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> 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 re

> 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's decision on where to live and work.

adventured 8y ago
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're really great at something, Google can trivially give you millions of dollars in stock if it makes sense. What company in Britain can compete with that? The skeptics will say something about healthcare in the US as a counter. The top 1/4 in the US have easy, fast access to some of the most elite medical care on the planet. And if you're making $142k in salary in the US, your healthcare is entirely paid for. There are only two strong counters, one is that the quality of life can be very high in parts of wealthy Western Europe, and the other is cultural (preferring one culture over another).
- robert_foss 8y ago
  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 - Literally spies on the entire population of the rest of the world ...
  - leg100 8y ago
    Sorry, which country are we talking about? Barring the guaranteed maternity leave I'm not seeing a helluva difference.
  - another-one-off 8y ago
    That starts to rule out a lot of English speaking countries, including probably the UK. I mean, in the UK alone you'd need to evaluate what, if anything, separates the modern British morals from the morals of the British Empire which was not a very nice organisation [1]. They technically didn't overthrow and bully, but that was because they conquered and colonised. I don't think the lineage of government institutions has changed that drastically. The modern anglosphere (UK, Australia, US, New Zealand, Canada) are all part of the spying-on-everyone gig. The social security system and environmental comments I'll grant you; but the reason for that is (ironically, given your comment) that people don't want to contribute taxes for it. Work life balance I have no comment. [1] EDIT The stereotype I picked up was that a good foundation of modern British wealth was a bunch of things they 'found unattended' overseas. I gather the Indians still claim that some parts of British royal jewelry were stolen from them and should be returned with an apology.
    - signal11 8y ago
      > I gather the Indians still claim that some parts of British royal jewelry were stolen from them and should be returned with an apology. Bit offtopic, but this is complicated. A lot of the jewellery were taken from present-day Pakistan (or were gifts from kings in that area) so it's not clear to which country they should be returned to.
    - eeeuo 8y ago
      Yes, they did "technically" overthrow. The UK, alongside the US, overthrew a democratically elected government in Iran in 1953. This is not a point of contention, it's been openly stated by the CIA. I genuinely thought the GP was making a joke until the bit about time off.
  - bodas 8y ago
    Even on a selfish level, the extra 2-3 weeks of PTO in UK is easily more important than the extra compensation in the US. What's the point of having more money if you are stuck in an office for more of the year and can only spend it on material goods? As you say, for women the difference in maternity leave is laughable.
- foldr 8y ago
  >And if you're making $142k in salary in the US, your healthcare is entirely paid for. Surely there's still copay?
  - Balero 8y ago
    IF you have good insurance the co-pay is trivial. I broke a bone, total of $80 in copay. Someone with worse insurance is looking at a bill in the $1000's or even $10,000
    - foldr 8y ago
      It's the unexpected things that get you, though. I had to have a few emergency room visits for rabies shots, and ended up paying about $1500. I don't really know how to measure how "good" my insurance was, but I was working at a university in MA, so I expect the policy was at least decent. (The rabies vaccine is very expensive. The theoretical cost of the treatment, which the insurance company theoretically paid, was about $30,000.)
      - Balero 8y ago
        Funnily in the UK with the NHS it's again the unexpected things. In this case it's paying for parking, it adds up quick, especially if your'e visiting someone who's in hospital for a while.
        foldr 8y ago
        This incident happened a couple of weeks before I was due to move back to the UK. The NHS gave me my final rabies shot for free at my GP's surgery. I walked there, so I didn't pay parking, but I'm guessing it would have cost less than $1500.
        noir_lord 8y ago
        It's a measure of the success of the NHS that people complain about paying to park to go visit someone getting free at the point of us socialized healthcare.
- Moodles 8y ago
  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.
  - timthorn 8y ago
    Between £100k-£120k it hits an effective 60% as the personal allowance is withdrawn.
    - Moodles 8y ago
      Good point. Yeah, it seems impossible for tech in the UK to compete financially...
    - foldr 8y ago
