I saw a list of European unicorns (on HN in fact I think) and probably about 2/3 were UK/London based. That’s right now. The other ones are scattered around, so this might be your best bet in this part of the world.
As another comment says, you’ll mostly get political comments, so here goes: UK universities, while still very good, are dropping quite significantly in various league tables since Brexit. This is for a range of reasons: non-UK applicants now get a full US-style price, with little support or loans. They are less attractive for academics too. 2/3 of UK unis dropped since the Brexit votes, Cambridge is at a historical low of 7th in the world, behind ETH. Student visas are sth like £1000 per year on top of that. If you think this will continue, and talented and driven young people will choose other countries, this will extinguish, in the long term, the supply of talent to startups and tech.
UK’s attitude to immigration will also be unpredictable. On the one hand, it states that it is keen to attract talent etc, on the other hand visas will be largely awarded based on salaries (maybe not so good for early stage startups). Also there are no guarantees that eg the partner of a visa taker will be awarded one, or that visas will be extended. This is another reason why people might give the Uk a wide berth - and these would be potentially your cofounders, colleagues, investors.
On the flip side, finance was thought to leave London en masse, and didn’t. Banks etc established a presence in EU countries, but most of the business logic staff are actually staying out.
Also UK is at heart a country of innovation, where novelty and innovation are welcome, and entrepreneurship runs in the blood, more so than in many other places. Brexit won’t change that.
So... who knows? I’m an EU citizen, now also British and well settled here. I like it, but probably wouldn’t choose it now.
>On the flip side, finance was thought to leave London en masse, and didn’t
It's a bit early to say, isn't it? Finance is still working under temporary arrangements. Most of the regulations regarding services remain to be negotiated.
Banks moved a skeletal staff to EU offices already a long time ago, and no one else.
As far as regulated business goes, it was clear from the start pretty much that there will be no passporting. The extent of other regulatory burdens remains unclear.
The point is, unless some highly unexpected new regulation comes in, it looks like banks at least kept the business and decision making in London, and only moved enough operational staff to EU to support operations there.
Funds for sure seem to have stay put in London, some moved but this is definitely a minority.
> I saw a list of European unicorns (on HN in fact I think) and probably about 2/3 were UK/London based
While unicorns are an interesting measure (even though it favours the biggest startups - are 2x 500Mi startups "worse than" 1x 1Bi startup?), I always wonder how much of it is some form "language blindness". How much value is on startups or companies that don't get on HN or "don't speak English" much?
Agreed, this was the first proxy that came to mind.
This is probably quite good for VC funded companies, as there is some transparency in this. But, apart from the arbitrary 1bn cutoff, what is a startup? What about more established, but still innovative companies? What about ones that are not VC funded?
London wasn't that great when it comes to tech jobs compared to US/Canada. Starting salary for grads at FANGs is around a third of what it is at large US cities when living costs are no more than 30-40% lower for example. Compared to rest of Europe London is a lot better with notable exception of Switzerland which is a non-EU country. So to me it would seem that membership in EU is not a necessary condition for good tech jobs with competitive pay.
I'd be a lot more worried about the general shift to working from home than leaving EU when it comes to London's importance as a tech center.
I always feel like salary comparisons are a little biased by a slightly US-centric definition of a comfortable lifestyle (e.g. including a car, parking, bigger house requirements, etc) as well as underestimating some built-in benefits of other countries like free healthcare.
Are there good sources out there that would afford a holistic cost comparison of a typical London lifestyle (Tube, 1-bedroom in Zone 1-2, weekend abroad in Europe, etc.) vs SF, LA or NY for instance?
Otherwise agree that long-term the work from home trend could be slightly more concerning, but this won't materialise as soon as most think. There is still a lot of value in being physically close to networks of influence and decision-makers, which in the UK would very much still remain in London.
I get the impression US salaries usually come out way ahead for software people (in other fields, not so much).
The only point where it starts to get questionable is when you consider stuff like, how much would you pay to live in a city that doesn't have needles all over the sidewalks, or, what is the value of living in a society that isn't brutally unfair and visibly dystopian?
