So for a super quick background. I have worked for 8 years in Australia, pretty much since I finished uni. I have had roles such as Fullstack Developer, DevOps Engineer, and Cloud Engineer. But like all Australians, the urge in your late 20s to move to London arrived. I however did not want to just randomly work in a bar and take fortnightly trips to the continent. I wanted to try to actually do a real job. I was lucky enough to land myself a role working on a data science platform for the country's largest retail store.
~~the good~~
Let's start with the good. It's pretty nice to work at such a large scale. There are not many companies in Australia that could compare with this level. It genuinely seems they are using well established technologies years ahead of any organisation at home. Using big data tools such as Apache Spark and developing truly cloud native applications are just two examples.
Being a much larger team also helps. It always feels at home like you're constantly stretched to your limit. Being forced to rush development or called into some mess customer deal that has gone bad at the last minute. I'm sure there are organisations in the UK running to wire, but properly staffing development teams does seem to be a priority providing they have the cash flow.
The work undertaken by the team feels more managed and prioritised as well. When things change you are sort of able to identify why the company has shifted direction. All feels very business-like with shifting "economic" tides pushing the decisions. At home it often feels like decisions come top down from some sales person or inexperienced, non technical CTO. Often what feels like an urgent priority today, is forgotten tomorrow. This does make it hard to truly judge the technical priorities.
~~the bad~~
The UK is definitely NOT a morning person's place. I don't think the office starts to fill up anytime before 10am. Either everyone here loves to sleep in or the trains aren't working (which is pretty common as well). Honestly it's just a personal preference but you forget how much the culture of a city changes how you work. I'm just used to 6am exercise routines and other health/wellness crap probably promoted by some random podcast.
As previously mentioned, with the larger scale and bigger teams the workload can feel a bit slower in the UK. While I am finding ways to stay energised and iterate quickly on problems, it still feels like this is a much bigger system that needs to be slowly tweaked to achieve your goals. There is rarely going to be those dream "rebuild the universe" opportunities. Which to be honest might be a good thing, rebuilds are often never that good and just recreate a lot of the same issues. Still doesn't mean they're not fun or that hacking something together quickly isn't extremely rewarding at times.
Alright now the BIG one. Salaries. There's no denying they are just across the board, in every industry and job a lot lower here. Couple that with an equal or worse cost of living if you are in London and you have a recipe for a VERY expensive time. That is all I want to say on this one. That it's just a bit tougher financially for everyone in the UK.
~~conclusion~~
Overall I'm pretty happy working here for now. The sh*t weather, lower salaries and fact no one is awake pre 9am not so much. But for day to day working it's better. Also learnt the lesson that I won't be staying in a role for more than 4 years again... I hope these conclusions aren’t too biased or specific to my circumstances. It's really just the things I've noticed. Maybe a few more years and another role I can do a "loopback" and compare again.
c ya 🤪