      60% of what exactly? Take home pay for a salary of £100k is about £66k, and about £74k for £120k.
      - rcxdude 8y ago
        It means if you get a 1k raise, your take-home pay only increases by 400.
      - paulmckeever 8y ago
        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%.
        foldr 8y ago
        Ok, but doing a rough calculation using https://goodcalculators.com/us-salary-tax-calculator/ 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).
- kalkut 8y ago
  > The top 1/4 in the US have easy, fast access to some of the most elite medical care on the planet. And if you're making $142k in salary in the US, your healthcare is entirely paid for. There is nothing surprising in the fact that the top 25% earners have access to healthcare. The point of public healthcare is to make sure that the remaining 75% will not get indebted to barely survive. What would worry an European worker would be : - What would happen to my (and eventually wife's and kids') access to healthcare if I lose my job ? - What if I want to start a business ? - What if I want to go back to college ? - What if I have to take care of a family member full-time ? Who protects me and this member ? I am sure US medical care is very elite but what I also see is that a very large part of people who fell into poverty in the US did so because of unexpected health problems that would be taken care of in most European countries.
  - jimmy1 8y ago
    Misunderstood the question
    - NLips 8y ago
      Pretty sure all the parent's questions were healthcare related: [What happens to my healthcare] if I want to start a business? [What happens to my healthcare] if I want to go back to college? ...
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
    - kalkut 8y ago
      EDIT: Parent edited while I was writing this but I let my original post for the sake of the argument I think you misunderstood my question, sorry if it was not clear : What kind of healthcare do I have in those situations ? In most of Europe you have access to very good healthcare with no conditions attached. You get covered in all those situations. Of course if you are a young single tech worker with no health issue this does not feel important but accidents happen, illness happens. I mean it is great that the US is 2nd for being pro business but being in pre-brexit UK, Germany or France don't harm your business prospects. I worked for smallish French companies (~20 employees) whose customers were mainly Americans it never seemed that it was a problem. I mean you propose > Most companies pay for your college, or if not the entire term, at least 2 years. You could also go to one of our excellent community colleges for peanuts. Here if you manage to join our very best engineering schools you get paid for attending. The rest is not higher than 1000$ and the most expensive schools are business school with tuitions of at most 20k$/year. We also have online courses. And degrees are less and less important everywhere in the western world. I am a college dropout and it never hurt my career in Europe Or you say > Outside of the heavily taxed Northern European countries, not many countries in Europe take care of you and your family member full time outside of some fringe benefits For the sake of the argument, let's assume that as you say it is not that common in EU. The good thing here is that neither you nor your family member will have to pay absurd amount of money for healthcare and as I said above > "a very large part of people who fell into poverty in the US did so because of unexpected health problems that would be taken care of in most European countries." See : https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2017/05/05/this-is-the-no-1-reason-americans-file-for-bankruptcy/101148136/ https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2017/05/... "medical debt is the No. 1 source of personal bankruptcy filings in the U.S., and in 2014, an estimated 40% of Americans racked up debt resulting from a medical issue." I (personally) don't believe that a country can be a meritocratic society if getting ill at a bad moment in your life requires you to take "that extra 30% of your income you are not taxed, and opening up a high-yield portfolio for a rainy day" to pay healthcare bills that are way higher that in Europe. I mean even without healthcare insurance whether public or private : A surgery at the hospital I was born in cost 1660,43 €. Any surgery. They have a price for what they call "Costly Specialty", it is 2734,85 €. So you are not European or you don't have any healthcare insurance, this is the worst case scenario for you here. We can do the comparison for almost every treatment and even without insurance it is ridiculously way cheaper because of the bargaining power a state who provides healthcare to millions of people have vs big pharma. The thing that you seem to miss with your high salaries (here in tech) is that you spend a lot of money paying people with high salaries (here health professional) so they can pay back their excessive college