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Admin
Perhaps you would consider moving north (to, say, Milton Keynes, or Aberdeen. Look up which one is closest to you on Google Maps).
It is a source of continuing amazement to me that the British (and in the olden days it was simply Southern Gits) immediately assume that, because you have a job, you are entitled to a house. Don't worry about getting the job right, guv, just watch house prices rise. This is one seriously unbalanced and insane economy.
BTW, £20-£25k is roughly speaking the median salary in Britain. Not bad for a starting position where you will probably get in peoples' way and effectively be on a training course for the next six to eighteen months.
I hope your mother loves you, because with this attitude she's going to be in intimate contact for the next ten years or so.
Admin
Dude, no way.
Admin
Ohhh~, That photo is a joke. It is photoshopped. The writing on the sign is hand-writhing font.
Admin
Here, in Belfast, with 5 and a half years post grad experience I expect to gross about £45K this year. Grad strating salaries range from 16K..36K. I can't believe how low some of the figures you're quoting from England are, then again, a decent 3 bed semi here will run you about £260K!
Admin
Place I was on about was Manchester for anyone interested. House prices here are prob cheaper, not sure what average is but varies a lot depending on where you go. I rent a 1 bedroom flat in Salford (West Manchester) for £450 a month which I think is around £70K to buy.
Admin
This would be a great way of advertising provided it was just outside the driveway to some major software developers offices(MS,Oracle,etc). If don't just off any street I would ignore it, done outside a major developer I would look into it provided they were offering better a better salary then that.
Admin
That area is on a road leading into two business parks and also to several large firms (most likely with their own IT departments)... so it is better than advertising on a random street :)
Admin
Meanwhile here in Brazil, a senior developer earning the equivalent 40k USD / year... In England this company, desperate for professionals to pay 100k more than USD/year... That small difference...
Admin
I wouldn't be surprised to find you can live better on US$40k a year in Brazil than you could on £50k in Peterborough.
Admin
Yes - it's designed to poach staff from the local gaffs. For someone thinking about a new dogs knob in the same area, it's ideal
Admin
When I say 40k USD, I am mentioning myself to a TOP wage and in the most important city of the country (São Paulo). This is not a common case this way. And I am certain that with 50k UKL are possible to live very better in England. (For example, the model of possible simpler car costs the equivalent here 12k USD and the official kit of Xbox 360 equivalent 1,4Kk USD..., if it does not forget that in Brazil the highest taxes of world... and different of "world accepted concept" not it lives better with 1/3 of the wage that if would live in England, why somebody that gains 40k USD rude leaves government at least ones 8k only with wage taxes)…
Admin
Other example... Accenture in Brazil pay 18k USD / year for a Senior Developer... Great, no? =\
Admin
And don't forget though, that costs in the UK are much higher as well - the common joke is, "treat it as if the prices were the same". So a Big Mac which costs $3 US, will cost probably UKP 3. The prices don't scale. So you may make UKP 50k, but after the cost of living (house/food/etc) is figured out, you may not be making much more than you were before. Maybe even less.
Silicon Valley jobs pay a lot, but a lot of that pay is spent on living costs - housing's way pricey, gas can be pricey, cars can be pricey (taxes), etc. Sure it's cheaper, but if most of your $100k salary goes to living expenses leaving little disposable income...
There is a "relative cost of living" site out there that tracks these things
Admin
dang, I went and did this and now I see someone else got there first!
Admin
The pay rate doesn't seem that bad until you visit their site, and realize that they deal with EDI. I've worked with EDI enough to know that no amount of pay is worth working for a company who specializes in EDI.
Admin
The US Department of State says that (as of Jan 2007) Oxfordshire is 1.68x as expensive as Washington, DC, which isn't exactly a cheap place either. So while £50k as of that date was $97 500, which would be quite decent in DC (at least without kids), it's actually the equivalent of $58000, which is okay for someone getting out of school with a four-year engineering degree.
Peterborough is cheaper... but AFAIK not dramatically so, and most, if not all, of the decrease in housing costs compared to Oxfordshire would be swallowed up by the petrol duty.
I'm currently working for the US government in the UK, and we get a combination of allowances and tax privileges that effectively bumps up US salaries to the PPP equivalent. If I wasn't an expatriate, I could probably make about what my base salary is now... assuming I find something in Aberdeen, where I'd much rather be than London, still probably a 50% effective pay cut.
Bear in mind that that would be for an IT management position -- to pick one example, I saw a recent ad in New Scientist for a private-sector PhD-level chemical engineering job that was offering at least a third less salary than one would expect for an equivalent position in the US at the nominal exchange rate.
Admin
8 to 13 k, what a joke. You get paid 18k for just doing a data entry job.
I suggest software devleopers who only earn 8k have a word with their employer, they are clearly taking advantage!!
