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Ask HN: Relocating to London After Brexit

by aearm on 12/27/20, 1:13 PM with 89 comments

• by rich_sasha on 12/27/20, 1:51 PM

  I saw a list of European unicorns (on HN in fact I think) and probably about 2/3 were UK/London based. That’s right now. The other ones are scattered around, so this might be your best bet in this part of the world.

  As another comment says, you’ll mostly get political comments, so here goes: UK universities, while still very good, are dropping quite significantly in various league tables since Brexit. This is for a range of reasons: non-UK applicants now get a full US-style price, with little support or loans. They are less attractive for academics too. 2/3 of UK unis dropped since the Brexit votes, Cambridge is at a historical low of 7th in the world, behind ETH. Student visas are sth like £1000 per year on top of that. If you think this will continue, and talented and driven young people will choose other countries, this will extinguish, in the long term, the supply of talent to startups and tech.

  UK’s attitude to immigration will also be unpredictable. On the one hand, it states that it is keen to attract talent etc, on the other hand visas will be largely awarded based on salaries (maybe not so good for early stage startups). Also there are no guarantees that eg the partner of a visa taker will be awarded one, or that visas will be extended. This is another reason why people might give the Uk a wide berth - and these would be potentially your cofounders, colleagues, investors.

  On the flip side, finance was thought to leave London en masse, and didn’t. Banks etc established a presence in EU countries, but most of the business logic staff are actually staying out.

  Also UK is at heart a country of innovation, where novelty and innovation are welcome, and entrepreneurship runs in the blood, more so than in many other places. Brexit won’t change that.

  So... who knows? I’m an EU citizen, now also British and well settled here. I like it, but probably wouldn’t choose it now.

• by thr0waway2 on 12/27/20, 1:31 PM

  London wasn't that great when it comes to tech jobs compared to US/Canada. Starting salary for grads at FANGs is around a third of what it is at large US cities when living costs are no more than 30-40% lower for example. Compared to rest of Europe London is a lot better with notable exception of Switzerland which is a non-EU country. So to me it would seem that membership in EU is not a necessary condition for good tech jobs with competitive pay.

  I'd be a lot more worried about the general shift to working from home than leaving EU when it comes to London's importance as a tech center.

• by starfallg on 12/27/20, 1:52 PM

  As a Canadian based in the UK for nearly 20 years, I'm making plans to go back to Canada or join family in the US.

  London is expensive compared to Canadian cities, even Vancouver, but pay for tech workers is comparable, if not a bit lower than in Canada. The US has higher pay than both, but it's only about 30% and you have more cost out of pocket, especially healthcare.

  Much of the energy in London in the past 20-30 years is driven by EU nationals. A lot of multinationals and tech companies are based in the south-east to access this talent pool. Many companies have whole teams based in London serving the respective European markets (French speaking, Germans speaking, Italian speaking, etc.). This will change in the next decade or so.

• by throwaway2245 on 12/27/20, 2:17 PM

  London will likely be less attractive as a place to work for Europeans: since they cannot work without organising a visa and depending on the UK government (given also that the government said out loud they would put up EU residents' rights as stakes in their Brexit negotiations);

  and likely less attractive as a place for to non-Europeans to work, since they can't get access to Europe via London.

  Finding workers for your unicorn startup in the UK will be much more challenging.

• by holstvoogd on 12/27/20, 1:40 PM

  I think the biggest impact will be the loss of access to EU workers without hassle. I would have gladly worked for a company based out of the UK in the past; now I assume I am not welcome and can't be asked to find out what would be involved.

• by neural99 on 12/27/20, 1:33 PM

  I’m not sure what you’ll gain from this question other than political comments.

  Some will say no because of possible tariffs the EU could apply to sales into the Eu. It tends to forget that the rest of the world exists.

  Some will say yes given the UK now has the ability to reduce taxes, invest in areas that it couldn’t before and provide competitive opportunities which anyone in the EU couldn’t

  So it’s really down to the UK to take advantage of its freedom.

• by hcayless on 12/27/20, 1:56 PM

  That’s certainly the hope of some in the government, though I’m not sure if I’d count on them to execute in supporting it. A lot of services based in the UK/London were there because it was a natural gateway to Europe, and that will no longer be the case since the new deal just struck doesn’t include them from what I understand. I see more downsides than upsides at the moment.

• by gartdavis on 12/27/20, 2:35 PM

  Brexit was about UK nativism. As the USA steps out of its own nativist administration, the UK has fewer like-minded global partners with real shared interests.

  I'm an American that lived in London for 2 years in the 90s - the high tide for an American abroad - so that's the POV I bring to your question. The following decades have seen mostly retrograde changes. I cannot imagine it becoming -easier- for a non-native in Britain in the 2020s... can you? Germany and even France now bring a genuine interest in cultivating technology economies by welcoming global investors AND workers. I would put Berlin or even Paris ahead of London for the next decade if you're looking for an exciting soup of technology culture, opportunity, reasonable costs, and relative freedom to operate. I'm not being arbitrary in saying this - the company I co-founded, Spoonflower, runs its European operations out of Berlin.

