> You can try your luck elsewhere, but it's hard to think of where exactly

Huh? Manchester, Leeds and Newcastle have plenty of work, you get paid rather less (surprisingly not much less last 5 years - but that's been London rates falling rather than north rising), but keep significantly more in your pocket. The people and beer are nicer in the grim North too.

Aside from during the peak of dot con and y2k contract rate insanity I've avoided London like the plague. It's a great place to visit for a show, but live and work?

I never understood the appeal of earning 25% more, but having 50-70% less in your pocket after housing and travel. It's the only UK city where the pollution is palpable, and constant.

London is nice as long as you live on the outskirts.

When I first moved to London, I lived in Farringdon and then Marble Arch, and the first couple of years it was awesome to be able to just step outside the door and be in the centre of town (at Marble Arch I literally had two minutes walk to be on Oxford Street, or could cross the road and be in Hyde Park). But the pollution was certainly awful - it's the only place I've lived where your snot would be black at the end of the day. And then I moved to Barnes (South West London - very leafy, very affluent), but when we decided to buy it was too expensive, and we ended up moving to Croydon (zone 5, South). I don't think I'll ever move closer in towards the centre again. If I were to consider moving elsewhere, it'd be either further out, or along the edge of London somewhere along one of the major train lines.

You get the option of working in the centre when it makes sense, it's far more relaxing, greener, far less pollution, and far cheaper.

I can see the appeal of moving somewhere else entirely, but this is a decent compromise for people who want easy access to London but don't want all the downsides of the centre.

Hm, if commuting, I prefer to live somewhere else entirely, the outskirts of London seem to have none of the advantages (places to go, things to do), but all the disadvantages.

It is close enough to have the places to go and things to do, and the high paid jobs, but far enough to not pay central London house prices. To me that's highly attractive. Especially now that I rarely need to commute.

25% more is a bit of an understatement.

A web developer outside of London could expect 40/50K pa where as in London you could earn 600 a day contracting.

That's 2-3 times the money, plus with so many jobs you don't have to worry about becoming trapped.

Not really. Comparing contract with perm is not really a workable comparison.

There's plenty of web dev contracts in the North, but rates might be 400 - 500 a day.

In permanent roles the bump, if any, seems to be around 25%. If you're more junior in PHP the perm roles are similarly salaried in London as outside it (at least going on a friend who complained about this a lot a year or two ago).

To be fair, I live in Newcastle and I know people contracting for web dev here who charge 500 pounds/day. But then again, my partner is a salaried web dev and she makes 32k. Contracting does have its downsides though.

The contracts in London are often 6-12 months for big companies, for agencies less. However there are so many the is little risk of ever being without work.

A graduate developer at a finance company would earn over 40k...

There are so many now. The big risk with contracting is that when times get tough, suddenly everything dries up, while at the same time jumping ship and going back to permanent work gets hareder. If contracting, you need to factor in the risk of a recession by building up according reserves, so you need to make accordingly more in good times.

You certainly can still do extremely well, but the risk is certainly there.

I got the hell out of London ten years ago, moved to the south West, started a web development company.

We're now 40 people and we're struggling to hire developers fast enough - we mopped up the local talent, and we're now hiring EU nationals mostly, as while we offer a relocation package etc., the cost of living here is a fraction of London - but folks coming from London usually want a London salary - and aren't willing to negotiate. So they stay in London and moan about their rent trap, while most of our employees now own their homes.

Shrug. Inertia's a bitch.

"If you're tired of London, you're tired of life" is the usual response to that. Preferences differ. I'd hate to live in London for the long term (I'm probably tired of life) but I have friends who live there, love it, and wouldn't leave unless they absolutely had to. The rent is just something you have to put up with.

That quote is from the 18th century. Things change.

If you're tired of London that is because it's overcrowded, it takes forever to commute, it's noisy, it's expensive and it's required of your to get at least tipsy every Friday.

> now own their homes

Most londoners don't consider that a plus if it's in the middle of nowhere with no culture or anything to do.

And most Londoners consider Bristol to be the middle of nowhere. I rest my case.

Would like to move to Bristol, but doesn’t seem to be enough contracting work doing python to sustain a career.

> with no culture

Everywhere has a culture. It's more accurate to say you don't appreciate other cultures.

Most londoners I know who rent constantly whine about how they can't afford a deposit (yet are unwilling to consider moving further out than zone 2 to save on rent so they'll be able to save up for one).

The gains from moving further out are all priced in through increased cost of public transport, so on top of the lower quality of living and longer commute, you generally end up paying the same.

