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Comment by liviavs | Hacker News Reader

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Is that pre or post taxes? How do people survive in London with such low salaries? It always baffles me, as I live in NYC (which is equally expensive).

Not parent but we always talk pre-tax in the UK. Take home on £60k is ~£3,548/month or ~£3,255 if you have a student loan.

"Survive" is the right word. It's likely insufficient to save enough money for a deposit anywhere commutable to their job while also contributing significantly to savings and a pension.

A single person in a studio/1 bed with a not-too-bad commute would probably spend £1300-1600 on accommodation/travel/council tax/utilities. (Sure, you can find god-awful "studios"/houseshares for less...).

We basically just accept less and less. 1 bed -> studio -> house share. Give up idea of buying a house. Contribute less to pension. etc

People who want to earn more in London tend to do contracting.

Pretty much same experience. Used to live in a awful houseshare (read: sewage problems like once a week), then decided to spend the money on a single. Salary covers rent + electricity and council bills, but saving for a deposit on an apt anywhere within ~1h commute to central is pretty damn impossible.

Bedford's a 1 hour commute and on 60-80k you could do better than some studio flat

Not OP, but I think that is pre-tax. Most salaries I've seen are quoted in gross terms. As far as living in London, a lot of people have roommates/live in flatshares to save on rent or live in the commuter towns around the M25 belt (big highway surrounding London). Startups in London offer significantly less salary than SF/NYC. You can earn by being a perm employee in finance or contracting.

It's worth noting that GBP lost ~20% of its value last year (although it retained some value recently)

And that companies advertising for 80k will possibly stretch to 100k for the right candidate.

100k =~ 5k/month And a reasonable 1 bed is 1500-1800 somewhere decent to live.

So, it's not exactly like you can't survive.

Agreed, it is a reasonable amount, but how many London companies outside of finance/trading have you seen advertise 80k-100k? The most common numbers I see is 45-65k.

I've not seen anyone advertise at 100k.

But I had a profile on Hired.com open for ~ a week, and all the companies who I normally see advertising 60-80 offered me 100.

That's about 10 datapoints saying that for the right CV they'll go there.

Something to aspire to then! :)

I basically never see this advertised, however roles which are £100-120k roll into my inbox a few times a month. Not all of them are in finance.

To be honest, I get the feeling finance goes much higher than that for the right person.

A £1500 flat in London is $3000+ in NYC/SF. That's the difference.

When I lived in London roughly 40% of my salary went to rent. London was actually more expensive, at least for a 1BR with roughly the same distance to the city center, as NYC.

I'm a software engineer in London (3 years experience), I earn £45k + bonus (5-10%). That puts me around 85-90% percentile for earnings in the UK. Is that low?

I live in a 3 bedroom penthouse with my friends, 15 minute cycle to work. Under 40% of my net income on rent, about that with bills. Used to be significantly cheaper but we moved (very) upmarket. I guess a 1 bed would be a bit more expensive, but 1 beds tend to be mostly for couples. I save maybe 25-30% of my net income and spend the rest on social stuff and holidays.

I don't feel like I'm just surviving, I feel embarrassingly wealthy compared to my (non software) peers. Surviving on the average London salary would be a different matter.

That works as long as you share rent with 2 other people and have no kids, try supporting a family on that and things change.

Most of the difference is down to currency variation and working conditions (e.g. most UK companies give 25-30 days holiday).

If you benchmark it within country by comparing the ratio median dev salary/median salary there's not a huge difference between the US and UK (the US is a bit higher by about 10% IIRC) - although SF is higher.

I applied to them a few weeks ago with years of PHP & Symfony experience. Their comments back to me said that previous FinTech experience was also a requirement.

What is the Venn diagram of people who have experience in those frameworks, in finTech, and in London?

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