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Ask HN: Relocating to London After Brexit

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Re: Ask HN: Relocating to London After Brexit

#41

Post by 0xfaded »

patrickdet wrote: post #23
0xy wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

London beats any European city by a substantial amount, even including cost of living. I don't see why that would change. Switzerland as you point out has similarly high wages. I can't see innovation, talent or companies moving to the EU at any stage. It's a regulatory horror show and has massive brain drain to places that actually pay developers reasonable wages. Developers in Sweden are paid the equivalent of 51k U…

> Developers in the EU get shafted big time. Free health insurance is not worth half, or even one-third the salary. It’s called solidarity

No, it's called getting shafted. The EU has more or less the same wealth floating around as any other western country, but it's in total stagnation.

We can argue about why this is, but the end result is that asset prices are high, while there's no incentive to cycle money through the economy in a way that allows wealth building.

Not even the government is willing to spend, which is a problem because the government has set itself up to be the subsidizer of everything. The scale of the problem is easily appearant when you see Brussels celebrating a €10b climate package. Exactly what is €20 per citizen supposed to achieve?

Re: Ask HN: Relocating to London After Brexit

#42

Post by ben_w »

For software, I don’t expect much to change. I’m basically as Remain-y as it’s possible to be, but the post-Brexit issues are:

• Mutual recognition of qualifications: usually not as important in software as what you do after your degree, but even when it is the “engineer” in “software engineer” isn’t a protected term.

• Customs and border controls: solution for software is “the internet!”

• Work visas when visiting the content from the UK: apparently not needed for short business trips?

• Work visas for those going to the UK: IIRC the UK wants a minimum pay threshold such that most of us would reject a pay offer that low even straight out of university.

• Pay/living costs: possibly a real issue — as others point out, the UK is already not very competitive for pay and London is somewhat expensive.

•• Regarding pay: while the exchange rates may swing sharply in the next few months, I expect that a year from now they will mostly be close to the current values.

•• Regarding living costs: if it hasn’t been for COVID, I’d have expected housing costs to go down and everything else to go up (when measured in £), given COVID I have no idea what to expect.

I’d actively try to dissuade you if you were doing anything involving hardware, chemicals, medicine, law, space, or food; and I’d still put 5% on this developing like the Northern Ireland Troubles; but software as a particular domain is probably either fine, or at the very least the problems will be unrelated to Brexit.

Re: Ask HN: Relocating to London After Brexit

#43

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

Nursie wrote: post #24
mfDjB wrote: post #15

I moved to London to do a startup in December 2019. All I can say is do not do this. The government during covid has been horribly inefficient, I just received my NHS ID in the last month (taking upwards of a year to process, during which time they denied me covid testing after I had the necessary symptoms) and I received my NINO 6 months after moving here, however now with covid they aren't even processing these any…

I don't think undoing the GDPR would be doing "the right thing", personally. I'm hoping that's legislation we keep for the time being, until we can figure out how to do it better. But fundamentally it's pulling in the right direction. You're right that in a lot of the UK software folks are viewed as 'beneath' the management and business types though, and not valued in the same way as they are in other economies. Usel…

Brexit was essentially those arseholes taking over the country and doing their best to lock out or break down anyone with real skill or talent.

This is not exaggeration. The point of Brexit was "sovereignty" - but only for a somewhat eccentric and delusional ruling class which saw its financial and political power being eroded by the UK's links to the EU.

Instead of integrating and keeping some influence and privilege - something the continental aristocracies managed relatively smoothly - they decided to pull up the drawbridge and launch into a fantasy of Empire 2.0.

This will not end well. But in the meantime the competent middle classes will find working and living conditions in the UK increasingly harsh, expensive, and unpleasant.

Re: Ask HN: Relocating to London After Brexit

#44

Post by mellosouls »

thr0waway2 wrote: post #2

London wasn't that great when it comes to tech jobs compared to US/Canada. Starting salary for grads at FANGs is around a third of what it is at large US cities when living costs are no more than 30-40% lower for example. Compared to rest of Europe London is a lot better with notable exception of Switzerland which is a non-EU country. So to me it would seem that membership in EU is not a necessary condition for good…

FANG salaries and financial rewards aren't relevant to most software engineers, though the proportion may be higher on HN.

