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by hogFeast 1798 days ago
"crisis" in UK terms...London is moderately expensive in international terms but has come down significantly over the past ten years as price growth levelled off, Bristol is rising but still pretty cheap (and it is rising because so many companies are moving there), Brighton is expensive but there are lots of other commuter options, Edinburgh (the city I am most familiar with) is not expensive...it is up a lot because of AirBnb, HMO conversions, and the fairly strong economy...but it isn't expensive in absolute terms (you can rent a nice two bedroom place in the city centre for £1k/month) and it is nowhere on the map in relative terms. Buying is a bit more complicated...but, right now, renting in the UK makes more sense.

One thing to bear in mind too, places like Edinburgh and Bristol have huge gaps...you can easily find somewhere in Edinburgh that is £400/month for one person, the area won't be great, I have lived in those places and the crime is usually drug-related so it isn't actually too bad (nothing compared to London, nowhere close) but there are options.

So this is a post about people coming to the UK to do, relatively, high paid work...this is nothing like most big cities in the US, Tokyo, Switzerland, Toronto, Sydney or Melbourne...London is pretty expensive, but it has come down a lot and isn't a "crisis" imo (if you don't mind living outside London and commuting...I will admit Essex is quite terrible though). As an example, lots of people coming here from HK, and (from what I have heard) they can't believe how cheap property is here.

1 comments

London is absurd place when it comes to costs. It's very similar to NY, but then to find a tech job that would pay £100K+ is virtually unheard-of except some niche jobs in financial sector or super-ultra-specialised in tech companies. The same job with Google pays 2-3 times less than in the US..
> The same job with Google pays 2-3 times less than in the US..

Is that the case? (a) How does Google justify that internally? (b) Doesn't it cause a huge amount of ill-feeling internally? (c) If that is so why are there people elsewhere in this thread saying that FAANG jobs pay very well in London?

People transfer but whilst your base salary is adjusted, RSUs and options generally stay the same.