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Ask HN: Relocating to London After Brexit

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Re: Ask HN: Relocating to London After Brexit

#91

Post by majewsky »

orange_tee wrote: post #45
bvcvbuiy wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

I'm a German with statutory healthcare.

> most [specialists] will refuse you on account of them being "fully booked"

I don't deny that this does happen, but it's not as inevitable as you make it sound. I've seen about a dozen separate specialists over the years for various reasons, and have never had such problems. There were a few outliers where I had to wait several weeks for an appointment, but that was only for non-urgent matters and I was never refused service. In most cases, I can get an appointment within 1-5 days of calling the doctor's office.

My suspicion is that such overload as you describe is a regional issue, so if, as an immigrant, you need to rely on certain specialists because of chronic ailments, it may be worth to investigate the availability of the relevant specialist doctor beforehand.

Re: Ask HN: Relocating to London After Brexit

#92

Post by killtimeatwork »

ben_w wrote: post #42

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 t…

Biggest and pretty serious difference I see is that, in the past a lot of devs from EU moved to UK for contracting, as that's why the most money was to be made. Now I suspect it will be impossible or impractical. However, I don't follow the details anymore but this probably aligns with the end of contracting boom anyway (due to IR35 tax regulations).

Re: Ask HN: Relocating to London After Brexit

#93

Post by djaahk »

marcinzm wrote: post #18
djaahk wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always feel like salary comparisons are a little biased by a slightly US-centric definition of a comfortable lifestyle (e.g. including a car, parking, bigger house requirements, etc) as well as underestimating some built-in benefits of other countries like free healthcare. Are there good sources out there that would afford a holistic cost comparison of a typical London lifestyle (Tube, 1-bedroom in Zone 1-2, weeken…

>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’s a really good point. My understanding however was that you still need to pay some parts of the treatments, even with top healthcare?

I’m no specialist on the US system, so could be wrong, but I heard from a friend who paid $4K cash for a broken ankle (arguably out of a total bill of $25K+, and not sure what type of healthcare they had), whereas your bill in the U.K., France or Spain for the same injury would be exactly zero (as an example, from countries I know better). The same would be true, I believe, for child birth for instance (again, I could be wrong as relying on second-hand accounts in both cases).

Agreed on the type of specialist you would get in the U.K., although in my experience it’s always been very feasible to see top specialists when warranted, even on public healthcare. You would typically get faster access for non-essential care on a private basis though.

Overall, it seems from Yours and other comments that the salary multiple in U.S. tech specifically may still be significant and would probably make these moot.

Re: Ask HN: Relocating to London After Brexit

#94

Post by djaahk »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #71
djaahk wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always feel like salary comparisons are a little biased by a slightly US-centric definition of a comfortable lifestyle (e.g. including a car, parking, bigger house requirements, etc) as well as underestimating some built-in benefits of other countries like free healthcare. Are there good sources out there that would afford a holistic cost comparison of a typical London lifestyle (Tube, 1-bedroom in Zone 1-2, weeken…

The typical London lifestyle for people with a respectable income -- tech money, not finance money -- is more like living in Zone 3 and working in Zone 1. I think there is a lot of proportionality between standard of lifestyle and income between London and expensive US cities, a similar level of income buying a similar lifestyle (adjusted for local context). A big difference is that high incomes are much more widely…

> An under-rated feature of US cities is the diversity of occupations that can command relatively high incomes.

I find this super interesting, especially when linking salary back to how much society values that job type. For instance it seems that many European countries value societally their teachers and professors, yet it is a rather underpaid profession, all things considered. Similarly, a maitre d’ would be quite well regarded in France or Italie, yet would not command a high-salary.

Thus it feels like your point on there being more diverse sectors being cogent with a comfortable lifestyle in the U.S. rings true.

Veering away from the main point, but I wonder if, as pointed in other comments, that is somewhat balanced by less people being, comparatively, in the poor and very poor category. That is to say, less of a difference between top lifestyles and bottom lifestyles overall. I would need to properly research that though, as salary alone won’t give us that variance.

