I'm not doubting it's been a good couple of years for folks in London, but I'm sitting on some pretty good salary data and the density of high compensation packages for both new grads and senior hires is still an order of magnitude bigger in SF, Seattle and NYC (coming in third).

Most people are really underpaid and would be shocked to learn what is available. If you went to the right schools with the right internships you shouldn't ask for anything less than $225k to start off with and on the more experienced side, I know a few dozen engineers in NY with total comp packages at or above $450k.

I worked in Finance before I worked in Software and the situation was much the same -- top talent came from London for higher salaries.