Combined with the hassle for EU citizen nowadays to get a work permit it does not sound so enticing anymore.
Though for FAANG London still seems to have a better ratio of salary to CoL than Dublin.
Or working for a bank, which is the classic high-paid London job. The pure software engineers get paid less than quants/traders (which can get astronomical comp depending on what exactly they do) but usually still very substantial.
If you pick the right place (look at the cycleways map), you can usually find somewhere with a mostly off-road cycle route from home to your office.
All that combined means it's much easier / more enjoyable to do some work / read a book on your commute if you're using the bus, which for me was worth the extra journey time.
Obviously for longer journeys you still need the tube/train, but I lived fairly centrally so was able to either bus or bike 90% of the time.
It's much easier to get a remote gig, so it seems like a location will no longer be a problem.
Like Romania, it has an almost impenetrable firewall of negative PR that isn't born out by the experience of living there. Yes, there's an ugly old ICI factory that covers several square miles (the emblem of the region). But everything beyond that is gorgeous, green and largely untrammeled. I shall never forget walking through waterfall-strewn valleys and splendid forests and meeting hardly anyone else except some friendly dog-walkers.
Plymouth was decent enough, but I was only there as an industrial placement student, so I’m not sure about non-student prices.
Aberystwyth is pretty, but tiny, ~4 hours from anywhere that isn’t rural Wales regardless of your mode of transport, and literally 30% of the population are students. I didn’t stay long after graduation precisely because of the lack of tech jobs.
Portsmouth area is terrible for the tech scene — I grew up close to there, my siblings still live nearby, but when one of them was job hunting they ended up getting one just outside Farnborough with a one hour commute.
Sheffield is cheap, but I was trying to be a self-employed game dev when I was there, so I can’t say anything about the tech scene.
If you still care about location for everything except work, there’s lots of pretty countryside on the South Downs, Norfolk, Aberystwyth area, and west of Sheffield. St. Ives (the one near Cambridge) is probably one of the best combinations of cheap and pretty (just be aware of the flood zones).
There are plenty of well paying tech jobs outside of FAANG, but many of them are in finance.
I'm hoping to buy a house soon which will be more of a challenge.
What kid of property can you buy if you are a good software dev working at FAANG?
Housing is expensive in rough proportion to how central you are, and especially how close to tube stations you are. But it's also possible to live quite well. My commute would be a little over 1 hour each way by public transport, but I generally used a motorbike, closer to 35 minutes.
We are however leaving, in large part due to Brexit. I'm Irish, my partner is German, and neither of us wants our son to be schooled in this country. The political situation is heading in an Orban-like direction, they're locking up EU citizens at the border and the anti-EU rhetoric from leadership and tabloids is relentless.
I would not come here as an EU citizen.
I quit my job and joined Google in part because they'll relocate me to Zurich.
500k is what I want to spend for housing as well and it would merely buy a sad flat in London.
The cost of housing, the weather, the incoming tax hikes, progressive teachers and teenagers with knives are the reason I'm relocating somewhere else (Brexit didn't change much).
That said, for buying a house, I'm personally looking to one of the commuter towns. Somewhere like Woking, Basildon, Cheshunt... Maybe even out near Gatwick somewhere. I grew up next to an airport so I actually find the sound nice.
The biggest material impact of Brexit for me right now is the much greater difficulty in importing stuff, wine especially. But when we get back to international travel, the border will make more difference. Goods to declare, for one thing.
The only immigration system I am aware of that's more hostile is US. Obviously there are many countries I know nothing about
More important however might be the interaction with locals. And from what I witnessed, Americans (well, Californians at least) are much more welcoming than Germans.