vs hiring remote workers who are cheaper but produce less on average. That's just how it works.
I realize these aren't controlled experiments, but consider two sources:
1) Alistair Cockburn has a communication chart [0] suggesting that face-to-face at a whiteboard is the most effective form of communication. He's been showing the chart for at least a decade, to rooms full of engineers from all the big players and lots of little players. If he were wrong, he'd eventually run out of consulting clients, but that hasn't happened. I realize this is a weak argument.
2) YCombinator co-locates its funded teams. I'd wager they're familiar with the arguments for and against remote work, that they're technology savvy, that they're data-driven, and they're incentivized to get the most for their money. I realize that this second argument is the same as my first, but I think these arguments should make you think about why they put a premium on in-person collaboration.
People on the internet love to exaggerate how bad living in the US is.
The US is a big country and there's plenty of places that most people wouldn't like to live (every country has locations like this), but if you're a tech worker, there's no place better in the world to live than in the US. You don't have to live in the Bay Area, you can live in Seattle, New York City, Boston, Los Angeles, or Atlanta. Don't like the city? Okay, there's plenty of affordable suburbs to live in all over the country.
Plus your cost of healthcare will either be free or heavily subsidized, taxes will be lower, you'll be making more money, and the opportunities for career advancement, VC funding (if you want to go the startup route), and opportunities to network will be much greater here.
America is an amazing place to live, whether the internet wants to believe it or not.
The visa scene is US is fickle and very unfriendly even for folks in high tech companies. For instance, the Green Card process is same for a software developer (no matter what company she is in) and a taxi driver. Of course, I don't have anything against taxi drivers, but I do believe education and professional qualifications should play some role in the Green Card process.
"the dice you have to [roll] every time you encounter a police [officer]"? Are engineers recruited from Cambridge of the sort that particularly attract the attention of the police?
Well, UK officers don't carry guns as much as US officers do. UK officers also don't have to worry about guns as much. However, the lack of centralization of the US system and culture/mindset of the US officers (as a whole) are the main problems IMO
For one, our healthcare is free. Though many companies still provide private healthcare as a benefit. Personally I agree with OP, I wouldn't want to live in the US either. Mainly because capitalism has been taken to an ugly extreme and you might get paid more but you also work more etc. Not to mention the tax and tips culture. Of course there are problems here too; it rains a lot more, and every conversation that goes on long enough always ends up as some sort of brexit complaint ...
> every conversation that goes on long enough always ends up as some sort of brexit complaint
To be fair, we definitely have a problem with normal/non-political conversations suddenly turning political as well. It's even a problem that started in 2016, too :/.
The major disadvantage of the UK is:
Shoebox "houses". Or what we call them houses.
So its raining a lot outside, but we also do not feel comfortable inside, at home, because it is ridiculously small and normally very old. bad weather and cage-homes, deeply depressing combination.
Th main advantage of the US:
Big homes (if you choose not to live in SF or NYC) and good weather.
"I am thinking about moving from US to London. So, I am curious to know why you prefer UK to US despite the salary gap."
Because it's not all about the money. People make mistake by comparing salaries on their own which is not correct, you need to compare what's left of your salary after you've afforded the same level of lifestyle.
You might look at $140k as a lot of money and £40k as very little money but you need to put that into perspective. My salary comes with tax deducted and you have to pay someone to do your taxes for you. That's the first difference and it's quite vocal.
I don't mind and honestly prefer to have 40-50% tax taken away from my salary to enjoy certain social benefits which you would need to pay extra for and there are some things that just aren't in the US, like pension. You don't have pension, you have 401k which is a voluntary savings account basically. Besides the state pension that I will get once I retire (and will continue to receive as long as I'm alive), I also get 5% of my gross salary taken away every month and my employer tops it off with another 5%. If nothing else, at least I'm set when I retire and I don't have to worry if I'll have enough money until the day I die after retirement.
Some countries in Europe, much like the one I come from, have half smaller salaries than the UK and I would still take £20k salary over $140k in US because you can't put a price on a 5min commute to work and letting your children play outside without supervision, going for a walk at 11pm without having to worry that something might happen to you, not having ghettos or "bad areas" in your city, being able to go to a hospital and have a surgery without paying anything, sending your kids to university without paying anything... like I said, to each their own. If you only look at money itself and nothing else then yes, $140k in US is much better.
> you can't put a price on a 5min commute to work and letting your children play outside
That's very achieveable in parts of the US, and unachieveable in parts of the UK.
> having ghettos or "bad areas" in your city
Not exclusive to the US by any means. Plenty of nice cities in the UK have ghetto/bad areas.
> sending your kids to university without paying anything
If you live in England, this is definitely not applicable. Based on [0] (no idea how reputable the source is, but the first I could find) The average student loan debt is just shy of £35k. Anyone who borrowed for university from 2012 or later is paying 3% + RPI interest on their loans - That's fairly substantial.
Yeah traffic can still be bad in the UK, but ghetto wise the US have it worse because of their gun laws (and seen from the murder rate). Also student loans are paid for by the UK government, and you only have to pay it off after graduating, and even then it's basically a small percentage of your earnings. Also after 25 years they write off the debt anyway.
I wasn't actually talking about traffic, I was purely talking affordability. e.g. You can live in nice areas around Leamington-Spa with 5-15 minute commutes in light traffic, with huge amounts of green space for kids, or you could live in Zone 4 and have to commute to the City every day. Similarly in the US, you could commute to Mountain view, and live in a city condo, or you could live in Raleigh, NC and work for SAS/Red Hat, and live in a wonderful outdoor area 10 minutes away.
