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Those companies already exist in London and they give a haircut of 30% over US salary practically as a matter of policy. Why would they pay more than they need to in the abysmal UK market?

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I'm trying to understand your 30%. Are you saying they give 70% of US salary or 30%?

Sorry, I meant 30% haircut, so yeah, 70% of total US salary. Granted that's totally rough but you can confirm it on glassdoor. People will give you CoL arguments but they're BS -- London is just as expensive as NYC, if not more. A big part of the problem is that HMRC costs increase so rapidly above £120k. It seems like the UK government is hampering the willingness of US companies to raise salaries past that level. It's typical UK government behavior, honestly.

This is interesting but I think it's just a matter of time before the dam breaks and all the tech companies with a UK presence start increasing salaries to get more competitive. The same thing happened in NYC around 2015-2020. At some point money talks and the bullshit starts to walk.

I know someone who is moving from NYC to the UK to run an engineering team at a FANG company. He'll want to hire the best engineers and be willing to pay for them. And I know he wouldn't have taken that job if it didn't come with a big pay increase.

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