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

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

#71

Post by sjg007 »

dasil003 wrote: post #52
pooya72 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, b…

3bdrm house in London is basically $1m. This is on par with the Valley. I am surprised salaries are not higher.

I am not sure what you mean by less material goods... I don't think that's true or really means much of anything. Not having space means less stuff in general anyway cause you have to put it somewhere.

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

#72

Post by shantnutiwari »

342ljlas wrote: post #69

A lot of non-sense in the comments about TC/ money. I have worked at FAANG for a long time, both in the Bay Area and in London. My experience is: - TC is lower, but how much lower is highly dependent on your level as the multiplier on base is smaller than the multiplier on stock refreshers. If you are very senior, then the total difference will be ~10-15% (TC), which is arguably not that large. - Private schools are…

> The UK does not have a property tax (!).

It most certainly does, and is called council tax, based on the value of your property, plus other factors

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

#73

Post by sjg007 »

pawelwentpawel wrote: post #19
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.

I wonder, is moving from UK to US easy within a FAANG company? Is that something people do?

Yes but it can tie your hands promotion wise.

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

#74

Post by [deleted] »

shantnutiwari wrote: post #72
342ljlas wrote: post #69

A lot of non-sense in the comments about TC/ money. I have worked at FAANG for a long time, both in the Bay Area and in London. My experience is: - TC is lower, but how much lower is highly dependent on your level as the multiplier on base is smaller than the multiplier on stock refreshers. If you are very senior, then the total difference will be ~10-15% (TC), which is arguably not that large. - Private schools are…

> The UK does not have a property tax (!). It most certainly does, and is called council tax, based on the value of your property, plus other factors

[deleted]

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

#75

Post by sjg007 »

lacker wrote: post #60
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 salar…

They call this cost of labor. Makes you realize how much of a cog you really are.

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

#76

Post by gpderetta »

shantnutiwari wrote: post #72
342ljlas wrote: post #69

A lot of non-sense in the comments about TC/ money. I have worked at FAANG for a long time, both in the Bay Area and in London. My experience is: - TC is lower, but how much lower is highly dependent on your level as the multiplier on base is smaller than the multiplier on stock refreshers. If you are very senior, then the total difference will be ~10-15% (TC), which is arguably not that large. - Private schools are…

> The UK does not have a property tax (!). It most certainly does, and is called council tax, based on the value of your property, plus other factors

As you pay council tax as a tenant, it is a bit different from a property tax. Is more of a services tax. Also the valuation used is often very outdated and I believe regressive.

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

#77

Post by mmarq »

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…

> One person said that 130K USD salary in the Bay Area would be equivalent to 50K GBP in London

I don't know how expensive the Bay Area may be, but 50K in London (3100 per month) are barely enough to pay rent (2000 per month) and definitely not enough to send a child to nursery (2000 per month).

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

#78

Post by Balero »

jen20 wrote: post #67
sokoloff wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

A household (not individual) income of £100000 is sufficient to be well inside the top 10% by income. Using the standard ratio of 4.5 times income for a mortgage means that you are capped at houses costing around 560k, assuming you have 20% to put down. The following search for 3 bedroom houses [1] provides either flats, maisonettes and a few houses in areas with poor transport links, and many of these are still over…

What's wrong with a decent flat or maisonette?

I agree with your general point that housing is too expensive! I'm just curious.

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

#79

Post by Balero »

shantnutiwari wrote: post #72
342ljlas wrote: post #69

A lot of non-sense in the comments about TC/ money. I have worked at FAANG for a long time, both in the Bay Area and in London. My experience is: - TC is lower, but how much lower is highly dependent on your level as the multiplier on base is smaller than the multiplier on stock refreshers. If you are very senior, then the total difference will be ~10-15% (TC), which is arguably not that large. - Private schools are…

> The UK does not have a property tax (!). It most certainly does, and is called council tax, based on the value of your property, plus other factors

It is based on the value of your property in 1993, which can lead to some weird payment. Also it is generally much lower for expensive properties than Californias property tax.

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

#80

Post by CommanderData »

There's a massive skills shortage in London, to make matters worse the government penalised the self-employed and IT contractors were particularly hit hard because alot of them choose to work this way.

Ironic because I know a few recruitment agents that have said IR35 have made things increasingly difficult in an already scarce market, alot of the clients they recruit for are in public and government sectors.

With the changes you'll be less tax efficient and paying almost the same as you're permanent counterparts.

You can avoid IR35 if you're conniving enough to work through a specially setup PSC however these are so difficult and costly, for the fat cats and not the general populous.

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