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Comment by hocuspocus | Hacker News Reader

> The reason why every European developer migrates to London is to escape the craziness of the continent.

> Every European developer's final 'dream' is to work in the US tech industry - London is the second best thing to reach.

Sorry but no. I think you're delusional about tech salaries in London. And if you want to sell your soul to the finance industry, there are other places where developers make good money, without the need to live in an overcrowded city.

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Contract rates in London are really rather good, at least in my particular little world (ops/"devops")...

Really, we're talking minimum 500gbp/day and there is so much work you can quit a contract and have another within hours....

that does seem to be rather low for an expensive city and a falling currency.

That's an avg of 10k a month, then add 6% on that if you're on flat rate vat scheme. Take off 20% if you don't have a ninja accountant and with the (now sadly, over) dividend rules and such you're still looking at a pretty healthy 8-9k take home a month..

Even in london where a 2 bed 30 mins from the center is about 2k/month that's not exactly hard living is it?

As I said 500gbp/day is not much. I see a lot of IT people earning this is Germany, especially in the Devops field. With something like that you would get an average qualified person hired in, say, Munich.

That is my impression as well. My rate is currently around 445gbp/day for backend development in Berlin and it is far from being at the high end (according to a yearly survey run by gulp.de). My total monthly expenses including rent, health insurance, etc. are below 2k gbp. I do pay higher taxes though.

TIL I basically work for free. But then again, I hardly do any work, so it seems to even out in the end.

What's the situation like there with having your own business vs as things are here with a uk ltd company, or do you work via an umbrella corp?

As far as I know, setting up a "UG" is easy enough. I'm registered as a freelancer ("Freiberufler") with the tax authorities. I guess that's like a sole proprietor? Upside is that I don't pay corporate tax (because there's no corporation). Downside is that I pay taxes on all my income instead of keeping most of it in the corporation.

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