Sure, the worst areas in the US are worse than the worst areas in the UK, but that doesn't mean that the worst areas in the uk don't suck. You said you couldn't put a price on not having ghettos, not that the ghettos in the UK are better than the US equivalent. Besides, being on HN, the majority of us aren't going to be living in the Missions or Paisley.
> Also student loans are paid for by the UK government, and you only have to pay it off after graduating, and even then it's basically a small percentage of your earnings.
Right, but you still have to take out a 35k loan, and pay 9% of your earnings for 25 Years, or until it's paid off. That definitely doesn't sound like having to pay nothing to me.
> Right, but you still have to take out a 35k loan, and pay 9% of your earnings for 25 Years, or until it's paid off. That definitely doesn't sound like having to pay nothing to me.
The student loan really isn't that big of a big deal, because it's 9% of your salary OVER £25,000. So at the moment on £27k, I pay about £15 a month. If I stop going to work or earn less than £25k then I won't have to pay anything back (unlike normal loans).
Ideally the tuition fees would be free like in Scotland, but the English loans aren't as big of a deal as you're making them out to be.
The student loans also include money for living costs (if desired), some of which is free (and doesn't have to be paid back) depending on household income. We also pay year by year, so we wouldn't have to commit to £35k straight off the bat, just £9k per year. So if you decide to drop out after first year, you'd be in £9k of debt (or slightly more if you took out extra money for living costs).
Thanks for commenting maccard, but looks like you haven't read my comment or read it superficially.
Nevertheless, since I'm commenting already might as well add two more things. One thing is I get 29 days of PAID annual holiday. I've head from my US colleagues that in US you can take about a week or two of UNPAID holiday in a year.
Not to mention that women can go on maternity leave for a whole year and then come back to work without losing any rights whatsoever and also get paid 40 weeks of their maternity leave while in the US women can take up to 3 months of UNPAID maternity leave and only if they've worked for a company at least a year.
I would believe the highest NET salary (the only kind that matters) of all is clearly in either Switzerland or Singapore, where you have a total tax rate of roughly 10 % at a 150k salary. The absolute salary is the same or higher than in SF, USA, but you can keep 90 %. Additionally, foreign income is taxed 0 %. Capital gains are taxed 0 %. It's hilarious to see that American's (especially the ones from SF) believe they earn the most. Yes, they are at the upper end if you consider "absolute gross salary", but at the tiny lower end for "net, after-tax salary" and "investment income".
As for stock options, your employers typically give you stock options, great bonuses and a 401k-like plan, e.g.: You can invest 5 % of your salary and we (the company) will 4x this. So this is a little like 4x free return on 5% of your salary if you max out.
I used to work in Cambridge, a tech job of sorts. It was swell, the quality of life is great, London really close as well.
There were only two downsides. One, pretty bad public transport and driving was often not an option. Two, very few flats, so you’d mostly share with others in houses.
Last but not least, there is a great divide between the students, the so-called professionals (meaning tech, medical research, aeronautics etc.) and town people. The frictions were commonplace.
It's town vs gown. You have separate areas and generally don't mingle. There is an age difference as well as a cultural and class difference. Much of Cambridge is gated off into colleges that a town person can't go unless escorted by someone connected to the university.
I was in the gown group, but even within this group there are additional degrees of stratification.
I went to Cambridge as an undergrad, and indeed I interacted basically exclusively with other undergrads. Now as an adult I'm living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and there are tons of undergrad students on the street, and I basically never interact with them at all (nor go into the the various university buildings that are scattered throughout the town).
But I wouldn't describe that as friction? If anything, it seems the opposite of friction, there are separate groups of people who are smoothly gliding past each other... I guess what I'm wondering is, do you feel there are any concrete problems or inconveniences caused by the town/gown distinction?
I get the style this article is going for, but Cambridge Science Park (and surrounding areas) have quietly been a major hub for tech for at least the last 2-3 decades. Lots of biotech research, but Microsoft Research has been there since as long as I can remember (I went to school around the corner) as well as major offices for Intel, ARM and any other major player you can think of.
If I had to give an answer to the question 'why now?', I would say because of investment, and also Cambridge has really modernised as a city in the last few years. Plus it is a genuinely nice place to live- good schools, you can cycle and walk everywhere, and cars aren't really allowed in the city centre.
> According to the recruitment website Hired, the average tech salary in London is $78,000 a year, versus $142,000 in Silicon Valley.
Does anyone have a like-for-like comparison? What do the FAANGS pay for the same thing in one place or the other? Is Glassdoor reliable for these stats?
I don't think the comparison is so easy, because London has a huge financial tech market which SV probably doesn't. But those incomes might end up in the "finance jobs" column rather than "tech". HFT coders get paid a fair bit, but could reasonably claim to be either.
This is a bit strange that this is news considering a lot of the foundations of the tech industry were created at Cambridge and it's never stopped, with ARM being the most visible example. I'm assuming that average people outside of Europe are not aware of Cambridge's importance. Is it also true of the avg person in Europe as well?
Genuinely surprised at how much most people on this thread seem to consider salary as the most important variable when it comes to where you'd want to live.
Relocating TO the US from other countries is often a nightmare, no matter how talented you are.
And I personally care more about how much I like the culture and environment around me after work and on the weekends than how much I'm being paid.
SF is really great, but it's not London.
All that is to say, there's more to it than money. At least for some people.
Strangely the discussions seem to be focused on salaries and the cost of living in the UK.
The article talks about academics being lured away from teaching, which is a problem, I imagine that academics could perhaps guide students in the companies they employed at, like a paid course? Although there's a difference between pure research and getting stuff done.
With all these people working at US companies it creates hubs of knowledge, networks of people, that in turn could spawn new companies, which in the long run is surely a good thing.
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