10 ms·

London’s Tech Boom Is More Than Just Hype, the Hard Numbers Say So

64 points by vvvv 12y ago

newy 12y ago
Neat, I happen to be in London (Shoreditch) reading this. Just in town for the day (Sunday). Any HN peeps up for meeting up? @euwyn on Twitter or email in profile.
_random_ 12y ago
London is the place to be in Europe. I only wish there were proper large tech companies head-quartered here and capable of competing with financial sector in salaries.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - k-mcgrady 12y ago
    Sorry but I disagree with nearly all of that. >> "many CS graduates I meet really want to work in tech rather than finance" I would hope so considering what they studied CS. And I'm are many finance grads want to work in finance rather than tech. >> "They want you to work 60+ hours give or take" This also applies to a lot of startups. Even in places that don't enforce extra long hours you often feel pressured to arrive early and stay late. >> "There is dress code - really ? 2014 and we still enforce people to wear suits ? we grew up idolizing steve jobs so no thanks." Didn't Steve Jobs have his own uniform (turtle neck, jeans, trainers)? Even places that don't require a suit usually have some sort of dress code (jeans, shirt). In a small startup you will have to meet investors or potential customers and in these situations it's required to look at least respectable. It sucks but appearances matter. >> "Tech is way more fun and the chances of making it big is what drives many young people." Personally I think tech is more fun but I know lots of people who have fun working in the financial sector. >> "A tech career to many people is a lot like an struggling actor's career however the difference is there is less luck and more hardworking." I disagree completely. There is LOTS of luck in the startup game. Sure you have to work hard but there are tonnes of people who work their asses off and don't succeed even though they have a good product. If you read about the work ethic of the worlds biggest actors I think you'd be surprised. Most of them got there by working their asses off too. And they also got lucky.
    - lmm 12y ago
      > This also applies to a lot of startups. Even in places that don't enforce extra long hours you often feel pressured to arrive early and stay late. Not my experience, working in several London tech companies. > Didn't Steve Jobs have his own uniform (turtle neck, jeans, trainers)? Even places that don't require a suit usually have some sort of dress code (jeans, shirt). In a small startup you will have to meet investors or potential customers and in these situations it's required to look at least respectable. It sucks but appearances matter. Only one of those tech companies I worked for enforced a dress code. It was the one that went bankrupt. I don't think this is coincidence.
      - k-mcgrady 12y ago
        >> "Only one of those tech companies I worked for enforced a dress code. It was the one that went bankrupt. I don't think this is coincidence." You can't be serious.
- Nursie 12y ago
  There are offices of a few large tech companies around but it makes sense for them only to have a sales presence in London because it's so incredibly expensive. And for workers the UK is not great. Salaries are very low (when compared to other english-speaking nations) and so are expectations in many companies.
  - justincormack 12y ago
    Google has a non sales presence in the UK, has done for a long time (indeed they claim not to have sales people in UK for tax reasons!). Amazon has just announced it is moving from Slough to Shoreditch. I am fairly sure Facebook has engineers here. The older tech companies were based in the traditional M4 corridor (Microsoft, Oracle, etc) but many companies there are moving to London, as it is easier to hire people. Salaries are lower than the US, maybe, or parts of it, but lower than other English speaking countries?
    - Nursie 12y ago
