[freditup]

I'm actually surprised that as a 'Principal Architect' he was only making $208,000 a year. Considering that entry-level positions at large companies which can have cash compensation of around $150,000+, it seems he may have been 'underpaid'.

Of course $208,000 is nothing to scoff at, and money is hardly the most important thing when it comes to life. Just interesting to see that a reasonably large Bay-area company would pay such a high-level engineer barely more than new grads can get.

[LandR]

In the US, maybe.

In other countries like the UK, a principal architect is probably not getting half that.

I would guess from a quick google that an architect in the UK is on around £50k to £70k. Which is $63k to $90k.

I'm a senior software engineer with around 10years experience. I'm on £38k ($48k) plus a very small bonus, maybe £2 to £3k if I'm lucky.

Last job was a mid-level engineer on £28k. I've seen junior developers as low as £20k and senior engineers on as low as £35k.

[CalRobert]

I really can't understand why they stay in the UK then, to be honest. We seem to have better salaries and generally lower cost of living across the sea...

I have no affiliation with this company but here's a recent example, quoted at 95k so you could presumably push higher:

https://www.ninedots.io/job/lead-react-engineer/

[apexalpha]

Family, friends, football club, being in ones own culture?

Not everyone is ready, able or willing to start a new life somewhere.

And an important detail to remember is that Europeans usually work a lot less than Americans. Due to progressive taxes people tend to choose for more time off rather than more pay.

[eertami]

>And an important detail to remember is that Europeans usually work a lot less than Americans. Due to progressive taxes people tend to choose for more time off rather than more pay.

Yep, anecdotal but time is just so much more valuable in my 20s than the extra (taxed) money. The sweet spot atleast for me is a 3 day work week. Pays enough and it has a decent balance.

I could never trade this situation for a US dev job even for 3-4x the salary.

[CalRobert]

Yeah - but I was referring to Ireland. When headhunters contact me it's weird how the British ones offer surprisingly low salaries compared to Ireland, Germany, Finland, etc. (obviously this is after converting to EUR). I suppose I should have been more specific about which sea I referred to.

And time is incredibly valuable, if only because for most of us enjoying time is the whole damn point of working. I find playing with my kid or traveling or working on side projects much more fulfilling than my day job (which is fine, but ultimately just a job)

[eertami]

Yeah that's fair, but (again, purely personal) I also wouldn't want to move from the Alps to live in Dublin, no matter the salary.

I agree that the salaries are lower, but also tax is a fair bit less in the UK than some EU countries. When I did the math on paying UK taxes vs registering in France for French taxes, the take home would only have been ~50% of net salary on the French system.

[n4r9]

Well, the places where you'd get better salaries than London probably don't have a much lower cost of living. Personally I'd consider working somewhere like California for a couple of years for the experience, but like a lot of Brits I just don't think the US would be a comfortable cultural fit.

[CalRobert]

Right, but I was referring to the Irish Sea. €95k (about $107k thanks to the atrocious euro atm) for that job would be ridiculously low in the valley, after all. As someone who left California for Europe because I wanted a better cultural fit I wouldn't tell Brits they should move to the US. But Ireland appears to offer better salaries, for all of its housing issues is still cheaper than southeast England, and isn't so dissimilar culturally.

TBF sticker shock isn't just for salaries. When I started looking at private health insurance in Ireland I kept double-checking to make sure they weren't quoting weekly rates or similar; I couldn't believe how cheap it was. Similarly, the cost of living is much more than it used to be, but SV dwarfs Dublin (and most other places) for COL.

Also, I just hated coming in to work on Monday morning and being greeted with annoyance that I hadn't read my boss' email from Sunday night. I wasn't too keen on the look of disbelief when I asked for two whole weeks off, either.

Funny enough being a European citizen working in California seems like the best of both worlds. You'd get very high pay but still have a fallback in the event of illness, injury, unemployment, etc. And, of course, some of us have partners who don't work in tech and the salary disparities there are much smaller (or in some cases, favour Europe - at least the northern bits)

[n4r9]

Hah, sorry, I assumed you meant the Atlantic and your username confirmed it in my head. Should have read your link more carefully.

Interestingly, Dublin ranked 19th in the Economist's 2018 Worldwide cost of living report, whereas London came 30th.

