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Comment by eckesicle | Hacker News Reader

I worked at Coinbase making 140k GBP in base compensation.

My SF based colleagues with the same job title were making 250k USD (so 202k GBP).

We sat down one day and compared our household budgets line by line and in the end we estimated that 'money left over' for equivalent house, medical and kids education my American colleagues were slightly better off, but maybe only by 5-10k USD per year.

Anecdatally ...

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Bare in mind at the time coinbase also paid above market rate in London (London rates were cut for new hires shortly after IIRC) (I also worked at CB London)

140k is an incredible salary in the UK though, like top 0.1% at least.

It's also hard to compare things 1:1 - since the NHS is "free" (via taxation), but it doesn't cover dentistry at all really whereas equivalent good US health insurances will do.

You're off but not by much, 1% earn over 183k, 2% earn over 128k and 3% earn over 104k meaning they were in the top 2% of income earners.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/percentile-points-f...

Also top deciles are concentrated in London / the south east so a lower %ile when you restrict to London

Incredible salary in the UK != incredible salary in London

You are gated from almost nothing in London on £140K -- the only meaningful exception would be buying a house in a central location

How much of the budget was mortgage? Because with mortgage you can sell the expensive house afterwards.

Not the part of the mortgage that's accumulated interest -- which is going to be considerable at current rates.

The fact that people living in SF managed to be ahead by anything proves there's a massive delta, especially since you're wording this in past-tense (SF has gotten cheaper depending on the timeline you consider)

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