Hacker News Reader

Comment by spacedcowboy | Hacker News Reader

I work at FAANG, in California, and I moved from the UK to the US specifically because of the money. I’ve been here 16 years now, so relatively senior, but my compensation was just under a half million last year. That’s significantly more than 2x what I, personally, would expect to be getting in the UK.

Regarding taxes, once you’ve taken out state, federal, property taxes and healthcare (just to keep things comparable), I get taxed more in the US than I would in the UK. Property taxes alone run at ~$16k/year.

View on HN

Any advice for someone looking to do the same as yourself? Looking to do a similar move to the US from UK but not sure how to even start.

I wonder if FAANG type companies are the only viable options for the move over to get a VISA.

As for taxes I think California is one of the special cases where taxes are similar to UK levels but of course having a massive salary boost ceiling helps offset that.

I'm not sure I have "advice". The route to getting out of where I was in the UK (my dad was a docker in Liverpool, we weren't well off) was to get to college and then start my own company.

I spent 3-4 years wooing an Apple VP at trade shows twice per year, which was the entire point (the exit strategy) for what we were doing - video asset management in the film industry. This particular VP wanted "Asset management" in photos and figured that video was harder than photo, so we'd be a good fit. We were actually aiming for "Final Cut" but we got "Aperture" instead. It got to the point where he'd send me a calendar slot to appear and demo the latest work/progress on the stuff we were doing at both IBC (Amsterdam) and NAB (Vegas) every year. They eventually decided to buy the (small) company and as part of that we had to come out and work in CA, which to be honest, wasn't too big a problem :)

As for how it started, myself and my co-owner took ourselves out to Amsterdam, walked up to an Apple stand at IBC and said "we've got something we'd like to show you. Can we have a slot with someone with the capability to make the decision ?" This actually worked (!) It still took a few years to persuade him, but I've since been at the company for 16 years. Sometimes you have to take the risk and tell yourself that being told "No" isn't the worst thing in the world - and I was pretty sure we'd be told 'No', but hey, we weren't.

Beautifully spoken. I think I'm still in the being too safe camp from just getting out of university and into a for life corporate job. I like your attitude towards 'no'. Some risks are necessary but the worst outcome being 'no' like you said is really not a bad outcome. Hey, it could even be a good outcome since it lets you start focusing effort somewhere else earlier.

Any chance I could contact you as a newer grad from a similar background?

What is your overall tax rate in the US (if you include healthcare)? If you were earning similar amounts in the UK, your overall tax rate would be ~45%.

I'll post back in a month or so, once the accountant has had the chance to go over the fine detail...

Using some online calculators, the overall tax rate on $500k / £360k actually works out to be exactly the same. But that is before property taxes in the US, although not counting any exemptions (more difficult to compare pensions allowances that you would pay out of gross salary etc.). Also not counting total cost to employer, which could well be higher in the UK.

But seems like overall it would work out to be about the same. Certainly not a huge difference in tax levels.

To be fair, I went back and looked at my spreadsheet (I put it together a few years back), and it was more focused on cost-of-living than tax.

Examples: my health insurance for the family is ~$500/month, my electricity and gas bill (combined) peaked at $1200/month, property taxes are ~$1300/month, all rounded to $100.

I fixed the electricity by installing solar and (later) Tesla power walls, but I can’t do much about the other two.

It still works out, monetarily, for me because (and I’m not sure if I was clear on this before), I didn’t make anything like this sort of money in the uk, and didn’t really expect to.

> my electricity and gas bill (combined) peaked at $1200/mont

That is insane. Why so high? are these normal rates in the US?

I pay £100-£120 for electricity (no gas here).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com