[dv_dt]

I don't know about the UK, but there was a recent breakdown of salary of US vs France and though there is a delta in the absolute salaries offert, the gap was almost closed when considering health care, vacation, or other benefits. It's important to consider that the salary can be buying you a lifestyle and some savings, not a high-score.

[digianarchist]

UK salaries are dire. When I moved from the UK to Canada my salary doubled and my expenses in the UK (Brighton) were actually higher than here in Canada.

I could probably double my salary again moving to the US but I don't want to stay in a place that doesn't have a solid route to citizenship. The TN visas being temporary, non-dual intent and not allowing my spouse to work. Maybe my company will transfer me on an L1.

Also, there was as story on the BBC today about a firm that can't hire software engineers even offering 100k in compensation (which is pretty good for the UK). I rarely see postings for positions that pay this much. London salaries seem to cap out at around 60k which is peanuts considering how expensive the city is.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-45891002

[cgh]

What's funny is Canadians often lament their lousy salaries compared to their US counterparts. But I've found that by "US", they really mean "Silicon Valley". It's not a fair comparison.

Also, quality of life matters and should be factored in.

[digianarchist]

I personally would prefer to live in Denver or Austin.

[yitchelle]

I am really amazed at the salaries you Brits are getting. I work in Germany and are getting headhunters calling me. When I question them about the salary, it becomes a immediately blocker as they are not able to match my German salary.

Once an engineer start working on the continent, I would imagine that it would be hard to go back to Britain solely for monetary reasons.

[mirsadm]

I'm a senior software engineer and am earning £70k in Edinburgh. You may be getting underpaid depending on where you are.

[ta-uk-salary]

I'm a mid level engineer earning £45k in Bristol, not including additional benefits and perks. To get that I moved from a small company to a very big software employer in the UK. I've found that UK salaries have a massive range but it's pretty much the big companies paying the top end ones, and then all the rest paying the lower ones.

I have many friends with the same years of experience as myself, and similar tech stacks. They're working for smaller organisations across the south of England and on roughly £28-30k with few/no perks past the standard UK pension payments.

I think a lot of people are underpaid in the UK (including the parent poster), in particular those at smaller companies and smaller consulting agencies. However I imagine it's less of an issue in London.

[theriddlr]

I have 4 years experience and earn £ 45k as an AI dev in a small business who sponsored my work visa. Secured 3 job offers in the same magnitude in diverse roles during my job search spree earlier this year. DevOps, Python data consultancy and this one. I have recruiters bugging me every day because of my polyglot experience but those roles won't sponsor my visa.

On QoL, I have a 2 bedroom flat in a nice area within a 15 min walk of tech employers. This is equivalent to owning prime real-estate in San Fransisco.

[fyfy18]

Depends of course where you are, but it sounds like you are getting underpaid.

In London a senior engineer will get at least £60k (depending on what 'senior' means and how many currently hot languages you list on your CV). I know people in obscure parts of the country, with next to no tech scene, who aren't far off that.

The real money in the UK is in contracting though, or go to the dark side and work in finance.

[jermaustin1]

I've seen some sky high contracting rates in London listed on indeed.co.uk (£85-£120 per hour). I was never sure if they were legit.

Also, it doesn't really matter to me since I'm a US Citizen with no cheap Visa route.

[itscirony]

Eh no one pays per hour here, it's all day rates. But yeah 500-700 is common. You see up to 850 every now and then. 1000 is heard of but .. not so much.

[Herald_MJ]

Perm roles are now (finally) getting better at competing with sky-high contracting rates. Every successive budget also makes contracting a slightly less lucrative situation.

[heidar]

The gap is getting smaller for certain contracts, but it's still huge.

[radzina]

What's wrong with working in finance in London? (I'm genuinely curious)

[lordnacho]

Depends a lot on whether you are in finance. Plenty of people there are on £150k or more coding for front office stuff. My LinkedIn always has someone touting 200k or more roles.

[jackpeterfletch]

Assuming your outside of London?

Principle architect on £150-200k is entirely usual in the smoker.

[itscirony]

UK market is changing a lot.

You can get lead roles for 100k+ at least in London without having to go to finance.

