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I do get a fair amount of job offers from startups in London, but they are very inflexible about remote working (I'm in Scotland). Want me to move to London ? S

I do get a fair amount of job offers from startups in London, but they are very inflexible about remote working (I'm in Scotland). Want me to move to London ? Sure, double whatever salary you're offering and I might consider it. Otherwise it would be a big drop in my standard of living - nice big apartment up here for cardboard box down there. There is a lot of good talent in the UK, the problem is we have a massively over-centralized economy, which is bad for London (way too expensive to live for average workers, and infrastructure straining under excess population) and bad for the rest of the UK (no jobs). Contrast with Germany, which has a more distributed (and far healthier) economy - Berlin, Munich, Hamburg etc. Remote working would help redress the imbalance but some startups for good and bad reasons are reluctant. And no, I could care less about twin monitors or aeron chairs.

fedd 16y ago
watching The Social Network, i saw some wordless hackers that were happy to work for early facebook when they only had $1000 in bank to pay for servers. is it something different in American climate?.. :)
- borism 16y ago
  is it something different in American climate?.. :) one can live in a cardboard box in California but not in Scotland?
  - arethuza 16y ago
    Scotland would probably be one of the worst places to try living in a cardboard box - cold enough to be dangerous if you are outdoors but not cold enough to be dry. Combine that with rather unpredictable weather and rapid temperature changes (we've had temperatures changing 20C in a few days recently) and you would have a pretty miserable time in a cardboard box.
    - JonnieCache 16y ago
      Unfortunately there are a lot of kids living on the street in scotland. It really surprised me the first time I went to Edinburgh, how many young people there were sitting in doorways. A lot of them didn't look like they'd been there long either.
      - arethuza 16y ago
        There is no doubt there are "real" homeless people in Edinburgh (probably poor souls who've been thrown out of long term care) - but a lot (not all) of the younger people you see in Edinburgh are doing it because a) there are plenty tourists who will hand over some cash b) people who have traveled in from outlying towns/villages, spent all of their cash on booze and don't have enough to get home. [NB I've helped a few people in the latter category get home, so I know it happens]
- arethuza 16y ago
  "work for" != "full time salaried employee"
  - fedd 16y ago
    i meant that - is that true that in America there are more risky, romantic hackers that would be happy to work for a promising startup for nothing, than in Europe, where too much people want to be full time employees? without any critics, just wondering.
    - zeemonkee 16y ago
      I suspect most Americans have annoying personal requirements like bills and mortgages to pay same as Europeans. College students don't have these overheads, but they don't have experience either - so coding for next to nothing is a good exchange for experience and resume padding. However, if you're an experienced developer and you work for nothing without a huge chunk of equity or ownership in the business then you're a fool. Look up some of the job offers on Craigslist - you'll be very much in demand.
- zeemonkee 16y ago
  If I'm going to work for nothing, I'll work for myself, or as a fully-vested partner. If I'm going to work for a salary, I'll work for at least the going market rate for my skills. I don't care if you're Joe McStartup or IBM. It's your dream, not mine.
  - fedd 16y ago
    this is what i understand. so, that guy in the movie, that won a drunken coding contest, must have been a fully vested partner.
    - Aqwis 16y ago
      The "drunken coding contest" might or might not have been made up for the sake of the movie. But say Dustin Moskovitz was a fully vested partner.
SimonPStevens 16y ago
I totally empathise with this. When I'm looking for work I see lots of firms in London hiring, but I have no interest in moving there, and although commuting is just about doable for the very short term, it totally ruins my out of work life. I would happily work remotely, but no one ever offers this. I'm not sure I quite understand the obsession companies have with London. There are plenty of talented people around the rest of the country.
- ig1 16y ago
  There are various reasons, but one of the big one is because the talent pool isn't large enough in most places. It's hard to get someone to move to London for a job, but it's even harder to get someone to move to a smaller city, so you get much more restricted to the local talent pool. You see hubs of companies around university towns with good CS programs (Oxford, Cambridge, Bristol, Edinburgh) as universities draw talent in from a wider area, but for most cities there simply aren't enough people in a concentrated area.
  - JoeAltmaier 16y ago
    I live in (near) a smaller city (70,000) with a University. We have a vigorous startup landscape. There is no monopoly on brains in a large city. In fact, as my Aunt Kate used to say, Honey attracts Flies. Big cities have a disproportionate share of not-so-good players. In smaller towns you can only stay if you're employable, have a modicum of skills. Still, there's many other drawbacks - scarce investment, more difficult to find markets, absolutely bounded set of talent, hiring inertia (folks tend to stick to their job).
- zeemonkee 16y ago
  I can understand the obsession. As pointed out, the UK is massively centralized around a single city. Media ? London. Finance ? London. Politics ? London. And so on. There may be local centers of excellence elsewhere - and devolution has been an improvement - but if your startup relies on, for example, shmoozing clients or investors in the media or finance sectors, then London is where you want to be. Personally, I think that's one thing (well that and our antiquated infrastructure and class system) that's holding the UK back, and it didn't used to be the case. But that's the situation we have. However, there is no reason why people who don't need to shmooze with clients need to live in London or the Home Counties. If your job is coding, then remote working is a viable - and cheap - option, with the occasional company meeting every other month. A lot of companies have a lot of success with this model and, well-managed, it works well. I think a lot of startups are still attached to some "Social Network" romantic ideal of a hackers' playground where we sit in Aeron chairs and eat pizza doing all-night coding sprints in between Nerf gun fights. However that has absolutely nothing to do with success or failure of a software project. A startup needs to adapt and economize and a huge office in central London is hardly the best way to do either. First, you are paying through the nose for office space you don't need, and second, it's hard to get people to work for you.
