Why do you think this is? I fully invite speculation. It's... interesting. If paying tech professionals more is the way to win, then it's surprising the market

Why do you think this is? I fully invite speculation. It's... interesting. If paying tech professionals more is the way to win, then it's surprising the market doesn't eventually move in this direction. I can think of a few possibilities. One is that tech in the UK is dissimilar to Silicon Valley. Perhaps tech in UK industry is much more of a supporting role, valuable and important to do well, but not a differentiator that separates market winners from losers (unlike Silicon Valley, where you have existential wars going on between massive multi billion dollar corporations where hiring engineers can determine the winner who takes all). I'm kind of begging the question here, though (it isn't cause it isn't). Another possibility is flat out collusion. This clearly happened in Silicon Valley, with the no poach wage collusion. Once that cartel broke up (partly due to external pressures from participants who refused to join the cartel, and partly from a large anti-trust action), tech salaries did skyrocket. Pure, flat out cultural resistance can also play a big role (going back to my first point). Maybe class-based behavior patterns are just too ingrained. I think market oriented people often underestimate just how stubborn deeply ingrained structural behavior patterns can be. There's something to the claim that there are people who would rather rule in hell than serve in heaven, so to speak, and I suppose there could be a class of people who would rather ensure that the UK never develop a competitive tech industry than drop a rung in the job hierarchy (or even just share a spot on the perch). In this sense, tech in there UK can develop only as far as possible within the boundaries of certain tech workers never being paid more a designated set of other classes of workers.