Personally, I put a pretty high value on abstract stuff like fraternity and equality, and I feel like it has a really good effect on quality-of-life, but I can also see why people just go for the biggest paycheck. If you're planning on living in a kind of bubble, and just ignore the wider social context, you don't really need to live in a functioning society.
The typical London lifestyle for people with a respectable income -- tech money, not finance money -- is more like living in Zone 3 and working in Zone 1. I think there is a lot of proportionality between standard of lifestyle and income between London and expensive US cities, a similar level of income buying a similar lifestyle (adjusted for local context). A big difference is that high incomes are much more widely distributed across industries in the US than London. If you are a middle manager in a boring industry like publishing, you aren't going to get £150k in London but you can in the US, even outside the big cities. The diversity of people that can afford an upper-middle class lifestyle in the US is much greater. Even dialing back US standards of lifestyle to something contextually appropriate, the kind of work that affords a "comfortable" lifestyle is much narrower in London.
An under-rated feature of US cities is the diversity of occupations that can command relatively high incomes. London does this better than many European cities but it still has a long way to go. Living on a tech salary in London is a bit like living on a good non-tech salary in SF or Seattle. Comfortable in the abstract but there is visibly a tier of people that the city culture values much more.
>as underestimating some built-in benefits of other countries like free healthcare.
If you're at FAANG (which the original post was talking about) then there's little advantage of free healthcare imho. You get top of the line company paid for healthcare. You can see a top specialist in a week with no referrals needed and someone almost as good same day.
Agree direct comparison is tough and multifactored and would be highly individual (how do you put a price on being a 2 hr train ride away from Paris whilst having much better job opportunities than Parisians). However, given that compensation in US is a large multiple higher I think it would be easy to agree it's better overall. For comparison Big Law pays 20-30% lower on average in London vs. NYC and finance pays marginally lower (outside of quant finance where London pays a lot lower than NYC as hedge funds don't have to compete with FANGs for tech talent that wants high pay).
Swiss tech companies find that there isn't enough talent within Switzerland unless they are focusing purely on the Swiss market. Cost of living is higher than London in somewhere like Geneva.
For growing US tech companies, what is the main reason why they want to open a tech office in Europe? If it's just regulatory / business / tax stuff, there's no need to employ developers: it could just be business & legal side. If it's access to talent then London is still great. Perhaps that will decline as it won't be as easy to bring EU citizens over to work there.
I know that the Silicon Valley salaries can be several times higher than in London, but for some Europeans it just doesn't seem super attractive to live and work in the US.
FANG salaries and financial rewards aren't relevant to most software engineers, though the proportion may be higher on HN.
Realistic salaries more generally also can't be taken out of the wider context of living in a country with different social values and funding of them (I'm trying to be polite in reference to the comparative British/European vs USA perspectives of and funding with regard to social support and social disparities).
Switzerland is not that great either I believe. Looked it up last year, I could make ~1.5 times what I make now, but prices are on average at least 2 times higher than where I live now.
I would agree to this about working from home. But this applies every city as well - New York being notable because of the mass emigration during COVID.
London beats any European city by a substantial amount, even including cost of living. I don't see why that would change. Switzerland as you point out has similarly high wages.
I can't see innovation, talent or companies moving to the EU at any stage. It's a regulatory horror show and has massive brain drain to places that actually pay developers reasonable wages.
Developers in Sweden are paid the equivalent of 51k USD. This means even including cost of living such as health insurance, you can make substantially more in the US, London or Switzerland.
Developers in the EU get shafted big time. Free health insurance is not worth half, or even one-third the salary.
Finland, Sweden, and Denmark have a much healthier startup scene than the UK does. You can also go further afield and explore places like Lisbon, which have a growing buzz.
In some ways they have a much healthier startup scene than SV does.
You won't earn $400k - guaranteed until the restructuring and breakup layoffs hit - but you will be happier and less stressed, and your kids will be too. And you won't be living in a city that has become a dystopian nightmare.
If you're all about the money then of course you won't get what's cool about the EU.
And that's fine. Because not only do companies have cultural fit, so do countries.
