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Comment by pooya72 | Hacker News Reader

It's interesting that you have lived in both and can do a fair comparison. There was a reddit thread a while back that compared US and UK salaries.[1] The consensus seemed to be, that if you compared the cost of living, you would need a considerably higher income in the US to have the same standard of living as the UK. One person said that 130K USD salary in the Bay Area would be equivalent to 50K GBP in London.[2] Another person said that 100K USD in the Bay Area is equivalent to 50 GBP in London. [3]

It would be great to get your feedback on this.

[1]:https://old.reddit.com/r/UKPersonalFinance/comments/nhe8v1/w...

[2]:https://old.reddit.com/r/UKPersonalFinance/comments/nhe8v1/w...

[3]:https://old.reddit.com/r/UKPersonalFinance/comments/nhe8v1/w...

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I moved from SF to London in 2010 and back in 2014. I was working for a startup at the time, so not FAANG, but also salaries weren't anywhere near what they are today.

My experience is you can't really compare salaries directly, you really need to think about your personal lifestyle. First, if you care primarily about money then there's no substitute for being in Silicon Valley. After that it gets more complicated, basic cost of living like food and going out to the pub is cheaper in London, but high end goods are more expensive and the 20% VAT really hurts. People are generally calibrated on less material goods than the typical American is used to. That includes smaller flats and spending a greater percentage of your income on them. On the other hand though, you don't have to worry about health care, and you don't need to own a car because public transport coverage is solid, and the majority of places have at least decent walkability with some local shops. Overall I would say if you're interested you need to look at potential salary and rents and figure out if it works financially, but don't expect to make equivalent as the US and stay on the same financial trajectory—it's apples and oranges.

3bdrm house in London is basically $1m. This is on par with the Valley. I am surprised salaries are not higher.

I am not sure what you mean by less material goods... I don't think that's true or really means much of anything. Not having space means less stuff in general anyway cause you have to put it somewhere.

Agree. I’m a US citizen who lived in London. The cost of essentials are actually very affordable in the UK. Your lifestyle excludes the need to acquire material goods. If earning money is your primary focus, I would choose the US. These are my prime earning years and am happy to be here. Otherwise, I found the UK to be an amazing place to live. I look forward to hanging it all up and returning to a quiet village in the Cotswalds.

> The consensus seemed to be, that if you compared the cost of living, you would need a considerably higher income in the US to have the same standard of living as the UK

While this does have a partial truth to it, the examples are delusional. How can anyone compare 50k GBP to 130K USD?

I have lived across the USA, EU, and Asia; but such comparisons are heavily personal situation dependant. The calculations would differ for single vs family as well.

I’ve also lived in the UK and US, though did not work for a FAANG in the UK.

By the exchange rate right now, 50k GBP is around 65k USD. If you want to live within (say) an hour reach of an office, you’ll have a much easier time doing that in the London metro area with 50k than you will in the Bay Area with 130k. This is before you even consider taxes and healthcare. High quality groceries also substantially cheaper in the UK. A new wildcard is the price of energy, which looks to have gone up considerably in the UK since I left, though.

Neither would be a comfortable position, and you wouldn’t be in danger of being able to buy a house absent other income. All in all though, if they were my fixed options, I’d take the money in London.

Anecdotally, 10 years ago, two people could rent and live comfortably in zone 1 (just a few minutes from work) with a salary of ~50k. A few salary bumps later we managed to buy a flat in zone 2. Prices of flats have gone up (but not as much as houses) and so has cost of living, but I would say that two people or even a family will live more than comfortably in London on ~100k, manage to save some money and even be able to buy a flat, given a reasonable deposit.

Houses, even small ones, in zone 1-2 are now prohibitively expensive, but if you are willing to move further away there are options.

not only there are options, but there is excellent transportation in London, especially compared to the driving hell because of the all day traffic all around Bay Area. Another parameter I don't see people mentioning (not surprisingly, since its HN after all) is the monoculture in Bay Area, versus living in one of the few global metropolis. In the Bay all you see and live is tech, in London tech is only a part of the overall life experience.

But yeah, overall it's highly personal depending on personal circumstances than anything else.

Very much agree.

Regarding transportation, I have been living here for 13 years and still don't own a car.

Like I said, it depends on your circumstances. If you /have/ to live in the center of a metropolitan, SFO and LHR are equally bad - I have friends in both areas.

I still wouldn’t compare 50k GBP to 130k USD.

> One person said that 130K USD salary in the Bay Area would be equivalent to 50K GBP in London

I don't know how expensive the Bay Area may be, but 50K in London (3100 per month) are barely enough to pay rent (2000 per month) and definitely not enough to send a child to nursery (2000 per month).

I think you are correct that yu need approximately 2x salary in the United States to maintain the same cost of living as in London. However with larger companies, you can usually make 3x or even 4x working in California compared to what they pay in London.

130K USD salary in the Bay Area

It's worth pointing out that this is below FAANG range. A software engineer with zero years of experience in the US should make roughly $160K-190K in compensation at the large tech companies.

https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Amazon,Google,Facebook,Apple...

In the Bay Area, the cost of real estate will dominate your cost of living. If you are happy to live in a 1-bedroom apartment, that entry level FAANG software engineering job will pay for everything you need in life and more. If you want to buy a house for your spouse and three children, it will start to depend much more on precisely where you want to live.

Unfortunately a 5 bedroom house in Mountain View will run you maybe $3.5M. But it depends a lot on where you go though. Look out in the San Jose suburbs and the same house might cost half as much. I don't know much about the London real estate situation so I can't speak to it but if you really want to compare cost of living for software engineers you probably should look specifically at housing, rather than comparing general statistics.

London housing is expensive, but I think still significantly less than SV.

It isn't really worth pointing that out, because GP's quote was '... is equivalent to £50k in London'. (Which is also below FAANG range, but that's still besides the point.)

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