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Ask HN: Relocating from London to Silicon Valley for a higher salary at 35?

35 years old DevOps Engineer in London specialized in Cloud tech - Azure & GCP, earning around £160k before tax with contracting - that's $130k after tax converted to dollars. For this amount of money I'm working my back off and putting in many hours, no job security, so I might as well move to Silicon Valley or New York to maximize my earnings. I own a flat in London and I'm married, no kids.

Just recently started researching the Silicon Valley culture and I'm worried about two things -

1). Landing a job as a newcomer that will pay me more money than London adjusted to the COL. +30% more "profit" would be worth the hassle. Am I shooting too high?

2). Would I have any issues getting such an amount at 35? Maybe 20-somethings are percieved as more productive in the Valley?

I don't have a work visa and my plan is working my way towards the O-1.

3). My guess is that through H-1B I wouldn't be able to achieve my desired rate due to international competition - is this accurate?

With L-1 I'd have to go permie in the UK first, meaning accepting a significant pay cut.

I'm a UK citizen. Any insights about moving from UK/London to Silicon Valley appreciated.

20 points greedythrowaway 5 years ago 28 comments

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