As a developer in Stockholm in a not particularly exciting big company in a not particularly exciting position I making about $80000. I have daycare for my two kids within 200 meter from my home, and I pay less than $200 per month and kid for that. I have a safe bicycle commute that takes less than half an hour. I have the forest behind the house. In my area kids as young as 7 roam around without direct supervision on their bicycles. Im currently on paid (ok, it doesn’t cover 100% of my salary, but enough) parental leave and will be for another three months. After that I will probably use my legal right to work 80% while the kids are small. And of course free healthcare.
I know that this is far from what everyone wants, and wasn’t what I looked for 10 years ago, but for me, now, it is almost perfect. And I don’t think there’s many places in the world I can live like this.
As a Canadian based in the UK for nearly 20 years, I'm making plans to go back to Canada or join family in the US.
London is expensive compared to Canadian cities, even Vancouver, but pay for tech workers is comparable, if not a bit lower than in Canada. The US has higher pay than both, but it's only about 30% and you have more cost out of pocket, especially healthcare.
Much of the energy in London in the past 20-30 years is driven by EU nationals. A lot of multinationals and tech companies are based in the south-east to access this talent pool. Many companies have whole teams based in London serving the respective European markets (French speaking, Germans speaking, Italian speaking, etc.). This will change in the next decade or so.
London will likely be less attractive as a place to work for Europeans: since they cannot work without organising a visa and depending on the UK government (given also that the government said out loud they would put up EU residents' rights as stakes in their Brexit negotiations);
and likely less attractive as a place for to non-Europeans to work, since they can't get access to Europe via London.
Finding workers for your unicorn startup in the UK will be much more challenging.
I think the biggest impact will be the loss of access to EU workers without hassle. I would have gladly worked for a company based out of the UK in the past; now I assume I am not welcome and can't be asked to find out what would be involved.
I’m not sure what you’ll gain from this question other than political comments.
Some will say no because of possible tariffs the EU could apply to sales into the Eu. It tends to forget that the rest of the world exists.
Some will say yes given the UK now has the ability to reduce taxes, invest in areas that it couldn’t before and provide competitive opportunities which anyone in the EU couldn’t
So it’s really down to the UK to take advantage of its freedom.
> possible tariffs the EU could apply to sales into the Eu.
Isn't that what the 2000 page trade deal they just signed is for?
> It tends to forget that the rest of the world exists.
the EU offers unilateral zero tariffs on all goods except weapons to all Least Developed Countries. Seems a strange way to "forget that the rest of the world exist"
I’m going to be modestly cynical here. I don’t think they will take advantage, not for a decade or three minimum. The Tories were foolish enough that they thought Brexit was a path to prosperity to begin with, and Labour is allergic to anything not owned by the state, at some points proposing expropriations in the power sector which were exciting enough to get pension funds to move money to special vehicles in Asia with treaties saying the UK won’t expropriate their holdings.
The biggest macro thing would be free trade treaties with markets like the US and Asia (obviously including China, but elsewhere too) and streamlining regulatory standards to be efficient - not to be all “oh no the big capitalists will exploit everyone,” just better targeted and less bureaucratic; you can glimpse this in the way the UK was first to approve vaccines for covid.
But all that has to compete with maintaining trade access to the EU and that’s a huge barrier if it remains and a huge loss if it doesn’t.
What’s supposed to make startups and tech more competitive there now? Maybe if the Euro collapses in a banking crisis somehow (?!?) but I’m not seeing it.
That’s certainly the hope of some in the government, though I’m not sure if I’d count on them to execute in supporting it. A lot of services based in the UK/London were there because it was a natural gateway to Europe, and that will no longer be the case since the new deal just struck doesn’t include them from what I understand. I see more downsides than upsides at the moment.
Brexit was about UK nativism. As the USA steps out of its own nativist administration, the UK has fewer like-minded global partners with real shared interests.
I'm an American that lived in London for 2 years in the 90s - the high tide for an American abroad - so that's the POV I bring to your question. The following decades have seen mostly retrograde changes. I cannot imagine it becoming -easier- for a non-native in Britain in the 2020s... can you? Germany and even France now bring a genuine interest in cultivating technology economies by welcoming global investors AND workers. I would put Berlin or even Paris ahead of London for the next decade if you're looking for an exciting soup of technology culture, opportunity, reasonable costs, and relative freedom to operate. I'm not being arbitrary in saying this - the company I co-founded, Spoonflower, runs its European operations out of Berlin.
