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Comment by christophilus | Hacker News Reader

This is true. I recently applied for a job in the US and one in the UK. In the US, I got a ridiculously good salary offer. The UK job's compensation was maybe half what the US job offered. My cost of living is also lower than the folks in London, so it's just perverse no matter how you slice it.

I honestly don't think it will last, though. Economically, it just doesn't make sense. My recommendation to any of my fellow US developers: save as much as you can while the money is good.

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To be honest, I think if anything the trend will continue and the salaries will go up. There will still be a shortage of highly skilled developers who demand higher salaries. At my company we've been trying to hire a senior frontend developer for the last 6 months; it's hard, especially outside of major tech areas. Most people come unprepared, lie in their resumes, and suffer intensely from the Dunning Kruger effect. I don't see this trend of lying to get the job that pays good money to stop anytime soon. Out the 1.6M programmers employed in the US, I think a large portion still have the job because companies are desperate to hire, but don't know how hire for this industry.

I disagree, but time will tell. I think that at some point companies will realize that it's 2018 and remote work is a (mostly) solved problem. Once that realization hits, the high salaries are going.

I've worked remotely for the past 3 years. If you're open to remote work, the challenge isn't finding qualified employees. The challenge is turning off the firehose of qualified applicants once you post a job listing.

Have you seen the revenues? Have you seen the stock prices? Besides that they obviously can afford to keep raising salaries to compete with each other, they also have to keep raising salaries to compete with the devs. Market entry has such a low barrier, they have to essentially pay every developer to not simply take their knowledge, walk out the door, and set up their own shingle.

US Tech also makes a lot more money than UK tech. Starting with the big ones, ending with the amount of investment funding the area has.

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