yellowroom

I already did.

mrken30

the salary is about the same range for similar position in Portland, OR. I would check out the company on glassdoor.com. The salary for that position used to be about £45k (£60-70k contracting) in London, 10 years ago, but just depends on the company.

A lot of companies that have a California presence are going to "unlimited" vacation.

My first job here I got 3 weeks vacation , but similar to you they allow some time off unpaid. People quite often went away for 5 to 6 weeks. These were generally trips to India or Europe.

Get a feeling of rents from zillow or trulia

Used cars are more expensive here. I am surprised how many people drive around in $50k+ cars.

If you are in London , I assume you are paying £1500 / month for a flat or similar.

I certainly don't think you will be worse off.

Anian

Via Iceland is fun because they have 10 flights to north America all leaving from consecutive gates within an hour of each other and there's barely room to stand. If you are lucky then you also get the added fun of there being two flights to the same city and none of the announcements specify which they apply to.

mrken30

I guess we were lucky only having a 2 hour layover in Iceland. The best thing was we got a choice of several UK airports to fly in and out of.

Steerpike

My g/f works for a company with an 'unlimited time off' policy. And it is paid, too. My g/f is too conscientious / dedicated / busy / embarrassed to push the envelope with this policy, so she pretty much takes about 3 weeks/year, but I just thought I'd mention it since it came up in this thread. It is a very small company (~10) doing IT application consulting (programming, basically).


I feel confident that they would take issue with anyone taking 'a lot' of time off, but from what she's told me, no one has in the ~5 years she's been with them.

mrken30

A lot of bay area companies are doing that. But as you said most employees don't push the limit. Is CA an at will state?

Steerpike

I honestly did not know the answer to that, but this is what I read just now:


So I believe the answer is yes, CA is an 'at will' state. There's still a plethora of reasons you can't fire someone, though; age discrimination, sex discrimination, race discrimination, etc.


I had an IT guy working for me, who was totally not cutting it. He failed to show up, showed up late, and had all kinds of relationship issues (police showed up at the office once) and was almost certainly on drugs. He was supposed to be on call but never answered the phone when necessary. He would snooze at his desk. He may have survived in a bigger company/department, but I was running a small team in a fast moving startup. Anyway, it took me 3 months to get rid of him; I had to go through written warnings, and had to give him 3 chances. He finally blew it on unexplained absences, but it took a huge amount of effort to get there. I asked the HR person why we had to go through all this, and she said this guy was "in a protected class" - he was over 40 ! So she was worried that if we terminated him 'for no reason', he would sue us for age discrimination.


Personally, I believe the ability of an employer to terminate an employee 'at will' is an important benefit (to the company) and I would say anyone making a 'decent' salary is not unduly burdened by this law. I do feel strongly that 'minimum wage' workers at places like McDonalds and WalMart deserve extra protections, as termination can be used as a strategy to avoid benefits such as healthcare (that is - a company may offer healthcare 'after 6 months', and then terminate people at the end of their 6th month to avoid having to provide the benefit).


Just found this article - confirms the 'over 40' issue. And this article reminded me that we actually 'paid off' this guy in the end (gave him a severance package with a release, as described in the article) - even after having gone through the 'written warning' hassle. So all I can say is, it would seem that it is not that easy to truly terminate someone 'at will'!

username.exe

Thanks for these comments, Steerpike. It's interesting to hear some first hand examples.

On the other side of the spectrum, my brother-in-law's father worked for Disney as an engineer for over 35 years (designing the rides, fun gig).

One day, security turned up at his desk and informed him he was being terminated. (They escorted him off the premises there and then). Turns out they decided to get rid of a few staff to cut costs and he was one of the heads to roll, thus ending his career.

Hoped that was just an outlier when I first heard the story.

Steerpike

On the one hand I feel that 'minimum wage' (and close to...) workers deserve protections, and on the other hand I feel that highly compensated people should be smart enough to realize they are working at the discretion of their employer and should always be building up savings to cover the inevitable. But then there's a gray area in the middle, and I don't know where that line belongs (and remember - the employee can leave at any time, possibly leaving their employer in the lurch ... when the market was great in the early 2000's, you could jump ship and get an extra $10k if you could as much as spell "IT").


Having started my own company recently (after more than 30 years working for others), I've had the opportunity to hire people myself, I can tell you, my biggest fear is - what if the work dries up? I've been overwhelmed by work, and had to turn work away, and have had long discussions with my business partner about hiring some extra help. We could potentially make good money - hire a junior IT person at $60k ($30/hr), and bill him out at $125/hr or more ... sounds great ... but what if we lose a contract; we are now stuck with a guy on payroll and will have to terminate him/her if new contracts don't come along soon. So far, we've simply turned down work rather than take on the risk. "Employers" aren't just monolithic, faceless corporations; working for startups really brings home the realities.


A buddy of mine recently started at a startup as a high-up guy - probably making $200k or more, with options and such. But they lost a major contract, and let him go. He didn't blame them - he could see the finances.

johnwoo

Until that particular Tech Bubble burst. Time for another one do you think?

mrken30

That was before major outsourcing to India and other countries. Now IT is global and not just for Western countries

johnwoo

Judging by the number of Indians moving into the San Francisco Bay Area, you'd never know it. Even the Techies are moving to Seattle, as it's getting too expensive in the SFBA for even them. My house is paid for, I could make a lot of money if I moved to somewhere cheaper. Where to go, there is the rub.

Pulaski

Please not NC.

johnwoo

That would be very close to the bottom of my list, believe me. Following the deep south.

Have to be the West Coast, after all as you said, "I have a West Coast mindset".
The rub is, I love where I am now. Northern California.

Always eagerly look forward to you posts.

Pulaski

Thank you, I shall take that as a compliment.