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I've heard London is actually the best place in the world in terms of salary for IT workers and programmers. Why are you all coming to Cal: for palm trees, or the gay scene in SF? (serious question)

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This just isn't true. It might be 'published' as such somewhere, but there is such high demand for skilled IT workers and programmers in other large cities (I'm in Bristol myself) that you can get near London rates outside of London and the living costs are substantially cheaper.

London is drab, grey and expensive. It's not at all a relaxed place, and whatever you make you'll spend again on overpriced items.

I'm not fond of london at all, there are much better places to live in europe.

The Bay Area is really expensive too. Especially when it comes to housing.

Cost of living in London is number 3 in the world. San Francisco is number 78.

http://www.citymayors.com/features/cost_survey.html

Why would Shanghai be so high on the list? It did not seem that expensive to me.

Some of those numbers seem very suspect. For example, it lists Houston and Boston as almost identical, with Houston slightly higher. Anyone who's lived in both cities can tell you that's ridiculous; the BankRate.com COL calculator shows Boston as almost 50% more expensive:

http://www.bankrate.com/brm/movecalc.asp?a=0&d1=100000&#...

The list above also puts LA significantly higher than SF, which is also ridiculous. BankRate has SF at 15% higher:

http://www.bankrate.com/brm/movecalc.asp?a=0&d1=100000&#...

The crucial information is in the small print though:

"(The index is based on cost of living expressed in US dollars. Therefore, if the dollar weakens against the local currency of a city, the city becomes more expensive and moves up the index, even if prices expressed in local currency remain the same or even go down.)"

London is now over 25% cheaper in dollar terms than in the summer.

Bay Area isn't really drab and grey though. It's 65 and sunny right now!

Its 16:34, dark and about to snow.

I just fancy a change, I don't want to wake up one morning and think, shit. where has my life gone.

In regards to UK salaries, I think it massively depends on what you're doing in the IT. I've been in mobile and I know the big guns can get pretty insane salaries.

London is expensive, huge, cold...London might have a good tech scene but its still not silicon valley.

Im sure the gay scene in London is perfectly adequate for those who like that sort of thing...

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