[DaiPlusPlus]

I gather that Dyson does actually pay fairly well in the UK, the problem is the UK as a whole really doesn't pay engineers that well - and not just SWE, but chem-eng, civil-eng, mech-eng, and so on.

I'm British myself but I've been living in the US west-coast for the past 7.5 years because I get paid 2-3x more here for the exact same work (heck, even 4x if you don't count London).

The reasons for the disparity are as complex as they are legion - but I believe the size of the market you can sell to matters the most - and with the UK out of the EU the size of the effective market it can realistically sell to has shrunk considerably, so I don't see things getting better at all for the UK eng sector.

...secondarily, the UK is having the same problem the US is having with boomer-generation people still working and occupying senior positions... and housing... which limits opportunities for nominal upward mobility in younger professionals, which in-turn suppresses total-comp. This is especially a problem given the UK's entrenched business culture which I'm not personally a fan of.

[MattGaiser]

A Quora answer from a UK based headhunter on this. He argues that if you are an engineer who wants to make money, you are best off going to Goldman Sachs.

https://qr.ae/pGP3SR

That does not say good things about the engineering culture in the UK.

[DaiPlusPlus]

> about the engineering culture in the UK.

I remember reading an article here on HN within the past year (lost the link, sorry) that ascribed it to traditional/establishment UK managerial thinking that all departments of a company, including engineering, are strictly subordinate to management. Consequently engineers of any level won't be involved in managerial discussions nor to set the direction of the company. Management wants people they can give orders to and won't have to listen to, and who they can sack if management's ideas fail, and keep the rewards for themselves (naturally). Of course the inherent problem with that approach is you lose-out on good ideas for the company's direction from engineering, and miss important early feedback.

Whereas my experience working here in the US, the west-coast, at least, is that eng is part of the decision-making processes at every level - though my experiences are necessarily limited as I only really have direct personal experiences with software-engineering companies - but I see that other west-coast companies do take their own SWEs seriously - take Nordstrom for example, they still run their own e-commerce division instead of just farming it out as other retailers would do - not to mention Amazon.

[Traster]

This is absolutely true. I worked at a large engineering organisation, I was a manager so I could literally list the salary boundaries for different experience levels. Now I work doing the exact same job but in a finance related company. I earn ~6x what I earned in the traditional engineering org. It's insane. Also, the quality of the engineers is no higher, and in some cases comically lower.

The exception to this are companies that pride themselves on their silicon valley culture (Google etc) although some of those still choose to take advantage of the cheap local market.