So can UK if your time is billable, extra hours = more revenue! That's absolutely a factor in reviews and directly impacts bonuses, why shouldn't the guy who brought in 50% more revenue get a bigger bonus etc... IF that's not the case then it's perhaps down to other goals/targets etc.. but that can often also involve working extra hours at times - perhaps at the end of a project or being available to assist with stuff when it goes wrong etc...
US vs UK taxes etc
- Thread starter Scougar
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So can UK if your time is billable, extra hours = more revenue! That's absolutely a factor in reviews and directly impacts bonuses, why shouldn't the guy who brought in 50% more revenue get a bigger bonus etc... IF that's not the case then it's perhaps down to other goals/targets etc.. but that can often also involve working extra hours at times - perhaps at the end of a project or being available to assist with stuff when it goes wrong etc...
The additional hours are not often project related, it's additional or planned. i.e. an outage of some kind. Or this weekend there is a disaster recovery test going on that I need to support.
Work is planned on hours available. There is always something that screws up your timeline though.
One thing I would say, is that if the support work was being billed they would be shutting things down a lot quicker.
Related note: American companies 'knee jerk' a hell of a lot more than UK companies. Excessive reaction to a problem is common and expected.
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Location is everything when it comes to pay in almost any country. Even within the UK it's very possible to have total compensation in the ~$200-300k range with a few years experience. I know fresh grads joining FAANG et. al are definitely in the $200k+ range total comp, and probably with large signing bonus on top, etc. The pay is quite eye-watering, but if they're offering it you can't really blame people for taking it up!
Salaries that pay that much with any of the FAANG companies are actually quite rare in the UK. I work at (Amazon AWS) I'm in Dublin (meant to be going to Seattle early next year)..... To get that sort of money, you'll likely have to go to Dublin simply because the likes of Facebook, Google, Amazon etc have highly elaborate tax avoidance schemes which prevent employees involved with engineering and development, to be based outside of the UK as I think it violates a bunch of the Irish tax breaks. There are exceptions of course, but most of the "big stuff" is done in Ireland, rather than the UK.
1) They're not highly elaborate tax avoidance schemes,
2) They're actually rather simple from a technical point of view, and
3) It's not just for Irish tax breaks you may be where you are.
Interesting ran the calcs myself and for me it would be 66% take home in UK vs 69% take home US
However if you add on property tax that would take the US effective take home to 65%
The upside to the US is that pay is about 100% more than it was in London
However if you add on property tax that would take the US effective take home to 65%
The upside to the US is that pay is about 100% more than it was in London
Basic rate taxpayers are only getting 68% net, however you need to consider that we pay 20% VAT on most essentials like clothing, only basic food items are exempt. So it's more like 54% net in the UK for basic rate taxpayers.
Basic rate UK taxpayers are getting at least 75% net. I've just looked through my last supermarket receipt, every item of food was 0% VAT.
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Interesting thread - how do salaries generally translate between UK/USA in terms of lifestyle i.e. what are the roughly 'equivalent' salaries? On the face of what I read, pay in engineering/tech always seem massive in USA; 2-4x higher than that in UK, but does your standard of living increase in a similar proportion?
I've heard it said that the UK is a great country to be poor in, but not that great if you want to get ahead, & the opposite for USA.
I've heard it said that the UK is a great country to be poor in, but not that great if you want to get ahead, & the opposite for USA.
The U.K. is not a great place to be poor, sure it’s better than the USA but it’s certainly not a life I’d call ‘great’.
If your poor, you are much better off in other parts of Europe like France with its much stronger rights for workers and welfare system or Norway with its excellent public services.
So you are completely ignoring all the other essentials I mentioned like clothing and utilities. Lovely.
Also you are the exception not the rule in this case.
I employ around 50 people in the USA and 40 in the UK generally in the same roles - nearly all WFH. Broadly speaking I’d say USA employees employment costs (so salaries and applicable employers contributions like benefits, pensions and taxes) are 25% higher like-for-like but there are wild variations in standards of living in the USA. Our healthcare plans are different state to state for individuals, taxes are different, housing costs are different etc. The only common themes I see across the country are petrol is super cheap and paracetamol super expensive compared to the UK. Oh and college/university fees can be off the chart high.
Someone already said, and it’s very true, you seem to have a good or bad year financially based on your health. Even with healthcare plans, depending on the one you pick the deductible (American for insurance excess on a policy) can be crippling.
The work culture is very different too. Being UK HQd we adopt UK style practices and attitudes which is generally favourable for US colleagues with unlimited holiday and a years paid maternity/paternity leave which is almost unheard of for them. But despite us treating them also with similar employment rights as the UK (well in excess of what is legally required) they still all live in fear of being fired and being out of a job with two weeks notice and that drives many unwanted behaviours (overly hierarchical, blame culture, working too many hours to show worth etc.)
