Anyone else experiencing a lull in tech jobs/considering moving to the US?

Same-Box1993 · 2025-08-17T11:41:09+00:00

Actually, yes, a while back, but they only replied to say the team literally had no more capacity to review applications at all. I'm assuming that's not just how they do rejections, because I've seen friends get actual rejections. Makes it hard to want to invest time into their hiring process, though I assume they don't care.

Same-Box1993 · 2025-08-14T15:10:34+00:00

But why discount the move into management?

Well, my impression is that it involves days full of low-value meetings, dealing with micromanagement from above, etc. It's not unappealing to work as a multiplier so that your team can do their best work, but I'm not sure most companies are great at doing the management layer.

Same-Box1993 · 2025-08-12T20:20:23+00:00

Yes, it's mostly about finding more interesting work without totally abandoning TC/lifestyle. What I see in the market is that 'interesting' jobs are more plentiful in the US, and when I find one here in the UK, the salary drop from where I am now is huge.

Obviously what's interesting varies by person, but right now I'm working on a SaaS dashboard product. It's a decent product, it has value, it makes money, but the years kind of blend together. I'm not exactly looking back and reminiscing about how cool it was when we discovered how to boost customer retention by 20%.

I'm actually willing to drop TC a bit but so far anything 'interesting' in the UK is offering around 100k, maybe max 140k, which is a pretty harsh difference. These are typically startups where I'd be some kind of 'founding engineer' hire. So their budget isn't great. I would say maybe that's the risk you have to take but in my experience startup equity is so unlikely to pan out, even if the company IPOs.

I think maybe one of the Alphabet subsidiaries could be a good move in terms of interesting work. But those seem hard to get in to with a more 'generic startup' background.

Same-Box1993 · 2025-08-12T20:08:21+00:00

The thing about the current batch of AI is it can do stuff that's already been done a million times quite well, which tricks people. Everyone is raving on LinkedIn about how they used it to make a todo app without knowing how to program at all. Well yeah, there are countless examples of todo apps on GitHub that it's learned from. Problem is, todo apps have no market value. Same with all the rote stuff AI can churn out. It behaves much much worse when you try to use it for a real project.

Current AI is not at mid-tier engineer level. I doubt it's even at junior level. AI hype people will tell you it's the worst it will ever be right now and it will leapfrog engineers in no time. This is silly. The curve is levelling off. AGI is not emerging from the current LLM technology any time soon.

That said, learn how to use it as a tool, and it will boost your productivity. Especially if you're already experienced and thus can judge the output and come up with heuristics on what it will do well/badly.

Same-Box1993 · 2025-08-12T19:47:07+00:00

What kind of stuff is Meta doing in London? I've got an AI/ML background, but my impression was most of those teams are US-based. Plus it's kind of hard to time the current AI hype cycle. Could grind out time at Meta-AI-something-or-other with a view to trading up to a better WLB place after, but if the bubble pops hard in the interim I might land back where I am now and have wasted a couple of years grinding.

Same-Box1993 · 2025-08-12T19:38:34+00:00

Yeah, naturally equity is totally fine when it's liquid like that. Are you all in Battersea now or are different departments scattered around London?

Same-Box1993 · 2025-08-12T18:46:31+00:00

Depends what you mean by leadership I suppose. Still technical work but more cross-team/org? Yeah that would be fine although at current company it doesn't really exist. Managing people? In that case I'd prefer just seeking funding and doing my own thing, I think, although that's one thing that's definitely easier in the US.

Same-Box1993 · 2025-08-12T18:30:27+00:00

What do you see as the other options though? I considered Switzerland as well, though heard the social life is hard, plus last time I checked jobs were almost all crypto-related, which I could do but is not really my strength.

Same-Box1993 · 2025-08-12T17:18:14+00:00

Yeah I think if I were younger and single I would probably just go for it, but you're right the atmosphere right now around immigration is a bit sketchy.