Admin
Admin
Inquire about the proper spelling of "enquire" perhaps?
Admin
LOL, too true
Admin
Are you paid to mangle English? I'm just sayin...
CAPTCHA = smile (you should)
Admin
I'd have to agree, as a UK expat in the US I experience this first hand.
$80-110k is the typical salary range for a Senior Software Engineering position here in St Louis, most fresh grads (comp sci/engineering etc) would make in th $40-55k range. So basically the same as for the UK.
However you can buy a nice, new 3 bedroom house for around $210-250k. Fuel costs $2.90/g (= 26p/l). Taxes are lower, even if I take into account the cost of health insurance. Cars are cheaper (don't have an accurate figure, but were I to hazard a guess ~20% ish), etc, etc.
CAPTCHA: doom, says it all.
Admin
Damn, those figures do make working in the US sound appealing. I'm from the UK but they won't let me in because I don't have a degree (even though I have 7 years experience in software development!).
You lucky Expat.
Admin
Common trick nowadays is to park a car or van there with the sign on the side of it. I see them pulled in to side roads or just off roundabouts, but not for software developers.
Admin
Except you forgot a couple of things:
This all depends of course on your employer and where you live, of course, this is just my personal experience living in both places.
Admin
New buzzword after enterprisy. Now comes univertisy...
Admin
Where were you living?
I've had from 2 - 4 weeks vacation here, and when I was contracting I took 5 - 6 a year. There's no legal minimum, but it's not too hard to finagle more.
Many suburban school districts here are great, including the one I'm living in. You'd only have to send kids to private school if you were living in "up and coming" areas. Not sure that's enitrely different in say, London.
You do have to buy a car. It sucks. You can't walk anywhere.
Crime is an issue in more urban areas, much less so in the suburbs. But the difference between the two is staggering.
Standard of living is subjective, it depends on what you're looking for and where you live. Were I to move back we'd take an effect 40-50% paycut, lose one bedroom and a car. The national murder rate would plumet but I doubt the local one would much different. On the otherhand I could go for walks and ride my bike.
Admin
Oh, wait ... yes, they're really different and annoying.
There's things like not seeing every bleeding job offered as "South-East."
There's things like not seeing every job you take up as working with a company that goes bankrupt, or morphs into a Marketing Organisation, bundling every other piece of shit out there.
There's things like having to maintain code that is, frankly, insane, but because of piss-poor investment and ignorant management over the last ten years or so, is stone-baked into the party pizza that our enterprise-ready software offers. (Typically, they buy it in a fire-sale from a collapsed company in the States.)
And then there's things like suffering a dismal, soul-destroying, day-to-day banal pointlessness that just get to you after seven years of not being in a real computer environment, such as, say, almost anywhere in the USA (with particular reference to Northern California, NY, Boston, and presumably parts of Illinois. Did I forget to mention Washington State? Yes, I did. I forgot to mention Northern Virginia, though. THere you go.)
Me, I look forwards to getting back and resuming my pitiful little life there. At least it will have Quality.
Oh yes. UK schools. They are to laugh. (Mind you, so are Californian schools.)
My parents, and half of their parents, and most of my friends here, were/are teachers.
Don't bother to send your kids to school. Either self-educate, or nail the little fuckers to the nearest mountain-side.
Admin
agreed, the vacation is the US is not as good as the UK, although the UK has the lowest number of legal vacation days in the whole of Europe.
although you possibly won't get healthcare cover with a small employer, you also don't have all that money stolen from your salary each month. We have "National Insurance" on top of our regular Tax (which is high enough) which we have no choice but to pay
i don't think the school system we be much worse. There are both good and bad schools here in the UK and the US. One big problem we are experiencing is the level of education being disrupted by non-english speaking children who are signed up to our English schools from places like Poland, East Africa etc. In the US, i doubt you have these problems.
Unless you live in perhaps one of 2 cities in the UK (London, Manchester) the public transport is pathetic too. You also can not get by without a car here. So much like New York City has it's own underground tube station, London has the same.
Crime rates are higher in the US, and i'd be quite scared about it with the US' lax gun laws. But we do have killings here too.
Standard of living. LOL. The UK has neither the weather, the space, the cheap houses, the big houses, the cheap car fuel and SO MUCH more that the US has.
You are lucky, admit it!!
Admin
My experience with living in Europe vs. the United States is that serious violent crime i.e. murder is higher in the US, but smaller petty crime i.e. pick pockets etc. is more common in Europe. So if you can avoid getting into a situation where a violent crime (mostly urban areas) is likely to occur you are generally better off in the US.
Admin
Looks like a rotating picture. When I go it says on the front page "Put your future in our hands". Kinda scary.
Admin
hi this is best way to search the & finding the gob.
................................
thomas
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