      I based that on my experience of the USA and Australia. I got a 60% raise to do the same job for the same company when I moved from London to Perth a few years ago. Tech salaries outside of finance in the UK in general are pretty depressed IMHO. As far as I can tell this is for a complex of reasons - engineers not expecting very much cash, the good ones all either go abroad or into finance, companies are used to mediocre engineers therefore are not willing to pay well etc etc. Me, I'm a high priced contractor because it's the only way I've found to replicate a US/AU salary. And I'm worth it. On my last project I committed twice as much code as the three permanent engineers combined.
- rogy 12y ago
  Agree with this, I work in tech in London for a company that has a NY and SF office, they pay CS grads (first or 2nd year out of school) between 90 and 110 thousand dollars. Exactly the same position in London gets me just under 30 thousand pounds (48k usd) the only way for me to earn anywhere near even the 90 range would be to move in to finance
  - justincormack 12y ago
    Well they are taking the piss. Leave and go somewhere that pays market rate.
    - Nursie 12y ago
      That is market rate in the UK. Tech people are not well valued here.
      - bshimmin 12y ago
        Perhaps computer science graduates in the UK don't make the same kind of money that they do in the Bay Area, but do you really think those salaries are actually justified in any real sense? Should a junior developer fresh out of his computer science degree really be earning more than, say, a trainee doctor?
        Nursie 12y ago
        The bay area is a weird phenomenon, and I wouldn't want it replicated everywhere. However. I don't believe that software folks in the UK are remunerated in line with their skills and value, nor the money they bring in Just what they have been lead to believe they are worth by business and by their own risk-averse, non entrepreneurial nature. This is pretty much the definition of market value I guess!
        bshimmin 12y ago
        I think people who work in technology in the UK - in London at least - are remunerated similarly as well as, if not better than, the other more traditional professions, by which I mean lawyers, doctors, and teachers (the latter were always traditionally paid worse, but are paid a bit better now). Outside of London, it's probably a different story, where I think tech workers probably do worse on the whole. If you work in tech and you feel hardly done by, and you're of the entrepreneurial sort, you can quite easily become a contractor and make an awful lot of money. I don't think that's so easily done in other professions. There will always be outliers who make staggering amounts of money - a partner at a magic circle law firm, or a very high level accountant at one of the big four, might command seven figures rather than six; but we have those in tech too: CTOs.
ryanjshaw 12y ago
Hopefully the elections next year will bring back the more sensible highly skilled migrant immigration policies from the past that will allow highly skilled foreigners to participate in and contribute to this boom. Current policy introduced by the coalition government, as I understand it [1], is that a highly skilled migrant in the UK from outside the EU would simply not be allowed to build a revenue generating side project, either by themselves or in a partnership. The best they can legally do is find somebody to take their IP and hire them into a new business - an unlikely prospect, and a risky one - and even then they'd be limited to 20 hours of work per week unless the new business goes through a complicated legal process to become a visa sponsor. And after 5/6 years the foreigner may be declined leave to remain and forced to return to their home country, regardless of what they may have built up in the mean time. [1] This is what my research shows. I'd love to learn that I'm wrong, being somebody who has to make a decision about whether to take this 5/6 year gamble while starting a family.
- jlangenauer 12y ago
