[shanwang]

I'm in London too, $120K job in today's London market (£100K) only exists in some banks, hedge fund and HFT companies, and you'll definitely need 10year+ experience to get those jobs.

I think the salary gap between US and UK programmers in the last decade has definitely increased.

One reason is exchange rate, only a few years ago GBP/USD is 1.5x, now it's 1.2x.

Another reason is that tech sector boomed in the US, big companies like google and Facebook are doing really well, there are also more successful small companies, fuelled by VC money. together they drive programmer salary up.

However, the UK economy is totally dominated by finance. And the banks are not doing particularly good after 2007.