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Comment by throwaway122kk | Hacker News Reader

From Ireland, been looking at shenanigans in UK for last 4 years while scratching my head at the madness which seems to have taken over.

Almost daily get contacts on linkedin for jobs both relocation and remote in UK (London and Belfast) and each time I politely point out to the recruiter that (beside the already lower salaries which have not kept up with fall in pounds value) it would not be a wise move to attach one to UK at this time due to all the uncertainty, also there has been a rush of companies setting up here opening up many opportunities while remaining in Europe.

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London's different. If the world economy falls apart I'd rather be in London than Dublin for job seeking purposes.

I would have agreed with you up to few years ago, but now Dublin has a vibrant jobs market in tech with salaries that are equal to higher than London with a less crazy (tho still crazy) cost of living.

Like I said the fall of pound has been spectacular in last 4-5 years.

* Engineer Dublin 2015 - €100K ~£70K

* Engineer Dublin 2020 - €125K ~£112K (5K eur increases per year)

* Engineer London 2015 - £70K ~€100K

* Engineer London 2020 - £95K ~€105K (5K gbp increases per year)

Both engineers start at same pay 5 years ago, both of them think they are moving up in the world with reasonable pay increases per year. One of them is being screwed by falling value of pound against just about every major currency due to Brexit and all the uncertainty.

It's only 'being screwed' (or just an unfortunate decision on your part) if your participation in Euro economy is weighted high enough vs. the local economy.

i.e. the same increase looks better if you live in London than if you work remotely from Dublin. But.. I don't think it's surprising that London salaries aren't optimised for remote workers in Dublin?

(This may well change of course! Will be interesting to see what happens if remote work gets significantly more widespread.)

London is more expensive to live in than Dublin, by raw property prices, but London is much easier to commute in from distances.

Until the pandemic Dublin had become impossible to rent in due to reallocation to AirBnB.

I'm currently still comfortable in Edinburgh, where I get slightly less money than London but a much cheaper house. My current employer is not exposed to much Brexit risk, but Dublin is very high up on my exit strategy choices list.

What a coincidence. I'm currently in London but have been given permission to relocate to Edinburgh if I wanted (keeping London salary).

It's really tempting. The thought of being a hour or so's drive from wilderness is very appealing. My main concern is being stuck up there if things really go to shit. That and the poorer weather!

One thing I would recommend if you do consider moving to Edinburgh is moving to a place just outside of Edinburgh that is on a rail line. After living the centre of Edinburgh for ~30 years we moved across to a rural location in Fife and it's the best of both worlds - getting into Edinburgh by train is easy and actually quite a pleasant journey (the Forth Bridge!) and you are a good bit closer to the Highlands (where I go most weekends).

Out of curiousity, how long is the commute and how much less would you the cost of living is? 25%?

My commute is about 50 mins door to door - 10 min drive, 30 on train and 10 minute walk. Mind you even pre-coronavirus I was only going into the office 2 or 3 days a week, working from home the rest of the time. The train trip is actually quite nice as you go along the coast then across the Forth Bridge.

Property is much cheaper in Fife than a comparable property in Edinburgh. We got a nice 5 bedroom house in a rural area with a large garden and fantastic views for about a third less than a 4 bedroom flat in Edinburgh.

Roughly the sliding scale is that 250k buys you:

- a garage in London

- a small flat in central Edinburgh

- a medium sized house in Edinburgh outskirts

- a large house in Edinburgh commuter belt

- a mansion if you're prepared to drive more than an hour

- or a small island in the middle of nowhere

Even without driving there's so much green space up here. And the weather isn't that bad. The east coast from Edinburgh to Dundee is in this weird spot in Scotland that gets significantly less rain than most other areas. It's just a bit colder.

Yeah, I'm also in Edinburgh. I honestly don't see the London appeal these days. There are a few cheap northern cities with solid tech scenes, little competition and cheap cost of living. Edinburgh's the best one, but I've heard tons of great stuff about Manchester, Glasgow and Birmingham. Even accounting for salary (and those have been going up in Edinburgh recently) you're still better off due to cost of living. Plus green space!

Thats the other problem with Brexit, you might not be able to take advantage of remote if you are in UK as EU has fairly strict data protection laws regarding its citizens.

As a EU citizen i would be horrified if any non EU company gets its hands on my personal data.

From our point of view UK is now in same league of "3rd countries" as Russia or India

If the world economy falls apart I'd rather be in a place that produces anything tangible than in London

Funnily enough a good chunk of the food UK eats comes from Ireland and other neighbouring EU countries.

