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Comment by seanhandley | Hacker News Reader

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seanhandley

You're kidding me.

I'm in the UK, 10 years dev experience, BSc Computer Science.

Every single salary in that list is higher than mine.

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> You're kidding me.

> I'm in the UK

That's why. This list is very US-centric. The disparity between metro US and metro UK is indeed that high.

Based on talking to peers at my company who work in the UK, and corroborating stories from friends at similar companies, UK salaries are dramatically lower across the board.

A one bedroom is not $3000+ either.

A one bedroom in London is easily $2000 though, so that only explains $12k difference in salary.

Doesn't make sense to count in dollars. You are not paid in dollars in London.

It's fluff talk about the exchange rate. It sure was more than $2000 last year when it was £1 for $1.5.

London, Cambridge...rents aren't low.

They very easily are. And cost per square foot is higher in London, so you're in a smaller place.

You can replace "UK" by "the rest of the world" and it would still be accurate. For example, UK has probably the highest salaries in Europe.

Honestly, looking at the list and knowing how much people get paid at Google.(from personal experience) I found the salaries to be quite low in total compensation.

I know fresh grads in the NYC area who have been offered $130k/year in total compensation from Google and Facebook. I've also known several engineers at Google making in the range of $300k-$500k/year.

There's going to be self-reporting bias here, but these salaries look right to me for bootcamp grads getting offers from the big tech companies.

as a starter offer? They have a wide range in the spreadsheet, but still overall high.

When I lived in London in the late 2000s, dev salaries were shockingly low relative to what we saw in the states both before and after living in the UK.

And most of the rest of Europe is lower than London still.

anecdotal evidence from Facebook: if you transfer to London office instead of Bay Area, your salary gets slashed 20%

That would still be very high for London/uk

Wow, and it's not like London is cheap.

is that after conversion?

e.g.: 200k USD would equal (200 * 0.79 USD/GBP * 0.8) = 126k GBP?

I wonder if it is because salaries were set before the pound plummetted due to brexit.

For most companies, you at least get more vacation days in London, but i think facebook US already provides 21 business days, I would imagine facebook UK is the standard 5 weeks?

Similar... and by quite a margin too. This is very sobering.

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