Realistic salaries more generally also can't be taken out of the wider context of living in a country with different social values and funding of them (I'm trying to be polite in reference to the comparative British/European vs USA perspectives of and funding with regard to social support and social disparities).

Re: Ask HN: Relocating to London After Brexit

#45

Post by orange_tee »

bvcvbuiy wrote: post #38
marcinzm wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>as underestimating some built-in benefits of other countries like free healthcare. If you're at FAANG (which the original post was talking about) then there's little advantage of free healthcare imho. You get top of the line company paid for healthcare. You can see a top specialist in a week with no referrals needed and someone almost as good same day.

That is a given for every resident in most European countries. Edit: it seems I am wrong. I commented a bit too fast.

That's not true. For example in Germany there is an explicit difference between statutory healthcare and private healthcare. Private healthcare will get you to the front of the line and will give you easy access to all services. With statutory healthcare you will have to go around searching for specialists who have time for you, as most will refuse you on account of them being "fully booked".

Re: Ask HN: Relocating to London After Brexit

#46

Post by ff7c11 »

thr0waway2 wrote: post #2

London wasn't that great when it comes to tech jobs compared to US/Canada. Starting salary for grads at FANGs is around a third of what it is at large US cities when living costs are no more than 30-40% lower for example. Compared to rest of Europe London is a lot better with notable exception of Switzerland which is a non-EU country. So to me it would seem that membership in EU is not a necessary condition for good…

Swiss tech companies find that there isn't enough talent within Switzerland unless they are focusing purely on the Swiss market. Cost of living is higher than London in somewhere like Geneva. For growing US tech companies, what is the main reason why they want to open a tech office in Europe? If it's just regulatory / business / tax stuff, there's no need to employ developers: it could just be business & legal side. If it's access to talent then London is still great. Perhaps that will decline as it won't be as easy to bring EU citizens over to work there. I know that the Silicon Valley salaries can be several times higher than in London, but for some Europeans it just doesn't seem super attractive to live and work in the US.

Re: Ask HN: Relocating to London After Brexit

#47

Post by marcinzm »

bvcvbuiy wrote: post #38
marcinzm wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>as underestimating some built-in benefits of other countries like free healthcare. If you're at FAANG (which the original post was talking about) then there's little advantage of free healthcare imho. You get top of the line company paid for healthcare. You can see a top specialist in a week with no referrals needed and someone almost as good same day.

That is a given for every resident in most European countries. Edit: it seems I am wrong. I commented a bit too fast.

>That is a given for every resident in most European countries.

Based on what I've heard it's not a given in the UK for example. Need non-guaranteed GP referral (ie: they may say no) for a specialist and there's often a long waiting period.

Re: Ask HN: Relocating to London After Brexit

#48

Post by rswail »

mfDjB wrote: post #26
Nursie wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think undoing the GDPR would be doing "the right thing", personally. I'm hoping that's legislation we keep for the time being, until we can figure out how to do it better. But fundamentally it's pulling in the right direction. You're right that in a lot of the UK software folks are viewed as 'beneath' the management and business types though, and not valued in the same way as they are in other economies. Usel…

In regards to GDPR, I agree it's the right thing for consumers, but it puts compliance pressure on startups. So from the perspective of a startup, I could see its removal being a positive. (Note that is just from the perspective of a startup)

Don't collect information about your customers that you don't need to provide the service to them.

If they decide to delete their account and request that they be forgotten, delete that data that you only needed while providing the service.

It's not hard to comply, and it's a cost of doing business that you have to accept. If you implement it right, then you'll be compliant by default. Not sure how not being compliant is a positive for any startup.

It's the law in the EU, so unless you want to cut out a market of half a billion people, you have to comply.

Re: Ask HN: Relocating to London After Brexit

#50

Post by adav »

Too early to tell.

If you’re coming from a less well-off country and have the flexibility to take advantage of any post-Brexit easier immigration flux, I’d definitely take the risk and go for it.

If you’re coming from a country that’s roughly as prosperous and have some luxury of time, I’d delay any decision by at least a year.

There will most likely still be more opportunity in London than anywhere else in Europe, but hard to tell what it’ll be like compared against the rest of the world.

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