[lacker]

130K USD salary in the Bay Area

It's worth pointing out that this is below FAANG range. A software engineer with zero years of experience in the US should make roughly $160K-190K in compensation at the large tech companies.

https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Amazon,Google,Facebook,Apple...

In the Bay Area, the cost of real estate will dominate your cost of living. If you are happy to live in a 1-bedroom apartment, that entry level FAANG software engineering job will pay for everything you need in life and more. If you want to buy a house for your spouse and three children, it will start to depend much more on precisely where you want to live.

Unfortunately a 5 bedroom house in Mountain View will run you maybe $3.5M. But it depends a lot on where you go though. Look out in the San Jose suburbs and the same house might cost half as much. I don't know much about the London real estate situation so I can't speak to it but if you really want to compare cost of living for software engineers you probably should look specifically at housing, rather than comparing general statistics.

[OJFord]

It isn't really worth pointing that out, because GP's quote was '... is equivalent to £50k in London'. (Which is also below FAANG range, but that's still besides the point.)

[gpderetta]

London housing is expensive, but I think still significantly less than SV.