Are these normal for UK? Even for startups in SF bay area, senior engineers are making 50-100+% above that number. I've been at startups that pay these rates to EU remote workers.
The biggest gulf between the UK and US is at the top end, i.e: people earning TC of 500k+ is not uncommon in SF whereas that would be quite rare here outside of the upper echelons of the big tech companies. Part of this is because stock grants are much lower here in general, but salaries are lower too.
If you were an experienced software engineer in London today looking to maximise your salary, you'd have an easy time reaching £100k and you could probably touch £150k but it would take some effort.
Colorado isn’t even comparable to California in terms of cost, it’s also a state that most companies pay a national salary band for since it’s not considered a high cost state.
Aspen is more comparable to SF costs than Sacramento is.
In London? You probably won't be buying a property anytime soon, unless you have a partner with a similar salary. Single and renting? You're leading a pretty comfy bachelor life
For perspective though, £90K is almost 3x the national median full-time wage . Total taxation at this level is 32%.
I worked in a mid-tier us city i.e Austin, Nashville and my take home pay is comparable to what I earn in london for the same role level. and same level of company profile. never worked at a mega tech - but have worked for well known ones.
and better yet my standard of living is higher.
Remember that in the UK we have access to more public services and benefits etc. Americans pay more here for better or worse eg healthcare. Many Americans also seem to have to overwork from a European point of view, so you earn more but at a cost most of us wouldn't tolerate. Lack of holidays, long hours etc.
Not a judgement, just contextualising the differences and explaining why focusing solely on pay as a metric is a bit misleading.
Whether e.g. healthcare premiums comes out of my paycheck separately or is paid via higher taxes is just accounting.
Just on healthcare, did you know your per capita spending is 2 to 3 times higher?
Also, I've worked at a bank before as a software developer and made basically the same range.
Not saying this is good or bad. Just curious about the reason for the pay discrepancy.
https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm
The US in total pays $12318 dollars per capita in health care. In the UK, it's $5387 per per capita. The US's supposedly more efficient market-based system turns out to be wildly more expensive than any other country.
You can get a better sense of the salaries in the UK via https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/london-...
Surprise! There is no free market. We live in a global crony-communist system which decides how much money people get paid from the top down starting with US shareholders and executives at the top of the social pyramid. All based on military coercion, wars and foreign debt traps. You can thank your military-industrial complex.
It's actually quite typical, when you move to places where costs of living are higher, salaries are higher too. You may still struggle to save anything. What you do manage to save can represent a lot of value, but only if you end up selling everything and relocating to a different, cheaper country/city later. I wish I had seen the global scheme sooner.
It's obviously difficult to try to compare actual numbers, but I think I had 5-10K DKK (670-1340 EUR) in surplus at the end of every month at that time. Obviously things are different when you have a partner and/or kids - or you might just get less lucky with how cheap you can rent or buy an apartment.
In the real market, in the local job boards, it's hard to find anything above $50K USD. There is a dual class system in EU. The upper class get certain salaries and everybody else (which includes immigrants and unconnected individuals) get totally different salaries for the exact same work.