Everything I read on the internet suggests that UK tech salaries are extremely low, and that the profession has a low level of respect overall.
I have many many foreign or first generation immigrant coworkers, but almost no one British. I'm surprised, because there's no language barrier and a minimal cultural barrier, but still the vast majority of my coworkers are from places that are much harder to immigrate from.
If any UKites have made it to this thread, is be curious to hear why so few people leave for countries with a stronger and higher paying tech sector?
Extremely low? Not as high as SF, sure, but easily top 5% for the country after a few years experience. Salary aside, many people find life a lot more enjoyable here. I know plenty of people who've worked for a period in the US and come back, as well as myself having done a stint for a US company for a while.
US corporate working culture is rather different to here. Here, if you don't take 4+ weeks holiday, your manager will have a word with you for working too much. Complaining about being back at work after a holiday is expected. At the end of the day, you log off and go home, and you don't think about work again until the next morning except in exceptional cases. Everyone knows and accepts that work is work, not the point of your life. 3PM Friday drinks is still a part of the culture in many companies, as is knocking off early on a nice day and going to the pub.
Obviously it's not like this in every job (particularly low salary or menial), but every job I and most of my acquaintances have had has been vaguely like this.
Then of course there's safety, environment, toxic politics, healthcare, etc. plus generally just liking what you're familiar with. I love the USA, but there are things that are hard to get used to, like car-only suburbs, jaywalking laws, beaches that close at night or are privately owned, rules against outdoor drinking...
I also find UK tech has less of an ageism problem than the USA. People sometimes return here after they start to find their age is causing problems finding work in the US.
> US corporate working culture is rather different to here. Here, if you don't take 4+ weeks holiday, your manager will have a word with you for working too much. Complaining about being back at work after a holiday is expected. At the end of the day, you log off and go home, and you don't think about work again until the next morning except in exceptional cases. Everyone knows and accepts that work is work, not the point of your life. 3PM Friday drinks is still a part of the culture in many companies, as is knocking off early on a nice day and going to the pub.
This is a classic view in London's legal industry. In truth, solicitors in London work as hard as New York corporate lawyers and earn 25%-33% of the pay. Yes, they do tend to take more vacation days and don't have to pay for health insurance, but the health insurance component is made up for taxes and otherwise vacation days are about the only difference.
For me, holiday days are a BIG deal. If company policy allows me to take 6 weeks off without people getting upset, I would happily take a 2/3rd pay cut over the same with 2 weeks off. Of course, if the company allows unpaid leave that's fine, but US companies tend to get bothered if you actually take decent amounts of time off (even in the UK).
UKite here, active in the London fintech scene. Everything I say is based purely on my perception of the situation.
Anecdotally, I see more people in this sector moving to places such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand than to the USA. I think there is a perception here that while salaries might be higher in the USA, there are hidden costs both financially and socially (such as health insurance payments, getting to grips with the American "way of life" etc). The American "way of life" in particular is not seen as "glamorous" (again anecdotally) and I think most view it as a bit of a step down, while the other countries I mentioned are viewed as a step up.
Afaik, there are more UK citizens living in Australia than all the rest of Europe combined.
Unless you are a Data engineer, or React Developer a career move to Australia is career suicide. Just go to LinkedIn and search the variety of jobs and salaries across all of Australia compared to the UK, it doesn't even come close. Salaries are one thing but it's also the variety off work that depresses me more. NZ would be even worse.
I came to Australia and had a good four years but now want to leave after the honeymoon period has worn off. I see all my UK friends doing nice interesting work and I'm stuck doing Python ETL sorry big data / data engineering as that's the demand that pays the bills. My partner is Aussie and want's to stay in Australia so I have some tough choices ahead, career or accept the Australia job market and stay with my partner. I know a few developer immigrants in Australia and they all seem to be over it work wise, COVID and not being to leave Australia to see family has been a big decision changer for most of them.
All my old UK friends and colleagues are now contracting. It seems full time salaries are low in the UK but if you are a contractor things are reasonably ok.Haven't been keeping in touch much but I think there's been recent IR35 changes so not sure how that's changed the contracting landscape. On the lower salaries it does look like they are now higher than when I left a few years ago but when you compare to USA it is still night and day.
I see lots of frontend React jobs, bunch of NodeJS jobs then lots of Python/Spark jobs. Full-time probably around $150-160k average or contracting $1k a day.
Outside of that I see C# or Java using Spring Boot for < $150k but the companies themselfs are a bit meh, fairly non descriptive and closer to the $120k mark than $150.
I don't mind Java but the stuff out here I have done and used is so meh, Spring for everything when there's so much more than Spring. Java 17 was released last week and half the places have only just started using 11.
Even a lot of the cloud/devops stuff here it seems way behind what I was doing a decade ago in the UK.
Recently I've been asking myself maybe I just got lucky and had some good jobs in the UK for forward thinking companies using cloud from the early days at large scale, and my first 4 years in AU I also got lucky before the work changed, so maybe that's poisoned my views. But then I speak to other friends/collages in AU who are not from AU and they express the same problems as me, the choice of jobs isn't great and they feel bit of a step back from what they have done before. I also know people who have left AU completely because of feeling the same.
When i do speak to friends in the UK who careers where lagging behind mine and I was moving way ahead off it seems they're jobs gone from strength to strength where as I get paid a fairly good salary, 30% more than average speaking to recruiters but doing the least interesting, least rewarding work of my life and feeling like the career has gone backwards as now my options are Python/Javascript or take a significant paycut to use some tech I enjoy for a company culture I enjoy.
The more interesting work I have seen has always been overseas companies opening up in AU.
I think this may be a matter of different expectations.
When I moved to Sydney 3 years ago and picked up a job within a week writing JavaScript at $130k + super (£80k then, £70k now the exchange rates have shifted a bit), I was very happy to be paid >2.5x what I'd been earning in the UK.
If you're already on $180k + super (£95k), then you're already extremely well paid almost anywhere outside the USA.
Regarding technologies: JavaScript/Python/C#/Java, well, you've just listed the most common programming languages that everyone uses everywhere? If you want to do Clojure or F# or something exotic then you probably want a Fintech.
I share your pain about Spring though. Life's too short for that nonsense.
> The more interesting work I have seen has always been overseas companies opening up in AU.
That is where I ended up. But now I'm a Django developer which I suspect isn't what you mean by interesting.
