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

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

#111

Post by foldr » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 2:40 PM UTC

paulmckeever wrote: post #103

foldr wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

60% of what exactly? Take home pay for a salary of £100k is about £66k, and about £74k for £120k.

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 when you consider differences in overall cost of living, healthcare, etc. etc.

I've found that Americans have a very fixed perception of America having low taxes and Europe having high taxes. But taxes in the UK are really not that much higher (except VAT in comparison to sales tax).

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

#112

Post by ljcn » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 2:42 PM UTC

aphextron wrote: post #109

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…

You forgot: - Defends the global liberal world order and upholds free trade through spending half it’s budget on a military which protects the entire continent of Europe.

A trade war is a funny way to go about that.

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

#113

Post by steve_musk » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 2:48 PM UTC

aphextron wrote: post #109

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…

You forgot: - Defends the global liberal world order and upholds free trade through spending half it’s budget on a military which protects the entire continent of Europe.

It’s only half of the discrentionary budget, which itself is roughly half of the total budget.

And with the pending trade war with our Allies and Trump’s threats to NATO this point may not be valid much longer.

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

#114

Post by scatters » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 2:49 PM UTC

cafard wrote: post #90

swarnie_ wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess would be healthcare costs, bay area living costs or the dice you you have to pass every time you encounter a police offer.

"the dice you have to [roll] every time you encounter a police [officer]"? Are engineers recruited from Cambridge of the sort that particularly attract the attention of the police?

22% in the latest admissions cycle (though that's across undergraduates as a whole, not engineers specifically).

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

#115

Post by sjm-lbm » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 2:52 PM UTC

hacker_9 wrote: post #93

6ak74rfy wrote: post #62

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. Also, do you know how does their healthcare compare?

For one, our healthcare is free. Though many companies still provide private healthcare as a benefit. Personally I agree with OP, I wouldn't want to live in the US either. Mainly because capitalism has been taken to an ugly extreme and you might get paid more but you also work more etc. Not to mention the tax and tips culture. Of course there are problems here too; it rains a lot more, and every conversation that goe…

> every conversation that goes on long enough always ends up as some sort of brexit complaint

To be fair, we definitely have a problem with normal/non-political conversations suddenly turning political as well. It's even a problem that started in 2016, too :/.

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

#116

Post by dredmorbius » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 2:53 PM UTC

Moodles wrote: post #39

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'…

Not to mention that marginal tax in the UK is 40% income tax for 45k+ (45% over 150k) + 2% national insurance which is actually more marginal tax than SF, the highest taxed state in the US. Of course UK has the NHS fee healthcare, but if you're pulling $200k+ in SF you probably have medical benefits too.

Credible claims notwithstanding, at last check San Fraancisco was has not (yet) achieved either statehood or People's Republic status.

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

#117

Post by steve_musk » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 2:54 PM UTC

gabbo wrote: post #110

IshKebab wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also we get 2-3x more holiday, and sick days don't come from your holiday allowance. And the hours are shorter. I work 40 hours a week for very good pay (for the UK). Previous job was 37.5 hours. I bet Google's hours are much longer.

I know a lot of Google US employees who work 40 hour weeks (plenty who work more but usually by choice), their sick days don’t come out of their vacation allowance at all, and after 4 years of working there they get 5 weeks of vacation per year on top of 12 days of paid holidays. Even Amazon employees do pretty well, getting 2 weeks paid time off + 1 week of "personal days" (de facto vacation days) in year 1, then th…

I know a UK google employee who is a new college grad and gets 5 weeks of vacation per year on top of 8 bank holidays. And their salary is higher than most US Google new grads.

They are working at a US company, but at least they are still paying UK taxes and contributing to the UK economy.

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

#118

Post by zimablue » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 2:59 PM UTC

aphextron wrote: post #109

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…

You forgot: - Defends the global liberal world order and upholds free trade through spending half it’s budget on a military which protects the entire continent of Europe.

Because the multiple nuclear states in Europe and its standing army which would give the US itself a hell of a fight are otherwise easy prey for

...

aliens?

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

#119

Post by samdoidge » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 3:01 PM UTC

noir_lord wrote: post #60

slivym wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lot's of companies do that, but the UK is kind of a strange place to choose to do that. If you want cheap, go hire a team of 10,000 engineers in Penang (I'm looking at you Intel). If you want expensive, choose silicon valley. If you want 2nd tier, take a look at Canada. You can choose the UK, but why? Their time zone means you'll never be able to meet with them at the same time as your Malaysian and Californian offic…

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.

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

#120

Post by pjc50 » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 3:07 PM UTC

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.

I moved to Edinburgh for this, which has worked well for me; although there's not a huge depth of job market especially in smaller companies. And the thing squeezing out locals in the city centre is .. AirBnB.