I talked to my friends at FB and Google in London and they all said they were paid less than if they were working in SV.
Of course, we may be too old, and earn less than those with 5 years' experience who have better knowledge of this week's single-page JS framework...
(my sample group includes some pretty dedicated, smart people as well as barely-adequate slackers like myself)
But we do all get decent holidays and sick days, which is a definite bonus.
Cloud plus Agile still seems to be the flavour of the month. There are always opportunities in serious back office/infrastructure programming (Java, C#, C++) in fields like banking, too, but those positions often require relevant experience of their field as well as the programming skills, or at least say they do in the ads.
Whether a 15-year vet would do a better job picking up this week's buzzwords on the go than a 3-year newbie who has never known anything else is a different question, of course.