How to Get a Job as a Software Developer in the UK After Brexit (Guide) | Hacker News Reader

How to Get a Job as a Software Developer in the UK After Brexit (Guide)

devitjobs.uk

20 pointsVarqu48 comments

I think a better question is "why would you want to?", and for EU based developers I don't really see the point.

I'm from the UK, but now live in post-Soviet EU country. Ten years or even five years ago it was seen as a "right of passage" to go work in the UK, then come home and buy a used BMW with your earnings, but Brexit and COVID really changed that (well, except car preferences). In my previous position I was working remotely for a UK company and working in a co-working space, and many people were there who had the same stories. They'd been working in the UK for a while, but wanted to come home, and the company let them continue to work remotely for the same salary.

COVID and IR35 threw another spanner into the cogs, so you started to see many more UK companies willing to hire people remotely, and at that point, why limit yourself to the talent pool in the UK? Late last year I talked to a recruiter who had placed a number of contractors with a London based food delivery company, and he said almost all new people he places are now based outside the UK, somewhere in Europe.

This has had a knock-on effect on salaries of local companies here. Sure you could get more working remotely for a US or Western European company, but the rates that are being offered now are on par with what 3 years ago would be a really good salary for a second rate city in the UK (Manchester, Bristol, Reading, etc). So why go to the UK, when you can get good salaries working from your home country, where the cost of living is much lower than the UK?

> Manchester, Bristol, Reading, etc

I don’t think that is true to be honest

Interestingly, I see the complete opposite. High rates for remote contracts (700, even 800 pounds per day) in London companies, but almost all of them they want to hire remotely from the UK only. I'm not sure if there's some practical reason behind it or it's just pure classism/nationalism at play.

Salaries are still considerably higher in the UK and cost of life relatively low.

For seniors: 100k are not unheard of in tons of companies, especially after inflation. Contractor rates are even better and you can get more than 1k per day.

That said, nowadays remote working with UK company (or even US) is a viable alternative.

I personally left the UK after 7 years, moved to a sunny EU country and had enough money for a house.

> I think a better question is "why would you want to?", and for EU based developers I don't really see the point.

With the previous administration starting to crackdown on fraudulent H1Bs it's also much easier for Europeans engineers to come to the US (or just get an O-1 and bypass the H1 system).

It makes the UK less attractive (often it's seen, like Canada, as a backup plan).

"Much easier" is kind of an overstatement. The odds in the H1B lottery still suck. The FY2023 season saw a record number of applicants https://redbus2us.com/uscis-received-484k-h1b-registrations-...

Also O visas are strictly non-immigrant intent, which is a big restriction.

> Also O visas are strictly non-immigrant intent, which is a big restriction.

It's fairly common to go from O-1 to a Green Card.

Yes. But it still has strict non-immigrant intent. So you can't travel on O or renew your O-associated work authorization while your I-485 is pending. H-1B doesn't have those restrictions because it's dual-intent.

unless you don't think living in the US can be any better than living in London

Just don’t, you don’t want to spend days fighting with the Home Office every other year to renew your visa, for the questionable privilege of making 70-80K pa in London, where a two bedroom apartment cost half your salary. I strongly advise one goes to Germany or the Netherlands, especially if they plan to have kids.

Moved from Poland to UK, and unfortunately can confirm. My former colleagues are working for UK companies remotely getting UK level salaries, but spending much less because it’s cheaper to live in Poland.

We are overly London-centric in the UK. It's important to remember that it's just one city, and it's completely different to the rest of the country in almost every way.

In the rest of the UK, you’d get a lower salary than in central Italy and possibly East Germany (I haven’t checked the latter).

Inner London is different from the rest of the country because it’s the only part that looks like Western Europe. Starting in Putney, the UK is a giant periphery, with kilometres of houses and nothing to do apart from getting the train to Inner London. There’s more stuff to do in my grandmother’s village than in the entirety of West London after Hammersmith. At least, in that 1200 people village, there are 2 fully operational churches (one 1000 year old), a football field, 2-3 restaurants/cafes and a castle. Outside of inner London the density of foreigners drops dramatically, which in Brexit England tends to be a problem.

