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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

#241

Post by TulliusCicero »

greggarious wrote: post #202
TulliusCicero wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eventually at Google US you get 5 weeks PTO, which is the same as in Google London. Plus Google has four more holidays in the US than in the UK.

> Eventually at Google US you get 5 weeks PTO, which is the same as in Google London. Plus Google has four more holidays in the US than in the UK. How many engineers do you know who made full use of their five weeks every year and were able to be promoted?

I don't keep track of people's vacation time that closely. When I transferred to Google Munich though I didn't notice a change in work life balance, other than having more vacation.

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

#242

Post by TulliusCicero »

lawlorino wrote: post #144
TulliusCicero wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eventually at Google US you get 5 weeks PTO, which is the same as in Google London. Plus Google has four more holidays in the US than in the UK.

> Eventually at Google US you get 5 weeks PTO, which is the same as in Google London. Ah but you're cherry picking an example from one company, I am also not sure how long or what role you'd need to accrue that much PTO. In Europe most (all?) countries have a legal minimum of 3-4 weeks PTO in addition to public holidays, regardless of your job or time working. > Plus Google has four more holidays in the US than in th…

I'm specifically talking about what Google gives its employees for public holidays. And federal holidays are basically meaningless unless you, y'know, work for the feds.

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

#243

Post by TulliusCicero »

bodas wrote: post #153
TulliusCicero wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eventually at Google US you get 5 weeks PTO, which is the same as in Google London. Plus Google has four more holidays in the US than in the UK.

"Eventually" but to get to that point you have to endure years of getting half the time off that a burger flipper gets in McDonalds UK. Honestly it's a bit humiliating.

The more limited time does suck, but on the other hand the huge amount of money makes it way easier to retire earlier, so you can have more time off in the long run if you want.

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

#244

Post by dragonwriter »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #212
dragonwriter wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure, but most tech companies will give you them anyways I've yet to see any private employer in the US that gives employees every public holiday applicable in their jurisdiction; heck even public employers often don't, as federal government doesn't give state holidays in the location and state and local agencies often don't give all federal holidays.

There are only ten federal holidays. If you are working in the states, you get most of not all of them.

> There are only ten federal holidays. If you are working in the states, you get most of not all of them.

MLK, Washington's Birthday, Labor Day, and Columbus Day are particularly frequently not granted by private employers. Columbus Day and MLK are each not given by some nonfederal public employers (to my knowledge, a non-overlapping set.)

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

#245

Post by distant_hat »

swebs wrote: post #126
riyadparvez wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have better chance getting a green card if you're an illegal immigrant than if you're on H1-B.

Lol, that's because H1-B is a temporary work visa, not an immigration visa.

H1-B is dual intent.

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

#246

Post by njarboe »

QasimK wrote: post #193
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.

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

I found it strange that such a big decision was allowed to happen without a super-majority of some type. Why not have another vote and switch back, and then another? And I heard, but did not research, that technically the vote was not really binding in any case.

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

#247

Post by notahacker »

foldr wrote: post #235
notahacker wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm reading the political slant into the comment upthread I quoted from; not really sure why we're engaged in the tangent of questioning the adequacy of Trident if you acknowledge it's a better deterrent than the present "Special Relationship" (and an expensive one paid from our taxes). The UK's non-operational stockpile means ample capacity to expand upon the currently operational missile stock in the event of a rat…

Trident is (and is widely acknowledged to be) about the bare minimum required for a semi-credible nuclear deterrent. It's just about enough to make a country like Russia think twice. Probably. The deterrent provided by the US is not the special relationship, but the US's enormous nuclear arsenal, which it probably would deploy against Russia if Russia launched a nuclear attack against the UK. They would do the same i…

As I said above, it is difficult to argue with a straight face that Putin will be less concerned by a direct threat to his eight largest centres of population than the possibility a US executive far less enthusiastic about NATO than cordial relations with Russia might choose to sacrifice its citizens to escalate that threat. Not even if one believes in the uniquely British conceit that our bilateral relations are more special still.

None of which has any real bearing on whether the UK might be a more or less unpalatable place to live than the US for political reasons anyway. :-)

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

#248

Post by greggarious »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #241
greggarious wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Eventually at Google US you get 5 weeks PTO, which is the same as in Google London. Plus Google has four more holidays in the US than in the UK. How many engineers do you know who made full use of their five weeks every year and were able to be promoted?

I don't keep track of people's vacation time that closely. When I transferred to Google Munich though I didn't notice a change in work life balance, other than having more vacation.

Were you transferring from the Mountain View office?

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

#249

Post by doingmyting »

dragonwriter wrote: post #244
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are only ten federal holidays. If you are working in the states, you get most of not all of them.

> There are only ten federal holidays. If you are working in the states, you get most of not all of them. MLK, Washington's Birthday, Labor Day, and Columbus Day are particularly frequently not granted by private employers. Columbus Day and MLK are each not given by some nonfederal public employers (to my knowledge, a non-overlapping set.)

I know from previously working there that Microsoft gives all public holidays. When I started you had floating holidays you could take for some (MLK, Columbus etc) but now all are given. Wouldn't be surprised to learn it's the same at Google, FB et al.

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

#250

Post by JansjoFromIkea »

dood wrote: post #141
JansjoFromIkea wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've lived in both SF (and Berkeley) and London. Accommodation in London zone 1 is a good bit lower than SF without the same level of competition. Accommodation further out is (overall) significantly cheaper than the BART accessible parts of Oakland and Berkeley with a drastically better public transportation setup. Pretty cool and inexpensive but (by London standards) not that accessible areas like Peckham are about…

I was curious about this since it seems unlikely SF can be so much more expensive than London. When I looked into it a couple of months ago, I found zone 1 London rents are a fair bit higher than equivalent apartments in SF if you compare by square-footage and quality. I speculate that the idea SF is much pricier than London is caused by significantly lower standards/expectations for London.

Well it's needless to speculate, the variation is because London has the public transportation infrastructure to keep demand in prime areas under control. Wanting a large high quality apartment in zone 1 of London is a trio of luxuries that most people will happily compromise on, and they have the ability to do so without it being a big issue.

As far as space is concerned, in my experience one of the Bay Area's biggest problems was inefficient use of space in every which way possible. Even beyond the lack of usage of vertical space, every room I had was pretty huge, double bed, desk, room to do just about any kind of yoga I could think of and still a ton of extra on top of that. I'd have happily traded half of it for a few hundred off my rent.

I'd need to know what metrics are being used for quality (e.g. I'd take an absolute slum of a single room over sharing in prime apartment).

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