Thinking about leaving the UK

[watchmaker]

Think about working in Boston and living in NH.  No sales tax or income tax in NH.  More climate future friendly than most of the US.  Buying a house in Boston is very expensive, though.  $850K for a 1300 sq ft 60 year old Cape Cod style tht desperately need freshening up (but otherwise good bones).  I personally would avoid large NH cities of Manchester and Nashua. Prefer the towns.

Check Zillow for housing in areas you are considering.  Check the annual climate change reports for expectations.

Kimball Physics is on a dirt road in one of the most unexpected places in south central NH.  Then there is Microspec in Peterborough.  I imagine there are many niche businesses with MIT alumni in MA and NH.  Skyworks is in Boston.

But no matter what, wait until it is clear there will be democracy in the USA next year.  Otherwise my kid and SIL will be looking along with you.

[tom66]

But, for engineering, the UK is still a world leader in many areas, especially in software and electronics.

You need to get out more. The UK is now so irrelevant to electronics that most of the component vendors who used to have substantial local sales operations in the UK now work through a tiny representative office, or the distributors. The UK is still a leader in some areas of engineering. Travel the world and you'll find a lot of UK civil engineers behind some of the most spectacular structures being built. For software, games still seems to be pretty active in the UK. Apart from ARM, who in the UK is really significant in electronics? Even ARM keeps mulling the idea of leaving. In the 90s there were still signs of life. A number of players, like CSR and Virata, popped up and did well globally, but the follow on has been very weak.

Well, you listed ARM, but let me think, just within about 100 miles of me...

Imagination Technologies - still supply core components of the GPU in the current-generation iPhone.

Roku - hardware/software design in Cambridge for lots of smart TVs.  And, whilst their hardware sucks, Vestel do most of their software design in the UK for their TVs.  Sky also have a base somewhere in Essex.

AMD have a base nearby here (inherited from Xilinx) specialising in high speed optoelectronics using their FPGAs. Mostly telecoms/5G stuff.

Microsoft have campuses in Reading, Cambridge and an office in London and these all do hardware and software design.  Microsoft Research in Cambridge were also involved in their prototype VR headset (HoloLens) which was almost sent to space (sadly the Falcon 9 didn't make it off the pad).

Broadcom have connections here, and, of course, Raspberry Pi - definitely a UK success story there.

Jagex in Cambridge - creators of Runescape.

FAE's may well be getting out of the UK (and everywhere else to be honest) but that's more a reflection of the type of support changing.  Manufacturers are less keen to pay for FAE's to provide support and expect customers to help themselves unless they are very high value... Some of that is probably down to the market being a lot more competitive and so margins are ever tighter on components.

[coppice]

Healthcare and waiting times are becoming more and more problematic everywhere. I have to wait till the end of November to see a rheumatologist about my Fibromyalgia. Physiotherapy also has waiting lists of more then six weeks.

And don't expect it to be better in the Netherlands. There too are problems with finding new medical workers, resulting in lots of work pressure, stress and long waiting lists.

This is inevitable. People live longer, accumulating more treatable conditions as they do. The cost of health care is essentially unbounded, and people find it very difficult to be pragmatic.

That said, the UK health service, like most organisations which don't have to worry about making money, has been overrun by administrators. 40 years ago 6% of NHS staff were in admin, and its now over 1/3rd. In the same period automation of records, x-ray image handling and other administrative functions has greatly reduced the need for administration. Unlike health care, administration has a natural bound - 100% of all people administering 100% of the time. Until that lofty goal is reached, the administrators will not stop their relentless climb.

[pcprogrammer]

Healthcare and waiting times are becoming more and more problematic everywhere. I have to wait till the end of November to see a rheumatologist about my Fibromyalgia. Physiotherapy also has waiting lists of more then six weeks.

And don't expect it to be better in the Netherlands. There too are problems with finding new medical workers, resulting in lots of work pressure, stress and long waiting lists.

This is inevitable. People live longer, accumulating more treatable conditions as they do. The cost of health care is essentially unbounded, and people find it very difficult to be pragmatic.

That said, the UK health service, like most organisations which don't have to worry about making money, has been overrun by administrators. 40 years ago 6% of NHS staff were in admin, and its now over 1/3rd. In the same period automation of records, x-ray image handling and other administrative functions has greatly reduced the need for administration. Unlike health care, administration has a natural bound - 100% of all people administering 100% of the time. Until that lofty goal is reached, the administrators will not stop their relentless climb.

