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Comment by onemorepassword | Hacker News Reader

Written by someone who should really get out in the world more before drawing conclusions.

There are many, many more places outside SF with a high(er) standard of living and about zero risk of being unemployed as a developer. Most of theses places outside the US also have decent social security, public healthcare and other facilities in case you should fall through the cracks at some point. (No amount of ninja rockstar tech skills will protect you against getting burned out or other misfortunes.)

This ignorant exceptionalism is something I really hate about these SF/SV types. I guess it illustrates why so many stick around: not because it's so great, but out of uninformed fear.

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What places outside the US pay salaries comparable to SF/SV salaries? I'm most familiar with London, where the average developer pay seems to be substantially below the average here.

This was about being gainfully employed and not risking unemployment, not about earning as much as possible.

You can make a well above average living as a developer in most places in the world, including London. It's ridiculous to claim that developer pay in London is "below average".

I didn't say it was "below average", I said it was "below the average [in SF/SV]". http://www.prospects.ac.uk/applications_developer_salary.htm claims the average salary for a senior developer is £50,000. I'm going to assume that that's the average across the U.K., so lets allow 33% more for being located in London (33% is what I see commonly thrown around for SF/SV vs. other large US city). If we assume a generous currency conversion rate of 1.6, that works out to ~107k USD. That's extremely low for a senior software developer in the Bay Area. And London isn't any cheaper than SF ...

Really? The developers I know in London earn 500 to 650 pounds per day, which after corporate tax and say 3 weeks of vacation is still at least $140K per year.

The majority of developers in London, and indeed in the rest of the UK, make far far far far less. On the plus side, 3 weeks of vacation? 5 is more common and 6 isn't unheard of.

A couple of places, please.

New York, London, Berlin, to name a few immediately.

Common pattern there is that they are all metropolises with industries requiring tech skills and that additionally have an emerging startup ecosystem.

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