Moving To England And Need Advice

nim6us

nim6us

nim6us

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Joined
27 Oct 2013
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12
I'm a part of the Overclockers.com forum, I've always had the best advice and best responses from members there. I don't know if you are sister sites, or completely different but I was hoping to get some equally as good advice here.


I live in the US, have my whole life. My wife came over to visit nearly 7 years ago, we met got married had a daughter and she stayed here with me. However now she's getting homesick and wants us to move our family to England for a few years. The only thing giving me reservation, is the work situation. I'm in IT same as most of you, I worked help desk mainly for about a year, but have been doing more networking and system admin type of work the past two years. I also have my college degree, CompTIA A+ and Network+ certs, working on my Security+ now. The reason I tell you all this is I've been into computers my whole life, but only working in IT for the past 3 years. It's important that I keep moving forward, I can't take a year off and work as a laborer or something. If we move to the UK I need to stay in IT.

I guess the thing is, and I'm probably generalizing, but outside of London I see England more as having a "country style", with beautiful old buildings and quaint little shops and bakeries. I don't think of tech firms and software companies. Obviously now I'm asking you to generalize a bit, but I was hoping someone could give me some insight. What's the IT situation like over there? Are their opportunities in every town, or is there a better city or area to work in that has more tech jobs, like the "Silicon Valley of the UK" or something? My wife wants to move near the Cornwall area but if there's no work there, then we'll have to find some place else. I know I sound pretty ignorant, I don't mean to be, I just have never left the US and I'm trying to figure out what to expect.

I know it's a lot to ask for you to summarize the tech state of your country for me, but I'd appreciate if you have a little time, giving me your thoughts. Again I know it's a broad request, but feel free to kick in your thoughts about IT in the UK I'd love to know what I'm in for, thanks!
 
There are a huge number of tech companies outside of the city of London, although naturally the highest salaries will be within the London area.

http://goo.gl/maps/Hsd66

See the above link, within that zone is the silicon valley of the UK. Zoom in a bit and you will see in particular Bracknell, Reading & Basingstoke. All of these places have a huge number of large tech parks. Reading is home to huge Oracle & Microsoft parks among many others, Bracknell has a large number of large offices from the likes of Dell & Fujitsu etc. Newbury further along the M4 to the west has the world Vodafone HQ.

Cornwall is no-mans land, see it right down in the far south west corner sticking out of the UK. You will be very doubtful to earn anything down there. Its a place mainly for vacations, second "beach homes", etc.
 
In this day and age IT is everywhere. The issue you have is having the right credentials for the right job!

Obviously in and around London you'll find the most jobs as that's where the largest proportion of the population is - and with good/easy travel/commute to and from the capital you can usually afford to live a bit further afield and just travel a bit longer to get to work.

Don't think that all of England can be summed up with quaint shops and villages, as it's not. Sure you'll get some very, very rural areas where not a lot happens, but you also get a lot more suburbs and towns/cities to choose from.

I'd imagine with those sort of qualifications you'd walk into a service desk job with ease, possibly even moving to second or third line support in some scenarios - at the end of the day it's down to the company to choose who they want. Generally, there will be tough competition for any job you see that's related to IT. It is a very big industry over here and is only getting bigger!

Take a look at some recruitment websites to get an idea of the sort of people that companies are typically after. If you don't know any, make a start at Reed and work from there.

Don't get me wrong, England (and the United Kingdom in general) has some beautiful areas that I would rival are unmatched by anything else in the world, but there will need to be a point where you find the middle ground - close to the countryside (if that's where you'd rather be) and close to the big population centres for work.
 
London is a very large city with by far the most economic activity but the rest of the uk is not just villages - there are half a dozen other large cities of several million people with smaller towns of tens or hundreds of thousands inbetween and then - yes - inbetween those there are villages with a few thousand or less population.

Bristol may be worth a look - young, modern, quite wealthy but not too far from the nice countryside of devon/cornwall.
 
I would seriously doubt his ability to earn a decent salary in Bristol. My brother works there and the salaries in general compared with the Thames valley and London seem woeful.
 
Come here for a long visit and stay with her family for a few weeks before you move to get an idea of what life is really like.

In general the cost of living is higher, our taxes are higher and you will probably make less money.

I moved back to the uk a year ago, we have a mazing life style but I still do not like living here.
 
Dr House said:
our taxes are higher and you will probably make less money.

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Click to expand...

This in my experience is not actually true, our tax burden is on a par with many states in the US, certainly the prosperous ones. Salaries are certainly no higher over there in the tech industry (or indeed the pharma industry which is my partners). If anything i would say the opposite is true.
 
It depends what job you want, surely. If you want an IT job working for an IT company then yes, London and the areas noted above will be the areas with the most opportunities (and most competition). But every company has an IT requirement and any city will have good opportunities for working in IT but for a non-IT company; Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh etc.

We were at SCC the other day - Europe's largest IT group - and they're based in Birmingham. Hell Rockstar are based all the way up in Aberdeen and together with the oil industry there will be a massive IT requirement there.

Even Cornwall is rolling out superfast fibre optic broadband to 95% of the region and there's a huge amount of funding for high-growth companies there through the European Regional Development Fund.
 
Not sure what the job situation is like in Cornwall but I live down into the South West (Somerset) and the job situation here isn't great - picking up a bit but for awhile it was pretty terrible. That said Bristol isn't too bad for finding work and has a pretty strong tech sector.

My brother works in Shepton Mallet - a quaint little rural town - but in IT support for a major international ISP - there are some quaint out the way places with little tech work prospects but equally there are plenty that do have good prospects and infact many IT companies have a token London presence these days and do much of their work from smaller towns due to the cost difference and the UK being relatively smaller the more out the way towns tend to still have city grade infastructures.
 
The other factor which may be a problem: moving from the US will you be able to even afford a house here? Our property market is far more expensive than that of the USA in most areas.
 
Bristol is pretty good for IT jobs and a very vibrant city. The tech jobs then get more sparse the further south-west you go. However you may find something in Exeter or Plymouth but it's more tricky. You would struggle to find a high paying IT job in Cornwall but it is a very nice place to live.
 
Ignore the negative comments: England (and Britain in general) is a great place to live and work. We moan a lot but we really do have a good standard of living. Yep, Reading has a big tech estate with Microsoft et al (last time I looked). Oh, and welcome to the boards Nim6us!
 
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