debt, that allowed them to pay some the most expensive universities in the world. And this pattern is everywhere when you deal with american knowledge economy including 150k$ tech workers who most likely have an education related debt. How indebted fresh graduates are supposed to live in one of the most expensive area of the world and to pay off their debt without this kind of salaries ? Now compare that to a debt free engineer at 75k$ living in Berlin whose only future debt "risk" is a mortgage And if it really was an issue this same person could close the gap in revenue by becoming a freelance or working for a Swiss or Luxembourgian company as a remote or trans-border employee since we have a free-market with freedom of movement across more than two dozen countries. So I don't say that to convince you that you need public healthcare and public education nor that EU is better. I try to make you understand that in reality an European engineer with a "75k$ in EU vs 150k$ in US" kind of choice will not care because in the end it is the same thing. In the end US and EU have quite different economies, very different social structures and very different labor laws. Labor markets take all of that into account into the wages. Now for the stock there can be an important difference, I always had shares in my previous companies and I know that big companies give some too. I don't know if FAANG gives stock in EU. I doubt that we have many EU companies that gives as much stock but more importantly I doubt that there are many company anywhere in the world including in the US whose performance in stock exchanges is as good as FAANG's
- IshKebab 8y ago
  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.
  - gabbo 8y ago
    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 that goes up to 3 weeks PTO + 1 week of personal days starting year 2 IIRC.
    - steve_musk 8y ago
      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.
      - throwawaymath 8y ago
        Do you mind saying what their compensation package is?
        steve_musk 8y ago
        Very similar to a standard SV Google one except much more stock.
      - gabbo 8y ago
        I'd love to hear what sort of job a UK new grad would get at Google that would pay them more than their US equivalent. Every data point I've ever seen has shown Google UK employees are paid a lot less.
- walshemj 8y ago
  The advantage of the UK's take on stock options is the tax man wont try on tax you on money you never had and their is much less opportunity to get screwed out of stock - you must get the same stock - multi class share listings are not looked on kindly and can get you kicked of the UK indices. My mate made 125k on 5 years worth of stock options at BT and that was open to all staff - oh ad that's mostly tax free.
- eli_gottlieb 8y ago
  >There are only two strong counters, one is that the quality of life can be very high in parts of wealthy Western Europe, and the other is cultural (preferring one culture over another). I would think the counters would also include: * Getting to go on vacation ever, at all. * Weather and closeness to family.
- ryandrake 8y ago
  > 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.
Nursie 8y ago
>> 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 work in the US, and outside of London they are just plain derisory.
- walshemj 8y ago
  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.
  - Nursie 8y ago
    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.
- cyclinghacker 8y ago
  I worked in AU around ten years ago. I don't remember salaries coming anywhere near the UK or US. I'd love to know if things are better now. I wouldn't say the UK market particularly undervalues talent, in the city at least. Most of my peer group are on a day rate of 800-900 which (assuming you take 5 weeks of holidays) would translate to at least USD 248k gross. Chatting to our traders they are pretty jealous of our 9-5 hours, 2 hour lunch breaks and relaxed dress code.
  - Nursie 8y ago
    You have to recognise, surely, that even for London those rates are exceptional? The vast, vast majority of salaried software guys make far less than that, especially outside of the capital. Hell, I pull in about 75% of that much and consider myself very fortunate as a contractor. And I see ads and 'opportunities' all the time for experienced people in the 40-50k range. About 8 years ago I moved from London to Western Aus and was immediately earning (as a permanent employee) in the six figure range, when AUD and USD were at parity. In London, doing the same job for the same company, I had been on less than £50k.
fgrep 8y ago
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 for a contract, I'm pretty certain I would be left with more money here that I would in SF even if im on $180k. Being in SF with family/kids is a game over I guess.
- dmode 8y ago
  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 a lot here. Because people can afford it.
  - fgrep 8y ago
    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