  There is the Tier 1 (Entrepreneur) visa, though it's not at all straight-forward - you need £200k investment, or £50k under conditions that I'm not sure it's possible to actually meet. https://www.gov.uk/tier-1-entrepreneur/overview https://www.gov.uk/tier-1-entrepreneur/overview
  - ryanjshaw 12y ago
    Right, just a 200k investment :) This belies a very specific view of how enterpreneurship works. Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple... none of these companies would have met a similar requirement in their times. Furthermore, by the time most people have 200k to investment a business they're likely to have settled in a geographically locked private life.
    - berdario 12y ago
      It's not like in the US it would've been much easier for a foreigner: for an E2 Visa you're expected to have 100k-150k$
tim333 12y ago
London's coming along although we're a bit lacking in big hits compared to the US with Google, MSFT, Facebook et al worth ~$406bn, 391bn and $202bn respectively. The London areas biggest hit (if you include Cambridge as it's an hour away) is ARM worth about $22bn. Things are definitely on the up here but with some catching up to do.
- gnerd 12y ago
  I have to agree. I have seen the Shoreditch triangle come a long way and having taken my skill set around Europe, there really is no place like home but we aren't exactly silicone valley. I look forward to some home grown giants over the next few decades.
  - walshemj 12y ago
    silicone valley in London would be Soho nudge nudge
jarmitage 12y ago
I've been working in tech in London for just over a year, and even in that short time I feel the spirit has evolved. People are thinking bigger and smarter. There is also a rudely healthy crypto currency scene in London, which I suspect will explode once they find a way through the banking/regulation maze.
- bernardlunn 12y ago
  As a Brit who lived in America and Asia for a long time, the change in the entrepreneurial culture in London/UK is amazing and it really has all happened in the last year or so according to the people I speak to.
tomelders 12y ago
It's easy to forget how small the UK is, which leads to London centric commentary when people talk about the UK tech scene. In reality, a startup could be based comfortably outside of London where the cost of living and the cost of operating are a lot cheaper, creating not only a better deal for founders and employees, but investors money would be going where it's needed and not on rent or rates. I've recently had the opportunity to see what rents people are charging for office space at the moment and it's obscene. The London investors will still be there. The talent in London is usually from somewhere else in the UK or Europe anyway. It's a cool city, but it's not as cool as having a successful startup of your very own.
- jiggy2011 12y ago
  Total UK population is nearly double California's population so it isn't that small. the problem is that London has a prestige to it, so business in London is seen as more serious than business elsewhere (and salaries higher) so it draws the talent.
  - yulaow 12y ago
    Also London is one of the cities in the EU zone with the highest cost of life (maybe it is really the highest of the entire EU). If you work there as a junior and you must live inside the city it is very problematic to find a even just decent flat and have still enough money to survive decently in the short term.
    - Spearchucker 12y ago
      When working in London, I found the living in London v. living outside London cost negligible. What you save on rent you spend on travel. The other issue I had was choosing to work in or outside London. My experience is that being in London is preferable, because of the increased number of opportunities that a denser network and more events tend to bring about.
      - Nursie 12y ago
duncanawoods 12y ago
I have been very impressed with the London HN meetup: http://www.meetup.com/HNLondon/ http://www.meetup.com/HNLondon/ ~250 attendees, pizza, beer, comedians and great talks from people like Stripe, Facebook & CityMapper. Well worth travelling to from outside London.

