[1] https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwor...

EDIT: £2,627 / month, not week!

Not sure how you got 31,524

"You can connect with others through our EDI networks as a member or ally. These include Ethnic Diversity, Faith & Belief, Social Equity, LGBTQ+, Neurodivergence, Age, Disability and Gender Health and Wellbeing."

(Should have mentioned Talibans, handy to blow up misplaced stones)

Not all LGB people support the expansion to include TQ+ issues. Nor some of the side-effects e.g. women athletes forced to compete against men. Or a women-owned gym in Germany that was fined because the owner didn't want to allow males in the women-only space.

There is no disdain for "these people" (or groups, as a poster above suggested) and some of this people exist in my own live too, but disagreement about what is appropriate and neutral in a job ad, particularly of a charity which receives?/received public funding.

My arguments were that biological men can enter women spaces, even though some women are not ok with that. Or compete in women's sports, violating fairness as male/female bodies are different. Or cases like the female gym-owner who was fined.

I don't think such laws existed or were being pushed for with homosexuality previously? That debate was more about what adults do in their private live.

Drag queens, yes, but no legal system which allowed a man to almost instantly become a lawful women (Germany had a "famous" such case..). I like simple, friendly programming languages. The same goes for law and common sense (~trans violates this somewaht).

> I don't see an a priori answer either way

Fair enough. But my common, naive sense would say, cis/trans bodies are objectively different (and this settles it in my favour ;-)). -- I'll stop here, public hn for this subjects is too demanding for me, I might fall over Queers for Palestine or Druids for Israel and become unwell...

Nice talking to you!

"…Age, Disability…"

You're going to be in for a rude awakening in 20 years when you're involuntarily a member of the groups you disdain.

edit: *obviously its not a wonderful salary, but for the sector....well I've seen worse.

I don't know how many staff there are, but it's surely one of EH's most important locations.

The UK is poorer than the US - sure. But it's wealthier than most other countries in the world. Not just in terms of GDP per capita or average household wealth, but also in infrastructure terms - the cumulative effect of being a wealthy industrialised country for so long is a huge amount of infrastructure.

I think it's fair to say that UK wealth growth has slowed at the same time as many other countries have caught up. So the UK is no longer the leader it once was. But that's very different from saying it's a poor country. It's just not.

Which is fine, someone has to be median, but really underwhelming for the (presumably highly-educated and talented) head of the #1 national historical monument.

It's a leadership role, there's no education requirements on it.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...

Setting aside the special cases (tiny, oil money, weird finance sectors, tax havens etc) there's basically a handful of countries which are clearly doing something right - the US, Taiwan, the north-eastern European countries (Germany, Austria, Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden). Most of the other "developed countries" are sitting in the same sort of GDP per capita range of $65-$75k. Ranking these isn't so meaningful - the difference between the UK and France is only 1.5%.

Something to keep in mind is that in the 70s digital tech also started to come into its own and that basically provided a massive economic boon to countries worldwide, but especially in the US. And so the concept of endless infinite exponential growth, as the current experiment effectively requires, was coincidentally paired alongside an era that made that briefly seem possible.

But now that that era is fading, the consequences of our actions are catching up to us. For instance in the US interest on the debt is now about 3% of the GDP, and the debt itself about 120% of GDP. And as faith in the debt falters, that will increase exponentially because rates for borrowing (which is how the government 'prints' money) will increase, due to reduced demand paired with increases in supply for such.

--

Basically instead of looking at GDP or whatever, I'd look to things on life contentment, optimism, and so on. If those are positive, then I think a government must be doing something right. If those are negative, then who cares what this metric or that says?

Seems they are hell-bent on getting rid of them

https://ifs.org.uk/data-items/gini-coefficient

The job market over here is shocking.

Although in the us you have to pay for healthcare on top of that.

Crazy huh?

It is bloody expensive, if you want life saving surgery now, not in two years!

Calculator: https://www.tax.service.gov.uk/estimate-paye-take-home-pay/y...

Lead Data Scientist for the UK Government is currently advertising for a salary of £57,670 - £67,500.

https://www.civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk/csr/jobs.cgi?jco...

Project manager on 65-85k

https://uk.indeed.com/m/viewjob?jk=a43416327745431e

Lead data scientist 100-110k

https://www.reed.co.uk/jobs/lead-data-scientist/56925078

Neither of those are London based.

I'm a CSO.

Oh nice, Strategy or Security?

Stonehenge.

"Yeah, a henge fund."

"Hedge fund."

"Henge fund."

"Hedge."

"Henge."

"...I think we're on the same page."

I bet they enjoyed typing that in.

"5,000 years+ -- depends on you"

Might be another option if it were freeform text

Izzard probably rewired my brain more than any other single comedian.

> Ironically, even though Stonehenge has an earthwork circle around it (the earliest phase of the monument), it isn’t officially a ‘proper’ henge, as the main ditch is external to the main bank. It has to make do with being a ‘proto-henge’.

https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/inspire-me/what-is...

Somewhat less eminent job title though.

UK wages are not great.

People overestimate how much senior devs in the UK earn, even after knowing they're not well paid, my usual response to hearing we should be earning £90k+ is, "well give us a job then"!

What sector?

First, you'll take home slightly over half of that net of various taxes and deductions, but let's be generous and say your take-home is 200k. You live very frugally, don't go out, don't really buy anything and keep your costs at 50k a year, including rent (!). That leaves you with 150k a year, so after 5 years you have 750k. This allows you to buy a modest 2-3 bed row house with a postage stamp sized garden in one of the less desirable areas of the city.

