| I moved from the UK to the US six years ago. The short answer is yes, but the nuances are interesting. The US has higher income variance, if you're on the 90th percentile of the income distribution you're going to be earning a higher multiple of the median than in the UK (about 2.6 in US vs 2.0 in UK, source as below.) Software engineers in the US are also higher up the income distribution than in the UK. In the UK in 2017, the [1] median salary for full time 'Programmers and software development professionals' was £41,314 vs £28,759 for full time employees. In the US [2] it was $97,770 for full time 'Software Developers and Programmers' vs $37,690 for full time employees. This puts UK software developers just above the 75th percentile and US software developers just above the 90th percentile. Then there's another step up when looking at big Silicon Valley tech companies, particularly for senior engineer roles and especially the post-senior engineer roles which don't really exist outside of the the big tech companies. Another big difference is that the GBP has depreciated significantly against the USD over the past 10 years. It went over 2.0 in 2007 and is now down to 1.3. Working at a big tech company in Silicon Valley now feels a little like working for a bank in London before the 2008 crash. [1] https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwor... [2] https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm |