London is a really unattractive place when you consider salary vs housing affordability. Most of the high tech salary goes straight into the pocket of landlords. And you can forget buying.
But London is where most of the innovative high-paying firms are. So tech workers are in a bind: move to London for a nominally high-paying tech job but get fucking hosed on rent and travel costs, or stay in the regions and work in a lower paid, less interesting firm. There isn't much real difference to your standard of living.
It's not just the absolute level of rent either; it also goes up faster. People don't want that kind of liability, you need a raise just to stay in place, and raises aren't forthcoming lately.
And it's not easy to get a London-tier salary while working remotely from rural Yorkshire or something. They've been tamping down hard on that kind of thing.
The housing market is rigged for boomers and it's strangling Britain's growth. Forget freedom of movement with Europe; I'd like freedom of movement inside my own fucking country first.
(And all of the above sounds similar to NYC and SF -- it is, but London's salary upside is nowhere near as high as those places. And Americans have several big metropoles to choose from, we only have the one.)
But London is where most of the innovative high-paying firms are. So tech workers are in a bind: move to London for a nominally high-paying tech job but get fucking hosed on rent and travel costs, or stay in the regions and work in a lower paid, less interesting firm. There isn't much real difference to your standard of living.
It's not just the absolute level of rent either; it also goes up faster. People don't want that kind of liability, you need a raise just to stay in place, and raises aren't forthcoming lately.
And it's not easy to get a London-tier salary while working remotely from rural Yorkshire or something. They've been tamping down hard on that kind of thing.
The housing market is rigged for boomers and it's strangling Britain's growth. Forget freedom of movement with Europe; I'd like freedom of movement inside my own fucking country first.
(And all of the above sounds similar to NYC and SF -- it is, but London's salary upside is nowhere near as high as those places. And Americans have several big metropoles to choose from, we only have the one.)