If you want something that doesn't look like a shed, you are looking at 1 million pounds and up, more like 1.5 million. If you want in a nice area and large garden, make it 2 million.

The only thing I can think of that would even come close to making a difference is having children. Then all bets are off, they can cost as much as you like.

'Inner London' and it goes up to £876K

Assuming a 90% mortgage that's 487k mortgage

That's two people on £70k each at a 3.5 multiple. £60k at a 4x multiple.

Two people on £180k would get you a £1.5m house, twice the average semi.

[0] https://landregistry.data.gov.uk/app/ukhpi/browse?from=2025-...

The average house price in London in July 2025 was £565k [pp33 - 2].

There is not being able to afford something and then there is not being able to afford exactly what you want.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/personal-incomes-s... [2] https://data.london.gov.uk/download/24rpx/37w/Housing%20in%2...

The mechanics driving compensation arent "normal." American pay is driven by the underlying mechanics. The USA didn't just randomly win at tech.

There are real factors that could reduce US compensation, but calling that "normalization" assumes the current gap exists for no reason. It exists because the US software industry is structurally different from most of Europe.

Globalization? Look at manufacturing, it moved to a country where things are a lot more affordable. In a world where remote collaboration gets easier and easier and you're able to pay software engineers half the world away a lot less there's no way it wouldn't have an effect on the domestic market.

and the talent is just better in the US on average (mostly because of immigration!), software is so levered one good Eng can 1000x the value of a bad one

Academia for comparison doesn’t make money…maybe a better comparison is HFT? Plenty of very very smart people playing a zero sum game, yet their comp has only increased

vc funded companies pay high so they can grow and eventually bring in lots of money, and america has the deepest vc pockets so it reaps the rewards of the biggest exits

Screw those things up, and those taxes will bankrupt you because they can exceed all your other earnings.

as others have said, some may be in for a very rude awakening...

$93.5k is abysmally low for a Senior Solutions Architect in the USA. I would expect at least $175k if not $200k+ on average. Plus stock and bonuses.

I am comparing average pay in UK/US for a senior solutions architect position.

I dont understand what your comment has to do with my comparison of pay. Mind you, the comment I replied to speculated about this comparison. Hence why I provided more specifics.

I think comparing a job like this purely on salary terms misses a lot. It's a prestige job that will be the highlight of someone's CV for the rest of their career. Not to mention 25-28 days vacation.

As someone that's lived both in the US and outside of it there's no denying US salaries are top of the game. But there are a lot of other factors that go into a person's life than salary alone. Long hours in US jobs are not rare at all. I expect folks at Stonehenge are out the door at 5pm sharp.

OK maybe. But that's how the salary compares.

Please re-read the comment I replied to. He speculated about salary differences and I gave solid numbers. You are arguing against some unspoken claim that I never made (something like "more money is always better").

I don't expect that's true for the Head of Stonehenge. You're right about the prestige of that position though.

The rest of the world has already been in a rude awakening, talented engineers should be compensated well no matter where they happen to live

not so much 0.5-1M jobs unless you got lucky with sbc or are really talented

Pretty decent flexibility though.

* Must provide own sickle, and robes.

NOTE: Only cauldrons with a safety mechanism preventing anyone from falling into the potion can be used at the site; traditional Gaul type cauldrons do not qualify.

George Washington's English ancestors, specifically Sir Lawrence Washington, were the owners of the West Amesbury Estate in Wiltshire, England, which included the land where the ancient Stonehenge monument sits. (Via Google)

If you hadn't that before, welcome to the "Huh, that's a funny coincidence" club.

Washington was a wealthy landowner in the British Empire, hardly surprising his ancestors were wealthy landowners.

No one knows who he was, or what he was doing.

But his legacy remains hewn in the HR dock of Stonehenge.

But, I took a modestly more expensive "Inner Stones" tour a few months ago and lucked out being selected to be fully alone for a minute. It was a profound experience being in the middle of such a historic place.

Highly, highly recommended!

During the the 1980s and ‘90s there were regular clashes between new age hippies and police stopping them from reaching Stonehenge during summer solstice before public access was allowed.

It also has a pub, a restaurant, a gift shop, a museum founded by a marmalade magnate, and if you're really rich you can buy one of the houses inside the circle.

Generally a happier experience than Stonehenge.

If megalithic rocks are your thing there's also the nearby West Kennet Longbarrow, which is far more likely to be deserted, especially at night, although if you go on the quarter days (nights) you'll probably meet weirdly-dressed people lighting candles and throwing spells around.

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

I maintained a collection of well organized rocks as a child. Surely that gets me a bit more than base pay right?

I was riding in the passenger seat.

There was a male and female police officer standing at the side of the road, beside a "Road Closed" sign blocking the entrance.

The male police officer came to my window and started yelling in my face:

"We are closed!! Come back another day!!!"

I knew it would be pointless to argue with this a-hole and there was no other day in my schedule that we could come back. So we left and never got to see it.

Do these old rocks get tired at three in the afternoon or what?

I'll be sending this Head of Stonehenge an email about the experiance...

But if there were actual Police, not just English Heritage security, it sounds like something strange was happening that day, like a VIP visit or something.

It gets so busy that it's recommended to book a timeslot in advance on the website, even if you are a member and don't have to pay.

I'm the head of pebble hedge!

...

And they moved it (Stonehenge!)

And they dragged it (Stonehenge!)

And they rolled it 46 miles from Waleeees! - Heeey (46 miles from Wales! )

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klJhWr_FTaE

[1]: https://www.nps.gov/jotr/learn/nature/skull-rock-trail.htm