Quote: (04-18-2015 02:20 AM)CrashBangWallop Wrote:
Some of these numbers are insane, from a UK perspective...outside of the upper echelons of the professional fields there are essentially zero jobs here that pay that much.
Americans do not realise what a land of opportunity they live in, frankly.
Myself and lots of people I know have earned more than that to wildly different degrees for a long time...the thing is, every single one of us owns our own businesses or is at the very best banks or professional companies.
It's only as you get older that you realise just how much £££ there is out there in the world for the taking.
Wages are definitely less in the UK, but in London it's not hard to find law/finance professionals pulling those figures. Dentists and Doctors are very close to those numbers too.
If that's upper echelons, then I guess I agree. I dunno, I think something like being in equity sales or an investment banker pulling good bonuses (e.g. pulling >$500k) would be what I'd consider upper echelons (also found in London lol)
Tech generally pays less than in the US it's true - alot harder to be a $150k programmer (£100k) in the UK unless you're doing it for a bank / hedge fund / algo trading comapny, and those jobs go to the very best programmers or the Math/Physics PhDs who can also sling code. The UK is a big hub for finance and those jobs can pay £100k+.
They do have more opportunity that side of the pond, but they also work harder. More overtime, only 2 weeks vacation time, etc.
A programmer in the UK has a fairly comfy life, whereas one in the US is likely gonna be pushed harder and under more pressure, all else being equal.
Overall though you are right. There is much more cash flowing around in the states, and I think the opportunities to position yourself in a stream of cashflow as a business owner are alot bigger. It's also going to keep growing for much longer than the UK... UK economy is shaky despite the "recovery" and won't endure like the US one over the next 10-20 years.