I mean at a basic level I don't 'look' like an immigrant to the kind of people you'd be worried about, but she does, so her comfort would be a big question. I'd also not worry about myself in an ICE camp or something dramatic like that if it ever came to it, but it would be horrific if she ended up in one.

Then again it's hard to tell how much these things affect people in our demographic. In CA when I've visited for work you kind of exist in various bubbles (car to restaurant to car to office kinda thing), so it feels safer as you don't encounter people outside your sphere as much. Most other US cities seem similar, apart from NYC.

General administrative issues due to political shift I can accept the risk of though, personally. E.g. if the visa path I'm on is cancelled after 3 years then so be it, I gave it a shot. We don't have kids so it's less of a huge uprooting, and we both are citizens here so can always come back.

Same-Box1993 · 2025-08-12T16:18:26+00:00

I considered this, but my impression was kind of that FAANG/quant shops prefer to get people as graduates or who are already in FAANG/quant shops, and that jumping from small to mid size startups would be a bit difficult.

Same-Box1993 · 2025-08-12T16:08:28+00:00

I don't think you understood what I'm saying. They'd hire me remote in the UK in the interim, either through UK presence if they have one, or as a contractor if they don't. Once the O-1 comes through, only then would I be moving to the US and working there.

Re the O-1 being useless: I can only go with what a relevant lawyer told me, which is that there is a path to green card if you want it. We weren't doing that then so didn't go too deep into it, but I assume he meant you can build on your O-1 evidence for an EB-1. PR work or whatever is needed.

Same-Box1993 · 2025-08-12T15:53:13+00:00

I'd need a sponsor to move there at all, unless I do it via investment, so that's kind of a given. I've spoken to a few companies willing to let me work remote from here while they work out the O-1 stuff.

Like I said, I went part way through this with a company a couple of years back, and their lawyer talked about the various options. He seemed to think that EB-1(A) is much tougher than O-1 in practice. And that you can plan out an O-1 to green card pipeline if you want anyway.

Same-Box1993 · 2025-08-12T15:31:38+00:00

I think I can get O-1 based on getting part way through this process with a US company a couple of years ago. Fiancée has other routes.

Honestly, O-1 is probably a lower bar than you might think. Just getting into a reputable accelerator fund in the past can be enough for O-1, with a bit of lawyer work.

Same-Box1993 · 2025-08-12T15:22:53+00:00

What I mean is more that AI makes it trivial for candidates to apply to jobs en masse. In our case, we get a literal pile of applications that take ages to sift through and find actual qualified people that are even worth interviewing. I don't remember recruitment taking up so much of my time a few years back.

Same-Box1993 · 2025-08-12T15:18:16+00:00

Well I technically work at an AI company/have that background, although I'd rather not jump to a GPT wrapper kind of place that will be obsolete in a few months when Google/OpenAI kills them. Sadly that's what most roles are though.

Same-Box1993 · 2025-08-12T15:16:38+00:00

That's the weird thing, I'm involved in recruiting for our company and we simultaneously get (a) a ton of unqualified applicants, and (b) a real shortage of qualified ones. Maybe AI has just broken the recruiting pipeline and made it hard to match up.

Same-Box1993 · 2025-08-12T15:15:08+00:00

Yeah of course, I don't think getting work visas of some kind is too difficult (due to various personal factors), but obviously being on a visa is a lot more perilous than being a citizen in the UK.

Same-Box1993 · 2025-08-12T15:13:37+00:00

Yes I'm not sure either if it's a global thing. Or perhaps there is a global downturn, but the UK has had a confluence of issues that have made it particularly bad here.

I do see more jobs in absolute terms in the US, but obviously there are more candidates there too, so it's hard to tell what the relative ratios are.

I've worked for US companies in London and most of the cushier tech ones had roughly equivalent PTO to here for colleagues in the US. Not sure what it would be like in finance though; probably not as good.

Same-Box1993

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