I might be reading more into you brief analysis than I should, but one interpretation I could make from what you just said is:
- there’s a bunch of companies that are using technologies that are a decade or more old, doing work that seems like it was maybe relevant and exciting a decade ago, and they are paying toward the lower end of the market
- there are companies using newer technologies/more modern problems, paying more
Maybe the solution here is to reskill/reposition yourself to be able to work for the companies that interest you? There’s quite a few companies doing very interesting things in AU these days. Admittedly the salaries aren’t close to the Bay Area, especially if you want a very early stage startup, but IMO there’s no shortage of exciting opportunities. If you want to optimise for income though you’re probably going to have to make a compromise somewhere.
Don't get me wrong I like paying with technologies, especially keeping up to date. In fact as a consultant that's why I'm brought in, to deliver the new thing the org doesn't yet have experience with. My list and breadth of experience is more than most from the CV's i've seen and the roles I perform going in as a consultant to some very large company's. In most cases up until recently due to job market shift I've been an early user. I've worked across frontend, backend and platform/devops for large flagship brand names and at a smaller scale and i've worked across all three in depth not just touching on them
The re-skilling for me to get employment with a good salary/maintain current salary from my point of view is to do what I was doing 10-15 years ago as a junior. So it's not re-skilling, I know and use/have used these things, it's lowering my expectations on the type of work i'm doing. Meanwhile I'm still on some UK agencies dial lists and there's a bunch of jobs i'd snap up and say yes to instantly. Same for jobs I see in the EU and US. Remote is an option but the timezones are pretty bad for AU, I have a friend who has ended up working overnight for a US company.
What would be an interesting role for you? There must be some companies in Sydney using Rust/Golang or similar if Python ETL isn't what you like doing.
No Rust, I’ve been looking and would be excited to do some rust professionally.
I have seen a few GoLang jobs, they have mainly been Devops tooling/platform support roles and a 30% paycut, I could be interested for the right company. Devops often comes with the unadvertised salary reduction, on call duties. Not against on call but every time the deal has been worse than not being on call.
Kotlin I’d be interested in, seen a few odd jobs but closer to 35% pay cut. I thought they would be more Kotlin usage than there currently is.
Modern Java I could be interested in with the caveat no Spring boot. I haven’t really seen this, and the Java roles seem to be the lower end of the market outside of specialised roles in banks which isn’t an atmosphere I’d like to work in due to how hard it is to get things done and being a people management game. That’s my current life, multi billion dollar city org where easy things become hard things for no obvious reason.
Scala, I would enjoy but it doesn’t exist. It’s only listed on roles next to Python and Spark as bait. It was reasonably popular here in 2014 being the largest tech meetup held at Atlassian. The people I know writing Scala are now doing it remotely. There is a crm who use it in Melbourne I’m actually following up, then there’s Rupert Murdoch owned orgs REA, Foxtel, etc i’d rather not work for and didn’t get a good impression when I have spoke to.
Haskell I would love but would say I’m beginner.
My specialties are cloud, micro services, devops, devops without Python except for small scripts and definitely no Ansible. I don’t mind devops, I’ve been setting Kafka clusters and writing Kafka apps up for the past few years but all the devops roles I see use ansible and it’s a pore choice in my opinion and from the programming side Spring have their own Kafka library which is a no go for my sanity. Spark / data engineering stuff I’ve just landed in, I get by but not an interest of mine especially as most of it I think has the if all you have is an hammer everything looks like a nail.
My ideal job would be working for a product company, on a product that has value you can invest yourself in and perform many roles. I miss working in a good product company with a valuable service. As long as I’m not writing NodeJs / massive amount of Python I wouldn’t be to fussed.
I did a couple of years at Atlassian, for a period that was really enjoyable until change of manager’s and direction etc.
I might have to refresh my leet code and give Canva a shot although that looks like a 40% paycut as most of the startups here do trading on name.
Salary right now seems a big factor for me, I’m on just under $200k AUD inc super, I’d move no questions asked for 10-15% in that range but 30-40% I have to have job satisfaction to move. I’m well aware my salary is way in to the upper end for AU although some will be on more. At the same time the paycut seems significant. Not complaining, I won’t go without food either way but it’s the predicament I am in. First world problems.
In the next 12 months I’ve been lucky enough to get in to a position to semi retire and then do 3-6 month contracts to tie me by and look at a career outside software.
Sounds like you've got a great range of experience, both broad and in-depth so I imagine you can pretty much pick and choose your job offers/contract gigs. I'm also wondering what a career outside of software might look like in the future - if you have any initial ideas I'd be interested to hear them.
I moved to Sydney at the end of 2018, have been working mostly with Python for the best part of 10 years (previously in the UK) and also have landed in data engineering. I also still do some web dev and act as a tech lead. I don't mind the data side of things and I get to work with (Azure|AWS|GCP) and their various data-realated technologies on a daily basis. I haven't worked with Kafka as nowhere I've worked has had a need for it so far, but having said that I've also done stuff with Kubernetes which was probably overkill too in retrospect.
I know they have slightly different use cases but if you don't like Ansible, have you used Terraform? Hashicorp have started to dominate in some areas of DevOps tooling and as you know it has a lot of traction, although I can't think of many companies using it in anger in Australia off the top of my head.
I don't work here so this isn't an ad for the company, but this is an example Java job description I saw recently https://www.todaysplan.com.au/jobs/ No mention of Spring which is a bonus for you, but I imagine there'd be a pay cut from what you're on now. I've heard some Canberra-based jobs pay relatively well but the average could be skewed by some of the high paying government jobs.
> Java 17 was released last week and half the places have only just started using 11
That's not Australia, that's just Java. Most companies who bet on Java 10 years ago did so because it was a stable and conservative platform; they were not going to accelerate their development practices just because the vendor started telling them to.
Most friends and colleagues in Java shops are all in the same boat: they're barely done migrating from 8 to 11 and they don't really know when they'll move further (although it should be easier). Maybe they have the occasional greenfield project on a newer release, but the bread and butter is always on the old workhorses.
The difference between Aus and NZ is night and day... there's so much more choice for interesting work in Aus. However I think that's changing; in just ~2 years there seems to have been a huge increase in tech startups in NZ, due to VC finally arriving. I think there are easily 4x more NLP startups than before.
I moved to the US from the UK and I think it was a mistake. The first 5 years were great now my kids have settled I feel kinda stuck. I didn't mind working non stop and dedicating life to work, but its a drag.
Become a freelancer/consultant. Also perhaps consider moving to a different part of the US. I moved from the lower peninsula to small-town Montana 20 years ago and much prefer it here.
Find a better job that respects work-life balance? There are plenty in the US if you aim for them.