Re: Ask HN: Relocating to London After Brexit

#95

Post by jandrewrogers »

djaahk wrote: post #94
jandrewrogers wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The typical London lifestyle for people with a respectable income -- tech money, not finance money -- is more like living in Zone 3 and working in Zone 1. I think there is a lot of proportionality between standard of lifestyle and income between London and expensive US cities, a similar level of income buying a similar lifestyle (adjusted for local context). A big difference is that high incomes are much more widely…

> An under-rated feature of US cities is the diversity of occupations that can command relatively high incomes. I find this super interesting, especially when linking salary back to how much society values that job type. For instance it seems that many European countries value societally their teachers and professors, yet it is a rather underpaid profession, all things considered. Similarly, a maitre d’ would be quit…

A large part of the income distribution differences result from wages being very compressed around the median for a given occupation in Europe. For most occupations in the US, the top 5% earn much more money than the median person in their occupation (or the population generally), even for occupations like waiters and cleaners that we don't think of as high-paying. This creates a different set of expectations culturally; everyone knows at least a few enterprising people that make a surprising amount of money doing nominally low-wage, low-status work and therefore having access to a visibly comfortable life.

I think "poor" is relative to cultural expectations, so I am not sure how to measure that over different geographic regions. The infamously poverty-stricken regions of the US, like Appalachia or Mississippi, really do have serious systemic poverty but even the middle-class there is often viewed as poor by the standards of other regions. However, the lifestyle afforded by the 40th percentile household income in most European countries would identify as "poor" in much of the US, despite being definitionally middle-class. In much of the US, "poverty" is primarily associated with social problems like drugs and crime, not economic resource issues per se outside of a few sparsely populated regions, which isn't that different than what I see in Europe. I grew up in abject poverty of non-social kind, which is pretty rare in the US. In hindsight, I think the government did a reasonable job of handling that case.

Re: Ask HN: Relocating to London After Brexit

#96

Post by TMWNN »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #71
djaahk wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always feel like salary comparisons are a little biased by a slightly US-centric definition of a comfortable lifestyle (e.g. including a car, parking, bigger house requirements, etc) as well as underestimating some built-in benefits of other countries like free healthcare. Are there good sources out there that would afford a holistic cost comparison of a typical London lifestyle (Tube, 1-bedroom in Zone 1-2, weeken…

The typical London lifestyle for people with a respectable income -- tech money, not finance money -- is more like living in Zone 3 and working in Zone 1. I think there is a lot of proportionality between standard of lifestyle and income between London and expensive US cities, a similar level of income buying a similar lifestyle (adjusted for local context). A big difference is that high incomes are much more widely…

>A big difference is that high incomes are much more widely distributed across industries in the US than London.

[...]

>An under-rated feature of US cities is the diversity of occupations that can command relatively high incomes.

The way I've explained this to people is that it's entirely possible in the US to rise to the top of your profession in any industry without ever moving to NY or LA, except maybe finance for NY and film/television for LA.[1] The equivalent is possible in Australia, Canada, and Germany, but impossible in the UK or France.

[1] And even here there are exceptions. For the entirety of the century that Hollywood has been "Hollywood", the creative types in LA have worked under control of the money men in NY. This is still true, except that the money men are now also in Dallas (AT&T), Philadelphia (Comcast), or Tokyo (Sony). In finance, one can become a managing director at a New York investment bank while always based in a regional office like Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas, or San Francisco (I think Byron Trott never left Chicago during his Goldman career).

Re: Ask HN: Relocating to London After Brexit

#97

Post by TMWNN »

djaahk wrote: post #93
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’s a really good point. My understanding however was that you still need to pay some parts of the treatments, even with top healthcare? I’m no specialist on the US system, so could be wrong, but I heard from a friend who paid $4K cash for a broken ankle (arguably out of a total bill of $25K+, and not sure what type of healthcare they had), whereas your bill in the U.K., France or Spain for the same injury would b…

>I’m no specialist on the US system, so could be wrong, but I heard from a friend who paid $4K cash for a broken ankle (arguably out of a total bill of $25K+, and not sure what type of healthcare they had), whereas your bill in the U.K., France or Spain for the same injury would be exactly zero (as an example, from countries I know better)

UK, yes. In France, aren't there copayments? I thought the French system typically covers 70% of hospital bills.

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