Yep. Government regulations, health insurance companies and the greedy pharmaceuticals are also to blame for these problems.

My wife was a nurse, but the pressure and some incompetence in the management and the more and more paper work and less time for the patient drove here away. Luckily we were and still are in a healthy financial state that we can afford not to work.

[coppice]

But, for engineering, the UK is still a world leader in many areas, especially in software and electronics.

You need to get out more. The UK is now so irrelevant to electronics that most of the component vendors who used to have substantial local sales operations in the UK now work through a tiny representative office, or the distributors. The UK is still a leader in some areas of engineering. Travel the world and you'll find a lot of UK civil engineers behind some of the most spectacular structures being built. For software, games still seems to be pretty active in the UK. Apart from ARM, who in the UK is really significant in electronics? Even ARM keeps mulling the idea of leaving. In the 90s there were still signs of life. A number of players, like CSR and Virata, popped up and did well globally, but the follow on has been very weak.

Well, you listed ARM, but let me think, just within about 100 miles of me...

Imagination Technologies - still supply core components of the GPU in the current-generation iPhone.

Roku - hardware/software design in Cambridge for lots of smart TVs.  And, whilst their hardware sucks, Vestel do most of their software design in the UK for their TVs.  Sky also have a base somewhere in Essex.

AMD have a base nearby here (inherited from Xilinx) specialising in high speed optoelectronics using their FPGAs. Mostly telecoms/5G stuff.

Microsoft have campuses in Reading, Cambridge and an office in London and these all do hardware and software design.  Microsoft Research in Cambridge were also involved in their prototype VR headset (HoloLens) which was almost sent to space (sadly the Falcon 9 didn't make it off the pad).

Broadcom have connections here, and, of course, Raspberry Pi - definitely a UK success story there.

Jagex in Cambridge - creators of Runescape.

In just one street in Bangalore there are more places than that, and none of them are small. 40 years ago the whole Thames Valley was buzzing. Hertfordshire was doing well. There were a number of silicon startups around East Kilbride until quite recently. Notably the things you listed are mostly around Cambridge. Its the last remaining, and shrinking, pool of activity.

FAE's may well be getting out of the UK (and everywhere else to be honest) but that's more a reflection of the type of support changing.  Manufacturers are less keen to pay for FAE's to provide support and expect customers to help themselves unless they are very high value... Some of that is probably down to the market being a lot more competitive and so margins are ever tighter on components.

Globally FAEs are a big deal. The integration of any popular function into a single chip means a lot of applications work has moved from the equipment companies to the silicon vendors. You just see a shrink in UK support, because vendors are withdrawing direct invoivement in the UK, and most FAEs follow the sales volumes. This can be very negative globally, but that is how it is. An FAE may be hard to get access to for an engineer in Hyderbad, because the thing they are developing will sell by the million, but will be made in China. Someone in China easily gets the FAE support they want, because local sales are good, but often don't need it. Such is life.

[tggzzz]

Healthcare and waiting times are becoming more and more problematic everywhere. I have to wait till the end of November to see a rheumatologist about my Fibromyalgia. Physiotherapy also has waiting lists of more then six weeks.

And don't expect it to be better in the Netherlands. There too are problems with finding new medical workers, resulting in lots of work pressure, stress and long waiting lists.

This is inevitable. People live longer, accumulating more treatable conditions as they do. The cost of health care is essentially unbounded, and people find it very difficult to be pragmatic.

That said, the UK health service, like most organisations which don't have to worry about making money, has been overrun by administrators. 40 years ago 6% of NHS staff were in admin, and its now over 1/3rd.

Before making statements like that, you really ought to do a decent compare-and-contrast with other systems; you will find the USA comparison particularly enlightening. Consider both the healthcare systems' internal workings, and the external effects perceived by patients.

The principle change in the UK in last 30 years is government "reforms".

I'll refain from saying more, since that's.... politics.

But back to the OP's position. If you can find someone who has personal experience of both, you can extract a (single) data point that is worth a lot of theoretical discussion

[tom66]

In just one street in Bangalore there are more places than that, and none of them are small. 40 years ago the whole Thames Valley was buzzing. Hertfordshire was doing well. There were a number of silicon startups around East Kilbride until quite recently. Notably the things you listed are mostly around Cambridge. Its the last remaining, and shrinking, pool of activity.

