151–160 of 276 posts
I used to work in Cambridge, a tech job of sorts. It was swell, the quality of life is great, London really close as well. There were only two downsides. One, pretty bad public transport and driving was often not an option. Two, very few flats, so you’d mostly share with others in houses. Last but not least, there is a great divide between the students, the so-called professionals (meaning tech, medical research, aer…
If I had to give an answer to the question 'why now?', I would say because of investment, and also Cambridge has really modernised as a city in the last few years. Plus it is a genuinely nice place to live- good schools, you can cycle and walk everywhere, and cars aren't really allowed in the city centre.
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Even on a selfish level, the extra 2-3 weeks of PTO in UK is easily more important than the extra compensation in the US. What's the point of having more money if you are stuck in an office for more of the year and can only spend it on material goods? As you say, for women the difference in maternity leave is laughable.
Eventually at Google US you get 5 weeks PTO, which is the same as in Google London. Plus Google has four more holidays in the US than in the UK.
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That is exactly what every multinational has been doing in the Third World for decades! Software developers in Tunisia, for instance, get paid 5k per year. If the salaries are enough to cover the cost of living then workers will be happy. 100k in SF is the same as 70k in London which is the same as 5k in Tunis.
> 100k in SF is the same as 70k in London which is the same as 5k in Tunis. Not really. Only some things are significantly affected by the local cost of living: rent, food, nights out for instance. Sure, they probably make up the majority of your spending, but CoL is almost irrelevant for - Buying luxuries: a Porsche or an iPhone are nearly the same price everywhere in the world - Going on vacation - Savings, if you…
When the GBP was a bit stronger you could fund a trip to NY and buy an iPhoneX/Macbook instead of buying in the UK.
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Russia's nuclear capacity? How is that relevant? The UK alone has 215 nukes (just checked wiki), so yeah maybe Russia could kill all of us and we'd only kill 90% of them but past a certain threshold additional nuclear weapons are irrelevant. My last post as HN is supposed to be better than this kind of nationalistic -swinging but I think the idea that Europe is reliant on US for protection is pretty absurd. Multiple…
That's supposing that the weapons work as advertised. The UK is entirely reliant on Trident for its nuclear deterrent, and it is reliant on support from the USA to maintain Trident. If Trident turns out not to work very well (which is entirely possible), or if relations with the USA sour, or if ballistic missile submarines turn out to be easier to detect and/or more vulnerable than expected, then the UK could very we…
For all of Trident's limitations, it is impossible to argue with a straight face that the current US executive's desire to maintain the liberal world order and free trade (hahahaha) offers the UK a more reliable defence from threats against UK interests.
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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 t…
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60% of the amount between £100-120k. For that additional £20k in gross salary, your take home pay only increases by £8k, so the _marginal rate_ for each additional pound in that bracket is 60%.
Ok, but doing a rough calculation using https://goodcalculators.com/us-salary-tax-calculator/ , you'd pay about the same percentage of tax in total from a 160k USD paycheck in California. So the level of tax is not radically different. If you go up to 200k USD compared to 150k GBP, then you get to keep about 66% of it in California and about 60% in the UK. That's a difference that's quite easily lost in the noise whe…
Of course that depends a lot on which taxes you look at.
For total personal income taxes for an employee on salary, the highest marginal rate (ignoring the odd 60% band at £100k-120k) is currently 47%, and you reach that when your salary passes £150k.
If you go independent and start getting paid through a limited company and then paying yourself, the highest marginal tax rates are effectively about 50% if you pay out through dividends or 54% if you pay out through salary.
And then people wonder why we don't see more successful entrepreneurial types setting up new companies so they can take on bigger projects and create more jobs... I mean, who wouldn't want to pay thousands more in taxes for the same original revenue earned by their work, and take on a bunch of extra paperwork filing and other statutory obligations, while simultaneously losing out on a bunch of statutory employment rights and protections?
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Ok, but doing a rough calculation using https://goodcalculators.com/us-salary-tax-calculator/ , you'd pay about the same percentage of tax in total from a 160k USD paycheck in California. So the level of tax is not radically different. If you go up to 200k USD compared to 150k GBP, then you get to keep about 66% of it in California and about 60% in the UK. That's a difference that's quite easily lost in the noise whe…
But taxes in the UK are really not that much higher (except VAT in comparison to sales tax). Of course that depends a lot on which taxes you look at. For total personal income taxes for an employee on salary, the highest marginal rate (ignoring the odd 60% band at £100k-120k) is currently 47%, and you reach that when your salary passes £150k. If you go independent and start getting paid through a limited company and…
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In complete terms it's more like 3x that $78k figure. The salary would be bad enough. The big US tech companies are nearly all publicly traded. So that $142,000 is really $250,000 or more in total compensation. The UK, and Europe more broadly, not only can't compete with the salaries, they can't compete with the ability to dish vast stock compensation thanks to the immense market caps that Google et al. have. If you'…
> The top 1/4 in the US have easy, fast access to some of the most elite medical care on the planet. And if you're making $142k in salary in the US, your healthcare is entirely paid for. There is nothing surprising in the fact that the top 25% earners have access to healthcare. The point of public healthcare is to make sure that the remaining 75% will not get indebted to barely survive. What would worry an European w…
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Russia's nuclear capacity? How is that relevant? The UK alone has 215 nukes (just checked wiki), so yeah maybe Russia could kill all of us and we'd only kill 90% of them but past a certain threshold additional nuclear weapons are irrelevant. My last post as HN is supposed to be better than this kind of nationalistic -swinging but I think the idea that Europe is reliant on US for protection is pretty absurd. Multiple…
That's supposing that the weapons work as advertised. The UK is entirely reliant on Trident for its nuclear deterrent, and it is reliant on support from the USA to maintain Trident. If Trident turns out not to work very well (which is entirely possible), or if relations with the USA sour, or if ballistic missile submarines turn out to be easier to detect and/or more vulnerable than expected, then the UK could very we…
The thing about nuclear war is that you can't attach the UK without attacking France. What's more, you can't attack Russia without attacking the UK and France. In a nuclear winter we all die. Everywhere.
It's like letting of a hand grenade in an elevator. You can throw it at the guy in the corner if you like, you're still going down too.
[0] https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/no-america-doesnt-control-br...