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The last days of Silicon Roundabout

newstatesman.com

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Re: The last days of Silicon Roundabout

#111

Post by ca01an »

stillworks wrote: post #103
glenngillen wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest issue I had with the US healthcare system was how confusing it is. And how much you seem to have to know upfront what you’ll need, where to go, etc vs trusting experts in the system to guide you. Even with top tier insurance from my employer. A lasting memory of that was in our prenatal class when they wanted the expecting mother’s to do a blood test to check for various risks. Queue much frantic checking…

Saying this at the risk of being downvoted but don't really care as I feel I have to let it out. The U.K. healthcare system is the lowest level of medical service possible being made available with tax payers' contribution. The highest tax rate contributors as a result are getting the worst possible service. And most of such high rate tax payers either get some kind of medical insurance from their employer OR they en…

UK doctors earn way less than US doctors, same as engineers

Re: The last days of Silicon Roundabout

#112

Post by tudorizer »

1_player wrote: post #57
lostdog wrote: post #17

Everything I read on the internet suggests that UK tech salaries are extremely low, and that the profession has a low level of respect overall. I have many many foreign or first generation immigrant coworkers, but almost no one British. I'm surprised, because there's no language barrier and a minimal cultural barrier, but still the vast majority of my coworkers are from places that are much harder to immigrate from.…

> If any UKites have made it to this thread, is be curious to hear why so few people leave for countries with a stronger and higher paying tech sector? If by "countries with higher paying tech sector" you mean the USA, with all due respect and without going into a huge discussion, I much prefer staying in UK, or the European continent in general. There is more to life, happiness, comfort, long-term goals and self-rea…

100% my thoughts too. US seems to have a lot of hidden costs , plus the value of the $ dropped quite a bit in recent times.

Re: The last days of Silicon Roundabout

#113

Post by [deleted] »

pjc50 wrote: post #102
lostdog wrote: post #17

Everything I read on the internet suggests that UK tech salaries are extremely low, and that the profession has a low level of respect overall. I have many many foreign or first generation immigrant coworkers, but almost no one British. I'm surprised, because there's no language barrier and a minimal cultural barrier, but still the vast majority of my coworkers are from places that are much harder to immigrate from.…

This may be controversial, but I think most of us Brits, even the liberal-internationalist ones, have enough national attachment to the place that it makes it hard to leave. We can tell you the top fifty things wrong with the country if you have the time, but have no intention of quitting just because it's a bit shit. The taint of cynical fatalism is the main thing that distinguishes us from the rest of the Anglosphe…

[deleted]

Re: The last days of Silicon Roundabout

#114

Post by eldudebrother »

tiew9Vii wrote: post #97
glenngillen wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might be reading more into you brief analysis than I should, but one interpretation I could make from what you just said is: - there’s a bunch of companies that are using technologies that are a decade or more old, doing work that seems like it was maybe relevant and exciting a decade ago, and they are paying toward the lower end of the market - there are companies using newer technologies/more modern problems, pay…

Don't get me wrong I like paying with technologies, especially keeping up to date. In fact as a consultant that's why I'm brought in, to deliver the new thing the org doesn't yet have experience with. My list and breadth of experience is more than most from the CV's i've seen and the roles I perform going in as a consultant to some very large company's. In most cases up until recently due to job market shift I've bee…

What would be an interesting role for you? There must be some companies in Sydney using Rust/Golang or similar if Python ETL isn't what you like doing.

Re: The last days of Silicon Roundabout

#115

Post by nanna »

lostdog wrote: post #17

Everything I read on the internet suggests that UK tech salaries are extremely low, and that the profession has a low level of respect overall. I have many many foreign or first generation immigrant coworkers, but almost no one British. I'm surprised, because there's no language barrier and a minimal cultural barrier, but still the vast majority of my coworkers are from places that are much harder to immigrate from.…

> there's no language barrier

As a Brit who's spent a fair amount of time in the Midwest I beg to differ. One example I often came across was that I would interlace what I said with relatively subtle humour, as everyone does back home, but find that instead of conveying multiple meanings people would take everything in flat earnest, often being rather miffed and perplexed. On the other hand Americans would smack me in the face with their gregarious intonations and beaming white teeth whenever they thought they had something funny to say, something that grew more and more irritating and bizarre to me over my stay.

