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> London is easily as expensive, if not moreso than San Francisco. As a Londoner, I find that hard to believe. London is a huge, diverse city with many industr

> London is easily as expensive, if not moreso than San Francisco. As a Londoner, I find that hard to believe. London is a huge, diverse city with many industries other than tech, and the vast majority of London's population don't make anything close to an SF tech salary. If London was as expensive as SF then I know I wouldn't be able to afford to live here.

ghaff 6y ago
One of the things that distorts these discussions is that it's not just SF proper that's expensive for the most part. It's also the South Bay, Marin, and even parts of the East Bay. It's hard to have a decent daily commute from anywhere that's relatively inexpensive. That's not the case with most cities where a 20-40 mile drive (or even a commuter rail) to where the jobs are (which may or may not be in the city proper) can get you into fairly reasonably-priced housing.
- hackissimo123 6y ago
  London also has excellent public transport. (Some Londoners might disagree, but have they ever travelled? I've never been to any other large city where it was easier to get around by train and bus.) It's very easy to live in London without needing a car, which brings the cost of living down substantially.
  - ljm 6y ago
    London is very well connected in a bunch of ways (bus, tube, ferry, overground, DLR, tram, train, boris bike...) and in the centre is a lot more walkable than you might think, to the point of not really needing any of it in certain areas. The reason we call it shit is because (before COVID) they're pretty much all pushed beyond capacity during the commuting hours, or practically all the time between the main tourist spots. Commuting in London is a truly hellish experience. And that includes the commuter trains that are frequently delayed or cancelled while ticket prices increase above inflation every year. The best thing that happened from covid is skipping the commute and saving the £300 a month it took to get to the office and back.
KDJohnBrown 6y ago
Perhaps it is local familiary. Living in Oakland and working in San Francisco I made $175k and was able to save $4,500 per month after all of my living and familial expenses. When I’ve spoken to companies in London they seemed to max out around $100k. Whenever I looked at apartments online trying to find an equivalent lifestyle (30 minutes door to door commute, nearby parks and restauranta, 1 br 85 m^2 with good amenities) the rent always came out about the same as what I was paying ($1,840/month). The difference being home in Oakland My hood was mostly single family homes with yards (and a few yuppy apartment complexes like mine). In London everything within that commute range seemed to be a concrete jungle, and I couldnt figure out how to find an equivalent neighborhood withot really going far away from the tech companies. Whenever I visit london my dollar never seemed to stretch far and food / groceries / transit felt reallly spendy. London pubtrans is clearly better than anywhere in the USA, that goes without sayyng, but was also more expensive (if I went to the office I think I paid $4 each way for the transbay bus, with a 5-10 minute walk on each end of my commute). It’s a great city (except for the traffic. I would be terrified to ride a bicycle there), and one of my favorite things to do in life is smoke a spliff and walk down the camden locks trail.
- vidarh 6y ago
  I was recently called by a Facebook internal recruiter that claimed (I wasn't interested, so can't verify - he might have been telling bullshit) that the relatively low level developer job he was hiring for in London had a budget of around USD $165k/year. But the London developer market has very broad salary range. It's not that many years ago I worked at companies where we hired senior developers around the GBP 40k/USD 55k mark. The 30 minutes door to door commute is the problem if comparing, as London is huge. A 1 hour commute is closer to the norm. But a 1 hour commute on a train is very different to the same 1 hour if you're driving and can't spend a good chunk of it with your face in a book or watching Netflix or whatever. In terms of housing, my current mortgage for a 3 bedroom terraced house with a garden in London is about USD $2k/month, but that does mean living further out from the centre than what you want. For anyone moving to London, my tip is Croydon. It has an awful reputation which is mostly unearned (it's a very large borough, and very diverse, and it's reputation is pretty much down to scale and some small pockets of the most deprived parts of the borough), and so it's unreasonably cheap for how good transport links it has in to the centre. There are places in London I might prefer if money was no object, but money really would need to be no object, as up until maybe the 3-4 million pound range you'll get more for your money here than ost other places in town.
laurencerowe 6y ago
The vast majority of SF's population don't make anything close to tech salaries either. Working at a FAANG or adjacent company in the Bay Area is roughly equivalent to working in finance in London. But even outside of the big tech companies, wages for software engineers are relatively higher in the US than the UK (90th percentile vs 75th) and the higher paid are paid more (2.6x the median at 90th percentile vs 2.0x the median.) If you compare median salaries / rents on pre Brexit and 2008 financial crash exchange rates SF and the Bay Area come out pretty similar.

