London is a really expensive place to live. I bet your rent would be double compared to Manchester, so even though your salary is less you will have probably have more money in the long run.
If you are getting paid £45k in London, this would not be something you have to worry about. Sure you'd have less disposable income than Manchester, but the idea that you couldn't afford to go out is ludicrous.
No, not really. I seriously doubt there is any part of London where you couldn't rent acceptable accommodation and have plenty of money left over on £45k.
In zones 1-2 (or 3) that'll probably have to be a houseshare - but you'd still easily get a nice private room for that. The takehome of £45k is £2,797.27 /month after tax[0]. Even if you spend 50% of that on rent (inadvisable but common in London), that's still £1400 a month to play with. Which is still more than the total takehome of someone earning the London living wage[1].
I mean, you'll have to have a commute if you want a private, 1 bed flat or larger and you're working in Zone 1, but that's not exactly much of a hardship. My point is that with even the most basic level of sane budgeting, £45k is easily enough to live/work pretty much anywhere in London.
Yep, houseshare in Zone 1, en suite, ~£900pcm here. It's not somewhere to live if you want to settle/make substantial saves for deposits or cars, but you'd still have enough to enjoy yourself.
That being said, whilst London has a nice vibe, if you don't know people here it can be isolating. Been here a few months and not really found "my people" yet.
Agreed,but in the late 90s living in the east end with a graduate job paying 18k I felt rich. 10 mins on the tube to the city and lots of free beer and champagne and posh meals on the company. I went out whenever I felt like it. I've been back quite a bit and while it is more expensive is not ridiculous. If you're sensible you can have a great time as long as you manage those housing costs.
If you can get 40k in Manchester then yes 50-55k should be achievable or contracting for more but that will make it harder to buy or set up a rental agreement if you don't have guaranteed income?
From my personal experience, and my experience with results from surveys/polls (such as the one Stack Exchange did) I've seen PHP being around 85% of what the average developer makes from other categories (Python, C#, so on).
I'm seeing numbers from $50,000 - $60,000 for developer salaries in London. Obviously a lot of things come into play, but that should give you some idea:
I'm already decided to move to London , But i don't know if the recruiter i'm working with is not good, Or the average PHP dev salary is low.