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Comment by jstx1 | Hacker News Reader

London really sticks out with lowest salaries (compared to US and Canada, not to the rest of the UK/Europe) and lowest % of remote positions.

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They've rendered the graph incorrectly, using the native currency as the unit instead of the converted USD unit.

Toronto and London should be at 103kUSD and 98kUSD respectively.

They really should have rendered this graph with the same currency. It is interesting that Toronto and London are so close.

You'd think there would be an arbitrage opportunity in paying more $$$ for London talent. Still surprises me that this hasn't happened after all these years of huge differences.

Top earning UK dev jobs are usually 200k upwards, already. Those numbers don't account for finance and similar industries, which they hire directly and don't use Hired services.

How common is this? Even breaking £150k seems really challenging - FAANGs aren't hiring in London right now, finance seems to require previous finance experience and/or prestigious education even for experienced candidates (I don't know if they really require it or just like to put it in their job ads); and even companies that pay less (£90-120k) aren't giving me the time of day.

I'm making more than that in London. I know similarly qualified people in Bristol who make literally a fifth of my salary yet for some reason do not want to move to London.

That's what startups are for, at least in the USA people hop from job to job to build a reputation.

I call that "trampoline". Jobs that are meant to be temporary to jump to the real interest.

The trampoline a year ago was crypto startups. Ponzi, probably.

Try contracting? I first hit six figures in London as a test engineer with 6 years experience and no degree

pretty common

as someone who's been a hiring manager for software engineers in finance: your problem is likely getting past the initial HR filter

they sadly care about all the things you listed

Initial HR filter is to weed out the DDOS of a million CVs on a job ad... Look for a backdoor. Friends, neighbors, Meetup, colleagues, online forums such as Twitter or Discord.

It's not just FAANGs that are offering TC that high in London. Have a look at levels.fyi if you want to see some numbers. Possibly not as prevalent nowadays unfortunately.

I know, that’s why I mentioned the other companies that won’t interview me either.

That'd be nice.

I have no special insight into the London market, but the fact that it hasn't happened after all these years of huge differences probably indicates that the arbitrage opportunity is not as large as it appears.

And in that case, what causes the discrepancy in productivity between London and SF?

It seems like a mistake to measure productivity through salary. A baker in India will make a fraction of a baker in the EU, even if they're making as many breads or more per day.

It may simply be that the the same product is worth less when developed in London rather than SF, due to relative availability of VC, market access restrictions, cultural approaches to monetary compensation or any number of other reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of the code.

Note that the graph seems to be overstating the difference by graphing £82k as if it was $82k. At the current exchange rate it's more like $98k.

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