High cost of living areas benefit SWEs and other in-demand professionals. I imagine they aren’t as good as mid-sized cities for commodity careers due to the cost of living.
Disclaimer here: I don’t know anything about London. And I won’t talk about Brexit, that’s a separate and important consideration.
The higher salary will almost certainly make up for the cost of living.
You just need to do the math. The information is readily available. Find salary information for your role and experience level, and then jump on real estate websites and find out how much rentals costs near some of those employees.
I thought San Francisco was crazy until I did the math. Sure, the rent is $5000 a month or higher, but that’s only $48k a year more than a $1000 a month apartment in the Midwest United States. But you’re looking at a salary difference of over $100k, maybe even $200k, and all that extra money means extra savings that could be taken to a cheaper city when you retire, or help you retire faster.
Not only that, but everything that comes from a factory, and things like plane tickets all stay the same price while your salary is way higher.
I personally think going from a mid-size city to a larger one is appealing. Larger cities have more things to do, more ways to explore niche interests, and better transit.
There are downsides but I think some adjustment is all you need. For one, you have to take your personal belongings seriously. If you have a suburban habit of storing a bunch of stuff you don’t need, you will need to change that. If you can learn to live in a smaller space and enjoy it that’ll go really far in allowing you to benefit from the extra salary without throwing it all away on housing.