In my in the bay area you'd be ridiculed if you checked in during a vacation, I took 5 continuous weeks off no problem and emailing off-hours is frowned upon.
>The American "way of life" in particular is not seen as "glamorous" (again anecdotally) and I think most view it as a bit of a step down
I'm actually a bit curious about this cultural perception. Could you elaborate a bit more about what the perceived American "way of life" is and how it differs from that of the UK, and why it's a step down? I've only had the chance to study for a bit in the US and never really been to the UK so I'm quite curious
I think a lot of American TV and movies that we see from a young age tend to portray America as some combination of violent, corrupt, venal, frenetic, a struggle. For every thoughtful film or show where no-one brandishes a gun there must be hundreds more the opposite. We get everything you make here as fire hose of content all in the original language in Britain and even though it’s all make believe and most Americans are living normal lives just like most Brits, I think it must have some affect at some level. It’s your brand perception, if you like. I think it probably affects Americans as well but you can’t rationalise it as something that happens somewhere else.
Perth feels a lot nearer to the UK (especially with the non-stop flight from London, 17 hours vs 24 with a layover to Sydney) than the rest of the continent. It's 7 hours ahead rather than 9 which I think makes a difference too.
And the immigration system. I'd love to move to the US but the family-focused immigration system makes it real tricky compared to Australia (could get a visa in 6 months WITHOUT a job offer) or Canada (working holiday visa gives me 3 years working access no problem).
That's true and the need to be able to drive a car is also a hard stop to move to the USA. I had a job offer but they wanted me to move from the UK to the US.
I didn't get the feeling you can live in the US without a car. Public transport is non-existent or very limited. Maybe my picture of the US or California is wrong
It's only really in some compact cities like SF or Manhattan with good public transport that you don't need a car. Car clubs are useful for local trips. But SV and other towns and cities you'd need one. I'd say in Manhattan having a car is a liability!
It may, however getting a driving license is really easy compared to most countries. And rentals are not to expensive (ok these days are a bit different due to agencies selling all their cars and being stuck not able to buy new ones now).
This may be controversial, but I think most of us Brits, even the liberal-internationalist ones, have enough national attachment to the place that it makes it hard to leave. We can tell you the top fifty things wrong with the country if you have the time, but have no intention of quitting just because it's a bit shit.
The taint of cynical fatalism is the main thing that distinguishes us from the rest of the Anglosphere. It makes us unable to participate in corporate boosterism. And it often prevents us from taking opportunities. Nowhere on the same level as the Russian national character, but it's definitely an important part of British culture and humor.
As is snobbishness about Americans. This dates back to the war and beyond ("over paid and over here" https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/unite...), and I suspect this lurks beneath the surface; moving to America would not only mean surrounding yourself with Americans, but admitting that they'd won. (Again, even if you're a liberal-internationalist Brit, Americans are the last foreigners it's OK to be prejudiced against)
Having moved from Cambridge to Edinburgh to secure a better salary/house price tradeoff, I get a double dose of this: Scotland is entirely made of people whose ancestors didn't flee the country in a previous economic disaster (either the Highland Clearances, the end of Empire, or Thatcherism), and that biases people against leaving.
(I've thought about it myself on a couple of occasions; the first time I was young and single and feared moving to a country where I knew nobody, and the second time was yesterday reading a government statement that we're definitely not running out of gas over the winter)
> If any UKites have made it to this thread, is be curious to hear why so few people leave for countries with a stronger and higher paying tech sector?
If by "countries with higher paying tech sector" you mean the USA, with all due respect and without going into a huge discussion, I much prefer staying in UK, or the European continent in general. There is more to life, happiness, comfort, long-term goals and self-realisation than the number of dollars deposited in my bank account by my employer.
With remote working and the Internet the idea of relocating where your job is, is quite antiquated, at least for my standards. If I really need the money, I'll try and find a way to get paid US salaries while living in the EU.
As a software engineer working 100% remote and living in London I get paid 3-4x the average London salary, which is enough _for me_ to live more than comfortably and I don't really feel I need to earn $500k a year to improve my quality of life. I can't afford a private jet, but I don't need one, either.
> If any UKites have made it to this thread, is be curious to hear why so few people leave for countries with a stronger and higher paying tech sector?
First of all, working in tech in the UK you can make $130,000 which is 3-4x the median annual salary. Very few Brits would describe that is "extremely low".
That's enough money to have a few kids, a wife who doesn't work, and a pretty decent lifestyle.
Why move a 10-hour flight away from all my friends and family, just because I could earn enough to drive a Lamborghini instead of a Lotus Elise?
> First of all, working in tech in the UK you can make $130,000 which is 3-4x the median annual salary.
That's not a common compensation at all. I think USA gives way more choices, at the very least finance, big tech and start-ups (that actually offer noticeable equity, unlike UK).
I've been outside the UK for a few years, but when I was there £80k for a senior in London was fairly standard, and I had recruiters emailing me for £100k roles. That's the pre-tax salary; getting some extra compensation or perks would be somewhat expected, but not at US levels.
Outside London it varies a lot though... I'm from the South West and £50k would be a good salary there. But that's no different from some places in the US. If you live in a small town, of course there is less opportunity.
But most people who know their worth become contractors. I've had to work with people on £500/day who I wouldn't even trust to run the tests properly. Selling yourself as a "senior <insert hot language of the day> developer" you can easily command a few hundred more. And then there's fintech which goes even higher.
In the UK there isn't that much difference in security from being an employee vs a contractor (you still have state health insurance at the end of the day). Even without the higher rates, the tax benefits alone make it very beneficial, which is why IR35 regulations have been brought in. I know someone who has a company car (Porsche Taycan) which they use to drive to the company yatch...
Can you supplement your post with some evidence? Because what I see on the market is all at the ~80k mark - 100k+ is an edge-case outside of FAANG.
In comparison, in the US 150k+ seems common, and while you could argue costs of living and healthcare offset that, if you're purely betting on the short-term and are relatively young (so unlikely to need much healthcare) you can save up a ton of cash with that compared to in UK.
How much do people think folks who work for FAANGs are paying for health care? My out of pocket max for a year is $3000. And I pay $25 a month. If I had a family it'd be something like $60 a month and an out of packet max of $7500. And that's the expensive plan, out of pocket max wise (for a lower monthly payment). I haven't come across anyone who was out of network my entire time here. Granted that's more than 0, but if you're making $200k a year, it's trivial.