I've seen most mid level roles in London go for between 50-60k.

Outside of the capital is very different.

[gabrielhoch]

Are you in London? If so those numbers seem really low.

Source: I'm a junior engineer being paid in the mid 30s, most of the seniors I know make well north of £60-70k.

[drrob]

I'm the Systems Architect in a small (fifteen people) non-IT consultancy, and I'm on £72k, so I'd say your estimates are bang on.

[test1235]

As a small-town-developer, I'm on ~50k as a boring, middle-of-the-road corporate dev.

[elf4]

To compare I'm mid 20s and I'm making £80,000 working in London as a Software Engineer.

[RoyTyrell]

Would you be able to purchase a home or condo in the Bay area with a $208k salary? If so, what could you get (size, quality, approximity to the main tech areas)?

[Kalium]

Yes. Well, yes if you assume decent credit and some cash saved up for a down payment. The conventional 20% wisdom can be safely ignored as a relic from the 1950s in the Bay.

It's definitely possible to buy a condo or detached house in Oakland for the 400k-700k that would likely be affordable on that salary. The condo, probably a one-bedroom might be a decade or less old, the house much more likely to be older, and probably not insanely distant from BART. This means reasonable access to SF, but annoying to get further south to the peninsula.

[nostrademons]

"The conventional 20% wisdom can be safely ignored as a relic from the 1950s in the Bay."

Curious what you mean by that - too high or too low? What do folks actually put down?

Anecdotally, I've seen both - I have friends that put down ~40-50% down, have heard of foreign buyers paying all-cash on multiple homes, but also have heard of people really stretching with 5% or 10% down mortgages to afford a home.

[Kalium]

To clarify, I mean that the old wisdom that you can only buy if you can put 20% down does not apply in the same sense that it is voices.

50% down is wonderful! But it's likely most engineers would be unable to manage that. The same is true of all-cash.

5% or 10% down is workable, and finding loans compatible with that will not be difficult if you are willing to work lenders familiar with local market conditions. PMI will generally be required, but it isn't likely to be nearly as expensive as people might expect (think 0.5%-1% of total loan amount). Further, odds are against our hypothetical engineer being able to work up a 20% downpayment on a property they want in a short enough timeframe that it does not appreciate out of reach. Finally, the people resting their dreams of homeownership on a major property price crash in the Bay to afford a 20% downpayment should not be emulated, as they are banking on an unlikely event and assuming they will be correctly positioned to take advantage.

In short, high recurring cashflow can reasonably be used to make up for a comparatively low amount of liquid cash, and this is often preferable to the other options people might choose to pursue.

Knowing what people put down with any certainty is not something I am able to do. I can just say that the old wisdom is sufficiently dated that it should be ignored by prospective homebuyers in the Bay.

[trhway]

you were able to do it in 2014 on the $208K. The 2018 equivalent of those $208K - a principal at a hot company is $450-$550 (Google's L5-L6 medians) and it does allow to buy very nice townhouse in MV/PA/SNVL or even a modest home.

[akhilcacharya]

As I noted in another comment he’s for whatever reason only counting cash salary.

I agree with your point though, no matter how bad it makes me feel :(

[freditup]

Fair points, though I don't know how high of an expected value I'd give to 50k of Box options. It's hard for me to imagine that options given that late are that valuable. I'd imagine the equity compensation at lots of other places would be better.

Don't feel bad though, these high salaries typically happen at large companies in extremely expensive areas. So, the money isn't as much as it seems, and you likely will feel like a small cog in a giant-money-making corporation. In other words, chasing the money is often not worth it.

[akhilcacharya]

I think I do fine, but I do already work in a very expensive area at a very large company.

[majky358]

And what's your expenses per month ? I see there are big salaries in the US but when i imagine, i am in central EU, smaller country, there's possibility to get 4-5k € per month in gross, that's around 3,5k in net and cost living even if you have 2/3 rooms flat and other daily stuff would not be higher than 1000€ per month. A have to note, you work 40 hours per week, around 170 hours per month max.

[RhodesianHunter]

In 2014.

[sjg007]

Entry level 150k is a lawyer or quant maybe.

[throwaway487548]

> Principal Architect

This could be a title for guy who decides whether to use React or Vue, webpack or whatever.