narag 16y ago
I've been planning to move from Spain to London for some months. You're scaring me. Is £40.000 not enough for a decent flat and once a month flight back home?
- barrkel 16y ago
  Assume about 1000 GBP/month if you want somewhere half-decent to live. If you want accommodation to be 30% of your before-tax salary, then you need to make 40K per year. If you're willing to compromise - live in a room in a shared house, almost like a student, or somewhere dodgy (e.g. tower block with lifts that smell like piss) or with poor transport links, you'll be able to reduce that by 50% or more. Between myself and my GF, we make about 90K GBP, and we're fairly comfortable. But we live in Bow in the East End, don't have kids, and barely feel middle class.
  - ig1 16y ago
    You say that as if living in a shared house was some sort of social stigma. Most single young (under say 35) professionals in London share flats, and I'm including lawyers, investment bankers, doctors, etc. One reason is that price drops disproportionately with the number of rooms, for example for a 1-bed flat you might pay £200/week but for a similar 2-bed you'd pay only £240/week. You could pay 1000/month for a "half-decent" 1-bed flat, or alternatively you could share a great 2-bed flat for the same price. And many people chose to make the second decision. Also it makes much more sense in terms of buying household products and makes "luxuries" such as hiring a cleaner much more affordable. If you really want to live on your own it makes more sense to live in one of london commuter belt suburbs where you can get a flat for 600/month.
    - barrkel 16y ago
      Living in a shared house (assuming no relationship with co-sharers) is a massive PITA, especially if you're as misanthropic as me. Sharing bathrooms, kitchen cleaning protocols, awkwardness / potential conflicts having guests stay over, ugh; it sucks. It's like living at home with your parents; better in some ways, worse in others, but a huge step below having one's own place. But if you have a significant other, then I agree, sharing is a whole heap better. We live in a 3-bedroom, two-story house with a back garden that runs down to the canal, and a view directly onto Victoria Park past the canal. It's about 25 minutes from almost anywhere in central London by scooter (to my mind, the best way to get around London). The house runs to only slightly more than 1000/month.
gregdetre 16y ago
heyhey zeemonkee, drop me a line if you're interested in talking about remote working. g
Isofarro 16y ago
"Sure, double whatever salary you're offering and I might consider it. Otherwise it would be a big drop in my standard of living - nice big apartment up here for cardboard box down there." I think this gets to the heart of the cultural difference between the UK and California in terms of startups. I get the feeling that people working for / running Silicon Valley startups are living extremely cheaply (hence references to Ramen profitability), sharing places with groups of people, working long hours with very little time off, sometimes sleeping over in the office instead of going home. I don't get the feeling that attitude happens within London, so working for a startup isn't much more different to a desk job in a big company - salary, set working hours, regular vacation time. Maybe a slightly better options/share stake in the company. Also the business infrastructure of London doesn't facilitate a lean startup environment. Registering a company with Companies House is cheap enough, but running it is quite costly for a group of people who are trying to build something that might pan out later. It's like London only wants organisations with existing revenue streams, not startups with potential. And there's the expectation of potential employees for London startups, they want the benefits of working for an established business. Silicon Valleyers seem more inclined to be involved with something interesting, and live a minimalist life outside of that role. Am I completely wrong here? (Would be interested in hearing back from people working in startups in Silicon Valley and London, but also elsewhere in the world - how is your organisation legally registered, do you pay salaries or offer compensation in stock ownership, are you living comfortably, or living off ramen noodles until you've created a decent income stream?)
- loewenskind 16y ago
  >so working for a startup isn't much more different to a desk job in a big company Why would invest so much of your life and earning potential at a start up? Because of that negligible chance that you'll be the next Facebook? You'd be better off working in a desk job and just using your extra money to buy lottery tickets. In my opinion the attitude you attribute to London is the wiser one.
axod 16y ago
There's plenty of affordable housing a stones throw away from London on the train if you're prepared to commute. I did it for a couple of years (1 hour each way).
- switch007 16y ago
  1 hour = a stone's throw? Anyway, I highly doubt there are any places cheap enough to make commuting cheaper than living in London (not in West Sussex or Surrey anyway.) Where did you live? Even with the costs of commuting was it cheaper than living in London?
  - axod 16y ago
    east of england (Colchester), and yes, it was/is way cheaper even with train ticket.
woodpanel 16y ago
I agree with you. The density of London makes it an awesome tourist attraction. But living there? No, thank you. I think what would help you getting remote working jobs are 1. knowing people down there, that know you're good/professional/trustable/likable/[insert social-binding characeristic] enough 2. raising the number of people from pragraph 1 by networking or getting down there for like 3 months and do some work. In my experience its all about knowing people who have worked with you and know that you can deliver. they will hire/recommend you or let you know if they hear anything about new jobs, fitting for you. If you are working in the same industry, those people will still be in the same industry in years. And if not, you propably won't get any jobs either by then. Plus, people swith employees over the time, so your 'eyes and ears in the field' increase.