Healthcare in the US is a real problem for folks on the margins or low wage jobs. But for people working white collar jobs, it's usually pretty good. There's a reason why when Obamacare passed, people freaked out! The status quo bias comes from the fact that most people are happy.
The biggest issue I had with the US healthcare system was how confusing it is. And how much you seem to have to know upfront what you’ll need, where to go, etc vs trusting experts in the system to guide you. Even with top tier insurance from my employer. A lasting memory of that was in our prenatal class when they wanted the expecting mother’s to do a blood test to check for various risks. Queue much frantic checking by all of the other white collar employees of Bay Area companies to see if the pathology in this hospital was in network or not.
I don’t live in either country any more, but if I had to choose I’d take the UK system.
Saying this at the risk of being downvoted but don't really care as I feel I have to let it out.
The U.K. healthcare system is the lowest level of medical service possible being made available with tax payers' contribution. The highest tax rate contributors as a result are getting the worst possible service. And most of such high rate tax payers either get some kind of medical insurance from their employer OR they end up buying their own in addition.
And unless one is prepared to go to Harley Street neighbourhood and pay close to around £500 per consultation, even with the additional so called private medical cover, one is still under the aegis of the N.H.S. Go there and you will see what appear to be "clientele" mostly from the Middle East as they probably can afford that sort of fee.
The overall benefit is really for the people who are contributing the least to the state. I understand there may surely be people who genuinely are unable to contribute to the state but then there are people who know and are for sure gaming the system (and this cuts across N.H.S and into other social services)
The results are dire in some cases for e.g. the Slough Borough Council very recently went bankrupt and this is within ten years of some alleged millions of pounds pumped into the community to help it grow.
The N.H.S. needs reform or else the way I see it, it will implode under its own weight.
People call out the U.S. health services being astronomically expensive. The fact of the matter is that medical services are expensive. Someone has to pay. An ambulance manned with two or three para-medics and life saving equipment doesn't come free, the fuel for the ambulance is not free, the paramedics were not trained for free. This is true whether it is in the U.S. or U.K. .In U.S. it is blatantly apparent as it is not a welfare state. In the U.K. it appears to be free to whom the service was provided in that moment but it is costing someone some very serious amount of money (i.e. the tax payer)
Move over from para-medics to doctors and I think U.K. medical schools are no less expensive than U.S. medical schools. It will still take an aspirant upwards of ten years to become a doctor be it U.S. or U.K. . And to an extent I think doctors on both sides earn pretty much the same and have very similar lifestyles after they gain specialisation or super-specialisation. Where is that money coming from ? Don't get me wrong.. I am not saying there is anything wrong with doctors making money.. they deserve it as they work REALLY HARD for it.
I have not heard from anyone in my close circle even being offered prenatal classes maybe it is available as a paid service under some expensive medical insurance plan but not via N.H.S. All N.H.S offer is access to a mid-wife and if one is unlucky (like I was in the case of my first born) it is not impossible that one won't get to see a real doctor during the delivery ! In case even a minor surgical procedure is required, and one is unlucky enough to be assigned to a Birth Centre rather than a maternity ward, be prepared to wait for hours.
In my experience, like I said, someone needs to take a serious look at N.H.S and it's workings and shake it down.
I mean if N.H.S is the world's best healthcare system (as it is touted to be, correct me if I am wrong) why for heavens sake does the Prime Minister has to go on national television and beg to people to "Save the N.H.S" during the initial phases of Covid. (This could lead the discussion in an entirely different direction but this was the same Prime Minister who was going to save 350 million Euros a week and pump them into the N.H.S)
The U.S. didn't do any better but then no one was anyways saying U.S. healthcare system was good to begin with.
> The U.K. healthcare system is the lowest level of medical service possible being made available with tax payers' contribution.
Rubbish. International studies stick the UK health system high up, and typically far higher than the US system. On top of that if you're that bothered you can pay for private health care, which typically costs less than £1k a year.
> People call out the U.S. health services being astronomically expensive. The fact of the matter is that medical services are expensive. Someone has to pay.
The US spends three times as much on healthcare than the UK, over twice as much as western european countries like Germany, Brelgium, France etc.
> I have not heard from anyone in my close circle even being offered prenatal classes maybe it is available as a paid service under some expensive medical insurance plan but not via N.H.S.
For our first child we had prenatal classes, they were free. Didn't bother for the second, but they were available. Plenty of standard hospital checkups.
> why for heavens sake does the Prime Minister has to go on national television and beg to people to "Save the N.H.S"
Because people like the NHS, but don't like the prime minister. I believe it's called "stolen valor" in the US
> The U.K. healthcare system is the lowest level of medical service possible being made available with tax payers' contribution.
> >Rubbish.
Nice way to start :)
>> International studies stick the UK health system high up, and typically far higher than the US system. On top of that if you're that bothered you can pay for private health care, which typically costs less than £1k a year.
Totally understand and aware that I can spend more money on top of the taxes I pay towards the N.H.S.. What made you think I didn't have the faculties to grasp that fact ?
If you read well, then read again... The U.K. healthcare system is the lowest level of medical service possible being made available (to the people in U.K.)
>The US spends three times as much on healthcare than the UK, over twice as much as western european countries like Germany, Brelgium, France etc
What is the point here ? U.K. should start spending even more ? Oh well more taxes are coming anyways now that Covid is here.
>For our first child we had prenatal classes, they were free. Didn't bother for the second, but they were available. Plenty of standard hospital checkups.
Maybe you live in area which has less population density. My personal experience with the N.H.S is unforgettable (in a bad way)
The reason for basically all of the problems you have described is over a decade of systematic under funding by the current government.
Continually forcing trusts to make cuts and costs savings result in them running with no slack at all - which leaves no room to make improvements, thus perpetuating the downward spiral.
Not just the current government, UK health care funding (regardless of source) has been about £1k a year per capita lower than France, Germany, Netherlands etc for 40 years (and about £8k a year lower than the US).
In 2016, UK governemnt/compulsory funding was $3175 per person. Germany $4781. The US was $8080.
> In my experience, like I said, someone needs to take a serious look at N.H.S and it's workings and shake it down.
Sounds to me like you've fallen for Tory propaganda about the NHS. The reason the service it provides is worse than in other countries is simply that it has less funding. Annual per capita spending on healthcare, in PPP pounds sterling:
The NHS isn’t even close to the best health system in the world. There are multiple other bizarre conceptions in tour rant but I would have to take 15 min that I don’t have.
£100K+ ($135k) is common enough in fintech, and lately smaller tech startups have been offering that kind of salary.
