Would love to hear opinions on this.
Even though living in London is expensive
Ask HN: Why salaries tend be lower for tech workers in UK compared to US
1–10 of 18 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why salaries tend be lower for tech workers in UK compared to US
#2The optimist in me wants to say better fringe benefits like vacation and healthcare. The pessimist say the your your timezone proximity to inexpensive talent from eastern Europe is a factor
Re: Ask HN: Why salaries tend be lower for tech workers in UK compared to US
#3Because everybody does it, and because the big US corps conveniently have strict regional salary bands.
Also, for the top tax brackets (120k+), the total cost per employee, divided by net salary, is far higher in the UK than the US. The UK government incentivizes corporations to pay their employees less.
Re: Ask HN: Why salaries tend be lower for tech workers in UK compared to US
#4The optimist in me wants to say better fringe benefits like vacation and healthcare. The pessimist say the your your timezone proximity to inexpensive talent from eastern Europe is a factor
Even outside of the tech co.'s, cheaper talent across Europe is a huge factor.
I'd also guess its because product teams are also largely centralised in the US, meaning development-focused talent is not in the same demand. Similarly, the variety of industries avaialble in cities like London, Berin, Madrid, etc., mean that salaries tend to homogenise across industries, instead of being almost exclusively tech co's.
In any case, a base tech salary in London can exceed £100k for manager/engineer lead roles, which is almost 3x the average salary within the city. I wouldn't say that's anything to complain about.
Re: Ask HN: Why salaries tend be lower for tech workers in UK compared to US
#5It has very little to do with incidentals like benefits, vacation time, etc, and is mostly a question of the huge difference in the productivity of labor of software engineers employed by companies that pay well and companies that don't. FAANG (and similar companies) derive a huge amount of value from each software engineer, which puts a much higher ceiling on how much they can afford to pay them before it stops making sense to hire them at all. And the reason they _do_ end up at a much higher number is because they're competing for a limited # of engineers that pass their bar.
Companies which don't get massive scale on the software they write (and therefore derive much less value from "write once, sell many times") pay correspondingly less.
Re: Ask HN: Why salaries tend be lower for tech workers in UK compared to US
#6I'd actually love to hear facts on this
Business always studies this stuff like crazy
Seems strange that 'we' don't know
Re: Ask HN: Why salaries tend be lower for tech workers in UK compared to US
#7My guess is it has a lot to do with how easy or not it is to start your own thing.
In my mind, developers in the US are more likely to have options to strike out on their own, so they need more $ to work for the man.
Re: Ask HN: Why salaries tend be lower for tech workers in UK compared to US
#8If you're looking at the higher end of the scale in London, and maybe ignore the >99th percentile in US where salaries get astronomical, I reckon the hourly rate might be in the same ball park.
For example a quick search in London shows a dev job at £160K, which is $221K. You would probably have an extra 4 weeks holiday in the London job, so that's the equivalent of $240K.
In London you've got a good chance of sticking close to working 40 hours a week too, depending on the company. In the US it sounds like longer hours are more likely.
Re: Ask HN: Why salaries tend be lower for tech workers in UK compared to US
#9My guess is it has a lot to do with how easy or not it is to start your own thing. In my mind, developers in the US are more likely to have options to strike out on their own, so they need more $ to work for the man.
I always assumed it was the opposite -- mainly because of healthcare.
I think the various 'entrepreneur indexes' generally rank the US high, but I'm not sure i buy it -- just b/c of the healthcare thing.
i would think, ok, right off the top, you get rid of anyone 30+ years old, anyone with a family, any women, anyone with any kind of health problems, anyone who is not a super-high-rish-taker, etc.
So that leaves the white dudes going to MIT, Stanford, and a few other places.
Actually surprised that I don't remember seeing much/any talk about those entrepreneur indexes here.
Re: Ask HN: Why salaries tend be lower for tech workers in UK compared to US
#10The optimist in me wants to say better fringe benefits like vacation and healthcare. The pessimist say the your your timezone proximity to inexpensive talent from eastern Europe is a factor
Having returned to Baltics recently, it's so refreshing to see the tech salaries over here that already look very similar to those in the UK. Just five years ago,the picture was completely different.