fedd 16y ago

watching The Social Network, i saw some wordless hackers that were happy to work for early facebook when they only had $1000 in bank to pay for servers. is it something different in American climate?.. :)

borism 16y ago
is it something different in American climate?.. :) one can live in a cardboard box in California but not in Scotland?
- arethuza 16y ago
  Scotland would probably be one of the worst places to try living in a cardboard box - cold enough to be dangerous if you are outdoors but not cold enough to be dry. Combine that with rather unpredictable weather and rapid temperature changes (we've had temperatures changing 20C in a few days recently) and you would have a pretty miserable time in a cardboard box.
  - JonnieCache 16y ago
    Unfortunately there are a lot of kids living on the street in scotland. It really surprised me the first time I went to Edinburgh, how many young people there were sitting in doorways. A lot of them didn't look like they'd been there long either.
    - arethuza 16y ago
      There is no doubt there are "real" homeless people in Edinburgh (probably poor souls who've been thrown out of long term care) - but a lot (not all) of the younger people you see in Edinburgh are doing it because a) there are plenty tourists who will hand over some cash b) people who have traveled in from outlying towns/villages, spent all of their cash on booze and don't have enough to get home. [NB I've helped a few people in the latter category get home, so I know it happens]
arethuza 16y ago
"work for" != "full time salaried employee"
- fedd 16y ago
  i meant that - is that true that in America there are more risky, romantic hackers that would be happy to work for a promising startup for nothing, than in Europe, where too much people want to be full time employees? without any critics, just wondering.
  - zeemonkee 16y ago
    I suspect most Americans have annoying personal requirements like bills and mortgages to pay same as Europeans. College students don't have these overheads, but they don't have experience either - so coding for next to nothing is a good exchange for experience and resume padding. However, if you're an experienced developer and you work for nothing without a huge chunk of equity or ownership in the business then you're a fool. Look up some of the job offers on Craigslist - you'll be very much in demand.
zeemonkee 16y ago
If I'm going to work for nothing, I'll work for myself, or as a fully-vested partner. If I'm going to work for a salary, I'll work for at least the going market rate for my skills. I don't care if you're Joe McStartup or IBM. It's your dream, not mine.
- fedd 16y ago
  this is what i understand. so, that guy in the movie, that won a drunken coding contest, must have been a fully vested partner.
  - Aqwis 16y ago
    The "drunken coding contest" might or might not have been made up for the sake of the movie. But say Dustin Moskovitz was a fully vested partner.