adventured 8y ago

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're really great at something, Google can trivially give you millions of dollars in stock if it makes sense. What company in Britain can compete with that? The skeptics will say something about healthcare in the US as a counter. The top 1/4 in the US have easy, fast access to some of the most elite medical care on the planet. And if you're making $142k in salary in the US, your healthcare is entirely paid for. There are only two strong counters, one is that the quality of life can be very high in parts of wealthy Western Europe, and the other is cultural (preferring one culture over another).

robert_foss 8y ago
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 - Literally spies on the entire population of the rest of the world ...
- leg100 8y ago
  Sorry, which country are we talking about? Barring the guaranteed maternity leave I'm not seeing a helluva difference.
- another-one-off 8y ago
  That starts to rule out a lot of English speaking countries, including probably the UK. I mean, in the UK alone you'd need to evaluate what, if anything, separates the modern British morals from the morals of the British Empire which was not a very nice organisation [1]. They technically didn't overthrow and bully, but that was because they conquered and colonised. I don't think the lineage of government institutions has changed that drastically. The modern anglosphere (UK, Australia, US, New Zealand, Canada) are all part of the spying-on-everyone gig. The social security system and environmental comments I'll grant you; but the reason for that is (ironically, given your comment) that people don't want to contribute taxes for it. Work life balance I have no comment. [1] EDIT The stereotype I picked up was that a good foundation of modern British wealth was a bunch of things they 'found unattended' overseas. I gather the Indians still claim that some parts of British royal jewelry were stolen from them and should be returned with an apology.
  - signal11 8y ago
    > I gather the Indians still claim that some parts of British royal jewelry were stolen from them and should be returned with an apology. Bit offtopic, but this is complicated. A lot of the jewellery were taken from present-day Pakistan (or were gifts from kings in that area) so it's not clear to which country they should be returned to.
  - eeeuo 8y ago
    Yes, they did "technically" overthrow. The UK, alongside the US, overthrew a democratically elected government in Iran in 1953. This is not a point of contention, it's been openly stated by the CIA. I genuinely thought the GP was making a joke until the bit about time off.
- bodas 8y ago
  Even on a selfish level, the extra 2-3 weeks of PTO in UK is easily more important than the extra compensation in the US. What's the point of having more money if you are stuck in an office for more of the year and can only spend it on material goods? As you say, for women the difference in maternity leave is laughable.
foldr 8y ago
>And if you're making $142k in salary in the US, your healthcare is entirely paid for. Surely there's still copay?
- Balero 8y ago
  IF you have good insurance the co-pay is trivial. I broke a bone, total of $80 in copay. Someone with worse insurance is looking at a bill in the $1000's or even $10,000
  - foldr 8y ago
    It's the unexpected things that get you, though. I had to have a few emergency room visits for rabies shots, and ended up paying about $1500. I don't really know how to measure how "good" my insurance was, but I was working at a university in MA, so I expect the policy was at least decent. (The rabies vaccine is very expensive. The theoretical cost of the treatment, which the insurance company theoretically paid, was about $30,000.)
    - Balero 8y ago
      Funnily in the UK with the NHS it's again the unexpected things. In this case it's paying for parking, it adds up quick, especially if your'e visiting someone who's in hospital for a while.
      - foldr 8y ago
        This incident happened a couple of weeks before I was due to move back to the UK. The NHS gave me my final rabies shot for free at my GP's surgery. I walked there, so I didn't pay parking, but I'm guessing it would have cost less than $1500.
        noir_lord 8y ago
        It's a measure of the success of the NHS that people complain about paying to park to go visit someone getting free at the point of us socialized healthcare.
Moodles 8y ago
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.
- timthorn 8y ago
  Between £100k-£120k it hits an effective 60% as the personal allowance is withdrawn.
  - Moodles 8y ago
    Good point. Yeah, it seems impossible for tech in the UK to compete financially...
  - foldr 8y ago
    60% of what exactly? Take home pay for a salary of £100k is about £66k, and about £74k for £120k.
    - rcxdude 8y ago
      It means if you get a 1k raise, your take-home pay only increases by 400.
    - paulmckeever 8y ago
      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%.
      - foldr 8y ago
        Ok, but doing a rough calculation using https://goodcalculators.com/us-salary-tax-calculator/ 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).
kalkut 8y ago
> The top 1/4 in the US have easy, fast access to some of the most elite medical care on the planet. And if you're making $142k in salary in the US, your healthcare is entirely paid for. There is nothing surprising in the fact that the top 25% earners have access to healthcare. The point of public healthcare is to make sure that the remaining 75% will not get indebted to barely survive. What would worry an European worker would be : - What would happen to my (and eventually wife's and kids') access to healthcare if I lose my job ? - What if I want to start a business ? - What if I want to go back to college ? - What if I have to take care of a family member full-time ? Who protects me and this member ? I am sure US medical care is very elite but what I also see is that a very large part of people who fell into poverty in the US did so because of unexpected health problems that would be taken care of in most European countries.
- jimmy1 8y ago
  Misunderstood the question
  - NLips 8y ago
    Pretty sure all the parent's questions were healthcare related: [What happens to my healthcare] if I want to start a business? [What happens to my healthcare] if I want to go back to college? ...
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - kalkut 8y ago