It also bothered me that even close friends often struggled to understand my pretty typical London accent, when I've had to guzzle American speech patterns off of screens my entire life. The only British English dialect you could expect anyone to be familiar with was that off of 1960s TV shows like Monty bloody Python. Grrr.

Re: The last days of Silicon Roundabout

#116

Post by dragonwriter »

lostdog wrote: post #17

Everything I read on the internet suggests that UK tech salaries are extremely low, and that the profession has a low level of respect overall. I have many many foreign or first generation immigrant coworkers, but almost no one British. I'm surprised, because there's no language barrier and a minimal cultural barrier, but still the vast majority of my coworkers are from places that are much harder to immigrate from.…

> I have many many foreign or first generation immigrant coworkers, but almost no one British.

Because math, plus UK immigrants are a lot less obvious in the US

> I'm surprised, because there's no language barrier

There's actually some language barrier (UK English is not US English). But its lower than for lots of other places, sure. That just means its a lot faster for a UK immigrant to pass (in speech) for a native.

> and a minimal cultural barrier,

I’m not really sure that's true.

> the vast majority of my coworkers are from places that are much harder to immigrate from

Sure, but the vast majority of people who aren't currently in the US are from places that (1) aren't the UK, and (2) have a much bigger income deficit for software engineers than the UK does compared to the US.

Re: The last days of Silicon Roundabout

#117

Post by sprafa »

lostdog wrote: post #17

Everything I read on the internet suggests that UK tech salaries are extremely low, and that the profession has a low level of respect overall. I have many many foreign or first generation immigrant coworkers, but almost no one British. I'm surprised, because there's no language barrier and a minimal cultural barrier, but still the vast majority of my coworkers are from places that are much harder to immigrate from.…

Because they earn well for the UK and living in Europe while earning London tech salaries is pretty dope. You don’t have Uk co workers because they don’t want to leave the country. What’s low paying for you is one of the best paid professions in the Uk.

Re: The last days of Silicon Roundabout

#118

Post by iso1210 »

mmerlin wrote: post #35
Computeiful wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UKite here, active in the London fintech scene. Everything I say is based purely on my perception of the situation. Anecdotally, I see more people in this sector moving to places such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand than to the USA. I think there is a perception here that while salaries might be higher in the USA, there are hidden costs both financially and socially (such as health insurance payments, getting to…

Perth has the highest per capita percentage migration from the UK, compared with the eastern states of Australia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perth#Ancestry_and_immigrati...

Perth feels a lot nearer to the UK (especially with the non-stop flight from London, 17 hours vs 24 with a layover to Sydney) than the rest of the continent. It's 7 hours ahead rather than 9 which I think makes a difference too.

Re: The last days of Silicon Roundabout

#119

Post by raverbashing »

mattmanser wrote: post #88
GlennS wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fraction of a given population that will voluntarily migrate is pretty low I think. The gap between London and UK-but-not-London salaries is probably pretty comparable to the one between London and San Francisco, but most people won't move a few hundred kilometers to London to get the extra money. The proportion of people willing to move across the ocean, leave behind friends and family, and embrace a new culture…

There's a huge number of UK expats in the north of France btw, no need to get snobby about the latitude!

True but the weather there is almost British, so...

Re: The last days of Silicon Roundabout

#120

Post by sprafa »

piker wrote: post #99
cameronh90 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extremely low? Not as high as SF, sure, but easily top 5% for the country after a few years experience. Salary aside, many people find life a lot more enjoyable here. I know plenty of people who've worked for a period in the US and come back, as well as myself having done a stint for a US company for a while. US corporate working culture is rather different to here. Here, if you don't take 4+ weeks holiday, your mana…

> US corporate working culture is rather different to here. Here, if you don't take 4+ weeks holiday, your manager will have a word with you for working too much. Complaining about being back at work after a holiday is expected. At the end of the day, you log off and go home, and you don't think about work again until the next morning except in exceptional cases. Everyone knows and accepts that work is work, not the…

People won’t move if they’re happy with what they’ve got.
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