Why would anybody in their right mind go to Nowhereshire instead of going, say, to Berlin or Milan or even Perugia?

What an insane take. You obviously haven't visited anywhere outside London.

I’ve actually visited half the country, when I worked as a consultant. Weather in the north is horrid, much worse than in London, food is appalling in ways that can’t be described, pubs are all the same replica of a Wetherspoon or of a Young’s.

It could be that coming from central Italy I have very high expectations, maybe some form of Stendhal syndrome in reverse. But I haven’t had the same feeling when travelling in Germany or France. The UK outside of inner London is a distinctly ugly and boring place. Now it’s also the place in Western Europe with the worse supply chain disruptions and shortages.

You may have visited half the country, but it doesn't seem like you saw any of it.

> Weather in the north is horrid, much worse than in London, food is appalling in ways that can’t be described, pubs are all the same replica of a Wetherspoon or of a Young’s

Perhaps you were going to a Spoons or whatever Young's is by accident. Brilliant food all around the North - maybe check OpenTable or Google Maps and find some proper restaurants/street food vendors. I live near Glasgow and there's some excellent food in the area.

Yes, the weather isn't as good as London/the South. You learn to love it unless you're spoiled with the sun all the time.

I don’t mean to be dismissive, but if you come from southern/central Italy (or Spain or Greece, etc…), your idea of good food is significantly different from that of the English.

I have to wonder why you're even here if you're just going to insult/dismiss all of our cities/towns and the tastes of our people as a whole without putting in any effort.

p.s. we know Wetherspoons is microwave crap, but it's cheap and comes with a free beer. :)

Saying that Manchester is uglier than Florence and that Italian food is better than English food are not insults, but a factual statements.

I’m in Inner London because I have a very high paying job, that allowed me to buy a nice flat in a nice area and that allows me to fly to Europe even 5 times a month with my entire family, if I want. But I was very close from leaving the UK a few years ago, when it became evident that my 100K£ salary wasn’t enough to enjoy the same lifestyle of a friend of mine that lives in Berlin with an entry level s/w development job and 2 children.

Manchester has some beautiful architecture, some very interesting places to visit and in the UK we compensate with culture, people and nightlife. And there are some very good restaurants & eateries if you actually put some research & effort in.

Maybe your £100k salary would go (a lot) further if you moved away from London and to somewhere like Manchester - everyone knows London is stupidly expensive ;) I'm on like £40kish around Glasgow in a nearby town and quite comfortable - I'd feel like Elon Musk on your salary.

If Rome and Paris and Florence are in the Champions League of beauty and Milan is in second division, Manchester is a funny non-league football team that once in its history got through round 1 of the FA cup and then lost 7-0 against a premier league club.

You must be nuts. Bath and the West Country are the prettiest parts of the country by far.

No, I’m not. They aren’t particularly beautiful and, outside of the UK, people don’t even know what these places are, for a reason. Compare to, in random order, Verona, Rome, Florence or Pisa or Orvieto or the Tuscan countryside or Tivoli or even Milan.

I'm betting that most people outside of Italy also can't tell where Verona or Orvieto or Tivoli are.

they might have heard of Verona though because of that pesky Brit from Nowhereshire who wrote that one play that one time.

If you don’t know what Verona is, you probably spent your entire existence under a rock. One would have to complete primary school to know that Tivoli or Capri exist. You are right, Orvieto may be only for the very learned.

The West Country instead it’s a rainy non-place that gets flooded every other day, with 0 historical or artistic relevance. And nobody even know it exists outside of the UK.

Having lived extensively in both the Cotswolds and Chianti, I can assure you: you are nuts.

OMG, a friend convinced my girlfriend to spend a weekend in the Cotswolds, allegedly the best place in England or whatever.

