I'm not going to underestimate the dedication of football fans. And I do feel someone could get by on £150k if they had to. Obviously they'd need to live an ascetic lifestyle, eating only porridge and drinking only lukewarm water. With luck they'd make it through winter.

> someone could get by on £150k if they had to

I know you're kinda joking, but it's just so HN :)

It's more than I make, and I own a house! The idea that someone could be a big football fan, but would refuse to take a job making less than the equivalent of that magic $250k a year seems like such a misalignment* of values. I agree that you see it a lot on HN, and elsewhere.

* (pun not intended, but sort of proud of it now)

Of all the ML/AI researchers I know (20+), none of them are football fans. I suppose it could happen but I have not seen it.

I wore their away kit for Halloween this year :D

But I suspect they're just like all the others -- looking for credentialling where it doesn't yet exist.

[Guess we'll find out... not holding my breath for what would be a dream for us both]

You must not know any Indian researchers then. Almost every one I know supports a football club

Huh, I do not. I guess most of the people I know in this space I knew prior to 2015 and the field was not as widely popular back then.

They'll be given a couple of server racks with GPUs for their tiny London apartment, that should do.

This comment made my day.

Hiring manager here!

While living off of porridge shouldn’t be necessary, I will say the porridge at the training ground is absolutely top tier.

This is an exceptional salary for the UK.

Plus, jobs like this are for people that have a connection with the organization. I can't see myself doing anything, however good the pay might be, for Arsenal. Would be very glad to do that for Chelsea.

Having done a bit of consulting for Chelsea FC, I wouldn't recommend working there in an office job. Poor pay (I doubt anyone below "Head of"/CxO even touches 6 figures) and very average working conditions.

Aren’t they both owned by pompous rich dudes and private equity, like most companies? Tasty is the boot we enjoy licking.

Everything is owned by rich people, is your solution to not enjoy anything?

Actually in countries like Portugal or Germany, most clubs are owned by its members (or at the very least, 51% owned by its members), which can e.g. vote on its president.

You're not totally wrong about the 51% thing (although it's really 50% + 1 vote), but it's not like that is a panacea that keeps out corporate interests. Leverkusen and Wolfsberg are owned by Bayer and Volkswagen respectively (although I understand there's historical reasons for that) and Leipzig is 99% owned by Red Bull, but they only have 50% - 1 voting rights to comply.

Arsenal's owned by Stan Kroenke. Chelsea by Todd Boehly the LA Dodgers guy.

I thought at first that you might be bantering but after reading your last sentence I am not sure anymore. I don't think being associated with Arsenal at this posting is ever going to be a blemish on anyone's CV. They are higher than Chelsea in PL standings at this moment.

Why bantering?

150k a year puts you in the 1% earners in UK, plenty to comfortable live on.

As you mentioned, having such a job in ones CV can only help.

But, I've been a Chelsea fan for most of my life, if I take such a job at Arsenal and do it properly, I'll be actively working against the organization that brought me so many emotions over the past 30ish years.

Oh that’s a fascinating reaction I never thought of. I mean people might refuse to work for any gambling company or any arms maker, but I cannot I imagine someone offered a job in banking refuse say Goldman but take JP Morgan, simply because their family have been Morgan fans for generations and would never accept any other bank …

Not sure if you intentionally obtuse or simply don't get it. There is no reason to be a fan of an organization whose main goal is to be making money, but there are plenty of reasons to be a fan of an organization whose main goal is to be better at a sport than other similar organizations.

I don't think the distinction is about whether the organizations make money; the distinction is about entertainment. Professional sports are primarily a form of entertainment. Sports fans are a bit like music fans in that regard. The rivalries in sports can get toxic sometimes, but there's weird snobbery in music and other arts as well.

There's no reason to be a fan of an organization whose main goal is to make money, yet GP said he's a Chelsea fan.

You don't think professional soccer teams are an organization whose main goal is to make money?

If it is, and it probably isn't, they are really not very good at it.

You underestimate how much being a soccer fan means, especially in countries like UK.

