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Comment by joefife | Hacker News Reader

I can cope with the UK financials.

While we don't have as much extreme wealth the US has, it's far better to be poor in the UK.

From a Global perspective, nobody in the UK is poor.

That's hardly relevant to anyone who is actually struggling. Someone else halfway across the globe having it worse than you doesn't make things better.

True, but poverty is relative is the point I was making.

I always like to counter "somebody is poorer than you so you should be happy" with "does that mean I should be unhappy because there are people richer than me?".

But, as somebody living in 2nd world I do get what the person you're replying to said, our countries and poverty often gets ignored (or worse, exploited) by westerners.

That’s not really relevant, though. Knowing that someone in a random part of the world has it worse is cold comfort when you have to chose between heating and eating, or when you are freezing to death on a street.

But if you have really any professional job at all, you'll get shafted on salary compared to the US.

In software, developers get ripped off big time in the UK and all of Europe really. Even after accounting for cost of living and additional costs in the US, you can earn 200% more salary there.

It's really no surprise all of the top talent get out as soon as they can. If they stay in Europe they're willingly throwing away millions of dollars.

I'm sure it's true at the top end - if you are a $500k pa dev in the USA you are going to be massively better off.

But if you are in the <$300k range I think that you are pretty likely to be as well off in the UK even though your top line pay is 1/2 or 1/3 of the USA rate... especially if you have kids.

The reason is healthcare. In the USA you can (with bad luck) get royally screwed if you have a health incident - even with good insurance. And employers are very wise to this, and so ditch employees who have that liability (ie are not 25)

So - yeah, at the top... but further down the pecking order it's not so clear.

I don't know what you've been reading other than fear propaganda posted on reddit, but that is an extreme rarity. All major software employers provide full insurance coverage.

Healthcare is a non-issue for software developers. Why would you take half the salary to get the same or worse healthcare (for very specialised needs you're better off in the US healthcare system, prime example of collateral damage in the UK system is Alfie).

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