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?

#51

Post by jltsiren » Thu, Mar 17, 2022, 3:36 PM UTC

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #36

Balero wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with everything you said aside from: "For some reason I thought FAANGs in London were paid really well but seems like contracting or finance is the only way to get a reasonable income." Even in London £100k is above a reasonable income for one person. It's not enough to buy a house and provide for a family on one income and still have no worries, but expecting that is unreasonable. It's really easy to get stu…

It's really out of the ordinary when you're in the top 1% and can't afford a decent life - meanwhile lower middle class people who bought before QE (15 years ago) can afford a decent life. We shouldn't be lowering our "unreasonable" standards. If you're in the top 1% in income - you should have an complementary lifestyle. Not just be grateful that you're not in complete financial misery like everyone else your age.

You should pay more attention to household incomes than individual incomes, because housing is a per-household expense. Even if you are a high-income individual, you may still live in a mid-income household. In most large cities, being mid-income means you can afford to rent in most areas or buy in cheap areas.

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

#52

Post by dasil003 » Thu, Mar 17, 2022, 3:40 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 moved from SF to London in 2010 and back in 2014. I was working for a startup at the time, so not FAANG, but also salaries weren't anywhere near what they are today.

My experience is you can't really compare salaries directly, you really need to think about your personal lifestyle. First, if you care primarily about money then there's no substitute for being in Silicon Valley. After that it gets more complicated, basic cost of living like food and going out to the pub is cheaper in London, but high end goods are more expensive and the 20% VAT really hurts. People are generally calibrated on less material goods than the typical American is used to. That includes smaller flats and spending a greater percentage of your income on them. On the other hand though, you don't have to worry about health care, and you don't need to own a car because public transport coverage is solid, and the majority of places have at least decent walkability with some local shops. Overall I would say if you're interested you need to look at potential salary and rents and figure out if it works financially, but don't expect to make equivalent as the US and stay on the same financial trajectory—it's apples and oranges.

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

#53

Post by dec0dedab0de » Thu, Mar 17, 2022, 3:42 PM UTC

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?

It's probably not as big of a difference when you get away from silicon valley which is a special case. And I think one major reason silicon valley salaries are so high because non-compete clauses are invalid, so people can jump to a competitor at a moments notice if they are offered more money.

Another thing I've heard is that many European countries have rules on how to terminate an employee, and most states in the US you can just fire someone at any time for almost any reason, or no reason. So in the US a high salary is essentially a short term risk that can be removed immediately if the company hits a financial downturn. US employees know that there is no loyalty from the company, and in-turn are constantly looking for new positions that pay more.

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

#54

Post by gpderetta » Thu, Mar 17, 2022, 3:42 PM UTC

jen20 wrote: post #47

yunohn wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 While this does have a partial truth to it, the examples are delusional. How can anyone compare 50k GBP to 130K USD? I have lived across the USA, EU, and Asia; but such comparisons are heavily personal situation dependant. The calculations would dif…

I’ve also lived in the UK and US, though did not work for a FAANG in the UK. By the exchange rate right now, 50k GBP is around 65k USD. If you want to live within (say) an hour reach of an office, you’ll have a much easier time doing that in the London metro area with 50k than you will in the Bay Area with 130k. This is before you even consider taxes and healthcare. High quality groceries also substantially cheaper i…

Anecdotally, 10 years ago, two people could rent and live comfortably in zone 1 (just a few minutes from work) with a salary of ~50k. A few salary bumps later we managed to buy a flat in zone 2. Prices of flats have gone up (but not as much as houses) and so has cost of living, but I would say that two people or even a family will live more than comfortably in London on ~100k, manage to save some money and even be able to buy a flat, given a reasonable deposit.

Houses, even small ones, in zone 1-2 are now prohibitively expensive, but if you are willing to move further away there are options.

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

#55

Post by sokoloff » Thu, Mar 17, 2022, 3:44 PM UTC

jen20 wrote: post #49

Balero wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with everything you said aside from: "For some reason I thought FAANGs in London were paid really well but seems like contracting or finance is the only way to get a reasonable income." Even in London £100k is above a reasonable income for one person. It's not enough to buy a house and provide for a family on one income and still have no worries, but expecting that is unreasonable. It's really easy to get stu…

I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect that someone in the top 10% of incomes should be able to buy a house.

Top 10% of household income with some savings for a downpayment should indeed be able to purchase housing if they choose to tie themself down that way.

It’s not necessarily the case that top 10% individual income means you’re top 10% household income (and the top 10% household income can obviously bid more for housing than the second, third, or farther decile of household income).

