Tech Giants Take Their Talent Hunt to Cambridge, UK
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Re: Tech Giants Take Their Talent Hunt to Cambridge, UK
#2The UK could pitch itself as a place rich US tech companies can buy top talent at low price. I have seen some (not many, to be honest) US tech companies open offices in the UK so they can pay half or less for staff, compared to what they'd pay at home. If Brexit goes as badly as it might, the pound could be even cheaper.
Re: Tech Giants Take Their Talent Hunt to Cambridge, UK
#3The UK could pitch itself as a place rich US tech companies can buy top talent at low price. I have seen some (not many, to be honest) US tech companies open offices in the UK so they can pay half or less for staff, compared to what they'd pay at home. If Brexit goes as badly as it might, the pound could be even cheaper.
Why are UK tech salaries so low compared to the US?
Re: Tech Giants Take Their Talent Hunt to Cambridge, UK
#4The UK could pitch itself as a place rich US tech companies can buy top talent at low price. I have seen some (not many, to be honest) US tech companies open offices in the UK so they can pay half or less for staff, compared to what they'd pay at home. If Brexit goes as badly as it might, the pound could be even cheaper.
Why are UK tech salaries so low compared to the US?
Because when tech companies come to places in the us they become gentrified and everything becomes expensive. In most cases tech companies coming to an area has a devastating effect as people who had lived in an area forever are forced out due to the insane spike in cost of living.
Re: Tech Giants Take Their Talent Hunt to Cambridge, UK
#5The UK could pitch itself as a place rich US tech companies can buy top talent at low price. I have seen some (not many, to be honest) US tech companies open offices in the UK so they can pay half or less for staff, compared to what they'd pay at home. If Brexit goes as badly as it might, the pound could be even cheaper.
Mainland Europe has even lower salaries in a similar timezone.
Re: Tech Giants Take Their Talent Hunt to Cambridge, UK
#6The UK could pitch itself as a place rich US tech companies can buy top talent at low price. I have seen some (not many, to be honest) US tech companies open offices in the UK so they can pay half or less for staff, compared to what they'd pay at home. If Brexit goes as badly as it might, the pound could be even cheaper.
Why are UK tech salaries so low compared to the US?
Because outside of financial services, there aren't that many highly profitable companies, Google or Facebook profitability levels are not common in Europe. Salaries have been rising though, and London salaries are twice or more than much of Europe.
Re: Tech Giants Take Their Talent Hunt to Cambridge, UK
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why are UK tech salaries so low compared to the US?
Because when tech companies come to places in the us they become gentrified and everything becomes expensive. In most cases tech companies coming to an area has a devastating effect as people who had lived in an area forever are forced out due to the insane spike in cost of living.
No. You are putting effect before cause.
It's the high salaries that cause gentrification, not gentrification that causes high salaries.
Re: Tech Giants Take Their Talent Hunt to Cambridge, UK
#8The UK could pitch itself as a place rich US tech companies can buy top talent at low price. I have seen some (not many, to be honest) US tech companies open offices in the UK so they can pay half or less for staff, compared to what they'd pay at home. If Brexit goes as badly as it might, the pound could be even cheaper.
Why are UK tech salaries so low compared to the US?
I think there are lots of reasons, both sociological and economical, but my hunch is that demand for the most productive tech employees is lower since it's so easy to lean on American-produced innovations and services rather than build our own in the UK.
Consider that Azure, AWS, Google Cloud Platform, etc. are all huge in the UK, yet most of the work on them is taking place in the US. Ditto for Oracle, Office 365, the Google Suite and even consumer stuff like Craigslist, Reddit or Apple's services (that the UK never home produced something like Reddit continues to boggle my mind). Why pay for the best people in the industry to work in the UK when we can just stand on the shoulders of work being done in the US?
If you look at industries where the UK does take an innovative role like finance or bioinformatics, the salaries seem a lot more competitive, though are still not at US levels due to the UK's lower cost of living I guess.
Re: Tech Giants Take Their Talent Hunt to Cambridge, UK
#9The UK could pitch itself as a place rich US tech companies can buy top talent at low price. I have seen some (not many, to be honest) US tech companies open offices in the UK so they can pay half or less for staff, compared to what they'd pay at home. If Brexit goes as badly as it might, the pound could be even cheaper.
Why are UK tech salaries so low compared to the US?
There are a number of reasons.
Probably the biggest is that the UK doesn't have the number of large tech companies in one place needed to push up wages. ARM is in Cambridge, Rockstar is in Newcastle, Dyson near Bristol. The only exception is in Banking where the salaries are much higher than the UK average (but still lower, as tech is views as second to other roles, not as the primary focus).
Other reasons are that the UK has a better social safety net. That to many people in many places in the uk there is no such thing as an engineer, if you work with computers you work in IT (and can you fix my laptop please?).
There is in many places (especially older companies with non-tech middle managers), also a management problem. You can't pay an engineer more than a (non-technical) middle manager, because the manager is (obviously) more important, as they can tell then engineers what to do. And all the engineers do is what management tells them to, so they're replaceable. This is obviously not a good environment for productive engineering, but explains why some companies see engineers as a cost centre rather than a revenue generating centre.
Re: Tech Giants Take Their Talent Hunt to Cambridge, UK
#10The UK could pitch itself as a place rich US tech companies can buy top talent at low price. I have seen some (not many, to be honest) US tech companies open offices in the UK so they can pay half or less for staff, compared to what they'd pay at home. If Brexit goes as badly as it might, the pound could be even cheaper.
Why are UK tech salaries so low compared to the US?
UK companies do not produce as much value, hence they are not able to pay as much as FANG.