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Comment by khuey | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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