64 points by vvvv 12y ago

newy 12y ago

Neat, I happen to be in London (Shoreditch) reading this. Just in town for the day (Sunday). Any HN peeps up for meeting up? @euwyn on Twitter or email in profile.

_random_ 12y ago

London is the place to be in Europe. I only wish there were proper large tech companies head-quartered here and capable of competing with financial sector in salaries.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- k-mcgrady 12y ago
  Sorry but I disagree with nearly all of that. >> "many CS graduates I meet really want to work in tech rather than finance" I would hope so considering what they studied CS. And I'm are many finance grads want to work in finance rather than tech. >> "They want you to work 60+ hours give or take" This also applies to a lot of startups. Even in places that don't enforce extra long hours you often feel pressured to arrive early and stay late. >> "There is dress code - really ? 2014 and we still enforce people to wear suits ? we grew up idolizing steve jobs so no thanks." Didn't Steve Jobs have his own uniform (turtle neck, jeans, trainers)? Even places that don't require a suit usually have some sort of dress code (jeans, shirt). In a small startup you will have to meet investors or potential customers and in these situations it's required to look at least respectable. It sucks but appearances matter. >> "Tech is way more fun and the chances of making it big is what drives many young people." Personally I think tech is more fun but I know lots of people who have fun working in the financial sector. >> "A tech career to many people is a lot like an struggling actor's career however the difference is there is less luck and more hardworking." I disagree completely. There is LOTS of luck in the startup game. Sure you have to work hard but there are tonnes of people who work their asses off and don't succeed even though they have a good product. If you read about the work ethic of the worlds biggest actors I think you'd be surprised. Most of them got there by working their asses off too. And they also got lucky.
  - lmm 12y ago
    > This also applies to a lot of startups. Even in places that don't enforce extra long hours you often feel pressured to arrive early and stay late. Not my experience, working in several London tech companies. > Didn't Steve Jobs have his own uniform (turtle neck, jeans, trainers)? Even places that don't require a suit usually have some sort of dress code (jeans, shirt). In a small startup you will have to meet investors or potential customers and in these situations it's required to look at least respectable. It sucks but appearances matter. Only one of those tech companies I worked for enforced a dress code. It was the one that went bankrupt. I don't think this is coincidence.
    - k-mcgrady 12y ago
      >> "Only one of those tech companies I worked for enforced a dress code. It was the one that went bankrupt. I don't think this is coincidence." You can't be serious.
Nursie 12y ago
There are offices of a few large tech companies around but it makes sense for them only to have a sales presence in London because it's so incredibly expensive. And for workers the UK is not great. Salaries are very low (when compared to other english-speaking nations) and so are expectations in many companies.
- justincormack 12y ago
  Google has a non sales presence in the UK, has done for a long time (indeed they claim not to have sales people in UK for tax reasons!). Amazon has just announced it is moving from Slough to Shoreditch. I am fairly sure Facebook has engineers here. The older tech companies were based in the traditional M4 corridor (Microsoft, Oracle, etc) but many companies there are moving to London, as it is easier to hire people. Salaries are lower than the US, maybe, or parts of it, but lower than other English speaking countries?
  - Nursie 12y ago
    I based that on my experience of the USA and Australia. I got a 60% raise to do the same job for the same company when I moved from London to Perth a few years ago. Tech salaries outside of finance in the UK in general are pretty depressed IMHO. As far as I can tell this is for a complex of reasons - engineers not expecting very much cash, the good ones all either go abroad or into finance, companies are used to mediocre engineers therefore are not willing to pay well etc etc. Me, I'm a high priced contractor because it's the only way I've found to replicate a US/AU salary. And I'm worth it. On my last project I committed twice as much code as the three permanent engineers combined.
rogy 12y ago
Agree with this, I work in tech in London for a company that has a NY and SF office, they pay CS grads (first or 2nd year out of school) between 90 and 110 thousand dollars. Exactly the same position in London gets me just under 30 thousand pounds (48k usd) the only way for me to earn anywhere near even the 90 range would be to move in to finance
- justincormack 12y ago
  Well they are taking the piss. Leave and go somewhere that pays market rate.
  - Nursie 12y ago
    That is market rate in the UK. Tech people are not well valued here.
    - bshimmin 12y ago
      Perhaps computer science graduates in the UK don't make the same kind of money that they do in the Bay Area, but do you really think those salaries are actually justified in any real sense? Should a junior developer fresh out of his computer science degree really be earning more than, say, a trainee doctor?
      - Nursie 12y ago
        The bay area is a weird phenomenon, and I wouldn't want it replicated everywhere. However. I don't believe that software folks in the UK are remunerated in line with their skills and value, nor the money they bring in Just what they have been lead to believe they are worth by business and by their own risk-averse, non entrepreneurial nature. This is pretty much the definition of market value I guess!
        bshimmin 12y ago
        I think people who work in technology in the UK - in London at least - are remunerated similarly as well as, if not better than, the other more traditional professions, by which I mean lawyers, doctors, and teachers (the latter were always traditionally paid worse, but are paid a bit better now). Outside of London, it's probably a different story, where I think tech workers probably do worse on the whole. If you work in tech and you feel hardly done by, and you're of the entrepreneurial sort, you can quite easily become a contractor and make an awful lot of money. I don't think that's so easily done in other professions. There will always be outliers who make staggering amounts of money - a partner at a magic circle law firm, or a very high level accountant at one of the big four, might command seven figures rather than six; but we have those in tech too: CTOs.

