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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 s

by 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
    But it's crowded, dusty and it stinks, so there's that going for working elsewhere...
    - walshemj 12y ago
      Really London has a buzz all of its own I get a buzz just getting of the train at black friars and looking down river and seeing tower bridge and the globe theatre. I had a drink at lunch Friday on the site of shakespeare's house a stones thrown from St pauls. Ok old street is a bit of a dump but don't let that put you off
      - Nursie 12y ago
        I lived in London for ten years. There is a buzz, there is always something going on. Then I moved away. Then I came back to work in the west end and the city. It was when I came back I noticed how tired, sick and depressed everyone looked. How long it takes to get anywhere. How crowded the streets are. And seriously, the dust and the smells are horrible. If you're still in a phase of life where you enjoy it then best of luck to you. I really loved the place for a long time. Now... give me practically anywhere else. I like clean air and space.
  - walshemj 12y ago
    When I worked in central London a two bed flat (ex council property) near the office was £750k Compared to ones a 60 min commute away at 120k annual season is £4k for that trip. I remember my boss a director of a FSTE 100 company commenting that he could not afford to live in central London
duncanawoods 12y ago
Small as in physical size. Even with a sparsely populated Scotland, the UK has around half the landmass of California so its possible to commute to/from London from a great number of locations. You can't commute from Harvard to Mountain View everyday but you can commute to London from Oxford, Cambridge or Bristol. For occasional meetings, travelling to/from Glasgow/Edinburgh is doable. We should take advantage of this and support and encourage startups to bootstrap in less expensive post-codes rather than competing for office space with investment banks.
- bshimmin 12y ago
  Commuting from Bristol to London on a daily basis is borderline ridiculous - by train it's probably a three hour trip each way (factoring in time to get to where you need to be in London and getting back from Bristol to wherever you live), and by car it's well over 2 hours with no traffic. Manchester is arguably slightly faster by train (but much slower by car) - and a 12 month season ticket would cost you an eye-watering £14,336. Birmingham is probably the biggest city in the UK where I would consider commuting into London as being something a sane person would just maybe think about doing on a daily basis, and that's still over 90 minutes on the train and a touch over £10K annually.
  - duncanawoods 12y ago
    >> Commuting from Bristol to London on a daily basis is borderline ridiculous >> by train it's probably a three hour trip each way Its 1 hour 30 mins from Bristol Parkway to Paddington. If you have to cross London, then yeah, it will suck. edit: I'm not recommending commuting to London, kind of the opposite. I'm using it to illustrate the geographical distances. A Silicon Valley type hub is needed in the US because of the continental distances between major cities. In the UK, we should be exploiting better connected cities to make a UK hub rather than continuing to ram everything into London.
    - bshimmin 12y ago
      Well, if you live nearer Parkway than Temple Meads, then it would certainly make more sense to go from there, certainly. As for crossing London... let's say you work in Old Street - that's a good half an hour from Paddington. I think you'd be lucky to have a door-to-door trip take less than three hours. I commute into Oxford Circus from Castle Cary (in Somerset, roughly the same journey time as from Bristol Temple Meads) one day a week: I set off from my house at 6.50am, driving to the station allowing myself ample time to collect my ticket and so as not to miss my train in case of getting stuck behind tractors, and I get into the office at 9.50am. On a good day. I don't mind the six hours of travel one day a week (and I am occasionally quite productive on the train, though often on the journey home I tend to get mildly drunk reading The Economist) - but doing all five days would drive me insane.
walshemj 12y ago
And its where all the transport links go so you have a much bigger pool to pull employees from than if you set up in some out of the way place like say maidenhead as 3 did.

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
  But it's crowded, dusty and it stinks, so there's that going for working elsewhere...
  - walshemj 12y ago
    Really London has a buzz all of its own I get a buzz just getting of the train at black friars and looking down river and seeing tower bridge and the globe theatre. I had a drink at lunch Friday on the site of shakespeare's house a stones thrown from St pauls. Ok old street is a bit of a dump but don't let that put you off
    - Nursie 12y ago
      I lived in London for ten years. There is a buzz, there is always something going on. Then I moved away. Then I came back to work in the west end and the city. It was when I came back I noticed how tired, sick and depressed everyone looked. How long it takes to get anywhere. How crowded the streets are. And seriously, the dust and the smells are horrible. If you're still in a phase of life where you enjoy it then best of luck to you. I really loved the place for a long time. Now... give me practically anywhere else. I like clean air and space.
- walshemj 12y ago
  When I worked in central London a two bed flat (ex council property) near the office was £750k Compared to ones a 60 min commute away at 120k annual season is £4k for that trip. I remember my boss a director of a FSTE 100 company commenting that he could not afford to live in central London

duncanawoods 12y ago

Small as in physical size. Even with a sparsely populated Scotland, the UK has around half the landmass of California so its possible to commute to/from London from a great number of locations. You can't commute from Harvard to Mountain View everyday but you can commute to London from Oxford, Cambridge or Bristol. For occasional meetings, travelling to/from Glasgow/Edinburgh is doable. We should take advantage of this and support and encourage startups to bootstrap in less expensive post-codes rather than competing for office space with investment banks.

bshimmin 12y ago
Commuting from Bristol to London on a daily basis is borderline ridiculous - by train it's probably a three hour trip each way (factoring in time to get to where you need to be in London and getting back from Bristol to wherever you live), and by car it's well over 2 hours with no traffic. Manchester is arguably slightly faster by train (but much slower by car) - and a 12 month season ticket would cost you an eye-watering £14,336. Birmingham is probably the biggest city in the UK where I would consider commuting into London as being something a sane person would just maybe think about doing on a daily basis, and that's still over 90 minutes on the train and a touch over £10K annually.
- duncanawoods 12y ago
  >> Commuting from Bristol to London on a daily basis is borderline ridiculous >> by train it's probably a three hour trip each way Its 1 hour 30 mins from Bristol Parkway to Paddington. If you have to cross London, then yeah, it will suck. edit: I'm not recommending commuting to London, kind of the opposite. I'm using it to illustrate the geographical distances. A Silicon Valley type hub is needed in the US because of the continental distances between major cities. In the UK, we should be exploiting better connected cities to make a UK hub rather than continuing to ram everything into London.
  - bshimmin 12y ago
    Well, if you live nearer Parkway than Temple Meads, then it would certainly make more sense to go from there, certainly. As for crossing London... let's say you work in Old Street - that's a good half an hour from Paddington. I think you'd be lucky to have a door-to-door trip take less than three hours. I commute into Oxford Circus from Castle Cary (in Somerset, roughly the same journey time as from Bristol Temple Meads) one day a week: I set off from my house at 6.50am, driving to the station allowing myself ample time to collect my ticket and so as not to miss my train in case of getting stuck behind tractors, and I get into the office at 9.50am. On a good day. I don't mind the six hours of travel one day a week (and I am occasionally quite productive on the train, though often on the journey home I tend to get mildly drunk reading The Economist) - but doing all five days would drive me insane.

walshemj 12y ago

And its where all the transport links go so you have a much bigger pool to pull employees from than if you set up in some out of the way place like say maidenhead as 3 did.