[Mandatum]

My entire network makes more than that in Dev and Arch roles in that part of the world. None of them have to live in London for them either.

Either you're underpaid, or C++ has been commoditized to the same point as PHP. If you value money over language, I'd switch. But given quite a few in my network are Java developers, I doubt language is the issue here.

[gambiting]

Well then I have no idea how you and your mates do it. I know people who are in very senior positions at FAANG companies as well as couple big financial firms in the UK and not a single one of them makes over £100k/year. Two of them with PhDs in big data analytics and working in the industry. My own salary might be excused by being in the North East, but they work all over the place, in and out of London.

[Mandatum]

It sounds like you've got an academia background so if they're research or R&D positions, that might be why. Because they're competing in an already saturated field. Or there aren't many jobs but lots of graduates keen to work in your subfield who will do it for lower pay because they enjoy the work.

If you moved into in-demand fields, service delivery or consulting, you'd see 100k GBP as normal for seniors. The fields only require mastering the tools or domain and the ability to work with business stakeholders. That is from my experience, the majority of the software world.

[comp_throw7]

Again, senior technical contributors at UK FAANG offices do not make under 100k/yr in total compensation; see: https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html?track=Software%20Engineer

I don't know what your friends told you, but either you misunderstood them, are talking solely about base (and see my other comment for why >100k base also exists in those roles), or were given inaccurate information. 100k GBP would be 45-60% of the credible range for senior engineer compensation at Google/Facebook in the UK (and maybe 55-70% for Amazon). That's so far outside of the standard compensation bands that other explanations are more likely.