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Comment by Von_Jones | Hacker News Reader

1. Cost of living soars in Britain. 2. Britain's young people want to leave: Europe offers a better deal. Cheaper property, better employment conditions, better looking men and women, good food. 3. Britain's codger population votes to pull up the drawbridge - not to keep the foreigners out, but to keep its youth enslaved.

You poor bastards, good luck to you.

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Here's another anecdotal story. I just got my visa for Australia so I'm going there in June. I also know 3 other friends who are leaving. We're all leaving because we don't want to be in a country that's so preoccupied with something we don't believe in, so we're voting with our feet. Over the next few years every other issue is going to be sidelined to deal with this.

Yep. I'm an EU citizen living in UK, and a year ago I would have never considered living somewhere else, like that thought was literally inconceivable. Right now, I'm not so sure. Especially if I'm going to end up needing a visa - why would I go through that trouble? A programmer can easily find work in any EU country still, so why live in a country that I don't agree with? Why would I choose to pay my taxes here, if the government of this country is actively trying to make my life more difficult? I wouldn't, so depending on the sort of the exit deal UK negotiates, I might just get up and leave. Like you said, the only way we can vote right now is with our feet, and by taking our tax money elsewhere.

Is any EU country paying remotely close to the UK for programmers?

I'm not in the EU, but one of my brothers in law ended up moving to the U.S. from Austria in part because the pay difference was humongous (and of course the scene is completely different).

The only other country he considered was the U.K.

Even UK doesn't pay super well unless you work for a financial company and are close to London. I'm in the North East, so while I enjoy cheap cost of living, I don't make that much - my salary could easily be matched by pretty much any industry in Germany or France.

The UK definitely pays the best rates in the EU. I moved here in part for that reason, though now that the GBP is slowly losing its value it makes less and less sense to stay here.

Do you mean the UK or London?

Well London has the highest rates, but if you compare cities of similar sizes from one country to another (Say London to Paris, Sheffield to Lyon, etc.) the rates in British cities are almost always higher.

I've been doing a lot of comparisons lately because I'm considering leaving the UK (due to Brexit) and I'm seeing the UK consistently paying far less unless it's the financial services/banking sector.

Austria/Germany/Benelux vs US is a big difference.

Austria/Germany/Benelux vs UK isn't - outside London, the pay is now about the same order of magnitude. While London salaries are higher for now, London living costs are much higher, so disposable income suffers.

I'd like to invite all the young poor bastards to have a look at Canada. We have a great immigration policy for young people looking for a new home!

I couldn't get a job in Canada, because your immigration policy required a bachelor's degree. That was even if I had a job offered to me before seeking a visa.

I think Canadian immigration policy is a bit over hyped for being 'great'. Trudeau took a lot of great PR with getting some Syrian refugees, but getting into Canada is still hard. Just easier in comparison to your neighbour to the south.

Really? A friend of mind lived a few years in Canada, and to my knowledge he doesn't have a bachelor's degree. (In fact, we both dropped out at about the same time.) He did have a job before going there, which was apparently helpful, but as far as I understand it the whole process was pretty smooth.

Nothing beats the EU though. Live in one country working a job on Friday, move to another over the weekend and start a new job on Monday – I've done literally this multiple times now. This alone is reason to stay in, as far as I'm concerned. The UK leaving is incredibly sad. :o(

To be fair, the company said they've tried hiring people without bachelor's degrees in the past, and it hadn't worked out. So I actually never got as far as to apply for a visa.

But I check out the point systems the Canadian visa system has, and it turns out that I could get without a bachelor's degree, but only if I aced the language test. Apparently, without the degree, you have to get the highest points available from the language test.

See this for more details: http://www.canadavisa.com/canadian-skilled-worker-immigratio...

(Also, I think they changed the immigration policy a few years ago, so your friend may have been able to get in before they changed it.)

From what I read here in the last month or two, I'd rather not have the Canadian and American borders be the ones that I'd often have to use. Many horror stories, even from native citizens.

The most plausible summary I've heard is that it won't be a rapid collapse, but a story of opportunities not taken or no longer available. We'll slowly forget that the UK used to be better off than Ireland and that young people used to emigrate from Dublin to London not the other way round.

(However, I'm still worried about what's going to happen to our 3m EU residents; there are a lot of ways in which the government could mess this up badly in a blood on the streets way. Will they? We don't know. But saying "that would be stupid, they won't do that" is no longer valid.)

> However, I'm still worried about what's going to happen to our 3m EU residents; there are a lot of ways in which the government could mess this up badly in a blood on the streets way. Will they? We don't know. But saying "that would be stupid, they won't do that" is no longer valid

Especially in the context of the NHS and social care, both of which have many employees from the EU.

My engineer friend in his late 20's already left for Canada earlier this month. His prime motivator was Brexit. Good luck, Britain, you'll need it.

I wouldn't be so quick to assume people will want to leave, the US election provoked a similar line of thinking ("if Trump wins I'm moving to Canada because X") and yet it doesn't seem to be happening.

I would very much like to leave. :/

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