ryanjshaw 12y ago

Hopefully the elections next year will bring back the more sensible highly skilled migrant immigration policies from the past that will allow highly skilled foreigners to participate in and contribute to this boom. Current policy introduced by the coalition government, as I understand it [1], is that a highly skilled migrant in the UK from outside the EU would simply not be allowed to build a revenue generating side project, either by themselves or in a partnership. The best they can legally do is find somebody to take their IP and hire them into a new business - an unlikely prospect, and a risky one - and even then they'd be limited to 20 hours of work per week unless the new business goes through a complicated legal process to become a visa sponsor. And after 5/6 years the foreigner may be declined leave to remain and forced to return to their home country, regardless of what they may have built up in the mean time. [1] This is what my research shows. I'd love to learn that I'm wrong, being somebody who has to make a decision about whether to take this 5/6 year gamble while starting a family.

jlangenauer 12y ago
There is the Tier 1 (Entrepreneur) visa, though it's not at all straight-forward - you need £200k investment, or £50k under conditions that I'm not sure it's possible to actually meet. https://www.gov.uk/tier-1-entrepreneur/overview https://www.gov.uk/tier-1-entrepreneur/overview
- ryanjshaw 12y ago
  Right, just a 200k investment :) This belies a very specific view of how enterpreneurship works. Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple... none of these companies would have met a similar requirement in their times. Furthermore, by the time most people have 200k to investment a business they're likely to have settled in a geographically locked private life.
  - berdario 12y ago
    It's not like in the US it would've been much easier for a foreigner: for an E2 Visa you're expected to have 100k-150k$

tim333 12y ago

London's coming along although we're a bit lacking in big hits compared to the US with Google, MSFT, Facebook et al worth ~$406bn, 391bn and $202bn respectively. The London areas biggest hit (if you include Cambridge as it's an hour away) is ARM worth about $22bn. Things are definitely on the up here but with some catching up to do.

gnerd 12y ago
I have to agree. I have seen the Shoreditch triangle come a long way and having taken my skill set around Europe, there really is no place like home but we aren't exactly silicone valley. I look forward to some home grown giants over the next few decades.
- walshemj 12y ago
  silicone valley in London would be Soho nudge nudge

jarmitage 12y ago

I've been working in tech in London for just over a year, and even in that short time I feel the spirit has evolved. People are thinking bigger and smarter. There is also a rudely healthy crypto currency scene in London, which I suspect will explode once they find a way through the banking/regulation maze.

bernardlunn 12y ago
As a Brit who lived in America and Asia for a long time, the change in the entrepreneurial culture in London/UK is amazing and it really has all happened in the last year or so according to the people I speak to.

tomelders 12y ago

It's easy to forget how small the UK is, which leads to London centric commentary when people talk about the UK tech scene. In reality, a startup could be based comfortably outside of London where the cost of living and the cost of operating are a lot cheaper, creating not only a better deal for founders and employees, but investors money would be going where it's needed and not on rent or rates. I've recently had the opportunity to see what rents people are charging for office space at the moment and it's obscene. The London investors will still be there. The talent in London is usually from somewhere else in the UK or Europe anyway. It's a cool city, but it's not as cool as having a successful startup of your very own.

jiggy2011 12y ago
Total UK population is nearly double California's population so it isn't that small. the problem is that London has a prestige to it, so business in London is seen as more serious than business elsewhere (and salaries higher) so it draws the talent.
- yulaow 12y ago
  Also London is one of the cities in the EU zone with the highest cost of life (maybe it is really the highest of the entire EU). If you work there as a junior and you must live inside the city it is very problematic to find a even just decent flat and have still enough money to survive decently in the short term.
  - Spearchucker 12y ago
    When working in London, I found the living in London v. living outside London cost negligible. What you save on rent you spend on travel. The other issue I had was choosing to work in or outside London. My experience is that being in London is preferable, because of the increased number of opportunities that a denser network and more events tend to bring about.
    - Nursie 12y ago

duncanawoods 12y ago

I have been very impressed with the London HN meetup: http://www.meetup.com/HNLondon/ http://www.meetup.com/HNLondon/ ~250 attendees, pizza, beer, comedians and great talks from people like Stripe, Facebook & CityMapper. Well worth travelling to from outside London.