Some places that is true, but not nearly all. The "premium" I used to pay to commute in to central London vs. if I'd needed only a zone 1 travel card used to be about 600 pounds a year. 50 pounds a month. For that I was able to get a 3 bed house with garden paying less a month than co-workers renting tiny one bed flats or even a room in a flat-share in many cases.

When I moved out to zone 5 from zone 2 (well technically 3, but my best route was get the bus to a zone 2 station), the combined cost of the premium on my travel card and mortgage/insurance/other costs was still lower than the 2 bedroom flat we used to rent.

The thing is, there is nowhere "cheap" in zone 1 or 2 that people with options want to live in, but once you get further out, you have a lot more choice. I certainly could end up paying more - I'm within a short bus ride from some of the most affluent areas in England (parts of South Croydon is full of large estates that are dirt cheap by London standards, yet within commutable distance to central London).

The quality living for me is far higher here, and the travel distance to central London is low enough that when I need to commute in I often had shorter commute than people who lived in zone 1 or two but happened to live on the "wrong" tube line.

You can't post that without contact details in your profile.

> I do wonder whether people feel trapped.

Whether they feel trapped I'm not sure but a girl I used to date worked in the city and she was definitely trapped.

She worked for a large bank in the finance sector and felt she had to play keep up with her colleagues and more importantly her managers on the social scene. This meant that she would often go out to dinner/drinks a couple of times a week. Obviously you need to dress smartly to work in the city, so had a clothes bill too. Lunches, make up, hair dos, nails, yoga and so on. It all adds up

She was probably earning somewhere in the region of £50k, which isn't bad I guess, but used credit cards and loans to keep up appearances.

I felt that she was locked in, with no choice but to continue working in London to earn the money to pay the bills she couldn't afford.

This is incredible representative of the London I know. 20-somethings earning huge salaries compared to other people of their age around the country, but with a much lower quality of life once you remove the 'social' (drinks/eating out) aspect.

I was holding down four jobs to "keep up" - the day job, freelance development, nightclub impresario, electronics refurbishment and resale.

It worked. I found myself rubbing shoulders with a-listers, throwing parties for royalty, launching gallery exhibitions, renting out the likes of Chinawhite, Boujis, roof gardens, raffles, blah blah.

Then I realised my head was disappearing up my own arse, that I was always exhausted, that I wasn't actually enjoying this, that I had a cocaine problem, and I hated these shallow, boring people who I was becoming one of.

Sometimes the only way to discover the true nature of something or yourself is to take it to its absolute extreme. You can muddle along in the middle forever, until you drown or just get bored of swimming.

London is perfectly fine on a 50k salary, provided you don't try to keep up with people who earn 3-4 times as much. It sounds to me that she was on an entry level or clerical/secretarial position (nothing wrong with that), but that's not what is usually associated with people who work in finance. The solution there is not necessarily to move out of London, but simply realize that in banks in London you are going to be surrounded by people earning >150k (and often much more) and there is no point in trying to keep up with them on a 50k budget.

My ex works in HR in a major bank. You'll be surrounded by people earning >1.5m, who complain about how they're going to make their ends meet because their bonus this year was only 150k (my ex has had to deal with that exact complaint; said person was worried how he was going to afford the second nanny).

I absolutely agree with you, but I also regularly get to hear about the pressure people are under to keep up appearances, and I'm not surprised a lot of younger people feel they can't resist it.

It's made worse by the toothless UK working time restrictions (look forward to those being gutted even more with an EU exit) that are abuse relentlessly in law and finance and result in staff that basically don't have time to recognise how messed up their lives are and/or time to find a way out. The amount of misery my ex has dealt with both personally (she is now in HR because while it's still tough, it's a walk in the park compared to her previous job as finance lawyer at one of the magic circle firms), and in her current job (including people regularly having breakdowns in the office at rates I've personally never seen anywhere I've worked) makes me totally unsurprised at younger employees at these places having problems finding ways to cope.

> It's made worse by the toothless UK working time restrictions (look forward to those being gutted even more with an EU exit) that are abuse relentlessly in law and finance (...)

I assume you're referring to the EU Working Time Directive, which pretty much every major employer requires their staff to opt-out of when starting a new job?

It's a pointless EU law that just adds more paperwork to the recruitment process.

It is with very limited exceptions illegal to require your staff to opt out, even in the UK, and the same restrictions applies to taking punitive actions against staff that chooses to opt back in.

EDIT: For my part I've never worked for anyone asking for an opt-out, and I'd never sign an opt-out, and I would sue if I suspected an employer punished me for not signing an opt-out.