So they are looking for people in the Venn diagram cross section of AI researchers and Arsenal FC supporters, of which I imagine there are very few.

I met some Americans who would never work for the New England Patriots.

Yes I think that’s just in the top 1% of salaries

But I’m pretty sure Brad got Jonah Hill for much less.

Surely you mean Scorcese got Jonah??

I think he means in Moneyball

That's extremely good for a job in soccer analytics. It's a really fun domain, you'd be working with very smart and bought-in people at Arsenal, and they have their own collection operation so control their own destiny in a way a lot of other places don't.

what is a "collection operation"?

Hiring manager here!

Aside from 3rd party data, we contract with a nonprofit in Laos where operators collect event data for us (~2000 data points per match) across roughly a dozen leagues worldwide.

We also extract player tracking data from video.

Why … how … Laos?

TL;DR - Our department was originally an independent football analytics startup

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/oct/17/arsenal-pla...

and probably bump fist with Jesus on your way to the parking lot!

I had to re-read this a couple times, ...but yes!

It's still crazy to me that 150K can be considered an unsatisfactory salary. I thought that must be enough anywhere in the world.

Lower middle class in Massachusetts...

6k mortgage for a modest house in any decent area in US, 3k per kid private school, 3k other monthly expenses, 2k food: that’s already 17k/mo with just 2 kids. Plus vacations, plus setting aside at least a few thousand a month for retirement.

I can do jobs like this one but I can’t consider any job offers for less than 500k (total comp).

Are houses and private schools cheaper in London?

> Are houses and private schools cheaper in London?

They are cheaper than that everywhere in the world. I think you need to realise that you are in the upper 0.001% of earners in the world and your expenses to the rest of us seem absolutely ridiculous.

$6k per month mortgage?

My entire expenses are less than half that, I have 2 kids and I consider myself to be middle class and doing ok.

You're a slave

6k a month mortgage for a family of four seems low. It's at least double that in any major metro area.

Im struggling to understand the math here. If a mortgage is 12k per month, how much does the house cost in total and how long is the mortgage term?

I mean in a year, thats $144k.

A $1.8mm 30 year fixed rate mortgage is about $12k per month at today’s rates. That wouldn’t include taxes and insurance, just the principal and interest.

Which would buy you a pretty nice house in Watford (where Arsenal's training grounds are), which has an average home price of $536,000.

Yeah, but you aren’t getting a $1.8mm mortgage on a £150k salary :)

It also doesn't include that a $1.8MM mortgage usually implies a $2.25MM house that you just put down $450k on.

The median price of American homes is $400k. In California it's $860k. In the Bay Area it's $1.5MM. You can get a house in the Bay Area for under $1.8MM, but you need a $360k down payment, and you will likely face a tradeoff between good schools, safe neighborhoods, being within walking distance of anything, and having a nice sized house. Outside of NYC, these numbers are the upper echelon. If you disagree, you have very expensive taste masquerading as requirements.

On that point about home sizes, Americans are frequently surprised how much less space Europeans are fine living in.

The parent post started this by saying:

> 6k mortgage for a modest house in any decent area in US

I really dont consider a $1.8MM or $2.25MM house to be 'modest' by any stretch of the imagination.

and then another post after that said:

> 6k a month mortgage for a family of four seems low. It's at least double that in any major metro area.

so $1.8MM for a 'modest' house for a family of four is low in the US?

Im so confused, are people just so out of touch with reality that they think these prices are normal, or have I missed something along the way?

You are confusing 6k and 12k mortgages: the former is to buy a modest house today in most decent areas in the US. The latter is to buy a modest house in Bay Area, where a large fraction of hacker news users reside.

A “modest” house to me is a median house: around 2k sqft, run-of-the-mill construction, cheap materials, 8 feet ceilings, <10k sqft lot.

This is the reality in good parts of US.

I'm butting up against Poe's Law on this one. Is it a joke, or peak HN?

Those are my actual expenses. Why do you think it’s a joke?

