UK's pay is extremely low. And you know that it is VERY difficult to earn beyond £80k/yr as a SWE outside of top foreign employers in the UK like Google or Citadel. More likely, you'll stagnate at £50-60k.
And when factoring the UK's CoL being comparable to some of the more expensive American cities (SF, NYC, Boston) yet salaries being a fraction of those available there, it makes sense why engineering isn't well regarded, and plenty of people either switch to finance or immigrates to the States, Australia, or Canada.
New Grad SWE London salary is more realistically 35k to 60k, Small Companies and Consultants are around 35k, Big Banks do 50k, and the bigger startups do like 55 to 60k.
The 100k is pretty much the elite prop trading, that's the whole LC hard grilling that 99.9% of candidates aren't going past.
Low relative to the US Tier 1 cities only. Just based on a cursory look at levels.fyi London median comp is £96k [1] while e.g. Houston is £103k [2] Toronto is £80k [3]. In fact, the only location I could find outside the US that was higher was Zurich at £126k [4]
First, CoL is miles lower in Houston and other tier 2 cities in America - you can buy a detached house for around $500k/£400k in a posh neighborhood. Not happpening in inner ring London.
Secondly, I've noticed issues with Levels.fyi ranges outside US/Canada and top tech hubs like Tel Aviv and Bangalore. Most markets don't have the same awareness of the tool, so salaries tend to be overestimated.
I don't think they'd relocate, but that doesn't matter.
They most likely will pull an ARM and hire almost entirely in the US and India instead of in the UK, because competitive British engineers would immigrate to the States, and you can get top tier Indian chip design talent across the spectrum for $30-60k.
It is impossible to immigrate to the US unless your employer is willing to go through the time-consuming and expensive process of sponsoring a visa + green card, which they have little reason to do since they can pay you less over here. I've been designing chips for years in the UK at ARM and elsewhere, haven't encountered anyone moving to the States
UK's pay is extremely low. And you know that it is VERY difficult to earn beyond £80k/yr as a SWE outside of top foreign employers in the UK like Google or Citadel. More likely, you'll stagnate at £50-60k.
And when factoring the UK's CoL being comparable to some of the more expensive American cities (SF, NYC, Boston) yet salaries being a fraction of those available there, it makes sense why engineering isn't well regarded, and plenty of people either switch to finance or immigrates to the States, Australia, or Canada.