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Comment by happyhardcore | Hacker News Reader

FWIW £18k in 2001 is ~£30k in today's money which is on the upper end of graduate starting salaries even for today

Im especially glad I’m not British - in America my $150k TC out of undergrad was mediocre.

Just an FYI to the Brits on this post - I've found US startups are happy to hire remote engineers from the UK. Might take a little bit of effort but it's surprisingly possible to get a six figure job quickly.

How do they handle things like payroll taxes, benefits and such?

Make a UK company and they pay that as a contractor, you sort it out with HMRC yourself.

The Americans seem to be much higher paying, greater variety of roles, happy to let you remote.

Now is the time by the way, I was blown away by how hot the market is. Maybe jump in there before WFH starts to get retracted, you can do more interviews before you're back in the office.

Are you contracting as a quant dev in the US? Can't imagine how much that lands you!

Yeah America seems to have the nice combo of reasonably price places to live and high tech salaries. Since “remote, but US” is common I do t see why you can’t take your $150k and live off a quarter of that somewhere and save most!

I recently got an offer that was $175k base, full remote and felt comfortable enough declining it (though most of that is because Im optimizing for liquid total compensation so….) $200k total compensation liquid is still mediocre for a mid level engineer but at least I don’t pay London real estate prices.

It's because some areas where you can get a house for $1,500 per month instead of $4,000 come with caveats like neighbors with guns and hellish weather

Isn't it deadly ironic that the country that has such terrible health care is also the same country where people get shot all the time?

I love it that San Jose is going to require gun owners to carry liability insurance if they want to carry weapons. It's about time they started paying for the health care and rehabilitation and funerals of all the people they shoot, and stopped whining that they're victims of government is oppression, when they're perfectly complacent with everyone paying for licensing and registration and insurance of cars.

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/california/articles/...

>San Jose to Require Gun Owners to Carry Liability Insurance

>San Jose officials have passed the first law in the country that requires gun owners to carry liability insurance and pay a fee to cover taxpayers’ costs associated with gun violence.

Bearing in mind that 30k a year goes a lot further given that there's no need for health insurance and student loans are effectively just a 6% tax on earnings above 27k until either your loan is repaid or it's been 30 years since graduating.

While it's true that UK salaries are quite a bit lower than other countries if I'm honest if I earned £150k a year the only difference in how I live my life would be that I'd be driving a Tesla. 30k is more than enough to live comfortably on, even in areas with a fairly high cost of living.

Health insurance is generally covered by your company as a benefit, and if it’s not when you’re in your early 20s it’s generally only a few hundred dollars a month. On a salary of $150k it’s pretty insignificant. Average student loan debt in the US for a bachelors degree is $30k (too high of course) but when paid out over decades is also insignificant against $150k.

I’m not making a value judgement about whether health insurance or student loans should exist but just pointing out that your comment seems like a false rationalization about why a much lower salary in a different country is okay.

Outside London, sure, but a London one-bed apartment 40 minutes away from city will run you ~1300/montn, that £18,000 a year with councill tax and bills.

I didn’t have student loans because state schools are cheap. I pay like $75 out of pocket for my health insurance per month and most of that is my HSA contribution.

For what it’s worth I can’t afford a Tesla either making $200k now and live in a 450sqft studio.

Literally anywhere that isn't the US really. Being the world's greatest empire has its benefits.

The US isn't really an empire. Much more of a hegemony.

This article from "A Collection Of Unmitigated Pedantry" goes in depth about how historians would classify the US as a state:

https://acoup.blog/2021/07/02/collections-my-country-isnt-a-...

This is only true of California, and maybe Boston / NYC.

>which is on the upper end of graduate starting salaries even for today

Do you have a source for this? Anecdotally, my impression is that graduates in any degree can reach £30k with reasonable effort. Specifically for graduates in tech, the top end is something like £100k nowadays, and the average would be more like £45k.

Overall maybe, but certainly not for CS/any engineering. Even if you only count engineering employers.

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