EDIT2: Here's the UK government advice on the opt-out [1]. Note: "Your employer can ask you to opt out, but you can’t be sacked or treated unfairly for refusing to do so. You can opt out for a certain period or indefinitely. It must be voluntary and in writing." Additionally there are exceptions for a very small set of types of workers [2].

[1] https://www.gov.uk/maximum-weekly-working-hours/weekly-maxim...

[2] https://www.gov.uk/maximum-weekly-working-hours/overview

Yes, that's the law, but as I mention in response to another comment, you only defer to the letter of the law if you have/want an adversarial relationship with an employer.

Most major employers include the waiver as part of their onboarding process, and if you refuse to sign, although legally they cannot do anything, in practice you're going to start off on the wrong foot with that employer.

Likewise, if you turn around to your manager and refuse to work more than 48 hours (having not signed a waiver), although legally they cannot punish you for that, it's hardly going to help your career.

If an employer is asking me to opt out, they have already started off on the wrong foot with me, in which case I'm very pleased to have legal protections.

If the UK hadn't demanded the opt-out it wouldn't be pointless at all.

A restriction on working hours is only going to be useful if you have, or aim to create, an adversarial relationship with your employer.

People are, by and large, aware of what they are getting into when they start a new job, and working hours are a factor in most remuneration calculations.

If the working hours are simply too much for you, then you should find a different job.

I'd say that, if the employer doesn't cover a need with a full-time employee working a healthy amount of time, he/she should hire another employee, full or partial time.

Thus, unemployment is reduced, more money is put into the economy and the full automation apocalypse is delayed for a little bit. And if another employee can't be paid, then that business is not really viable and should close.

And for anyone expecting shorter working hours to lead to the apocalypse: They should consider that France, the canonical UK example of "too strict" working time restrictions, for the vast majority of the last 50 years or so have had a higher GDP per capita than the UK (their GDP per capita was lower for a few recent years, but then they overtook again).

If you actually believe this, count yourself lucky to be so privileged. Given all the shit I've heard from HR people over the years, it is a hopelessly naive viewpoint.

£50k is a pretty awkward salary to live on in London.

It's enough to live quite comfortably in a house/flat share, or if you share a single bed apartment with a partner, but if you live independently (in a studio or single bed) you're still firmly in "mere existence" territory, unlikely to be able to add much to savings each month.

£50k after taxes (and student loan) is ~£2750/month.

If you're prepared to live South of the river (which contrary to popular belief isn't the end of the world) flat prices are in my area (SE4) around £800-1200/month which if you're sharing can still leave you over £1500/month disposable cash.

For a decent one bed flat anywhere in Zone 2/3 you're looking at £1500pcm. Let's be charitable and say that includes bills and council tax.

That leaves £1250pcm disposable. At least £100 will go on a Travelcard. If you're sensible, you'll be putting some money away in a pension as well. Let's say another £100 of net income.

That really doesn't leave much to lead a lifestyle commensurate with a young professional earning £50k. Yes, you can scrimp and save, but even then you're not going to be putting more than £500 away in savings each month.

At that rate, it would take you upwards of 10 years to save even a measly 10% deposit on a £600k property (which, at this rate, would get you an even worse one bed flat than the one you're renting).

Not sure what you can get for £800 a month, but I doubt it's a flat, even in Brighton it will cost you that much, plus the travel expense.

Plenty of flats in South London for that price:

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/find.html?search...

Cheapest 1 bedroom I could find is 725/month.

Here's a 1 bedroom for 750/month ca. 10 minutes walk (or a choice of 3 buses) from East Croydon station, zone 5. The 50/month drop from 800 makes up for the majority of the increased cost over a zone 1 travel card:

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/property-4164892...

That first property is an HMO. It looks like they've turned a small house into five 'studio flats', with a tiny communal kitchen.

The second, judging by the photos, is a small living room which has been converted into an 'open plan' studio. Doesn't even look like there's room for a double bed.

Both are in Croydon, so you get all the downsides of living in London, with virtually none of the upsides.

There are doubtless other catches to both properties, as decent properties never make it online.

Neither property is remotely commensurate with a young professional earning £50k.

The first one is not one property, but two pages of results with a wide range of different properties. I don't know which one you are getting first - the one I'm getting first does not match your description.

The second one is a one bedroom flat. The last picture is the bedroom, at the back of the house. I live down the road from that row of flats. They're not fantastic, but they're proper 1 bedroom flats of perfectly adequate quality.

> Both are in Croydon, so you get all the downsides of living in London, with virtually none of the upsides.

