Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tech Giants Take Their Talent Hunt to Cambridge, UK

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 276 posts

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

#261

Post by ryandrake »

adventured wrote: post #19
angarg12 wrote: post #14

> According to the recruitment website Hired, the average tech salary in London is $78,000 a year, versus $142,000 in Silicon Valley. And this is one of the reasons for the brain drain that the mention before. Silicon Valley firms pay significantly more than the competition, and they are still paying almost half of what they do in the US. It isn't only about money, but it would be naive to deny it's impact on people'…

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'…

> And if you're making $142k in salary in the US, your healthcare is entirely paid for

Not even close to true.

I was making about that much and had insurance and we were billed multiple thousands of dollars for a bog standard pregnancy/delivery. Sure, if I was not insured at all, it would have probably been hundreds of thousands--who knows? Anyway, I've never seen a health insurance policy where your health expenses were "entirely paid" for.

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

#262

Post by TulliusCicero »

greggarious wrote: post #248
TulliusCicero wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes.

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

#263

Post by swarnie_ »

maccard wrote: post #167
whatshisface wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you had 4x your salary, wouldn't you be spending a lot on keeping up your house, and paying a lot of taxes for local amenities like schools? I don't understand how an area that affluent could be a ghetto.

I think he's saying that if he borrowed 4x his salary for a mortgage (which is the commonly cited figure as the max you can borrow), he could only afford a ghetto.

Pretty much this yes.

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

#264

Post by foldr »

notahacker wrote: post #247
foldr wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mor…

Huh? It's not at all difficult to argue with a straight face that Russia would take into account the likelihood of a massive retaliation from the US if it launched a nuclear attack on another NATO country. Again, the special relationship has nothing to do with it.

You can't seriously be saying that the Russians are now confident that they would receive no nuclear response from the US if they decide to, say, nuke Paris, just because Trump is in power.

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

#265

Post by fgrep »

dmode wrote: post #259
fgrep wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

people do not think about it rationally. The money you earn in SF is mostly not your money, its the landlord's money. You can work in London, live outside the M25, and have 35 minutes commute time, in a train, and pay reasonably normal rent/mortgage. I am not sure if you can live outside SF and work in SF and spend less than 4 hours commuting eveyday. I've just received two offers one for permie £100k and £700/day fo…

This is just not true, I live outside SF and have kids and own a single family home. My pay here has exponentially gone up over the last 5 years, especially if you account for RSUs and so has my wife's. We are also able to change jobs every two years that results in decent pay increases. I also made a ton of money selling my previous home, and sit on a massive equity on my current home. There is a reason things cost…

So you owned a previous home, presumably before the real estate has rocketed, and your wife is also in the tech industry... If I want to move now and I do not own a home neither have millions to fork, and my wife is not in the tech industry... also its not clear how bad your commute time is. Not sure where outside SF you can live and still be able to commute everyday without being 4 hours on roads a day... there is no public transportation in the us

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

#266

Post by maccard »

hacker_9 wrote: post #191
maccard wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wasn't actually talking about traffic, I was purely talking affordability. e.g. You can live in nice areas around Leamington-Spa with 5-15 minute commutes in light traffic, with huge amounts of green space for kids, or you could live in Zone 4 and have to commute to the City every day. Similarly in the US, you could commute to Mountain view, and live in a city condo, or you could live in Raleigh, NC and work for SAS/Red Hat, and live in a wonderful outdoor area 10 minutes away.

Sure, the worst areas in the US are worse than the worst areas in the UK, but that doesn't mean that the worst areas in the uk don't suck. You said you couldn't put a price on not having ghettos, not that the ghettos in the UK are better than the US equivalent. Besides, being on HN, the majority of us aren't going to be living in the Missions or Paisley.

> 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.

Right, but you still have to take out a 35k loan, and pay 9% of your earnings for 25 Years, or until it's paid off. That definitely doesn't sound like having to pay nothing to me.

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

#267

Post by lflffl1lfl1lfl »

maccard wrote: post #266
hacker_9 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wasn't actually talking about traffic, I was purely talking affordability. e.g. You can live in nice areas around Leamington-Spa with 5-15 minute commutes in light traffic, with huge amounts of green space for kids, or you could live in Zone 4 and have to commute to the City every day. Similarly in the US, you could commute to Mountain view, and live in a city condo, or you could live in Raleigh, NC and work for SA…

> Right, but you still have to take out a 35k loan, and pay 9% of your earnings for 25 Years, or until it's paid off. That definitely doesn't sound like having to pay nothing to me.

The student loan really isn't that big of a big deal, because it's 9% of your salary OVER £25,000. So at the moment on £27k, I pay about £15 a month. If I stop going to work or earn less than £25k then I won't have to pay anything back (unlike normal loans).

Ideally the tuition fees would be free like in Scotland, but the English loans aren't as big of a deal as you're making them out to be.

The student loans also include money for living costs (if desired), some of which is free (and doesn't have to be paid back) depending on household income. We also pay year by year, so we wouldn't have to commit to £35k straight off the bat, just £9k per year. So if you decide to drop out after first year, you'd be in £9k of debt (or slightly more if you took out extra money for living costs).

Source:

https://www.gov.uk/repaying-your-student-loan/what-you-pay

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

#268

Post by arethuza »

foldr wrote: post #236
aphextron wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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_o…

230 billion USD is, according to Wikipedia, Russia's annual spending (not just military spending). I can see how that figure could have been interpreted as referring to military spending in the context of my post, but that's not what my post actually said. The figure of $69 billion overall military spending seems consistent with the 10 billion figure I gave for Russian spending on nuclear weapons. I got that figure f…

Russia is about as broke as the Soviets were - nukes are by far the cheapest way of them being considered a major power:

http://money.cnn.com/2018/05/02/news/russia-defense-spending...

Calling them "Upper Volta with Missiles" was a bit harsh - they do spend a larger percentage of their GDP then most European countries but with such a small economy I'm not sure it makes much difference. After all - nobody feels particularly threatened by Canada.... (which has a larger GDP).

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

#269

Post by swarnie_ »

handbanana wrote: post #178
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.

People are down voting because of the dice roll part. But it's not that far off reality when compared with other western nations

I'm not overly concerned, this forum is extremely USA-centric.

Across the entire UK there were only 4 police shootings in to 2016 and only 2 total in all of 2012-2014.

I'm willing to bet America has 4 yesterday (even adjusting for proportion populations)

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

#270

Post by Nursie »

walshemj wrote: post #208
Nursie wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Silicon Valley firms pay significantly more than the competition, I'd say another major factor here is that the UK market significantly undervalues talent, compared to the US, Australia and other markets I've heard of. It may be better than continental Europe, but it's pitiful compared to the money in other countries. Which is why I'm a contractor now, salaries for permanent work in London are not comparable to wo…

Very much so though the market is super hot now I just took a job locally on Monday (no godam commute on the shit show that is thames link ) and thought I did well to get 5K bump. since then I just got pitched a 100,000 K euro Job in Portugal (flat 20% tax!!!!) and a £60K one in London maybe I jumped to soon.

No (or little) commute is always a big positive, even if the salary isn't as good as it could be. I'm commuting Southampton->London at the moment and it's pretty awful. OTOH the money is good and I expect to take a few months off next year, so it's worth it for now.
Post reply on HN