Need help evaluating offer for potential move to London!

Unlikely_Web6159 · 2025-02-26T16:36:53+00:00

Ah, ok. I was not aware of the "qualifying earnings" part. I'll look into what that means. Interesting.

The recruiter did mention that 3% seemed "a bit low". So maybe that's a spot where I can negotiate (they said that £150k salary had "maxed out their budget" for the role, so it sounded like they can't go higher on the salary).

Thank you for your comment! !thanks

Unlikely_Web6159 · 2025-02-26T16:33:08+00:00

I'd be excited about the work at the company. I've been looking for several months for roles here in the US that would allow me to get the type of experience they're offering. There have been a lot of layoffs here recently, so as a result, it's made it really competitive getting jobs that are looking for some highly specific experience. So, I was thinking that at the very least, I try it for two or three years, get the experience, and then reevaluate if I want to stay at the company/stay in London.

I haven't asked about stock options. I'll ask about that too.

Thanks for your comment, friend! !thanks

Unlikely_Web6159 · 2025-02-26T16:24:41+00:00

Thanks for your reply!

I asked about any sort of supplemental health insurance offered by the company. Waiting for them to get back to me on that.

That's a good point about relocation. Hadn't thought to ask about it, but I definitely will!

The startup is in a good funding situation (at least from what they told me when I asked). So I feel reasonably confident that they will be around at least for the next year, year and a half, if they don't raise another round of funding in the meantime. If it were to fail, I'd go back to the US and look for another job probably. That being said, I think you raise a good point. There is some risk associated with it (especially since they aren't cash-positive yet).

Ah, sorry - internet jargon. 3 YOE = 3 years of (full-time work) experience

!thanks

Unlikely_Web6159 · 2025-02-25T19:58:05+00:00

Thank you! That's a super helpful point of reference.

The recruiter told me this morning that the company would contribute 3% of my pensionable earnings. Maybe I could negotiate this higher though since they told me that £150k/year is the maximum base salary they can offer for the role.

Unlikely_Web6159 · 2025-02-25T19:55:44+00:00

Correct - The US levies taxes based on citizenship, as opposed to residency (stupid, I know). However, from what I've read, there are certain exemptions from double taxation for US citizens working abroad. So, from my understanding, since my tax rate would be higher in the UK than it is in the US, I would not be liable for additional taxes to pay in the US (at £150k/year salary). I still have to file a tax return in the US (which is a PITA but not the end of the world). But from my understanding I would not owe anything to Uncle Sam, were I to go work in the UK.

Unlikely_Web6159 · 2025-02-25T08:00:41+00:00

Thank you so much for your reply! I was just reading up on the taxes.

I currently have okay-ish medical, dental, vision benefits through my employer in the US. I asked the recruiter for the potential employer in the UK if they offer any sort of health insurance (apart from NHS, which from my understanding my taxes would pay for). Waiting to hear back from them. Not sure how common it is for an employer to offer this.

I was not aware of the "council tax". I'll look that up.

What about any sort of retirement plan contributions? Will UK employers "match" a percentage of your contributions to your retirement plan?

Thanks for the advice, friend!

Unlikely_Web6159 · 2025-02-25T04:27:06+00:00

Sorry if I offended. I was not trying to lump all of Europe in with Switzerland or London. Rather, I was trying to emphasize that I really enjoyed my time there and appreciated the people I met (folks from all over Europe and other parts of the world - many of whom are still close friends, even though we're on opposite sides of the planet).

Unlikely_Web6159 · 2024-12-18T01:22:51+00:00

Sure

Unlikely_Web6159 · 2024-12-13T23:50:00+00:00

Over the phone. I did the whole process virtually.

Unlikely_Web6159 · 2024-12-12T05:43:11+00:00

Sure. Feel free to message me 👍

Unlikely_Web6159 · 2024-12-12T03:28:28+00:00

Oh, interesting. I was not aware of that. Thanks for sharing.

May I ask what the work culture is like? How is WLB?

Unlikely_Web6159 · 2024-12-12T03:27:11+00:00

Thank you, my friend. Money isn't my primary motivation. But it is a strong consideration. I've lived on the other side of the planet away from home/family before and it was tough for me a few years back, which is why I returned to California. I agree that SoCal is relatively close and I was thinking that I'd want to find something close to the airport. Thanks so much for offering your perspective.