From that flat it'd take ~25 minutes to be at London Victoria. ~25-30 minutes to be at London Bridge. ~20 minutes to Clapham Junction. Having lived about as centrally as you can in London, yes, it takes you longer to get "to the centre". But if you are going somewhere specific, it's not at all given that you won't get there in the same amount of time.

> Neither property is remotely commensurate with a young professional earning £50k.

In London, they can choose between something like that, and have money to save and invest for the future, or they can spend all their money now, and screw themselves over. A "young professional" who can't deal with living like that for a few years does not have any sympathy from me - they are spoiled.

There's a TV miniseries about that very subject called Wired.

I think using percentages obscures the actual numbers. My experience is that in London the money left at the end of the month may be a smaller percentage of your salary than it would be elsewhere - but it's more money, which is what matters.

There are plenty of areas within London that comes out better. Croydon, for example. Zone 5. Still expensive if you need to get in to zone 1, but property is far cheaper, helped by an unwarranted bad reputation (Croydon is safer than most of the central boroughs of London, for example, and incomes are above the London average).

A large part of the issue is that younger people are chasing the top jobs in London without being willing to deal with typical London commutes. I have had plenty of co-workers who insisted on living in zone 1 or 2 because they could not bear the idea of moving out to a place like Croydon, despite knowing I was paying less on a 3 bedroom house with a garden than the typical cost of a studio in the areas they have chosen to live in.

In fact, I pay less on my mortgage now for that 3 bed house with a garden than I used to pay for one room in a flat share in zone 1 when I first moved here 14 years ago. Sure, it takes me 45 minutes to get to a central London train station. But I'm 20 minutes walk from one of the largest commercial centres in the UK (Croydon has the 3rd or 4th largest shopping area in South East England).

I have a hard time feeling sympathy for most of these people. Sure, there are lots of people that genuinely struggle in London, but the high prices in large parts of London largely reflect that people willingly put an extremely high premium of being within minutes of a central tube station.

Note that a lot folks genuinely enjoy living in large cities.

There are other large cities. There are even small cities which grant all the amenities and few of the drawbacks of their larger brethren.

Not all the amenities. Where else has the same range of bands playing as frequently as in London? The same range of stage plays? Where else can you find such big communities for even quite obscure hobbies? (I play Netrunner)

Brighton, bristol, etc.

> "You can try your luck elsewhere, but it's hard to think of where exactly, and you know for a fact there's this huge network that's the big city."

Depends on what type of work you're looking for, but there's plenty of IT jobs along the M4 corridor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M4_corridor

I'd also suggest looking into Oxford, Cambridge and Manchester.

And Bristol and Bath, and even Cornwall where tech grants grow on trees - honestly, demonstrate a half decent idea and they'll match your investment up to £100k.

There are huge incentives for technology workers and entrepreneurs outside of London, but those already in London are trapped within its diamond dome - I left for good a few days after realising I hadn't been outside of the m25, other than abroad, in several years.

I run a software company and our MD is the queen of government grant (she's ex-local government). Interesting to hear that tech grants grow on trees in your neck of the woods - can I e-mail you a couple of questions?

Cornwall isn't my neck of the woods - I just know that my retail clients there have often paid for our services through a government grant. I think it's EU money intended to stimulate growth in remote areas.

Right - okay interesting I'll get my Google-fu on

Bristol and Bath are in the M4 corridor.

Out of interest, what sort of employees are you looking to hire at the moment?

Frontend and backend (php7) engineers. Modern stack, aws.

AWS contractor can earn up to 800 per day for a 6 month contract in London at the moment...

Thanks.

Also Brighton is quite nice. Good amount of tech jobs, awesome music/culture scene and it is quite close to London, making it possible to commute daily.

It's good, though the jobs aren't hugely varied, there is quite a lot of php, there used to be a lot of flash (I assume they have moved to JS now).

Techwise a little bit of a monoculture, though maybe that is the same as the rest of the UK?

Thats right, but there is also big game industry around the town and quite some high tech stuff (I used to work for company making embedded databases in aerospace/defence market) and hardware companies.

I live in Cambridge. The price/wage ratio is becoming even worse here.

I'm only in London twice a month, and I still pay ~£2000 a year for train tickets to cover an 80 mile journey due to having to travel at peak times. The concentration of jobs in London, for as far as I can see no particularly good reason, is utterly frustrating.

In related news, if anyone is looking for a 100% remote Ruby (and willing to learn most other things) developer, get in touch.

... and the rest! I'm looking at commuting from the Midlands to London and the annual season ticket is pushing £8k!