Because "I can’t consider any job offers for less than 500k (total comp)." is absolutely wild for 99+% of the global population.

I don’t think it is wild for people with skills to do this job.

Let me guess, you consider yourself firmly middle-class...

As long as I have to work for a living – yes, I’m middle class.

I think it's probably the description "modest house" that is making everybody laugh at you.

That is certainly the part which is confusing me

The irony - people looking to buy a house in Bay area laugh at my 6K mortgage because it’s so ridiculously low to them.

It’s probably a little self-aware but what he’s describing is a lifestyle attainable by people with similar jobs and qualifications as what Arsenal is asking for, and it’s reasonable to expect it if that’s what you can get from other employers.

Also, housing in much of the US is criminally expensive, and some people have unreasonably snobby attitudes about what constitutes a “decent area” in the US. Or maybe he was just making an understated and backhanded joke about the London housing market, which I’ve heard to be similarly absurd.

> the London housing market, which I’ve heard to be similarly absurd.

No matter how absurd it is, Ive never heard of a 6k per month mortgage, that is absolutely insane.

I’m curious where you live?

I live in NYC, on the UWS, in a nice (but not extravagant) 2 bedroom apartment. It’s about 1000 sq feet, and I pay $5k per month in rent. Buying a similar place in my neighborhood would cost me literally double that per month, after putting down $300k or more. My neighborhood has hundreds of thousands of people in it, all paying similar amounts (or much much more). My building has about 60 units, and I live in one of the smaller ones. Almost half of the units rent for $12k-15k per month. This is just one of hundreds of buildings in my neighborhood alone, one of thousands in Manhattan.

Of the ~350 apartments with at least 3 bedrooms for sale right in my neighborhood, only 77 cost less than $3mm. There are 52 for sale for more than $10mm, and those will almost all sell.

A £1.3 million house in London on a 10% deposit and a 4.7% interest rate over 30 years would be £6094 per month.

The average price for a terraced house in london zone 2 is £1.7 million

> The average price for a terraced house in london zone 2 is £1.7 million

I have a feeling that data is wrong. If it's accurate it's definitely been pushed up by huge outliers on the top end (like £50+M properties in Chelsea and west ken that are zone 2)

I think the median zone 2 terraced house is more like £1m, can't find a statistic but I just bought a £1.5m house in hackney and there were 10 £1-1.3m properties for every £1.7m+

You're probably right. I just pulled it from https://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/zone-2-93814.html without too much thought.

Still, a £1.3m house isn't completely infeasible in London :-).

I have a 6k a month mortgage in London. So - now you've heard of one!

You’re catching flak, but I’m with you, I live in NYC and I wouldn’t even look at a job for less than $400k liquid total comp. And that would be cutting it close.

That said, people do it:

1. What constitutes a “decent area” varies from person to person.

2. My kid goes to private school (at more $5k per month), but some people live in districts where public schools are great.

3. Living in a no income tax state helps a lot too.

I could see a family being just fine on $10k per month take-home if they bought their house awhile ago, kids go to public school, they travel domestically, etc.

I rent a 3 bedroom house in decent rural UK. 2 kids go to public school. I work remotely coding. I pay income tax.

My entire expenses are $3k per month.

You guys are just in a completely different world.

Sounds awesome, tbh. I’d leave NYC if I could.

I think Id move to NYC and work for a $500k salary if I could TBH, sounds awesome.

The grass is always greener...

First of all, thanks for sharing numbers. I live in the UK and often hear folks from the US touting huge salaries and I figured living costs must be higher but never knew by how much.

Second, this is absolutely wild to me. Is this your monthly expenses? I live in a pretty decent sized city in the UK and my mortgage is just under 1k per month. There's no way I could even attempt to spend 2k a month on food. That said I don't send my kids to private school, the state schools in my area are very good.

The idea of earning anywhere close to 500k is utterly mind boggling to me.

Don't think of the above comment as normal. It represents perhaps .01% of Americans. The other ~99% would be just as flabbergasted after reading it as you are.