    EDIT: Parent edited while I was writing this but I let my original post for the sake of the argument I think you misunderstood my question, sorry if it was not clear : What kind of healthcare do I have in those situations ? In most of Europe you have access to very good healthcare with no conditions attached. You get covered in all those situations. Of course if you are a young single tech worker with no health issue this does not feel important but accidents happen, illness happens. I mean it is great that the US is 2nd for being pro business but being in pre-brexit UK, Germany or France don't harm your business prospects. I worked for smallish French companies (~20 employees) whose customers were mainly Americans it never seemed that it was a problem. I mean you propose > Most companies pay for your college, or if not the entire term, at least 2 years. You could also go to one of our excellent community colleges for peanuts. Here if you manage to join our very best engineering schools you get paid for attending. The rest is not higher than 1000$ and the most expensive schools are business school with tuitions of at most 20k$/year. We also have online courses. And degrees are less and less important everywhere in the western world. I am a college dropout and it never hurt my career in Europe Or you say > Outside of the heavily taxed Northern European countries, not many countries in Europe take care of you and your family member full time outside of some fringe benefits For the sake of the argument, let's assume that as you say it is not that common in EU. The good thing here is that neither you nor your family member will have to pay absurd amount of money for healthcare and as I said above > "a very large part of people who fell into poverty in the US did so because of unexpected health problems that would be taken care of in most European countries." See : https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2017/05/05/this-is-the-no-1-reason-americans-file-for-bankruptcy/101148136/ https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2017/05/... "medical debt is the No. 1 source of personal bankruptcy filings in the U.S., and in 2014, an estimated 40% of Americans racked up debt resulting from a medical issue." I (personally) don't believe that a country can be a meritocratic society if getting ill at a bad moment in your life requires you to take "that extra 30% of your income you are not taxed, and opening up a high-yield portfolio for a rainy day" to pay healthcare bills that are way higher that in Europe. I mean even without healthcare insurance whether public or private : A surgery at the hospital I was born in cost 1660,43 €. Any surgery. They have a price for what they call "Costly Specialty", it is 2734,85 €. So you are not European or you don't have any healthcare insurance, this is the worst case scenario for you here. We can do the comparison for almost every treatment and even without insurance it is ridiculously way cheaper because of the bargaining power a state who provides healthcare to millions of people have vs big pharma. The thing that you seem to miss with your high salaries (here in tech) is that you spend a lot of money paying people with high salaries (here health professional) so they can pay back their excessive college debt, that allowed them to pay some the most expensive universities in the world. And this pattern is everywhere when you deal with american knowledge economy including 150k$ tech workers who most likely have an education related debt. How indebted fresh graduates are supposed to live in one of the most expensive area of the world and to pay off their debt without this kind of salaries ? Now compare that to a debt free engineer at 75k$ living in Berlin whose only future debt "risk" is a mortgage And if it really was an issue this same person could close the gap in revenue by becoming a freelance or working for a Swiss or Luxembourgian company as a remote or trans-border employee since we have a free-market with freedom of movement across more than two dozen countries. So I don't say that to convince you that you need public healthcare and public education nor that EU is better. I try to make you understand that in reality an European engineer with a "75k$ in EU vs 150k$ in US" kind of choice will not care because in the end it is the same thing. In the end US and EU have quite different economies, very different social structures and very different labor laws. Labor markets take all of that into account into the wages. Now for the stock there can be an important difference, I always had shares in my previous companies and I know that big companies give some too. I don't know if FAANG gives stock in EU. I doubt that we have many EU companies that gives as much stock but more importantly I doubt that there are many company anywhere in the world including in the US whose performance in stock exchanges is as good as FAANG's
IshKebab 8y ago
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.
- gabbo 8y ago
  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 that goes up to 3 weeks PTO + 1 week of personal days starting year 2 IIRC.
  - steve_musk 8y ago
    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.
    - throwawaymath 8y ago
      Do you mind saying what their compensation package is?
      - steve_musk 8y ago
        Very similar to a standard SV Google one except much more stock.
    - gabbo 8y ago
      I'd love to hear what sort of job a UK new grad would get at Google that would pay them more than their US equivalent. Every data point I've ever seen has shown Google UK employees are paid a lot less.
walshemj 8y ago
The advantage of the UK's take on stock options is the tax man wont try on tax you on money you never had and their is much less opportunity to get screwed out of stock - you must get the same stock - multi class share listings are not looked on kindly and can get you kicked of the UK indices. My mate made 125k on 5 years worth of stock options at BT and that was open to all staff - oh ad that's mostly tax free.
eli_gottlieb 8y ago
>There are only two strong counters, one is that the quality of life can be very high in parts of wealthy Western Europe, and the other is cultural (preferring one culture over another). I would think the counters would also include: * Getting to go on vacation ever, at all. * Weather and closeness to family.
ryandrake 8y ago
> 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.