I don't know where those aggregation sites get their data, but it doesn't match my experience. Those same sites will say the average in SF is well below what anyone I know is earning also.
I would note salaries are not very transparent in the UK, and most higher end job adverts don't even indicate a range - but based on the constant messages on LinkedIn and my experience hiring, the market is a lot hotter than those aggregation sites would suggest.
FAANG in London also pays £220k+ and closer to £400k+ total yearly comp for management roles. Once you have one FAANG on the CV you are going to have no problem getting £250k+ total comp packages from mid-tier fintechs and similar outfits in the city and 300-400 is available if you have some management experience. This may be an anomaly, but it is a sellers market right now in the UK tech scene -- lots of big funding rounds closing as the market remains frothy and capital frantically hunts around for something to invest in, so a lot of companies are competing for a smaller pool of talent.
FAANG in London will pay a lot more than £100k too, but parent specifically asked for outside of FAANG.
Also there are a lot of fintechs (or pure finance) that will pay more than that. I'd say after about £160k you're going to struggle without moving into some kind of management type of position, though, if you're not at a FAANG or extremely well funded startup.
Also bay area COL is substantially higher than London. I live in a 4 bed house a 30 min cycle from the City (where I work), and pay around £1500/month.
> after about £160k you're going to struggle without moving into some kind of management type of position
Or being a fairly experienced / niche contractor who can get £600+ a day - although that obviously forfeits the job security and benefits (but then is an actual £160k+, not £N+ with intangibles to bring it up.)
If you want a high salary with minimum fuss (i.e. no management, no clawing your way up a corporate ladder), this is way to do it. I've been contracting in London for 5 years. Rates are in the range of £500-£700 per day, never had a problem getting work, post-tax salary equivalent to £200k PAYE. You can often take several months off over the summer too, if you like that sort of thing.
Sure. I just did a 12 month stint at £650/day. Assume 220 working days/year = £143K. Now you have a silly dance to minimise your tax.
- Pay yourself minimum wage (0pct rate) ~£9K/year.
- You can probably write off around £10K against tax (lunch, transport)
- Pay 19% corporation tax on the rest
- Pay yourself a dividend up to upper rate, end up paying around 7.5% tax on that
- ...probably some other tricks
Leads to a total tax rate of around 20-25% as long as you can survive on £50K a year. So net income something like £115K after tax. Say £9.5K/month, would require a gross salary of £194K [0].
This is why the government is trying to clamp down on IR35 abuse, but still plenty of contracts outside, at the moment.
> Now you have a silly dance to minimise your tax.
Although there is a risk here that HMRC will come after you at some future point when this has been ruled an invalid scheme. Personally I don't think it's worth it and don't tax dodge/minimise/optimise (also a moral stance.)
To weigh in with an alternative viewpoint, as a pretty average not-even-ftse250-never-mind-faang developer, I've seen typical .net dev salaries hover around £40k/£50k for the past 10 years now even around London.
Extremely low compared to what? I’m in a competitively paid position as a principle developer for a large London technology company. Not renowned for high salaries, but also not bottom of the market.
Most people I know in basically any other industry make less money pre-tax than I have left over after tax, deductions, rent, and bills. I’m sure I could find things to do with more money, just as anyone can, but I definitely hit the point a while ago where more money would significantly improve my level of happiness.
Given that, why would I pack up my entire life and start over in another country?
One datapoint fwiw, but someone recently asked me why I hadn’t moved to the US. I reflected on it a while.
First point, I’ve travelled a lot to the US and would definitely not live in SF due to the insane levels of inequality and homelessness. I also like diversity and think it’s a competitive advantage in some domains, SF seems to be a bit of a monoculture. But I do like cities like Boulder and NYC. So it may depend on where in the US you’re looking.
I did consider a move to the US. The biggest deciding factor was the lack of social services, primarily a national health service, but also a welfare state. Partly this was for selfish reasons - I want a safety net for me and my family - but also because I don’t want to see other people suffering.
The U.K. is headed towards the same inequality and poor social provision as the US, we’re both already outliers in the western world, but the additional factor of older family here means I’m unlikely to move to the EU (if I can), at least not yet. So if anything, I’m headed in the other direction.
> Everything I read on the internet suggests that UK tech salaries are extremely low, and that the profession has a low level of respect overall.
For salaries, we're better paid than the vast majority of white-collar workers to the point it becomes a running joke. I once got asked by a standup comedian doing a set what my job is, I said software dev, and he answered "blimey you must be fuckin loaded". We're not at the level of the US, but we're probably higher than most of Western Europe, at least after CoL (e.g. https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/uk-developer...). It can be tricky to compare salaries across countries, but I can't imagine the massive amounts of European developers came to London for the climate.
As for respect, I don't really know what you mean. Beyond professions like nurses/social workers, I (and I hope most people) don't really base respect on profession. We probably get more professional respect in the workplace, we get away with stuff the other departments definitely don't, but personal respect? Just doesn't come into it, unless you're a social worker or nurse or something.
I think I might know what the OP means by respect. You see it in Thai dev recruitment ads, they sometimes mandate developers to be 27 years old or younger, the implication seems to be that if you are still a developer by the time you're 28, then there must be something wrong with you. It can be seen as something akin to an admin role, for which more than two years experience would be pointless.
I never experienced that in London, quite the opposite, devs have a mystic status as the person who probably earns more than anyone else, doing something no one understands and still wears a t-shirt to work.
I do see the low respect attitude in Paris a little though (or perhaps it's simply budget constraints). The best development is the cheapest, for instance there are a lot more react native gigs here where they want one person to do both an iOS and an Android app, and the contract is for 3 months. I don't touch those with a barge pole because they'll end up with junk that barely works of course
I would have to get a 5x+ opportunity to consider leaving London for the US and I am not even British. I think you have an idea of American exceptionalism which is not really shared by most people in Europe.
[Thanks to all the brits for educating me! I did not realize there where bands of SWE pay that were relatively well compensated.
I have also learned a lot about perceptions of the U.S. Later tonight, when I don the armor I constructed from discarded soda bottles, and leave my home storage locker to scavenge the dumpster scraps from a Kardashian's birthday party, I will reflect on the downsides of Americans' societal choices.]
UK salaries are a lot lower than US salaries but every country has lower salaries than the US and the UK fares better than most. I would guess this means brits have less incentive to emigrate than people from India or somewhere were salaries are even lower than the UK.
It’s also quite difficult to move to the US from the UK, a lot easier to move to Canada, Australia, New Zealand or the rest of Europe.