That said, I loved London and still do - such a civilized place to visit. I was there just before Covid times, and was absolutely amazed by the changes to LHR immigration and Crossrail that allowed me to go from deplaning my transatlantic flight to my hotel in central London in 55 minutes. I can't wait for the city to re-open and Crossrail to be complete. There are few pleasures to equal a walk by the Thames on a long sunny day - perhaps summer 2021?
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As another comment says, you’ll mostly get political comments, so here goes: UK universities, while still very good, are dropping quite significantly in various league tables since Brexit. This is for a range of reasons: non-UK applicants now get a full US-style price, with little support or loans. They are less attractive for academics too. 2/3 of UK unis dropped since the Brexit votes, Cambridge is at a historical low of 7th in the world, behind ETH. Student visas are sth like £1000 per year on top of that. If you think this will continue, and talented and driven young people will choose other countries, this will extinguish, in the long term, the supply of talent to startups and tech.
UK’s attitude to immigration will also be unpredictable. On the one hand, it states that it is keen to attract talent etc, on the other hand visas will be largely awarded based on salaries (maybe not so good for early stage startups). Also there are no guarantees that eg the partner of a visa taker will be awarded one, or that visas will be extended. This is another reason why people might give the Uk a wide berth - and these would be potentially your cofounders, colleagues, investors.
On the flip side, finance was thought to leave London en masse, and didn’t. Banks etc established a presence in EU countries, but most of the business logic staff are actually staying out.
Also UK is at heart a country of innovation, where novelty and innovation are welcome, and entrepreneurship runs in the blood, more so than in many other places. Brexit won’t change that.
So... who knows? I’m an EU citizen, now also British and well settled here. I like it, but probably wouldn’t choose it now.
It's a bit early to say, isn't it? Finance is still working under temporary arrangements. Most of the regulations regarding services remain to be negotiated.
As far as regulated business goes, it was clear from the start pretty much that there will be no passporting. The extent of other regulatory burdens remains unclear.
The point is, unless some highly unexpected new regulation comes in, it looks like banks at least kept the business and decision making in London, and only moved enough operational staff to EU to support operations there.
Funds for sure seem to have stay put in London, some moved but this is definitely a minority.
> I saw a list of European unicorns (on HN in fact I think) and probably about 2/3 were UK/London based
While unicorns are an interesting measure (even though it favours the biggest startups - are 2x 500Mi startups "worse than" 1x 1Bi startup?), I always wonder how much of it is some form "language blindness". How much value is on startups or companies that don't get on HN or "don't speak English" much?
This is probably quite good for VC funded companies, as there is some transparency in this. But, apart from the arbitrary 1bn cutoff, what is a startup? What about more established, but still innovative companies? What about ones that are not VC funded?
Deleted Comment
I'd be a lot more worried about the general shift to working from home than leaving EU when it comes to London's importance as a tech center.
Are there good sources out there that would afford a holistic cost comparison of a typical London lifestyle (Tube, 1-bedroom in Zone 1-2, weekend abroad in Europe, etc.) vs SF, LA or NY for instance?
Otherwise agree that long-term the work from home trend could be slightly more concerning, but this won't materialise as soon as most think. There is still a lot of value in being physically close to networks of influence and decision-makers, which in the UK would very much still remain in London.
The only point where it starts to get questionable is when you consider stuff like, how much would you pay to live in a city that doesn't have needles all over the sidewalks, or, what is the value of living in a society that isn't brutally unfair and visibly dystopian?
Personally, I put a pretty high value on abstract stuff like fraternity and equality, and I feel like it has a really good effect on quality-of-life, but I can also see why people just go for the biggest paycheck. If you're planning on living in a kind of bubble, and just ignore the wider social context, you don't really need to live in a functioning society.
An under-rated feature of US cities is the diversity of occupations that can command relatively high incomes. London does this better than many European cities but it still has a long way to go. Living on a tech salary in London is a bit like living on a good non-tech salary in SF or Seattle. Comfortable in the abstract but there is visibly a tier of people that the city culture values much more.