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

#56

Post by bluehatbrit » Thu, Mar 17, 2022, 3:48 PM UTC

Chirono wrote: post #5

To get an idea of comp for companies in London, levels.fyi is a good starting point. https://www.levels.fyi/Salaries/Software-Engineer/London/ Bottom line is that comp is way under what you would get for the same job in the US, but better than most other engineering jobs in London outside of certain finance roles. The market seems to have been going up a lot in the past couple of years though. The interview process i…

In my experience levels.fyi is pretty shoddy for the UK, I'm pretty sure a lot of non-London employers are on there but lumped under London since there are no other UK cities listed.

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

#57

Post by lacker » Thu, Mar 17, 2022, 3:49 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…

130K USD salary in the Bay Area

It's worth pointing out that this is below FAANG range. A software engineer with zero years of experience in the US should make roughly $160K-190K in compensation at the large tech companies.

https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Amazon,Google,Facebook,Apple...

In the Bay Area, the cost of real estate will dominate your cost of living. If you are happy to live in a 1-bedroom apartment, that entry level FAANG software engineering job will pay for everything you need in life and more. If you want to buy a house for your spouse and three children, it will start to depend much more on precisely where you want to live.

Unfortunately a 5 bedroom house in Mountain View will run you maybe $3.5M. But it depends a lot on where you go though. Look out in the San Jose suburbs and the same house might cost half as much. I don't know much about the London real estate situation so I can't speak to it but if you really want to compare cost of living for software engineers you probably should look specifically at housing, rather than comparing general statistics.

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

#58

Post by bluehatbrit » Thu, Mar 17, 2022, 3:52 PM UTC

mettamage wrote: post #17

Chirono wrote: post #5

To get an idea of comp for companies in London, levels.fyi is a good starting point. https://www.levels.fyi/Salaries/Software-Engineer/London/ Bottom line is that comp is way under what you would get for the same job in the US, but better than most other engineering jobs in London outside of certain finance roles. The market seems to have been going up a lot in the past couple of years though. The interview process i…

I still wonder how to adequately prep for system design. I feel leetcode is simply practice, but system design, I can't seem to get a full hang of it. And I've noticed in my day job that I am not getting enough experience with it.

I highly recommend working through https://dataintensive.net/ with a pencil to make notes. It has enough information to get you through basically any system design interview at a high level. After that you want to pick a tool for each category to learn in a bit more detail and screw around with if you think the interviewers might ask for details on your specific chosen technologies. Potentially learning the basic pros and cons would be enough. If you're going for more entry to mid level you likely won't need to get into the weeds of postgres index efficency etc in the interview.

Designing Data Intenstive systems will get you about 80-90% of the way there though (in the UK), certainly enough to get through the door as a mid engineer in many bigger places, although possibly not a FAANG.

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

#59

Post by agiamas » Thu, Mar 17, 2022, 3:56 PM UTC

gpderetta wrote: post #54

jen20 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve also lived in the UK and US, though did not work for a FAANG in the UK. By the exchange rate right now, 50k GBP is around 65k USD. If you want to live within (say) an hour reach of an office, you’ll have a much easier time doing that in the London metro area with 50k than you will in the Bay Area with 130k. This is before you even consider taxes and healthcare. High quality groceries also substantially cheaper i…

Anecdotally, 10 years ago, two people could rent and live comfortably in zone 1 (just a few minutes from work) with a salary of ~50k. A few salary bumps later we managed to buy a flat in zone 2. Prices of flats have gone up (but not as much as houses) and so has cost of living, but I would say that two people or even a family will live more than comfortably in London on ~100k, manage to save some money and even be ab…

not only there are options, but there is excellent transportation in London, especially compared to the driving hell because of the all day traffic all around Bay Area. Another parameter I don't see people mentioning (not surprisingly, since its HN after all) is the monoculture in Bay Area, versus living in one of the few global metropolis. In the Bay all you see and live is tech, in London tech is only a part of the overall life experience.

But yeah, overall it's highly personal depending on personal circumstances than anything else.

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

#60

Post by lacker » Thu, Mar 17, 2022, 3:56 PM UTC

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?

I find it odd though that people make so much less compared to their US counterparts. Does anyone know why that is?

It's just supply and demand. When I was working at Facebook they figured out what salary ranges they should pay in each country by doing a survey of how much software engineers were making and picking a target percentile. I might misremember but I believe Facebook was trying to pay 90th percentile salaries. Then every once in a while they would redo the survey, maybe you tweak it if an office has a hard time hiring, etc, but that's the core logic. I heard anecdotally that Google did it similarly.

So in London the market is just paying software engineers less than they make in California, and so the large tech companies follow that market.