Someone already said, and it’s very true, you seem to have a good or bad year financially based on your health. Even with healthcare plans, depending on the one you pick the deductible (American for insurance excess on a policy) can be crippling.
The work culture is very different too. Being UK HQd we adopt UK style practices and attitudes which is generally favourable for US colleagues with unlimited holiday and a years paid maternity/paternity leave which is almost unheard of for them. But despite us treating them also with similar employment rights as the UK (well in excess of what is legally required) they still all live in fear of being fired and being out of a job with two weeks notice and that drives many unwanted behaviours (overly hierarchical, blame culture, working too many hours to show worth etc.)
Soldato
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Apple’s days of crazy salaries for engineering new hires are long gone unless you’re an SME in something they want include in the next Big Thing. New hires in the overseas engineering teams are paid in line with what their fields are offering these days with none of the big perks that early joiners that built these teams enjoyed in 2007/2008.
Golden handcuffs (Restricted Stock Units that vest over the first four years of service) haven’t been a thing for your regular engineering staff at Apple for a while now unless you are highly skilled/experienced in a very niche field. Stock options stopped being a starting perk in around 2010-11 for normal staff IIRC.
Remember that Apple retail staff and a good slice of the corporate staff in support roles never got any of this good stuff.
You seem to be getting a little tetchy.
You pay VAT on things like alcoholic drinks, confectionery, crisps, savoury snacks, ice cream, soft drinks and mineral water.
Maybe those things make up a large part of your shopping basket but for many people they don't.
You've taken no account of the allowances for Income Tax or National Insurance.
At £50k p.a. you receive 75% net
At £40k p.a. you receive 77% net
At £30k p.a. you receive 80% net
At £20k p.a. you receive 86% net
You've reduced 68% by 20% to get to 54%.
Let's look at our £50k earner. Their net pay for the year would be £37,664 (75.3%). Assume they spend all £37,664 on items with 20% VAT that's £31,386.66 plus £6,277.33 VAT.
£6,277.33 is 16.67% of £37,664. 75.3% reduced by 16.67% is 62.75%.
The majority of the food we buy is zero rated for VAT. Gas and electricity attract 5% VAT. There's no VAT payable on domestic water charges.
Let's assume our £50k earner is still spending every penny of their income but at an average VAT rate of 15%. That's £32,751.30 plus £4,912.70 VAT.
£4,912.70 is 13.0% of £37,664. 75.3% reduced by 13.0% is 65.5%.
For our £20k earner their net net pay for the year would be £17,264 (86.3%).
Assume again they're spending every penny of their income at an average VAT rate of 15%. That's £15,012.17 plus £2,251.83 VAT.
£2,251.83 is 13.0% of £17,264. 86.3% reduced by 13.0% is 75.1%
Admittedly using some quite rough calculations but following your assumption of 100% spending and reflecting Income Tax, NI and VAT then 65-75% is closer to the mark.
This is wrong. re: the first point basic rate taxpayers aren't getting only 68% net.
People who only pay the basic rate have incomes from greater than £12,570 (personal allowance) and up to and including £50,270 (personal allowance + basic rate band)
https://www.gov.uk/government/publi...ome-tax-rates-and-allowances-current-and-past
This gives possible net income of between greater than £12,209.76 and up to and including £37,847.56 *
https://listentotaxman.com/12570?
https://listentotaxman.com/50270?
So basic rate taxpayers get from between approximately 97% and 75% net.
*(slight error here as some admin numpty at the listen to tax man website has entered the personal allowance as 12,579 instead of 12,570 so all their results are off slightly)
Secondly, VAT is variable and depends on your own personal consumption, some items are 0%, some 5% and some 20% + you have things like fuel duty, alcohol duty, import duties etc..
Are you talking about just the UK and/or Europe here, it sounds dubious for the US? I don't see how they'd compete over there as that's standard for software engineers and other technical roles in their various competitors from graduate entry onwards.
I don't thnk Dublin is particularly great for pay vs London either. It seems to be just Switzerland that has the US levels of pay. In London you basically have to work in finance if you want that sort of pay (and or transfer to tech under a high compensation scheme)
I don't think tech employees in the UK get a great deal in general compared to US counterparts, UK start ups get vague about how much equity they offer then it often turns out to be a pittance, established UK tech firms start introducing little paltry amounts of shares you can purchase at a discount etc.. it's just not in the same league.
Same issue in the legal sector UK law firms underpay relative to US law firms:
https://www.cityam.com/top-pay-at-us-law-firms-climbs-to-over-150k-for-londons-new-solicitors/