Should I work in the US or the UK? - which pays best?

[Toby Wintermute]

On 14 December 2011 12:17, Simon Wistow <simon at thegestalt.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 12:07:12PM +1100, Toby Wintermute said:
>> Just wanted to chip in and say -- why are you only considering the US or the UK?
>> If you're looking for a nice English-speaking city which employs
>> Perlmongers, have you considered Melbourne or Sydney in Australia?
>
> Well, the original reason this thread kicked off, was I think, "Is it
> more expensive to run a dev team in the US than in the UK?"
>
> My one comment on Oz is ... whilst I don't mind being 5500 miles away
> from my family it's comforting to know I can be on a plane and back in
> about 15 hours if something happens.
>
> There are far fewer flights back to the UK from Australia and they take
> much longer. I think when I worked it out last time the average time for
> me to get back to the UK if the flag went up, so to speak, was about 48
> hours.

I've never tried looking at that, let's see:

It's currently 1pm in Melbourne - if we said a flag went up right now
then according to skyscanner.com.au, I could hop on a flight at
10:20pm this evening for $1800 and get to Heathrow at 11:35am tomorrow
- 24 hours of travel, or 33 hours since the flag went up.

Or for $4000 there's a flight that'd get me there at quarter past 5 am
tomorrow, 28 hours after the 1pm flag.

Yeah.. not great if you need a faster response time.

> Not that that should stop you - the quality of life in Sydney and
> Melbourne are astonishingly high - but it's a point to mention.

Having lived in both London for a while and Melbourne, I have to say
that Melbourne's quality of life is very nice, and the pay for a good
Perl developer is higher than what I think I'd be getting in London at
the moment. (At least, if I was working somewhere with comparable
working conditions; I dare say there's more to be made in some of the
crazy financial jobs.. but we have those here too if you're that way
inclined.)

-Toby

-- 
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world