I wonder if we ever crossed over, i also worked for Intel in the west country (Swindon) and now whore myself out to aerospace/defence in the same area.
I see what our engineers are paid and its genuinely concerning.
Is the UK more in line with the norm though and the US is the outlier? I would say the UK, Europe, and Japan all have similar wages (although Japan has worse benefits and on the whole a larger expectation of workers so it's not like for like.)
US is an outlier. You can look at self-described data for front-end engineers from the annual State of JS survey for an indication (try clicking on USA vs World): https://2024.stateofjs.com/en-US/demographics/#yearly_salary
> Is the UK more in line with the norm though and the US is the outlier
Mostly the US is an outlier. Unfortunately, UK property prices, food prices, utilities etc make Silicon Valley look cheep.
Not disagreeing with your general point, but UK food is very cheap, compared to almost anywhere in western europe and nowadays with the states too.
It feels like it's got more expensive though, and worse quality. A lot of the garlic I've had this year has been in a sorry state to use a random example, and as well as food you buy to cook things like fish and chips which used to be a cheap takeaway meal cost a fortune now.
The depressing thing is that it'd rise a lot more if supermarkets weren't using their weight to squeeze farmers.
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Did you at least get to play with the demo computers? Some of the most fun times before everyone had a super powerful machine were when we got to borrow the top-of-the-line demo machines to play on all weekend. Set up in one of those conference rooms, pizza for everyone.