SimonPStevens 16y ago

I totally empathise with this. When I'm looking for work I see lots of firms in London hiring, but I have no interest in moving there, and although commuting is just about doable for the very short term, it totally ruins my out of work life. I would happily work remotely, but no one ever offers this. I'm not sure I quite understand the obsession companies have with London. There are plenty of talented people around the rest of the country.

ig1 16y ago
There are various reasons, but one of the big one is because the talent pool isn't large enough in most places. It's hard to get someone to move to London for a job, but it's even harder to get someone to move to a smaller city, so you get much more restricted to the local talent pool. You see hubs of companies around university towns with good CS programs (Oxford, Cambridge, Bristol, Edinburgh) as universities draw talent in from a wider area, but for most cities there simply aren't enough people in a concentrated area.
- JoeAltmaier 16y ago
  I live in (near) a smaller city (70,000) with a University. We have a vigorous startup landscape. There is no monopoly on brains in a large city. In fact, as my Aunt Kate used to say, Honey attracts Flies. Big cities have a disproportionate share of not-so-good players. In smaller towns you can only stay if you're employable, have a modicum of skills. Still, there's many other drawbacks - scarce investment, more difficult to find markets, absolutely bounded set of talent, hiring inertia (folks tend to stick to their job).
zeemonkee 16y ago
I can understand the obsession. As pointed out, the UK is massively centralized around a single city. Media ? London. Finance ? London. Politics ? London. And so on. There may be local centers of excellence elsewhere - and devolution has been an improvement - but if your startup relies on, for example, shmoozing clients or investors in the media or finance sectors, then London is where you want to be. Personally, I think that's one thing (well that and our antiquated infrastructure and class system) that's holding the UK back, and it didn't used to be the case. But that's the situation we have. However, there is no reason why people who don't need to shmooze with clients need to live in London or the Home Counties. If your job is coding, then remote working is a viable - and cheap - option, with the occasional company meeting every other month. A lot of companies have a lot of success with this model and, well-managed, it works well. I think a lot of startups are still attached to some "Social Network" romantic ideal of a hackers' playground where we sit in Aeron chairs and eat pizza doing all-night coding sprints in between Nerf gun fights. However that has absolutely nothing to do with success or failure of a software project. A startup needs to adapt and economize and a huge office in central London is hardly the best way to do either. First, you are paying through the nose for office space you don't need, and second, it's hard to get people to work for you.

narag 16y ago

I've been planning to move from Spain to London for some months. You're scaring me. Is £40.000 not enough for a decent flat and once a month flight back home?

