In complete terms it's more like 3x that $78k figure.
The salary would be bad enough. The big US tech companies are nearly all publicly traded. So that $142,000 is really $250,000 or more in total compensation. The UK, and Europe more broadly, not only can't compete with the salaries, they can't compete with the ability to dish vast stock compensation thanks to the immense market caps that Google et al. have. If you're really great at something, Google can trivially give you millions of dollars in stock if it makes sense. What company in Britain can compete with that?
The skeptics will say something about healthcare in the US as a counter. The top 1/4 in the US have easy, fast access to some of the most elite medical care on the planet. And if you're making $142k in salary in the US, your healthcare is entirely paid for.
There are only two strong counters, one is that the quality of life can be very high in parts of wealthy Western Europe, and the other is cultural (preferring one culture over another).
The salary would be bad enough. The big US tech companies are nearly all publicly traded. So that $142,000 is really $250,000 or more in total compensation. The UK, and Europe more broadly, not only can't compete with the salaries, they can't compete with the ability to dish vast stock compensation thanks to the immense market caps that Google et al. have. If you're really great at something, Google can trivially give you millions of dollars in stock if it makes sense. What company in Britain can compete with that?
The skeptics will say something about healthcare in the US as a counter. The top 1/4 in the US have easy, fast access to some of the most elite medical care on the planet. And if you're making $142k in salary in the US, your healthcare is entirely paid for.
There are only two strong counters, one is that the quality of life can be very high in parts of wealthy Western Europe, and the other is cultural (preferring one culture over another).