Ask HN: What has been your experience with bigger tech companies in London? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What has been your experience with bigger tech companies in London?

#111

Post by JonChesterfield » Fri, Mar 18, 2022, 11:35 PM UTC

blululu wrote: post #10

mettamage wrote: post #4

If you're European it's one of the few options you've got. I find it odd though that people make so much less compared to their US counterparts. Does anyone know why that is?

Putting aside the clear invitation to dunk on Euros the answer is pretty straightforward: 1.) The market rate on software engineering is lower in Europe. There are probably some cultural factors at play here (larger talent pool, less entrepreneurship). 2.) Taxes are a bit higher and the company must foot the bill even if that doesn’t show up in your take home directly.

UK employer national insurance is cheap compared to US health insurance. 1) sounds right.

Re: Ask HN: What has been your experience with bigger tech companies in London?

#112

Post by JonChesterfield » Fri, Mar 18, 2022, 11:37 PM UTC

Dave3of5 wrote: post #33

mettamage wrote: post #4

If you're European it's one of the few options you've got. I find it odd though that people make so much less compared to their US counterparts. Does anyone know why that is?

Mostly money, there's plenty of start-up's in europe but the funding is much less than that from USA VC's. There are exceptions to this rule but overall funding is less.

That is true but weird in itself. Much harder to raise large amounts of capital from European sources. Means we end up with European companies funded by American VC.

Re: Ask HN: What has been your experience with bigger tech companies in London?

#113

Post by JonChesterfield » Fri, Mar 18, 2022, 11:43 PM UTC

mattmanser wrote: post #70

tasubotadas wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

45% tax

That's not the employer tax rate. They pay like 13% national insurance. The rest of the tax is paid by the employee. And the 45% rate is only on any earnings OVER £150k. So the money eart less than that is at lower rates.

60% between 100k and 125k, then 40% to 150k, then 45% beyond that. Which is weird and hidden behind incrementally removing the 'personal allowance'.

Threshold is probably 100 + (personal allowance)*2 where that was 12.5ish last I looked.

Also some state support (childcare maybe?) evaporates at 100, which is fairly similar to another tax.

Re: Ask HN: What has been your experience with bigger tech companies in London?

#114

Post by randomopining » Sat, Mar 19, 2022, 12:47 AM UTC

asdadsdad wrote: post #88

colinmhayes wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

£150k is much, much less than non entry level FAANG engineers in the US are making.

150k USD is around what you'll get with 2-3 years of non-FAANG experience in the US, so not that bad for London.

Really non fangs pay 150k? Where?

Re: Ask HN: What has been your experience with bigger tech companies in London?

#115

Post by ab_testing » Sun, Mar 20, 2022, 7:40 PM UTC

pooya72 wrote: post #34

djohnston wrote: post #3

You make way less money than your peers in California and everything is still as expensive. It's a financially horrible decision if you can work in the US. If you want to work in Europe though it's pretty good. I've worked at FAANG in US and UK and am currently going back to the US for non-financial reasons. I don't regret being here but I find London to be impossibly expensive to build a family in.

It's interesting that you have lived in both and can do a fair comparison. There was a reddit thread a while back that compared US and UK salaries.[1] The consensus seemed to be, that if you compared the cost of living, you would need a considerably higher income in the US to have the same standard of living as the UK. One person said that 130K USD salary in the Bay Area would be equivalent to 50K GBP in London.[2] A…

I think you are correct that yu need approximately 2x salary in the United States to maintain the same cost of living as in London. However with larger companies, you can usually make 3x or even 4x working in California compared to what they pay in London.