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Comment by stewhuk | Hacker News Reader

Skyscanner is based in Edinburgh, with another large office in Glasgow. This is huge news for the Scottish tech scene, and will hopefully bring much needed cash to help it thrive. There's a lot of interesting stuff happening here in all types of tech.

Sadly Scotland's other unicorn, FanDuel, looks set to close its hq in Edinburgh after merging with draft kings. However, that will probably release a lot of talent to help smaller co's

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Skyscanner is a fantastic service. I'm really hoping CTrip don't bring their dark patterns, spam, and generally scammy behavior to it.

My experiences with Ctrip includes regular price revisions after booking (and after they ensure they have all of your personal information), added fees for "discount coupons" which can't be removed and are only included after they have your payment information, regular spam despite opting out, and various other deceptive behaviors.

Unlike most booking engines, they often advertise firm prices for hotels, flights etc, but don't actually have confirmed inventory and often take days to confirm (or cancel or revise) the booking despite having taking your payment information already. This is only revealed after taking payment info.

There are also reports of them illegally selling children's tickets as adult tickets and trying to sell tickets purchased via mileage. [1]

[1] http://www.shanghaidaily.com/metro/society/Flyers-left-in-lu...

Yes this really is phenomenal news for Scotland. Here's hoping they were generous with stock and we see a new wave of angel investors emerge.

According to https://angel.co/skyscanner-2 they last raised almost 200m at a 1.6b valuation. I wonder what kind of terms were attached to that. I'm guessing investors will have walked away with a pretty large chunk of the sale.

The founders have already taken some money off the table and made some angel investments. I'm sure that will accelerate now.

Through angel.co link, I realise that Sequoia Capital is major investor in them. I can't help but wonder how Sequoia Capital has a share in majority of exists/current "unicorn" companies.

Sequoia invested in Skyscanner after their earlier travel metasearch investment, Kayak, had been acquired by Priceline.

I gather they observed that Skyscanner was positioning themselves to become a leader in the areas where Kayak wasn't, particularly in China, and felt that their investment could help Skyscanner win in those markets.

Once again, it looks like Sequoia's judgement has been spot on.

> happening here

Does that mean you're living there? I'm curious what the prospects are like there.

There's been more discussion lately about us Americans looking for work abroad. My wife is finally on board with making a move out of the US as a family, so I'm glad it's being discussed more.

Prospects are good generally for technology talent. I'm in Tokyo now. Take a big chunk of vacation and visit several places that you have considered moving. Once you've visited and met other expats, you'll know what it's really like. The biggest barrier is your own decision.

I did that a few times; talking to expats really gives a skewed (and to my taste usually ugly) view of a place. I rather befriend locals first and then go to meet them which we do now. Then you also get a nice perspective on expats from them which indeed usually is consistent with my views of them. This is a generalisation and obviously there are plenty exceptions, but it is rather unpleasant to sit with yet another someone who says "ye,yeyyeyeye,ye,ye,ye,ye" to all you say and then starts talking about their own enormously important company and/or life in a way too loud tone. Which is basically what I see the average expat do everywhere (besides the not listening to others, I was like that too). Again matter of taste and exceptions, just saying I do not find talking to expats giving you much or any info about a what a place 'is really like'.

It's true that expatriation seems to preferentially select arrogant self-obsessed alpha assholes, who are horribly smug about their allegedly adventurous success in crossing a line on a map, and can't stop bragging about it.

It is often such a deliberate display, you can't help thinking they are secretly anxious, insecure and lonely. And frequently racist too.

There's some okay tech here - nothing like Seattle or San Francisco.

The biggest difference is the market. Expect to get paid 1/3 to 1/2 of the US.

---

EDIT that being said, contracting can pay well if you have the right skills and don't mind who you work for.

.. and pay considerably less for housing. Admittedly Brexit-related exchange rate changes make it look a lot less favourable now.

On the more corporate end of the market in Edinburgh there is a definite shortage of tech talent. Pay isn't at American levels but Edinburgh is the best city in the UK in terms of average disposable income - an average £800 per month compared to London's £300. Job security is also pretty rock solid. It's also a World Heritage site, has pretty good transport links to the rest of Europe and you can easily spend weekends in the country/Highlands.

It's not London but then a developer up here should have no problem owning a house, raising a family and having a decent quality of life. All while working a 35 hour week so you actually have time to enjoy living here.

Edinburgh is hands-down one of my favorite places on Earth. If it wasn't for the really shitty weather, I'd be living there.

I love living in Edinburgh, but I will admit that its startup scene is kind of tiny. There's a decent number of IT multinationals about though.

However, your biggest difficulty will be being an immigrant to the EU. These days it's a pretty damn arduous process.

The quality of life in Edinburgh is very high.[1] It's a really fantastic place to live.

I think the tech scene is quite strong and growing - as well as the multinationals and start-ups, there are a lot of well-established small/medium tech companies based here, too.

[1] https://www.uswitch.com/media-centre/2015/10/edinburgh-best-...

Edinburgh is one of my favourite cities in the world. Spent a year of University there, and visited it on vacation a couple months ago.

There's a pretty cool tech scene, much of it spinning off the University of Edinburgh (great school for AI). Also, a friend gave me a tour of the Amazon Edinburgh office while I was visiting- it's 11 years old (first non-US office), still growing and seems to be doing some neat stuff.

Real estate is different from America. People live in much smaller spaces and generally don't have yards if you live in a city. You'd have to accept that, or commute into the city. That said, Edinburgh is a beautiful city architecturally (the New Town especially). I also found the food to be pretty fantastic.

As much as I love Edinburgh, and hope the technology sector and economy there (and in Scotland as a whole) thrives, it has to be said that the technology job market is currently very small in comparison to London. Some stats to put this in perspective: There are 328,000 "digital tech jobs" in London[0], the entire population of Edinburgh is 464,990[1], and Edinburgh is the 11th biggest technology cluster in the UK with 21,000 "digital tech jobs"[0].

And if you're thinking of relocating your family from the US, there are 5 American schools in and around London[2], whereas I believe the only one in Scotland is in Aberdeen[3].

[0] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-37380696

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edinburgh

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_School_in_England

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_School_of_Aberde...

There is an estimated 5k more developer jobs per year in central Scotland than there are developers to fill them, so it is a pretty good time to be a developer here. Especially if you're senior level or above as you'd be in high demand.

Salary is not going to be as high as Silicon Valley, but living expenses are much lower[1]. A senior developer can expect to earn around £40k

I actually live in Glasgow and work in Edinburgh, and both cities are fantastic. Glasgow has more vibrant nightlife and music scene; while Edinburgh is so historic with beautiful architecture.

Also our politicians are not as bat shit crazy as the rest of the UK which is nice.

[1]: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...

A senior dev in Skyscanner would be earning more than £40k

Not to pile onto nationalist sentiment but anything of this size is quite big for the British tech scene too. Heck European too. We don't have many unicorns on this side.

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