Really? There are companies the scale of ARM, Broadcom, Microsoft with engineering the scale of Cambridge in one street on Bangalore?  Pull the other one.  Yes, work is contracted out to poorer countries.  And good engineering is done there (though plenty of bad engineering happens too by companies who think cheap engineers are the same as expensive engineers.)  But it's still second fiddle to the West. 

I have only seen growth in technology in the time I have been in the UK.  There's a reason why we're like #4 in the world for R&D investment in GDP terms, behind only USA, Germany, and Japan.  It would be great to have 2nd place, just behind the USA, but 4th ain't bad!

[Stray Electron]

I really don't think the UK is that bad.


The US is great in terms of engineering salaries and I can't say I haven't been tempted... But there are lots of problems.  The places where salaries are great are the most crowded and polluted.  Healthcare is pretty bad in some states too, even with private care.  (A friend had to wait 8 weeks for a cancer screening.  It was covered by his insurance no problem, but they just didn't have any appointments for that long.) 

    As far as health care is concerned I would take the US over the UK any day.  My uncle retired in England and about eight years ago he got a cancer diagnoses from his local doctor and then waited 8 months and finally died before he could see a cancer specialist in the UK Health Services.  I had congestive heart failure about 6 years ago and I called my local doctor and asked what was the best hospital in the area to treat it and then drove to that hospital and was seen immediately and admitted within 20 minutes and then spent the next 12 days in the CCU.  All of the care was great and I have zero complaints. My total out of pocket expenses was about $12,000.  So it wasn't totally free like the UK system but I DID get treated.

   But this was in Florida and not a state like California which the state and most of it's hospitals has been FLOODED with illegals with pretty much every disease known to man and with NO insurance. 

    I lived in California in the 1970s and it was still a pretty nice place to live although it was on the expensive side.  Today, I won't even visit the state!  Some of my family still visits there every year and they bring back photos of places like San Francisco that I know well and I'm just stunned at how bad living conditions are out there today.  About 20 years ago I was working for a very large US government military contractor with about 11,000 employees just in this area alone. They were looking for people to sent to California and everyone simply refused to go out there despite the fact that they were offering very large bonuses. 

   For the OP, I'm sure that there are companies that will offer you a job in places like New York and in California but make dammed sure what the living conditions are like in that area and what the taxes are and what the cost of living is BEFORE you accept.  My son just moved out of southern California about five years ago. Despite the fact that he was making over $80,000 per year and was single he just couldn't afford it.

[DenzilPenberthy]

    As far as health care is concerned I would take the US over the UK any day.  My uncle retired in England and about eight years ago he got a cancer diagnoses from his local doctor and then waited 8 months and finally died before he could see a cancer specialist in the UK Health Services.  I had congestive heart failure about 6 years ago and I called my local doctor and asked what was the best hospital in the area to treat it and then drove to that hospital and was seen immediately and admitted within 20 minutes and then spent the next 12 days in the CCU.  All of the care was great and I have zero complaints. My total out of pocket expenses was about $12,000.  So it wasn't totally free like the UK system but I DID get treated.

You're comparing apples with oranges here in lots of ways. There is private healthcare in the UK as well as public, so if you want to pay 12 grand for private healthcare then nothing is stopping you. Also you're comparing two entirely different types of medical care. Heart conditions like you describe are seen quickly and efficiently in the NHS in the experience of several friends of mine who have had such issues.

An important point for OP and their wife to consider which no-one has mentioned yet:
Due to the ongoing and continuing shenanigans with access to reproductive healthcare in the US, you and your (presumably) pre-menopausal wife might want to consider carefully whether the state you move to will be a safe place to be if you become pregnant. And whether that situation is likely to change over the timespan you want to live there.

I think it is far to say that for a lot of places in the US, a pregnant woman would not share the sentiment of "As far as health care is concerned I would take the US over the UK any day."

[watchmaker]

Virtually all the New England states protect reproductive healthcare.  That is not going to change.  Too many Academic Medical Centers that are powerful and need full services in order to train OB/Gyn as well ER staff.

[BrianHG]

They will both (sadly...) have a big shortage of men. And not only in terms of skilled workers, if you know what I mean.

The OP mentioned his wife, so not a good selling point?