There are also virtually equally exciting opportunities, I think. Deepmind has never moved from london, and google essentially just built their HQ around them in kings cross.
Compared to SF/NY salaries are low. Compared to Chicago/Denver/Houston UK tech salaries are probably similar. Traditionally the big banks in the city paid very highly but since the financial collapse pay has stagnated.
A low level of respect follows the money. London has a lot of traders, big company execs, politicians, lawyers, accountants etc they all pay more than IT.
As a Brit who's spent a fair amount of time in the Midwest I beg to differ. One example I often came across was that I would interlace what I said with relatively subtle humour, as everyone does back home, but find that instead of conveying multiple meanings people would take everything in flat earnest, often being rather miffed and perplexed. On the other hand Americans would smack me in the face with their gregarious intonations and beaming white teeth whenever they thought they had something funny to say, something that grew more and more irritating and bizarre to me over my stay.
It also bothered me that even close friends often struggled to understand my pretty typical London accent, when I've had to guzzle American speech patterns off of screens my entire life. The only British English dialect you could expect anyone to be familiar with was that off of 1960s TV shows like Monty bloody Python. Grrr.
Personally speaking (and I say this as a Brit who really likes the US, and Americans in general whenever I meet them). I haven't tried to move to the US because of the slightly distasteful situation in terms of education, healthcare and social security, car dependence, weirdly low holiday allowance, Foxnews, QAnon, an alarming gun lobby, and the current republican party in general is quite quite shocking to me in it's transparent gaslighting, racism and anti-democratic (small d) tendencies. The UK has its fair share of opportunistic charlatans too of course, ahem. That's why I now live in mainland Europe, get great health care, fast trains, fast internet, good work life balance etc though I probably earn less than I would if I was in the US
There are plenty of good reasons to move [to the US] too of course, and I do know quite a few who have (including my sister who loves it, and I suspect is never going to move back to rainy Britain)
There might be another reason you don't see many brit developers in the US though, we probably just don't produce that many of them. I worked in London for 20 years and the typical dev team had less than 50% Brits in it even there. Looking at Hollywood we seem to produce a lot more actors that can do a passable American accent than developers.
I moved from the UK to the US 32 years ago (as a developer).
The most important thing to understand about actual life here is that while all the things you mention are true, real aspects of the USA, they are not necessarily notable aspects of your own day to day life here.
The US is enormously varied in terms of climate, geography, political inclinations, cost of living, and public provisioning. By choosing somewhat carefully, you can find yourself in a situation that either stares your list in the face, or makes it seem like a distant roar somewhere far over the horizon. A couple of years ago, I moved from Philadelphia (after 23 years there) to a small village in NM. This is a far greater change in my way of life and my experience of life than moving from the UK to the US ever was.
It is true that in the US you are essentially forced into more self-reliance for a number of aspects of your own well-being in a way that seems crazy from a UK/EU perspective. Most developers will do well enough to not suffer dramatically from this "design", but the question of other's suffering under it may come up, as might bad luck.
Brexit is neither fascist nor (intrinsically) racist. Boris certainly has some racist ministers working for him, and I don't doubt that he's casually racist; but then most people are, to some extent.
I worked in the US for a year. I'll never go back. I saw too many black kids lying on their faces by the side of the highway, with cops standing over them pointing pistols at them. I never saw a carload of white kids getting that treatment. This was a daily experience (and I was only on the highway for about 10 minutes daily). It's completely normal. I was regularly told that when I leave my home, I shouldn't walk past Nth St., because that's a "bad neighbourhood" (i.e. black).
My experience of living in US was restricted to Richmond, VA. I've been to other parts, but not lived in them.
Sure, UK cops are racist too. But somehow the US cops seem to get a free pass - it's almost as if they're hired to be racists and bullies.
Methinks your view of the US is way too based on what you read/watch on the internet.
It’s no different than the UK. I could say I don’t want to live there because of rampant alcohol abuse, random crime in London, racial strife from refugees, crazy politicians, insane media who focus too much on some old family with crowns.
But I know that’s not an accurate representation of the UK.
Or maybe you're not paying close enough attention.
A few tiny examples: Texas, a state larger than the UK, just became a state where any resident can sue anyone else that helps someone access an abortion after about 6 weeks of pregnancy (before a lot of people know they are pregnant) regardless of rape or incest and win up to $10,000 for doing so.
States all over the country are busy banning voting on a Sunday because after church is when a lot of black people vote.
The looser of the last election, is still claiming to have won it, and millions of people genuinely believe him.
No different to the UK? Maybe try Bolsanaro's Brazil but with a larger GDP
Edit: that Brazil comparison is hyperbole, I don't know enough about Brazil to say that anyway
I don't really know what you mean, those are just facts, among many that exist whether I read about them or not. And American politics is fascinating to me, so I enjoy it.
American democracy is not out of the woods just because Bidden won, he has a healthy popular vote majority, but wafer thin control of the Senate. The two Democrat senators currently blocking reforms are from Republican leaning states so they're motivations are not typical for straight Democrats. Things very much hang in the balance at the moment. Republicans are busy gerrymandering their districts, so we could soon be back to Republican control of the House despite solid popular vote majorities for Democrats, at which point we can probably kiss goodbye to the US leading the world against climate change regardless of who's president.
Can I assume, that you don't know any of this because you enjoy "turning off your computer"? Then why comment about something you deliberately avoid learning about?
Your “facts” are actually carefully shaped narratives that come out of the shouting on social media and are based on a typically shallow understanding of the key issues and more based on sound bites than a carefully thought out belief structure.
The US seems like it’s unstable because that’s what gets clicks.
You can go back to any decade in the past 200 years and find outrageous “the sky is falling narratives”. Now is no different.
> I know that’s not an accurate representation of the UK.
Actually that's pretty accurate, from someone that lives here. There are some good points though, like basic human rights (e.g. abortion), which one cannot take for granted.
> I have many many foreign or first generation immigrant coworkers, but almost no one British.
Because math, plus UK immigrants are a lot less obvious in the US
> I'm surprised, because there's no language barrier
There's actually some language barrier (UK English is not US English). But its lower than for lots of other places, sure. That just means its a lot faster for a UK immigrant to pass (in speech) for a native.
> and a minimal cultural barrier,
I’m not really sure that's true.
> the vast majority of my coworkers are from places that are much harder to immigrate from
Sure, but the vast majority of people who aren't currently in the US are from places that (1) aren't the UK, and (2) have a much bigger income deficit for software engineers than the UK does compared to the US.
The fraction of a given population that will voluntarily migrate is pretty low I think.