If you're at FAANG (which the original post was talking about) then there's little advantage of free healthcare imho. You get top of the line company paid for healthcare. You can see a top specialist in a week with no referrals needed and someone almost as good same day.
Deleted Comment
Realistic salaries more generally also can't be taken out of the wider context of living in a country with different social values and funding of them (I'm trying to be polite in reference to the comparative British/European vs USA perspectives of and funding with regard to social support and social disparities).
I can't see innovation, talent or companies moving to the EU at any stage. It's a regulatory horror show and has massive brain drain to places that actually pay developers reasonable wages.
Developers in Sweden are paid the equivalent of 51k USD. This means even including cost of living such as health insurance, you can make substantially more in the US, London or Switzerland.
Developers in the EU get shafted big time. Free health insurance is not worth half, or even one-third the salary.
In some ways they have a much healthier startup scene than SV does.
You won't earn $400k - guaranteed until the restructuring and breakup layoffs hit - but you will be happier and less stressed, and your kids will be too. And you won't be living in a city that has become a dystopian nightmare.
If you're all about the money then of course you won't get what's cool about the EU.
And that's fine. Because not only do companies have cultural fit, so do countries.
I know that this is far from what everyone wants, and wasn’t what I looked for 10 years ago, but for me, now, it is almost perfect. And I don’t think there’s many places in the world I can live like this.
It’s called solidarity
London is expensive compared to Canadian cities, even Vancouver, but pay for tech workers is comparable, if not a bit lower than in Canada. The US has higher pay than both, but it's only about 30% and you have more cost out of pocket, especially healthcare.
Much of the energy in London in the past 20-30 years is driven by EU nationals. A lot of multinationals and tech companies are based in the south-east to access this talent pool. Many companies have whole teams based in London serving the respective European markets (French speaking, Germans speaking, Italian speaking, etc.). This will change in the next decade or so.
and likely less attractive as a place for to non-Europeans to work, since they can't get access to Europe via London.
Finding workers for your unicorn startup in the UK will be much more challenging.
Some will say no because of possible tariffs the EU could apply to sales into the Eu. It tends to forget that the rest of the world exists.
Some will say yes given the UK now has the ability to reduce taxes, invest in areas that it couldn’t before and provide competitive opportunities which anyone in the EU couldn’t
So it’s really down to the UK to take advantage of its freedom.
Isn't that what the 2000 page trade deal they just signed is for?
> It tends to forget that the rest of the world exists.
the EU offers unilateral zero tariffs on all goods except weapons to all Least Developed Countries. Seems a strange way to "forget that the rest of the world exist"
The biggest macro thing would be free trade treaties with markets like the US and Asia (obviously including China, but elsewhere too) and streamlining regulatory standards to be efficient - not to be all “oh no the big capitalists will exploit everyone,” just better targeted and less bureaucratic; you can glimpse this in the way the UK was first to approve vaccines for covid.
But all that has to compete with maintaining trade access to the EU and that’s a huge barrier if it remains and a huge loss if it doesn’t.
What’s supposed to make startups and tech more competitive there now? Maybe if the Euro collapses in a banking crisis somehow (?!?) but I’m not seeing it.
I'm an American that lived in London for 2 years in the 90s - the high tide for an American abroad - so that's the POV I bring to your question. The following decades have seen mostly retrograde changes. I cannot imagine it becoming -easier- for a non-native in Britain in the 2020s... can you? Germany and even France now bring a genuine interest in cultivating technology economies by welcoming global investors AND workers. I would put Berlin or even Paris ahead of London for the next decade if you're looking for an exciting soup of technology culture, opportunity, reasonable costs, and relative freedom to operate. I'm not being arbitrary in saying this - the company I co-founded, Spoonflower, runs its European operations out of Berlin.
That said, I loved London and still do - such a civilized place to visit. I was there just before Covid times, and was absolutely amazed by the changes to LHR immigration and Crossrail that allowed me to go from deplaning my transatlantic flight to my hotel in central London in 55 minutes. I can't wait for the city to re-open and Crossrail to be complete. There are few pleasures to equal a walk by the Thames on a long sunny day - perhaps summer 2021?