Nursie 8y ago

>> 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 work in the US, and outside of London they are just plain derisory.

walshemj 8y ago
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.
- Nursie 8y ago
  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.
cyclinghacker 8y ago
I worked in AU around ten years ago. I don't remember salaries coming anywhere near the UK or US. I'd love to know if things are better now. I wouldn't say the UK market particularly undervalues talent, in the city at least. Most of my peer group are on a day rate of 800-900 which (assuming you take 5 weeks of holidays) would translate to at least USD 248k gross. Chatting to our traders they are pretty jealous of our 9-5 hours, 2 hour lunch breaks and relaxed dress code.
- Nursie 8y ago
  You have to recognise, surely, that even for London those rates are exceptional? The vast, vast majority of salaried software guys make far less than that, especially outside of the capital. Hell, I pull in about 75% of that much and consider myself very fortunate as a contractor. And I see ads and 'opportunities' all the time for experienced people in the 40-50k range. About 8 years ago I moved from London to Western Aus and was immediately earning (as a permanent employee) in the six figure range, when AUD and USD were at parity. In London, doing the same job for the same company, I had been on less than £50k.

fgrep 8y ago

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 for a contract, I'm pretty certain I would be left with more money here that I would in SF even if im on $180k. Being in SF with family/kids is a game over I guess.

dmode 8y ago
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 a lot here. Because people can afford it.
- fgrep 8y ago
  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