I’ve never been in a more isolated, yet overcrowded and noisy place in my entire existence. The quality of housing is abysmal as everywhere in the UK. A car was required to go to everywhere, queues everywhere, traffic everywhere, everything cost a fortune and it’s just like a random place in the Roman countryside but without the sun and the olive trees and good food. There was this weird dinosaur park/thing, “children love it!” they told me, that’s the best way of getting a mental breakdown.

this reads like it was written by someone who has never stepped outside zone 2.

Not that there’s much to see outside of zone 2, but I’ve actually spent 3-4 years travelling across the UK and it was very very different from travelling across Europe, and not in a good way.

I’m laughing at the replies to your comments lol.

Didn’t you know that while all your statements might be subjectively correct, it’s only the Brits themselves allowed to moan about how much their country sucks, haha.

> I’m laughing at the replies to your comments lol.

I’m here to spread the truth that everybody knows, I’m here to teach them.

> Didn’t you know that while all your statements might be subjectively correct, it’s only the Brits themselves allowed to moan about how much their country sucks, haha.

The UK is many interesting things, but it’s certainly not a beautiful place, especially outside of London. I prefer Inner London to my home town, by not for the beauty, that would be a no-contest.

I understand that if somebody never actually visited Spain or Italy or France, they may have no idea of what a beautiful city is.

Take a trip to Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Newcastle, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Leeds or Sheffield (preferably after the train strikes at the moment are over) and get back to us. Might change your mind about 'Nowhereshire'.

I haven’t been in Scotland, but I’ve been told Edinburgh is a very nice city.

I visited England and Wales for work and I went to Belfast a few times. I visited all the English cities in your list and they aren’t in the same league of random central Italian towns. They were so ugly and anonymous that I’d demand a premium of 50K to move there from London.

Edinburgh is very nice but Glasgow is the livelier of the two.

From your comments though, doesn't sound like the UK (other than London) is for you unfortunately. No hard feelings.

I was reading through your comments and was thinking "This guy is definitely Italian" and well guess I was right. Typical attitude: Thinking Italy is this amazing place and that everything else is trash.

In fairness, if I were fortunate enough to live in Berlin, Italy I would hate everywhere else too.

Oh, no, I see what you are doing, but I mentioned Germany, France, Spain and Greece. I come from central Italy and that’s the part of the world I know best. I’m saying that the UK outside Inner London doesn’t look European, but it’s a gigantic periphery.

Here’s a list of random places I visited in Europe that would be the most beautiful place in the UK if teleported there: - Berlin - Paris - Krakow - Hamburg - Madrid - Barcelona - Palma - Aix-en-Provence - Avignon - Vienna - Random Greek island - Istanbul

List of places that would be the second most beautiful thing after Inner London: - Frankfurt - Cologne - Warsaw - Kassel

I can provide more if you need.

We also wrote similar guides for:

Germany: https://germantechjobs.de/blog/how-to-find-job-as-software-d...

and

Switzerland: https://swissdevjobs.ch/de/blog/how-to-find-job-as-software-...

I know it only applies to relatively few people, but I was surprised there's no mention of Irish people in the visa section.

We have the same right to live/work in the UK as their citizens (and vice-versa). No visa required. You can confirm this for yourself on the linked gov.uk website.

As a Brit, don't. It's a Tory run hellhole.

If you can buy a house, UK is cheaper and livelier that any other place on earth.

as someone who's interested in UK, am curious whether you are speaking from experience or is there anything to back up the statement?

From experience. I lived there a long time. If you are bored of London, you are bored of life as they say. Taxes are part of the price tag and no tipping, cheaper groceries add up to pretty nice savings every month.

Excuse me? I am living in central UK, rent costs me 5000GBP/month, council tax is around 3000GBP/year, food is more than 2 times expensive than in Europe, transportation is expensive in general.

Then my status here can be anytime reverted by Home Office. I have pre-settlement status, but HO can anytime come, deny it and kick me out of the country.

And before you tell me to move, yes I am currently in phase of moving back to Europe, because for same salary I will have much lower expenses and only thing which was preventing me from moving for last 2 years was the Covid.

But why?! Train tickets and housing consume easily 50% of tech salary in UK.

Only in you live in or close proximity to London.

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