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Tech Giants Take Their Talent Hunt to Cambridge, UK

nytimes.com

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

#191

Post by hacker_9 »

maccard wrote: post #171
justsomedude43 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I am thinking about moving from US to London. So, I am curious to know why you prefer UK to US despite the salary gap." Because it's not all about the money. People make mistake by comparing salaries on their own which is not correct, you need to compare what's left of your salary after you've afforded the same level of lifestyle. You might look at $140k as a lot of money and £40k as very little money but you need t…

I agree with your sentiment but - > you can't put a price on a 5min commute to work and letting your children play outside That's very achieveable in parts of the US, and unachieveable in parts of the UK. > having ghettos or "bad areas" in your city Not exclusive to the US by any means. Plenty of nice cities in the UK have ghetto/bad areas. > sending your kids to university without paying anything If you live in Engl…

Yeah traffic can still be bad in the UK, but ghetto wise the US have it worse because of their gun laws (and seen from the murder rate). Also student loans are paid for by the UK government, and you only have to pay it off after graduating, and even then it's basically a small percentage of your earnings. Also after 25 years they write off the debt anyway.

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

#192

Post by simonswords82 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #168
growlist wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also the holiday, or rather lack of it - there are many things about the UK I could grumble about, but every other Anglosphere country seems to have worse annual leave.

3 weeks is common for USA tech companies now. What is it in the uk?

We give our staff anything between 25 days to 30 days paid holiday. In addition they receive 8 paid bank (aka public) holidays a year. So that's a total of between 33 and 38 paid days off.

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

#193

Post by QasimK »

samdoidge wrote: post #119
noir_lord wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech multinationals are almost by definition 24/7 operations. The UK for an American tech company is a large stable country within 1-2 hours of the timezone of the largest single market in the world and has a shared language and culture. If you want to sell into Europe then Britain made sense...until the fuckwits voted for leave (yeah I'm bitter, they fucked over everyone my age and under).

> If you want to sell into Europe then Britain made sense...until the fuckwits voted for leave (yeah I'm bitter, they fucked over everyone my age and under). I think this is where the 'Remoaner' labels come from.

Tyranny of the majority. And a tiny tiny majority at that, perhaps just statistical variation.

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

#194

Post by desas »

sgt101 wrote: post #128
paulmckeever wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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%.

But you are allowed to save all of that 20k in a pension fund and pay zero on it. Up to 40k a year and 1m in your life.

Pay zero on it now. You'll be paying on it when you withdraw

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

#195

Post by always_good »

supergarfield wrote: post #180
pertymcpert wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iPhones same price everywhere? Lol. 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.

Sure, maybe occasionally there are anomalies, with extreme price hikes for specific things in specific places. Right now iPhone X prices seem to be reasonably close everywhere (not-so-great-source: http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-iphone-x-prices-around-... ). I think this doesn't affect my point though, which is mainly that iPhones are just as expensive in generally cheap places.

I don't really trust that chart. Like all tech in Mexico, the iPhone X is 30% more than the US price. I was in the Telcel store in Guadalajara last week and it was 1400 USD as I'd expect.

"Luxuries the same price around the world" is just straight wrong. I don't know how anyone could think that who has lived in various countries, especially for American goods.

For example, no matter where I've lived in the world, it was 25%-50% cheaper to wait until I visited family in Texas to purchase new Levi's.

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

#196

Post by aphextron »

foldr wrote: post #142
arethuza wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have a lot of nukes because nukes are cheap and Russia's economy is pretty small - a good bit less than Italy and less than half of the UK. They probably do pose a realistic threat to the Baltic states - but that's because they are very small and isolated.

They're not that cheap. Russia spends about 230 billion USD annually, and spends about 10 billion on nuclear weapons. That's more than any country other than the USA.

>They're not that cheap. Russia spends about 230 billion USD annually, and spends about 10 billion on nuclear weapons. That's more than any country other than the USA.

Where are you getting these numbers? I really doubt that Russia is spending 1/5th their GDP on the military. Wikipedia says it's $69 billion, which is more than order of magnitude below NATO [0], [1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_Russian...

[1] https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/pdf_2017_...

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

#197

Post by samdoidge »

Lio wrote: post #165
samdoidge wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want to sell into Europe then Britain made sense...until the fuckwits voted for leave (yeah I'm bitter, they fucked over everyone my age and under). I think this is where the 'Remoaner' labels come from.

You're right but 48% of us thought it was a terrible idea at the time and still haven't heard a good reason for leaving that doesn't involve vague patriotic ramblings. Plus on top of that many of the pro-leave arguments have proved to be outright lies already ...and we still haven't even left yet.

If you're genuinely interested, Jacob Rees Mogg has articulated many good reasons for leaving [1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUKjTPPcOdQ

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

#198

Post by seanmcdirmid »

simonswords82 wrote: post #192
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3 weeks is common for USA tech companies now. What is it in the uk?

We give our staff anything between 25 days to 30 days paid holiday. In addition they receive 8 paid bank (aka public) holidays a year. So that's a total of between 33 and 38 paid days off.

The USA has bank/federal holidays also (around 10/year).

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

#199

Post by seanmcdirmid »

blibble wrote: post #188
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

If we are including bank holidays, then I got around 4 weeks + 10 days off in the states.

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

#200

Post by dragonwriter »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #198
simonswords82 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We give our staff anything between 25 days to 30 days paid holiday. In addition they receive 8 paid bank (aka public) holidays a year. So that's a total of between 33 and 38 paid days off.

The USA has bank/federal holidays also (around 10/year).

Public holidays (federal or state) in the US are not obligatory for (and many are often not observed by) private employers.
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