Tech Giants Take Their Talent Hunt to Cambridge, UK • Hacker News Board

Re: Tech Giants Take Their Talent Hunt to Cambridge, UK

#181

Post by jingleheimer » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 5:08 PM UTC

vilhelm_s wrote: post #151

drej wrote: post #148

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…

What kind of frictions did you see?

It's town vs gown. You have separate areas and generally don't mingle. There is an age difference as well as a cultural and class difference. Much of Cambridge is gated off into colleges that a town person can't go unless escorted by someone connected to the university.

I was in the gown group, but even within this group there are additional degrees of stratification.

Re: Tech Giants Take Their Talent Hunt to Cambridge, UK

#182

Post by sievebrain » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 5:08 PM UTC

shanghaiaway wrote: post #54

tinktank wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LOL. I'm sure all the investors up to their eyeballs in the loss-making, ever hyped unicorns would beg to differ.

Which UK company makes the same profit per employee as FANG? None.

Isn't N in FANG Netflix? I thought Netflix was loss making. And Amazon has spent years being break even or making losses (albeit for good reasons).

Re: Tech Giants Take Their Talent Hunt to Cambridge, UK

#183

Post by Nursie » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 5:17 PM UTC

angarg12 wrote: post #14

> According to the recruitment website Hired, the average tech salary in London is $78,000 a year, versus $142,000 in Silicon Valley. And this is one of the reasons for the brain drain that the mention before. Silicon Valley firms pay significantly more than the competition, and they are still paying almost half of what they do in the US. It isn't only about money, but it would be naive to deny it's impact on people'…

>> Silicon Valley firms pay significantly more than the competition,

I'd say another major factor here is that the UK market significantly undervalues talent, compared to the US, Australia and other markets I've heard of. It may be better than continental Europe, but it's pitiful compared to the money in other countries.

Which is why I'm a contractor now, salaries for permanent work in London are not comparable to work in the US, and outside of London they are just plain derisory.

Re: Tech Giants Take Their Talent Hunt to Cambridge, UK

#184

Post by eftpotrm » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 5:19 PM UTC

cup-of-tea wrote: post #67

angarg12 wrote: post #11

> As the tech workers land the big salaries, home prices are skyrocketing, and the locals are being squeezed out. Joke is on them, I'm a new tech immigrant to Cambridge and I still can't buy a house here.

House prices have been skyrocketing for ages already and it's helped by the fact that Cambridge is within commuting distance of London. There's no way your average senior dev could afford to buy a house in Cambridge at this point.

That's been true over very large parts of the country for most of the last 15 years TBH. House prices in the UK are divorced from reality.

Re: Tech Giants Take Their Talent Hunt to Cambridge, UK

#185

Post by robk » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 5:32 PM UTC

kalkut wrote: post #85

adventured wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Then they just come back to Europe when they want those perqs

Re: Tech Giants Take Their Talent Hunt to Cambridge, UK

#186

Post by ben_w » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 5:42 PM UTC

robk wrote: post #185

kalkut wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Then they just come back to Europe when they want those perqs

My girlfriend accidentally moved from the UK to California because when her parents paid for her to visit, she didn’t have enough money saved up to come back afterwards. I’m visiting her next week, and sure, if there was an emergency we could sort something out… most people aren’t that lucky.

Re: Tech Giants Take Their Talent Hunt to Cambridge, UK

#187

Post by saryant » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 5:45 PM UTC

bodas wrote: post #64

robert_foss wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal counter is that I just couldn't morally accept contributing taxes to a nation which: - Exploits the poor and non-citizens - Overthrows governments and bullies smaller countries - Has only the most rudimentary social security system - Does not really have a concept of healthy work/life balance. With little time off and none at all for people with newborns. - Takes near-zero environmental responsibility - L…

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.

I work for Twitter in the US and I took 7 or 8 weeks last year, including taking off all of November. We also get 20 weeks paid parental leave (either mother or father) and it includes adoptions and same-sex couples.

Re: Tech Giants Take Their Talent Hunt to Cambridge, UK

#188

Post by blibble » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 5:51 PM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #176

blibble wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the statutory minimum is 5.6 weeks paid holiday/year and it's for every employee, including those not working for tech giants (e.g. people stacking shelves in supermarkets) if you normally work 5 days/week that's 5.6*5 == 28 days paid holiday/year (and this is the minimum, so most jobs give you more)

How much does a tech company in Cambridge or London usually give? I had around 4 weeks at Microsoft (3 weeks + 5 seniority days).

I've had tech jobs in Cambridge and London, and they've all been 25 + 8 public/bank holidays

so 33 total (6.6 weeks)

Re: Tech Giants Take Their Talent Hunt to Cambridge, UK

#189

Post by aphextron » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 5:59 PM UTC

zimablue wrote: post #143

foldr wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There are also Germany, Italy, other states which have nukes through NATO. If the US is serious about withdrawing from NATO then the nuclear capability of these states would end up being completely independent from the US, and EU has the tech and money to scale their nuclear capacity up to any necessary level. You're right they're not Germany's, my bad: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_sharing They're the US' nu…

>500 vs 3000 is kind of irrelevant when you could already kill millions upon millions.

No, it's not. The reason for having thousands of warheads is not to blanket the earth in a nuclear apocalypse. It's to have enough failsafe and fallbacks that you are guaranteed to destroy the opposing force's arsenal before they can hit you. 5 missiles at once can be trivially intercepted. 500 missiles at once is unstoppable. The first exchanges in a nuclear salvo would be aimed directly at each other's silos. The vast majority of research in nuclear weapons today is in penetration capability of hardened targets (which systems like the UK's Trident do not possess) not widespread killing of civilians, and whoever maintains a superior capability in this respect will have the upper hand in any negotiation.

Re: Tech Giants Take Their Talent Hunt to Cambridge, UK

#190

Post by a_imho » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 5:59 PM UTC

mattmanser wrote: post #123

a_imho wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, consider V4, Romania, Croatia etc.

My experience has been with Polish, Ukranian and Hungarian programmes who are technically excellent, but very flaky. They just disappear for weeks and then pop up again as if nothing happened. I don't know if it's a cultural thing like Indian programmers who always say yes even when they mean no, or I've just met unreliable ones.

Probably the latter, plenty of (US based) tech companies operating in these countries without a problem.