ghaff 6y ago

One of the things that distorts these discussions is that it's not just SF proper that's expensive for the most part. It's also the South Bay, Marin, and even parts of the East Bay. It's hard to have a decent daily commute from anywhere that's relatively inexpensive. That's not the case with most cities where a 20-40 mile drive (or even a commuter rail) to where the jobs are (which may or may not be in the city proper) can get you into fairly reasonably-priced housing.

hackissimo123 6y ago
London also has excellent public transport. (Some Londoners might disagree, but have they ever travelled? I've never been to any other large city where it was easier to get around by train and bus.) It's very easy to live in London without needing a car, which brings the cost of living down substantially.
- ljm 6y ago
  London is very well connected in a bunch of ways (bus, tube, ferry, overground, DLR, tram, train, boris bike...) and in the centre is a lot more walkable than you might think, to the point of not really needing any of it in certain areas. The reason we call it shit is because (before COVID) they're pretty much all pushed beyond capacity during the commuting hours, or practically all the time between the main tourist spots. Commuting in London is a truly hellish experience. And that includes the commuter trains that are frequently delayed or cancelled while ticket prices increase above inflation every year. The best thing that happened from covid is skipping the commute and saving the £300 a month it took to get to the office and back.

KDJohnBrown 6y ago

Perhaps it is local familiary. Living in Oakland and working in San Francisco I made $175k and was able to save $4,500 per month after all of my living and familial expenses. When I’ve spoken to companies in London they seemed to max out around $100k. Whenever I looked at apartments online trying to find an equivalent lifestyle (30 minutes door to door commute, nearby parks and restauranta, 1 br 85 m^2 with good amenities) the rent always came out about the same as what I was paying ($1,840/month). The difference being home in Oakland My hood was mostly single family homes with yards (and a few yuppy apartment complexes like mine). In London everything within that commute range seemed to be a concrete jungle, and I couldnt figure out how to find an equivalent neighborhood withot really going far away from the tech companies. Whenever I visit london my dollar never seemed to stretch far and food / groceries / transit felt reallly spendy. London pubtrans is clearly better than anywhere in the USA, that goes without sayyng, but was also more expensive (if I went to the office I think I paid $4 each way for the transbay bus, with a 5-10 minute walk on each end of my commute). It’s a great city (except for the traffic. I would be terrified to ride a bicycle there), and one of my favorite things to do in life is smoke a spliff and walk down the camden locks trail.

vidarh 6y ago
I was recently called by a Facebook internal recruiter that claimed (I wasn't interested, so can't verify - he might have been telling bullshit) that the relatively low level developer job he was hiring for in London had a budget of around USD $165k/year. But the London developer market has very broad salary range. It's not that many years ago I worked at companies where we hired senior developers around the GBP 40k/USD 55k mark. The 30 minutes door to door commute is the problem if comparing, as London is huge. A 1 hour commute is closer to the norm. But a 1 hour commute on a train is very different to the same 1 hour if you're driving and can't spend a good chunk of it with your face in a book or watching Netflix or whatever. In terms of housing, my current mortgage for a 3 bedroom terraced house with a garden in London is about USD $2k/month, but that does mean living further out from the centre than what you want. For anyone moving to London, my tip is Croydon. It has an awful reputation which is mostly unearned (it's a very large borough, and very diverse, and it's reputation is pretty much down to scale and some small pockets of the most deprived parts of the borough), and so it's unreasonably cheap for how good transport links it has in to the centre. There are places in London I might prefer if money was no object, but money really would need to be no object, as up until maybe the 3-4 million pound range you'll get more for your money here than ost other places in town.

laurencerowe 6y ago

The vast majority of SF's population don't make anything close to tech salaries either. Working at a FAANG or adjacent company in the Bay Area is roughly equivalent to working in finance in London. But even outside of the big tech companies, wages for software engineers are relatively higher in the US than the UK (90th percentile vs 75th) and the higher paid are paid more (2.6x the median at 90th percentile vs 2.0x the median.) If you compare median salaries / rents on pre Brexit and 2008 financial crash exchange rates SF and the Bay Area come out pretty similar.