Possibly OP is not the only person thinking of such a move?

Thanks to a new absurdly stupid Quebec law coming on the books, not only have I been thinking of starting up a new company in San Fransisco area, but to also move part of my extended family/relatives and offer them work.

(Warning if you are thinking about vacationing in Quebec, it is with a sad heart that I would have to say after this summer, cancel all plans for your safety unless everyone in your party is fluent in French.)

[coppice]

In just one street in Bangalore there are more places than that, and none of them are small. 40 years ago the whole Thames Valley was buzzing. Hertfordshire was doing well. There were a number of silicon startups around East Kilbride until quite recently. Notably the things you listed are mostly around Cambridge. Its the last remaining, and shrinking, pool of activity.

Really? There are companies the scale of ARM, Broadcom, Microsoft with engineering the scale of Cambridge in one street on Bangalore?  Pull the other one.  Yes, work is contracted out to poorer countries.  And good engineering is done there (though plenty of bad engineering happens too by companies who think cheap engineers are the same as expensive engineers.)  But it's still second fiddle to the West.

Yep. There are many streets with 5 to 10 of the world's major companies, each with teams in the hundreds. That is what a thriving place looks like. In silicon valley there are similar streets with multiple major companies. Less so than in Bangalore, as many companies have their headquarters in silicon valley, so they fill the whole street. You still find plenty of offshoot offices gathered together where the main sites have overspilled. Around Thames Valley spots, like Reading and Farnham, you saw the same thing in the 1980s. When I look for some of those places I remember on Google maps, they have been wiped away and replaced with warehousing or a retail park.

Don't discount Indian engineering. Good engineers in India get paid more than you, and often more than in the US. Some of the Indians who migrated to the US get pissed off when they find what their friends still in India get paid. They aren't being paid that much for low grade engineering. There are plenty of low paid Indians doing that low grade work.

I have only seen growth in technology in the time I have been in the UK.  There's a reason why we're like #4 in the world for R&D investment in GDP terms, behind only USA, Germany, and Japan.  It would be great to have 2nd place, just behind the USA, but 4th ain't bad!

I wonder how that 4th place is measured? Remember things like pharma are very active in the UK, and they spend a lot on R&D. There can be a big spend with very little of it going to the electronics sector. If there were big spending on electronics why do most electronics graduates in the UK not end up in a UK engineering job? In the 70s we did. Most of those I graduated with went into electronics. Now when you survey electronics graduates in the UK, they are more likely going into finance than engineering.

[IanB]

Even when I graduated in the 80's, electronics was already in decline as a career choice for the UK. However, I would say other fields of engineering have remained strong, such as mechanical, civil, chemical, and probably electrical power systems. For mechanical and civil, there have been megaprojects like Crossrail and HS2, and multitudes of other projects that are always going on. For electrical, there is of course the huge interest in sustainability, wind farms, power conversion and so on. In the UK in particular, with the move to offshore windfarms instead of onshore central generation, the electrical grid is the wrong shape and needs to be reengineered over the coming decades. Not to mention that the aforementioned megaprojects like Crossrail had/have an enormous electrical content for power, communications and signalling.

My suggestion to find a good career in engineering, would be to seek out big projects and industrial enterprises, and avoid consumer product manufacturing.

The same considerations would apply overseas as much as in the UK.

[coppice]

My suggestion to find a good career in engineering, would be to seek out big projects and industrial enterprises, and avoid consumer product manufacturing.

From a purely career point of view I have no disagreement with that. However, we are driven by different things. I spent years developing quite complex things, but the deployments were not big. I became deeply frustrate by putting effort into a really polished design, and have only a handful of people benefit from it. So, I actively sought out anything that would let me develop things that shipped at least a million units. There is something deeply satisfying watching your design roll off the line in voiume. Its frightening too, as any slip up you might have made will really come back to bite you, but nothing in engineering is as satisfying to me.

[DimitriP]

A good friend asked me some time ago "If money was no object where would you like to live?"
My answer was "If money is no object why do I have to choose?

Most people don't get that luxury and the choice is usually "Where would you rather live if you are not going to have enough money?".

Since you already have a "great job", keep it!
If you have money aside, get a financial advisor.

[bd139]

Sticking my head back in here finally for a bit...