barrkel 16y ago
Assume about 1000 GBP/month if you want somewhere half-decent to live. If you want accommodation to be 30% of your before-tax salary, then you need to make 40K per year. If you're willing to compromise - live in a room in a shared house, almost like a student, or somewhere dodgy (e.g. tower block with lifts that smell like piss) or with poor transport links, you'll be able to reduce that by 50% or more. Between myself and my GF, we make about 90K GBP, and we're fairly comfortable. But we live in Bow in the East End, don't have kids, and barely feel middle class.
- ig1 16y ago
  You say that as if living in a shared house was some sort of social stigma. Most single young (under say 35) professionals in London share flats, and I'm including lawyers, investment bankers, doctors, etc. One reason is that price drops disproportionately with the number of rooms, for example for a 1-bed flat you might pay £200/week but for a similar 2-bed you'd pay only £240/week. You could pay 1000/month for a "half-decent" 1-bed flat, or alternatively you could share a great 2-bed flat for the same price. And many people chose to make the second decision. Also it makes much more sense in terms of buying household products and makes "luxuries" such as hiring a cleaner much more affordable. If you really want to live on your own it makes more sense to live in one of london commuter belt suburbs where you can get a flat for 600/month.
  - barrkel 16y ago
    Living in a shared house (assuming no relationship with co-sharers) is a massive PITA, especially if you're as misanthropic as me. Sharing bathrooms, kitchen cleaning protocols, awkwardness / potential conflicts having guests stay over, ugh; it sucks. It's like living at home with your parents; better in some ways, worse in others, but a huge step below having one's own place. But if you have a significant other, then I agree, sharing is a whole heap better. We live in a 3-bedroom, two-story house with a back garden that runs down to the canal, and a view directly onto Victoria Park past the canal. It's about 25 minutes from almost anywhere in central London by scooter (to my mind, the best way to get around London). The house runs to only slightly more than 1000/month.

gregdetre 16y ago

heyhey zeemonkee, drop me a line if you're interested in talking about remote working. g

Isofarro 16y ago

"Sure, double whatever salary you're offering and I might consider it. Otherwise it would be a big drop in my standard of living - nice big apartment up here for cardboard box down there." I think this gets to the heart of the cultural difference between the UK and California in terms of startups. I get the feeling that people working for / running Silicon Valley startups are living extremely cheaply (hence references to Ramen profitability), sharing places with groups of people, working long hours with very little time off, sometimes sleeping over in the office instead of going home. I don't get the feeling that attitude happens within London, so working for a startup isn't much more different to a desk job in a big company - salary, set working hours, regular vacation time. Maybe a slightly better options/share stake in the company. Also the business infrastructure of London doesn't facilitate a lean startup environment. Registering a company with Companies House is cheap enough, but running it is quite costly for a group of people who are trying to build something that might pan out later. It's like London only wants organisations with existing revenue streams, not startups with potential. And there's the expectation of potential employees for London startups, they want the benefits of working for an established business. Silicon Valleyers seem more inclined to be involved with something interesting, and live a minimalist life outside of that role. Am I completely wrong here? (Would be interested in hearing back from people working in startups in Silicon Valley and London, but also elsewhere in the world - how is your organisation legally registered, do you pay salaries or offer compensation in stock ownership, are you living comfortably, or living off ramen noodles until you've created a decent income stream?)

loewenskind 16y ago
>so working for a startup isn't much more different to a desk job in a big company Why would invest so much of your life and earning potential at a start up? Because of that negligible chance that you'll be the next Facebook? You'd be better off working in a desk job and just using your extra money to buy lottery tickets. In my opinion the attitude you attribute to London is the wiser one.

axod 16y ago

There's plenty of affordable housing a stones throw away from London on the train if you're prepared to commute. I did it for a couple of years (1 hour each way).

switch007 16y ago
1 hour = a stone's throw? Anyway, I highly doubt there are any places cheap enough to make commuting cheaper than living in London (not in West Sussex or Surrey anyway.) Where did you live? Even with the costs of commuting was it cheaper than living in London?
- axod 16y ago
  east of england (Colchester), and yes, it was/is way cheaper even with train ticket.

woodpanel 16y ago

I agree with you. The density of London makes it an awesome tourist attraction. But living there? No, thank you. I think what would help you getting remote working jobs are 1. knowing people down there, that know you're good/professional/trustable/likable/[insert social-binding characeristic] enough 2. raising the number of people from pragraph 1 by networking or getting down there for like 3 months and do some work. In my experience its all about knowing people who have worked with you and know that you can deliver. they will hire/recommend you or let you know if they hear anything about new jobs, fitting for you. If you are working in the same industry, those people will still be in the same industry in years. And if not, you propably won't get any jobs either by then. Plus, people swith employees over the time, so your 'eyes and ears in the field' increase.