  That said, I loved London and still do - such a civilized place to visit. I was there just before Covid times, and was absolutely amazed by the changes to LHR immigration and Crossrail that allowed me to go from deplaning my transatlantic flight to my hotel in central London in 55 minutes. I can't wait for the city to re-open and Crossrail to be complete. There are few pleasures to equal a walk by the Thames on a long sunny day - perhaps summer 2021?

• by ben_w on 12/27/20, 2:08 PM

  For software, I don’t expect much to change. I’m basically as Remain-y as it’s possible to be, but the post-Brexit issues are:

  • Mutual recognition of qualifications: usually not as important in software as what you do after your degree, but even when it is the “engineer” in “software engineer” isn’t a protected term.

  • Customs and border controls: solution for software is “the internet!”

  • Work visas when visiting the content from the UK: apparently not needed for short business trips?

  • Work visas for those going to the UK: IIRC the UK wants a minimum pay threshold such that most of us would reject a pay offer that low even straight out of university.

  • Pay/living costs: possibly a real issue — as others point out, the UK is already not very competitive for pay and London is somewhat expensive.

  •• Regarding pay: while the exchange rates may swing sharply in the next few months, I expect that a year from now they will mostly be close to the current values.

  •• Regarding living costs: if it hasn’t been for COVID, I’d have expected housing costs to go down and everything else to go up (when measured in £), given COVID I have no idea what to expect.

  I’d actively try to dissuade you if you were doing anything involving hardware, chemicals, medicine, law, space, or food; and I’d still put 5% on this developing like the Northern Ireland Troubles; but software as a particular domain is probably either fine, or at the very least the problems will be unrelated to Brexit.

• by room271 on 12/27/20, 1:39 PM

  We will find out is the only sensible answer, as the question is too complex really.

  But, one obvious impact will be labour supply. Fewer European area devs will come to the UK, which will make things less attractive for big tech companies.

• by lagolinguini on 12/27/20, 2:41 PM

  A follow up question to this. What do people feel about relocating to the EU.

  Both this question and the question that OP is asking have been on my mind a lot lately. But I don't really have much choice in the matter, because of my situation. I was living in the US for 7 years but I had to leave because I did not get the H1B visa. I could have gone to Canada, but right now they are apparently taking upwards of 9 months to process work permits so I got turned down by a lot of FAANG companies. I ended up deciding to move to Europe.

  This decision has been really hard on me for a number of reasons. Other than the fact that all my friends are there and so are all my professional connections, being a first language English speaker, I think that I would also feel more at home in the US or Canada. Then there is the matter on compensation and opportunity. El the only things I've heard about jobs in the EU is that there are few opportunities and the pay is less. I feel like I've been forced to take a step backwards in my career.

• by mfDjB on 12/27/20, 1:44 PM

  I moved to London to do a startup in December 2019. All I can say is do not do this. The government during covid has been horribly inefficient, I just received my NHS ID in the last month (taking upwards of a year to process, during which time they denied me covid testing after I had the necessary symptoms) and I received my NINO 6 months after moving here, however now with covid they aren't even processing these anymore.

  In terms of brexit, any sort of gains for a startup will be possible only if the British government allows them to be (for example with deregulation or the removal of GDPR or the reduction/easing of bureaucratic proceses). In my experience betting on the British government to do the right thing is a bad bet. They have the digital London effort but it seems more like a PR stunt than a good-willed effort to attract startups.

  You will also encounter strange socio-economic effects that you would not see in other places, for example being an engineer and starting a startup here is viewed as a negative while being a business major is a positive. There is a big divide between capital and labour that perpetuates itself through these stereotypes that are not present in places like America.

• by robjan on 12/27/20, 1:49 PM

  It's too early to know right now. We can see that there has clearly been a lot of damage caused by Brexit but it may bring on more opportunities in the future depending on how regulations and relationships with other nations develop.

• by nextweek2 on 12/27/20, 5:58 PM

  All bets are off. Covid showed we don't need bums in seats for tech jobs and people can be trusted.

  Brexit will only have an effect if the government do something big like make a massive tax haven for certain industries and there's only talk of increasing taxes to pay for Covid.

  Pick a place for the people not the scene. Be a digital nomad until you find a connection.

  The UK is good for a market to sell into because of the strength of the pound and because it's a service based economy. These two things are not going to change.

• by adav on 12/27/20, 2:15 PM

  Too early to tell.

  If you’re coming from a less well-off country and have the flexibility to take advantage of any post-Brexit easier immigration flux, I’d definitely take the risk and go for it.

  If you’re coming from a country that’s roughly as prosperous and have some luxury of time, I’d delay any decision by at least a year.

  There will most likely still be more opportunity in London than anywhere else in Europe, but hard to tell what it’ll be like compared against the rest of the world.

• by trebligdivad on 12/27/20, 1:54 PM

  Why London as opposed to Cambridge or some of the other areas with a lot of tech?

• by richardARPANET on 12/27/20, 2:05 PM

  The UK government has recently turned the economy to dust through forced lockdowns. Thinking about moving to the UK any time soon is not a good idea.

  Also, taxes will go up soon to pay for the current economic depression.