During this covid virus lockdown working remotely from home with a massive farm size garden growing fruit and veggies in rural Ireland has proven to be better for my mental/physical health than being locked into a tiny apartment in a city

My routine for normal week days hasn’t changed. I’m still inside in front of a computer for most of the day. I still jog most mornings and go for a walk most evenings.

Not hanging out with people as much and other similar things would’ve presumably been impacted the same in most places.

Anecdotally, I mostly know middle and upper middle class people. A few have moved or are going to move into bigger and farther away places from their current apt. But still within their current city limits.

I’m sure you enjoy your location and house size. It appears people who are enjoying larger and more rural living spaces always preferred them pre-corona too. Perhaps I am missing a trend of many people who can work remote now, moving out of cities. I know I see a lot of chatter on ‘trendy’ social sites, but it’s not always representative.

Depends. I can see a great Xmas season in UK retail ("get stuff before the gates are closing"), and a wealth of new im-/export businesses in the time after (and running such businesses isn't out of character for Londoners I guess). I know I'd be looking into these kinds of opportunities right now.

The cost of living in London eats up any salary benefit. Once you factor in actually having to live in London, or a murderous commute, there is almost no benefit to living in London unless you're young or work in finance. If you're young there are opportunities in London you can't find elsewhere in English speaking Europe if you're willing to live like a pauper for a bit.

If this COVID stuff has taught me anything it's that London can be made far less expensive if you want. The amount of money I've saved since March is astounding, purely from not buying coffees, lunches and pints, which are things I only really did because I had to commute to work.

The real benefit of living in London is that it'd be far easier to get another job if things truly went south.

> The cost of living in London eats up any salary benefit.

Does it actually though? Genuine question having grown up here. I live with my partner, our monthly outgoings living on the zone 1/2 border are ~£800 each for mortgage, bills, car insurance, etc. Last year I earned ~£90k before tax. I don't think I would have earned anything like that amount working in another part in the UK. Even if my cost of living was halved I'd only be saving around £5k a year.

I'm relatively young I suppose and I don't love everything about London, but I see lots of benefits to living here outside of the income, too. I can also be in the (proper) countryside in an hour or so drive at the weekends if I want a change of scenery.

> mortgage

When did you buy? I get the distinct impression from friends that even well off techies are struggling to get a big deposit together for a London property nowadays.

Late 2018. I got a big income bump in early 2017 and both my partner I and were able to save for a deposit by living frugally for a couple of years. I wouldn't have been able to do it alone though, I think you realistically need two incomes to buy in London.

Deposit it not the problem, it's the disappointing quality of the properties in London that stops me buying. Why spend £700-800k for a 2-3 bedroom place which has finishing like it's £250k flat.

> The cost of living in London eats up any salary benefit.

The cost of living in Dublin is not much different from London though.

> there is almost no benefit to living in London unless you're young or work in finance.

What is the benefit to living in Dublin?

> London's different. If the world economy falls apart I'd rather be in London than Dublin for job seeking purposes.

If the word economy falls apart, cities that are disproportionately engaged in finance and especially international finance like London and New York are going to be the worst places to be for jobs in the short-term.

A little while after the initial chaos and collapse, they'll be great places for rebuilding jobs, though.

> A little while after the initial chaos and collapse, they'll be great places for rebuilding jobs, though.

I guess, if you can live with the hundreds of thousands of desperate/jobless/starving/homeless people you'll be seeing every day.

I mean, FFS, you're talking the world economy falling apart, that very likely means 1800's London, quite a terrible place to live in.

Average salary for Software Developers.

Ireland: €37,741

London: €51,686

Software Developer jobs on Indeed.

All of Ireland: 1,016

Just London: 5,650

Software Developer roles listed at over 90k EUR.

All of Ireland: 27

Just London: 1,033

If you're a talented senior-level developer you'll lose tens of thousands of Euros by choosing to work in a much colder market. In retirement, this could mean you'll lose half a million euros or more (with compounding investments).

"Developer" vs "Engineer"

-------------

Software Engineer 50K eur Dublin / 50K gbp London

https://www.linkedin.com/salary/search?countryCode=ie&geoId=...

https://www.linkedin.com/salary/search?countryCode=gb&geoId=...

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Senior Software Engineer 70K eur Dublin / 68K gbp London

https://www.linkedin.com/salary/search?countryCode=ie&geoId=...

https://www.linkedin.com/salary/search?countryCode=gb&geoId=...

-------------

Principal Software Engineer 85K eur Dublin / 80K gbp London

https://www.linkedin.com/salary/search?countryCode=ie&geoId=...