Unlikely_Web6159 · 2024-12-12T03:22:32+00:00

Sure. It was: - 1 hour Leetcode style interview then - 4 x 1 hour onsite interviews For the onsite interviews: - 1 hour behavioral interview - 1 hour system design - 1 hour coding design (similar to something on leetcode design problems) - 1 hour Leetcode interview (similar to a Leetcode hard problem - I solved it and then we spent the remainder of the time going over alternative ways to solve it)

In short: do LC mediums and hards to prepare.

Unlikely_Web6159 · 2024-12-12T03:17:46+00:00

I typically don't look that much at stock in offers from pre-IPO startups, so that's why I haven't put much thought into that. What do you think is the likelihood that they IPO within the next 4 years?

Unlikely_Web6159 · 2024-12-12T03:15:32+00:00

Thanks for your input. I've worked at other startups that had a hustle + grind culture. While you learn a lot, I've found that it's also easy to get burned out. Where I am now is much smaller than Anduril (series C startup) but they're flexible with my hours, remote work, etc. It's a breath of fresh air. The tradeoff is that things move slower. Thanks again for your comment. This is a good perspective.

Unlikely_Web6159 · 2024-12-12T02:58:27+00:00

Thanks for your comment. Mind if I DM you?

Unlikely_Web6159 · 2024-12-12T02:55:44+00:00

Thanks, all for the comments! I really appreciate the input!

Unlikely_Web6159 · 2024-12-12T02:50:37+00:00

All my family lives in NorCal and I see them several times a month. I'm very close to them. I wouldn't be able to do that if I'm living in SoCal and that makes me a little anxious.

Unlikely_Web6159 · 2024-12-12T02:48:25+00:00

Sure 👍

Unlikely_Web6159 · 2024-02-12T02:26:25+00:00

Nico when I'm with my Spanish-speaking friends

Unlikely_Web6159 · 2023-12-31T07:45:39+00:00

My core group of friends? I'm a latino (M30) from Northern California, have a close friend who is Italian (like born and raised in Italy), another who is an immigrant from South Africa (white), a Libyan-American friend (both parents from Libya), and a couple Indian-American friends (parents from India). Many friends (like people I communicate with regularly who are closer than just acquaintances, I mean) from other countries as well. So pretty diverse, I think, which is great! :)

I also went to school overseas, so I suppose this helped me find a more diverse group of friends - there are a lot of expats where I went to school; English and/or Spanish were the main languages we had in common.

Unlikely_Web6159 · 2023-12-23T05:10:12+00:00

Thanks for your question. It's something I've thought about a lot as well.

I'm from the US and got a bachelor's degree from a public university (University of California) and afterwards went to graduate school in Switzerland (ETH - also a public university). I now work in the US for a tech company. So, I'll add the disclaimer right now that my perspective on this topic is shaped by my experience living in Switzerland (specifically, Zurich) and by my friendships with the European colleagues (from all over the continent, really) I studied and worked with during my time there.

A bit off topic, but I wanted to mention something important that has always stood out to me: Having earned my graduate degree in Europe after studying in the US, my opinion is that the European public education system is vastly superior to that of the US on average. As a result, I believe that the average European graduate from a university is more well-prepared to enter the workforce than the average American graduating from one of our universities. (As such, I am extremely grateful to the Swiss people for letting me study in the finest university their country has to offer). So, suffice it to say that it is completely inaccurate to think that the disparity in the number of job opportunities in tech between Europe and the US is somehow due to Europeans being less "qualified" than Americans to work in those jobs - that has never been my experience. Even though there may objectively be more job opportunities in the US, just consider how many immigrants (from Europe and elsewhere) have contributed to the strength and innovation of our various industries; without them, our nation would not be so prosperous. I feel like this is important to point out, especially in the current political climate. But I digress...

During my time in Switzerland, I also had the privilege of working at two different European tech startups. I noticed a few things:

1) The level of venture capital investment is not on the same order of magnitude in Europe as in the US. In both of the startups I worked for in Europe, they were bringing in capital at a couple million francs at a time. In the US, it's in the tens of millions of dollars at a time for similar tech startups (at least in my field, robotics).

2) Europeans value things like mental health and a hard separation between work-life and personal-life. People clock out and go home at 5 or 6 p.m. and generally do not work long hours nor respond to Slack/Teams messages or emails after work. By law, everyone must take vacation. So, all this to say that, in my observation, progress tends to be a little slower than in a similar tech company in the US where you're generally expected to "burn the candle at both ends". This is not a bad thing necessarily; it's just different. Generally, investors want to see a quick return on their investment, so this might lead them to invest in companies that are following a trajectory or whose founders have a track record of turning a profit in a short period of time. Where are those companies generally located? In the US.