The gap between London and UK-but-not-London salaries is probably pretty comparable to the one between London and San Francisco, but most people won't move a few hundred kilometers to London to get the extra money. The proportion of people willing to move across the ocean, leave behind friends and family, and embrace a new culture, is lower still.
But I think the other commenters have it right: when British people dream of living overseas, they dream of Australia, Canada, Spain, and the south of France.
Not sure about the ‘extremely low salaries’ bit but don’t forget that in London for example finance can pay very well indeed so I suspect that lots of potential tech emigrees end up working in banking.
My move was partly because of the Investigatory Powers Act, partly because of Brexit.
I considered several countries, including the USA, Ireland, Canada, New Zealand. My reasons for rejecting the USA were a mixture of political and economic: even the Democrats are uncomfortably right-wing for me; I place a negative value on the 2nd amendment; I would rather walk or cycle than have a car; the legal minimum paid holiday in the EU is 4 weeks[0], plus public holidays, plus (this might just be Germany IDK) paid sick leave and paid compassionate leave and (not that this has yet happened but it is on my bucket list) an enormous amount of paid parental leave; the American healthcare system is terrifying (I am currently getting adverts on Facebook to crowdfund some American strangers’ care, not even sure why I see that ad); every anecdote about American cops (even the experiences of people I know personally) has been negative.
I do like several of the things America has done — Big tech, everything NASA — and there is appeal in both the higher salaries and better weather the Bay Area has compared to both the UK and Berlin, and I severely underestimated the difficulty of learning German, but given the nature of my political rejection of the UK is such that even Democrats in control of every branch of DC would still be marginal for me, Trump winning (and on a platform that denigrated migrants, a category I became a member of the moment I left the UK) totally eliminated it.
Forgot to mention: when actually visiting the US on four separate one-month visits, I was repeatedly shocked by poor tech adoption, poor quality housing, and the high cost of healthy food options even in supermarkets.
> If any UKites have made it to this thread, is be curious to hear why so few people leave for countries with a stronger and higher paying tech sector?
Where do you suggest?
I only speak English to any decent level, German to a barely conversational degree, and given brexit, the right to work in a German speaking country is not a given.
I sure as hell am not ever going to live in the (no offence) right-wing dystopia of the USA.
That leaves me with what? Canada or Australia? Both far away, with equally “bad” salaries and far away from my roots?
I did mean the USA, but now see that it was implicit (sorry. I probably enforced a bunch of stereotypes right there).
I'm very curious if "it's a right-wing dystopia" is a common viewpoint, and whether it comes from direct experience, or just reading about the US. (Not disagreeing at all).
I'd say "right-wing dystopia" is putting it too strongly. The USA is definitely further right than the UK, but the main perception I'd say is that the politics in the USA are toxic, highly polarised and all-consuming (very easy to get sucked into it and hard to get out).
But I don't think that's a surprising perception given that for the last 6 years, the news we get about the USA across the pond is almost exclusively politically-orientated.
As an outsider what I don't like about the US is less the politics of particular candidates (I guess that's the point of politics and having multiple competing parties - people vote for those with whom they align with) but the "dynamics" and people's approach to politics. Everything seems politicized to a much higher extent than in the UK or European countries. As a recent example, masks and vaccines are seen as political messages by (seemingly) a lot of people.
I'm a European living in the US. It's not (yet) a right-wing dystopia, but the political system is clearly teetering at a point of collapse.
The last presidential election was barely certified. Several people were killed in the national parliament building during an insurrection stoked by a candidate. Lies about election security are being spread to undermine public trust.
Those are things that you'd expect to read about elections in some African country, not a Western democracy. Will they be able to certify the next election with only a handful of people killed? I don't know, but I'm planning to get out of here before that.
I think it is. Whenever I suggested I’d like to move out to the US one day to work on a start up or in the healthy tech scenes, most recoil as if I’m out of my mind.
After seeing the number of massacres/shoot outs, losing an online friend to gun crime, healthcare bankruptcy and seeing Trump get voted in after he mocked a disabled journalist, I too decided I was out of my mind.
I’m not sure if I’m welcome anyway - I’d fair better being a white male but that shouldn’t matter. It just doesn’t look good.
I guess Boris was voted in over here but still… it’s bad but not quite the same level.
Because they earn well for the UK and living in Europe while earning London tech salaries is pretty dope. You don’t have Uk co workers because they don’t want to leave the country. What’s low paying for you is one of the best paid professions in the Uk.
I miss working from Google Campus and attending tech events in the surrounding streets. Not a day passed without meeting someone new and interesting, being inspired by the work of others as they describe it to you, even just checking out the student-like noticeboard of startups looking for co-founders for this or that idea. None of these have a compelling replacement online.
I moved from SF to London, and it was refreshing to be in a city where tech was not the dominant industry. In fact, by not working in finance I felt like an outsider and it for a more collegial atmosphere with other tech workers. Silicon Drinkabout (https://silicondrinkabout.com/) was a cool community on Fridays in London to meet other tech people who didn't wear suits.
Is this article down playing the effects of Brexit a little? I used to work in Silicon Roundabout and now I live in Paris, I know plenty of developers who've moved out of the UK because of Brexit, but none who have moved to the UK since Brexit was finalised. It must be getting harder and harder for London based startups to find a dev team
I think the article was quite balanced. If anything the tech scene is better since Brexit but I suspect that's in large part to the pandemic. However, if you worked for one of the faultering European investment banks then perhaps you would disagree.
I personally doubt the government's involvement made any difference to Silicon roundabout whatsoever. It was already well known as our tech hub in those days and the rents were low enough to attract creatives. It was also a matter of time before it became more gentrified and property value 'literally' doubled.
I think the tech jobs market in London is still better than in Paris for what I do, so possibly we agree? (I left the UK in spite of that not because of it).
Depends what you mean by tech scene being better, if it's a shortage of tech workers, it's better for tech workers, and it's worse for people looking for tech workers - which eventually affects the decisions about where to base a team. But like another commenter said, remote work changes these calculations.
To make it even more difficult to parse, we also had IR35 reform in the same period!
> It must be getting harder and harder for London based startups to find a dev team
The market has stabilized and the salaries demanded seem to exceed what typical "growth and engagement" startup crap is willing to pay, where as before there seemed to be a surplus of talent happy to take these lower wages.
But it's not hard to hire if you have a sustainable business that can afford to pay good wages. When someone complains to me how hard it is to hire I always talk about this magical thing called "money" and where if you put more of it on the table you'll magically get more candidates in the next day. But instead they still focus on pool tables and "culture".