Are you really sure you want to leave the UK? I had the same dilemma back in the late 1990s. I was working for a large defence company as an EE and getting paid bugger all, which is the going rate in the UK then and now. I had an option of going to the US and putting up with that (company funded) or going into Europe and continuing to be paid bugger all. The US option came with all the risks associated with living in the US and the Europe option came with all the risks associated with moving to Europe.

I decided neither was a good option so sloped around for a couple of years until I wangled a job doing something completely different. Look at the economic prospects of the countries and tailor yourself to that rather than find a poor fit somewhere out of desperation for what you are now. It'll be a smoother ride. I make 8x what I did as an EE now in the UK. Even adjusting for inflation that's pretty awful.

Also ignore DimitriP's advice about financial advisors. Don't get one. They are all bastards. Even the ones that survived RDR and RDR2 in the UK. Don't even get me started on the advice sector in the US (I work in it periodically). Work it out yourself and skip the commission and the bastards!

[artag]

I don't have direct experience of it but don't forget Ireland is still in Europe and English is spoken. There seems to be a growing tech scene.

[EEVblog]

I'm a fairly recent Electronics grad working for a big research centre designing custom instruments and sensors; great job, but my wife and I are looking hard at leaving the UK in the next few years but not sure where.
The wife is American - so that's an option - and Germany looks like there's plenty of choice in Engineering and might be better to live than the States, but beyond that I've no idea.

I'm not sure going from the UK to the US would be an improvement 

Australia, obviously, we have this thing called sun. But cost of living here is quite high now.
Australia consistently has two of the most livable cities in the world:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Liveability_Ranking
I think it's three in the top 15, Perth being the other one.

2024 summary report:
https://pages.eiu.com/rs/753-RIQ-438/images/The-Global-Liveability-Index-Summary-Report-final.pdf

We do have a housing shortage cricis though caused by massive unsustainable immigration.
It's fine if you have money, but if you aren't financially well off, it would be a stuggle.
Obviously any potential family plans will tie into this decision as well.

As general advice when you are (presumably) young, go where the good paying and satisfying work is and save like crazy.

[EEVblog]

Also ignore DimitriP's advice about financial advisors. Don't get one. They are all bastards.

I'd second that.

[Stray Electron]

Thanks to a new absurdly stupid Quebec law coming on the books, not only have I been thinking of starting up a new company in San Fransisco area, but to also move part of my extended family/relatives and offer them work.

(Warning if you are thinking about vacationing in Quebec, it is with a sad heart that I would have to say after this summer, cancel all plans for your safety unless everyone in your party is fluent in French.)

  What's going on in Quebec now?  I lived just south of the border in the late 1970s and made a few trips into Canada and all of the French Canadians went out of their way to be rude if you didn't speak French.  I lived and worked in Saint Jean sur Richelieu, Quebec in the mid 1980s and they were still rude but once I made friends with a few of them, the rest of them accepted me. That said, I never felt unsafe, which is more than I can say about some places in the US that's been to. I later worked with Spar Aerospace in Toronto and I made several trips up there and I have to say that that was a very nice area but I don't know what the cost of living was like there.

[mengfei]

Have you Considered Asia?

CN, VN or Singapore perhaps?

[boB]

What kind of weather do you prefer ?

[EEVblog]

Have you Considered Asia?
CN, VN or Singapore perhaps?

I can't imagine much worse than living in China.
Check out SerpentZA's channel for stories on living there for a decade.

[Smokey]

What's the deal with UK EE jobs?   What caused that market to suck now?

[IanB]

I'm not an EE, so I don't know a lot about it.

But over the years there has been a decline in sectors like avionics (Marconi was a big employer once), and consumer electronics goods (names like Plessey, Ferguson, all disappeared).

Today, when I see job adverts for electronics, especially smaller companies, the pay is pitiful.

On the other hand, I suspect industrial engineering in the power and controls sectors is still decent. As I mentioned in another post, there are still big infrastructure projects, and power generation and transmission are undergoing transformation.

Unfortunately some sectors like rail are seeing imports from Japan (Hitachi) or Germany (Siemens), where Britain used to lead. That's sad. However, there is still some design and manufacturing happening in the UK. And every rail system upgrade involves a lot of power, controls and signaling.

Furthermore, software continues to be a major employer, and lots of EE's go into software.

So I would say it is a bit of a change of emphasis more than anything. Combined with the general industrial decline that has been happening for years.