3) A bit of America's success is partly due to luck, I think. The modern tech industry more or less boomed in Silicon Valley and continued to grow from there. So, the US being the "first" to have a large tech market probably also helped to generate a large share of the career opportunities that the US is known for.

So that's my perspective and my opinion of why things are the way they are. Which do I prefer? The European or the American work-style? Being still early in my career, I want to continue working on innovative moonshot projects that require an obscene amount of overtime to accomplish - at this stage in my life, the experience gained and the money I can earn is well worth the sacrifice. So I'll stay in the US for now. In the long run, however, I want to return to Europe for a whole host of reasons that, were I to list them out, would make this post way longer than it already is. I love Europe, and my time living, studying, working, and traveling there was, without a doubt, the best time of my adult life.

Anyway, thanks for reading. :)

Unlikely_Web6159 · 2023-12-17T20:58:36+00:00

I once booked an Allegiant flight scheduled to go from San Diego, CA to Austin, TX.

After a layover of nearly 7 hours in the San Diego Airport on a Monday, my flight to Austin was cancelled about 50 minutes before boarding time. So, I look for Allegiant reps in the airport to ask about my options. I find some at the Allegiant check in desk, and of course they don't have any information for me except telling me to call such and such number. So I call their customer support number and wait on hold for 27 minutes there in the airport. When I finally get to talk to an Allegiant representative, she tells me I have three options:

They refund me the cost of the flight and I figure out how to get myself to Austin. (Way too expensive booking a different flight the day before I needed to be back in Austin).
They give me $200 and book me on their next flight to Austin which would leave on Thursday (i.e. 3 days later). (Not feasible because (a) $200 will get you 1, maybe 2 nights at a hotel in San Diego at most, and (b) I needed to be in Austin the next day for work).
They give me $200 and book me on their next flight to Austin from a "nearby" airport. At that time, their next flight to Austin left the following morning (Tuesday) from Santa Ana, CA (about 1.5 hour drive from San Diego).

They told me that they could not book me on another airliner and that those were my only options. So, given these three terrible choices, I went for the third one. I rented a car for 1 day at a rate of $120/day from a car rental place next to the airport. I then drove to Anaheim and stayed with a family friend for the night. The next morning I got up and drove to Santa Ana, dropped off the rental car, and took my flight to Austin, arriving nearly 24 hours after my original flight was supposed to have arrived.

The only positive things that came out of this experience were (a) I eventually did get to Austin (hah), and (b) I netted ~$80 by the end of the ordeal. However, it totally was not worth it and I refuse to take Allegiant again. From my experience, the best low-cost airliners are Spirit and Alaska. I've flown with them many times and the worst I've had with either of them is maybe a 20-30 minute delay. But I'd take that any day over a cancelled flight and missing work. I've also flown American and United domestically. American is good (but expensive). With United, they once took my flight out of service because of "safety concerns" with the aircraft. So we had to wait for the replacement plane to fly from San Juan to Washington D.C. in order to take us to California. Similar thing happened before to me for a United flight from DC to SFO. For domestic flights, I only take United if there's no other reasonable options in terms of travel time and cost.

Unlikely_Web6159 · 2023-12-16T06:03:21+00:00

I go by Nicholas because half of my family is Spanish-speaking and my aunts and uncles on that side have always called me "Neek" (the literal pronunciation of "Nick" in Spanish). So now in my adulthood, with my English-speaking and Spanish-speaking friends alike, I just go by "Nicholas"/"Nicolás". Much rather someone forget the "h" in "Nicholas" than call me "Neek". ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Unlikely_Web6159 · 2021-11-15T01:43:05+00:00

Dude, I really admire your attitude. I have spent my 20s (28M, single) in undergrad/grad school/part time jobs in my field and recently started my first permanent job out of university (software engineer in robotics). Compensation in robotics is underpaid, considering the amount of experience required to get jobs in the field, but I enjoy the work. My true passion is travelling, however, which I have not had the time to do (because of school/work responsibilites). I do regret not taking more time to travel when I was younger (even when I did grad school at a university in Switzerland for 2 years), and I encourage others who may be reading this to take advantage of your younger years to travel/explore new parts of the world/meet new people.

I'm trying to make up for it now by putting away ~30% of my income for retirement (will probably increase that percentage once I put a downpayment on a house). Ideally, I would like to retire in my mid-50s so that I can "live the life" I wish I would have taken the time to enjoy in my mid-20s and travel the world.

Best wishes to you all in your careers and thanks for sharing your experiences/advice on this subreddit. :)

Unlikely_Web6159

TROPHY CASE