It could also be that the startup market is saturated and the "growth and engagement" bubble is popping? It used to be that any tech company that can show growth (even without a solid business plan to turn that into profit) could get insane amounts of money thrown at them, where as now every idea has been hashed and rehashed multiple times and you need an actual business plan addressing your predecessors' failures - simply boasting how many users you have on your sinking ship won't cut it (or at least not as much).
+1 It is but Brexit also coincided with the pandemic which led to a massive spike in remote working so it's quite hard to tell the extend until the dust settles.
It isn't. Funding in first half of 2021 was larger than the whole of 2020...and London in 2020 was already many multiples than Paris. Additionally, the UK has a large startup scene outside London. Manchester was roughly equal to Amsterdam in 2020, it grew significantly in 2021 and is likely going to approach top-tier mainland cities soon. Edinburgh and Belfast are growing fast.
It isn't even close (tbh, the UK isn't really competing with the EU anymore...the EU is just so far behind).
Btw, the reason why people have moved out of Silicon Roundabout is the same reason banks moved out of Canary Wharf. Rents too high, office space not growing fast enough (Google moved into Holborn, outgrew that, moved to Victoria, outgrew that, and is now building a huge new office in King's Cross). VC funding is up something like 15x since the Roundabout was created, the growth was just too rapid for such a small area.
> “We increased funding, we increased the number of jobs, but as such, we increased the retail estate value. And the problem which we solved was the financing piece, but then unfortunately, financing still requires you to have an office. But that’s kind of just how the market works.
Same mistake as California. The landlords get a huge cut of cash inflows.
Tech should take a lesson from Macdonalds and buy land before placing a tech hub on it. And land price increases can help get seed money.
Not surprised there are nicer bits of London to set up in - not surprised the Googles moved to Kings Cross now its gentrified.
Before it was Silicon Roundabout BT had a couple of big offices that I used to go to occasionally and the area was a real dump back then.
Ironically in 95 or so I was up for a board (promotion) at 207 old street and was extoling all the cool things I was doing with the www and internet - unfortuetly I was interviewed by the old school COBOL guys and did not get one of the 18-20 promotions.
> not surprised the Googles moved to Kings Cross now its gentrified.
I really dont understand why people want to work there. Its a really expensive shithole still. Granted there are now lots of new offices full of tech workers, but thats not a selling point.
Facebook and google moved out of soho for kings bloody cross.
I suspect the real reason is that its the only site left big enough to put multi-thousand person offices in still. (along with the _really_ expensive chain shops that we tech workers apparently need.)
People moved to shoreditch because it was cheap, thats why it looked like a shithole. Now it still looks like a shithole, but lacks every other appealing feature.
You are labelling these locations as a 'shithole' without offering any real perspective. The urban regeneration, around the Google site and Kings X has changed the area considerably to shed its gritty image, even if it still lacks some soul. The transport links might be the key factor, but it is also situated in proximity to world leading universities and academic institutions (UCL/Birkbeck/SOAS/UoW/LSE), notwithstanding The British Library. You would be hard-pressed not to find exciting places, teeming with vibrant culture, within a mile radius.
Soho is pretty much equidistant to UCL, and is closer to kings. Everything is close in london.
My issue is this, Kings Cross is basically what someone thinks a "tech hub" should feel like, rather than what will naturally pop up over time. My company is moving from Soho, which is a nice vibrant (now sadly diminished) cultural center, to kings cross.
Everything is private land in kingscross, which means that the local council has no real control over what happens there. This means no real chance for markets, or passion shops that only have a tiny amount of capital to start up. Soho has three market pitches, shoreditch has at least 2.
Kingscross has none, and if they did, they would be charging eye watering pitch fees. This means that there is almost no chance of new local stall popping up and building out a presence. (Unless mummy & daddy provide cash) Which means that all the shops are both expensive and "boutique"
Shoreditch on the other hand was a working class, vibrant community. Most of the locals, barring the oldies who have council houses have left. When industry started leaving, and the artists started moving in, there was a time of creativity(90s early 2000s). Things looked scummy because there was no money, not because it was the USP of the area. The USP was it was cheap.
Now there is loads of money, a decimated local community, but everything is kept in a state of shabbiness because people think that's what made shoreditch special. Its a zoo for people to pretend to be working class and or cool, when in practice they are neither.
I actually went for dinner nears Kings X the other day, and there is a little market section near St. Martins https://canopymarket.co.uk/
Although I actually totally agree with you. Kings X not having as much public land makes the entire place almost feel pre-gentrified if that makes sense. Not much soul.
Yup - both HS1, Thameslink and several "northern" trains go into Kings Cross/St Pancras or Euston (a ~5 minute walk), whereas approximately nothing goes to Old Street.
The big companies have their own free restaurants and even bars inside so employees do not need to leave their buildings. Thus where the place is, is less important than with smaller companies. As a similar example, in silicon valley, they have convoys of buses from the nearby city to their offices. Where they work means nothing much.
Additionally being close to other companies is less important for networking when you are a monopoly!
Kings Cross is a bizarre no man’s land where it’s hyper gentrified in some ways but also a shitty void with fuck all going on. Bizarre place that experienced 30 years worth of development in 5.
It is a strange place indeed but its development is almost a blueprint for many others in the capital: previously shitty, ran down places being converted into very expensive areas,yet they aren't very livable. I mean what one is supposed to do when they leave their flats that are minutes walk from King's Cross?
I enjoyed working in Kings Cross for a year or so, but it is a slightly odd place. There are some nice small pubs and restaurants etc (better than the ones near Old Street, though less numerous) and loads of great concerts at Kings Place. The whole railway lands development area is weird but if you avoid that then it's quite good.
My brother lived on Great Eastern Street from the early 90's until last year, he got in just as it was an 'up and coming' area - it's an interesting place, and there are a fair few tech companies around there (Amazon is 5 minutes brisk walk, as is a company now owned by Vonage).
It was interesting to see the area develop over those years.
Boris Johnson did some press event when I was at tech hub (I think he was mayor of London at the time). We told him our app was good. "Right, err, so I must download pingtune, _on_ to my app, got it" buffoon / plucky underdog was just his brand
I have many many foreign or first generation immigrant coworkers, but almost no one British. I'm surprised, because there's no language barrier and a minimal cultural barrier, but still the vast majority of my coworkers are from places that are much harder to immigrate from.
If any UKites have made it to this thread, is be curious to hear why so few people leave for countries with a stronger and higher paying tech sector?