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Comment by c7DJTLrn | Hacker News Reader

Sounds like the author is upset that Brexit has closed the valve on the pipeline of cheap labour from EU workers. There's no shortage of talent in London trust me, it's just that you're going to have to start paying more than a pittance to get it. Brexit so far has been a positive thing for tech workers' salaries.

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Yes, I voted remain but I suspect the businesses yelling that they can't hire really mean they can't hire for what they were accustomed to paying before Brexit. It's particularly prevalent in lower paid areas like transport, coffee shops, and agriculture. If the success of your business depended on low wages Brits won't accept, you're likely to be in trouble.

The issue isn't pay itself but companies not knowing how to operate with higher wages (i.e. how to economise on labour usage) and not knowing how to deal with tight labour markets.

In agriculture, you have farmers complaining about no labour whilst they are failing to use machines that could replace the labour (and, unf, agriculture in the UK has turned into one massive IHT avoidance scheme...so most of the operators are clueless). In retail, you still have companies doing multi-day interviews with logical reasoning tests, team-working tests, problem solving exercises for shelf stacking positions (which, btw, they are getting people to do for free with no training on welfare-to-work programs).

I am not sure if I agree with the original post. Is it completely off though? No. Not at all.

"cheap EU labour" tends to apply more to fruit pickers than AI PhDs I suspect

Nope. Eastern European brilliant minds would flock to London and get paid far lower salaries than they were worth. Ukranians, Lithuanians. The legacy of communist math is alive and well - they were generally better than any western european talent you could get and cheaper. They would always get the top jobs, but the regular influx of new blood meant salaries were stuck.

But Brexit hasn't really changed that - most of Eastern Europeans you're describing aren't EU citizens and needed work visas even before Brexit.

Baltic countries. Romania, Bulgaria. There was a lot of talent available from the old Iron Curtain. The only example I can think of were Ukrainians and Bielorussians and even then I met a few people from Belarus.

Tech salaries in continental Europe are significantly lower than in the US or UK. Even the most highly developed economies like Germany and Denmark often provide 50% of what you might make in CA or NY for a similar role.

But not 50% of what you might make in London and that's what this is about.

And the EUR goes a lot farther in say Berlin than the GBP goes in London these days (see rent, eating out prices etc)

> Tech salaries in continental Europe are significantly lower than in the US or UK.

With the exception of Switzerland.

The labor pool isn't any cheaper in NYC. Salaries are significantly higher than London.

He's in for a harsh reality.

Not 'significantly' higher, no. In the remote-first covid world you are going to be paying at least Austin/Seattle rates for talent in London and closer to NYC comp packages. It has been a very, very good 12-18 months for tech talent in London if you have the right CV.

I'm not doubting it's been a good couple of years for folks in London, but I'm sitting on some pretty good salary data and the density of high compensation packages for both new grads and senior hires is still an order of magnitude bigger in SF, Seattle and NYC (coming in third).

Most people are really underpaid and would be shocked to learn what is available. If you went to the right schools with the right internships you shouldn't ask for anything less than $225k to start off with and on the more experienced side, I know a few dozen engineers in NY with total comp packages at or above $450k.

I worked in Finance before I worked in Software and the situation was much the same -- top talent came from London for higher salaries.

Tech workers salaries are going up everywhere, though, and it's happening in other industries too. It can't be because of Brexit that a bartender in NYC is getting paid more, but they are.

Found it amusing after moving to the bay area that a job ad on the side of a local Chinese restaurant was offering more for a "floor supervisor" than a professorship at Oxford Uni that I had just seen.

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