As far as income is concerned, some of us have the skills to demand that kind of comp even in the current job market, but it's rare - and more rare now than it was 2-3 years ago.

As far as expenses, it's trivially easy to slash those expenses by about a factor of 3 by living somewhere other than one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the US, and in an area with a decent public school system. 2k/month on food is also insane even for a family of 4 and implies a lot of eating out. I feed myself and my fiancée on about $450/month even buying fairly expensive ingredients, but I enjoy cooking.

Some people are just used to a certain lifestyle and are able to support it, so they consider changing it to be unthinkable. I make similar to what the person you're replying to probably makes, but my expenses are about ~$65k/year, and that includes a decent amount of spending that I consider frivolous. It would not be hard to slash another $10k/year off of that with minimal sacrifice. Not until going down toward $50k/year or below would I have to start making serious compromises.

Let’s look at income stats: to be top 1% earner in US you need to make 787k a year. 1% in California: >1M.

Source: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-the-income-needed-to...

Several millions of people in US make more than 500k, so it’s not really that rare.

$450/mo on food is probably insane for a homeless person in US, or for an average person in Uganda. Why not slash this amount to, say, $50? I’m sure you can do it if you decide to grow your own food on some remote land. Why don’t you “change your lifestyle”?

I spend 2k roughly 50/50 on groceries and eating out. Nothing fancy.

Bottom line: should I move to a shitty area, put my kids to a shitty school, and cook more (which I do not enjoy)? Why? So that whoever owns arsenal can buy an even bigger superyacht next year?

> On a global basis, the average salary to hit the top 1% is quite a bit lower: an annual salary of about $65,000 does the trick.

It's unsatisfying right now because the inflation (or price hike robbery) is so high.

It's a great salary for most occupations but CS and especially right now AI/ML is super hot and can demand more in the US...

you really should be aware of pay in the US. this maybe okay in the UK. even then it is low for a top researcher.

Season tickets would likely motivate a lot of supporters with the right background to apply despite the low salary. But they only offer “preferred access” to tickets and I’m not even sure what that means.

If there would be opportunities to present to Mikel Arteta and other high level football personnel, that would also be very motivating beyond raw salary.

150k GBP total comp is not especially competitive with a BigCo.

If that is just salary though, it might be competitive in London depending on the rest of the comp package (i.e. about the same again for equity, 20-25% bonus - so total about 300-325k GBP - would be Ok for mid/senior level IME)

What are you on about?

What are you defining as a BigCo? In the UK I can only really think of FAANG, a small number of hedge funds / HFT firms, and more recently some AI firms that are paying that level of salary.

I'm also guessing that salaries in football might be suppressed similar to video games jobs. There'll be a lot of people willing to work under market rate because they enjoy the football environment.

Yup those guys and fintech. They're the big players in UK (well London) tech employment if total comp is what matters.

The salary ranges in London are different than the US.

London's an expensive place to live.

Better off getting a pro contract with them I guess

Like for their players, they propose reasonable salaries, never too high, makes sense

man, I am so poor

This would be the dream job for a gunners fan. After a decade of making seven figures at Meta/Google etc., they won't even look at the salary.

You do realize that American salaries are not the norm internationally? The pay in Europe is far far far lower.

Yes, if you value your knowledge you should keep pushing for higher the market has enough elasticity as earnings show

Fun fact, that's probably the median weekly wage for the Arsenal players themselves.

one would think if they really believed in AI they'd pay more to improve their players rather than just pay it to players

Isn’t that an incredibly good salary in the UK?

uk salaries.

the average UK salary is £32k. in London your average midlevel engineer salary band is 60-75k. Senior band is 75-110 - this includes principles and directors as well. For total comp add 10% of bonus. given anemic uk tech sector most stock is yeah worthless so let's not count it - unless you work for Wise, Revolut etc.

the people making big bucks i.e £200k+ in tech - are in finance / hft / trading firms. then in government consulting.

Sports analytics is a lot like video game development. Where, for better or for worse, salaries are much lower because pure passion for the domain is a huge motivator for people