Thanks for the writeup. Minor point about salary, is £41k entry-level is typical for London?
According to Glassdoor average base pay for US is $116k USD, equivalent to £85k. Their page for Data Scientists in London puts the average at £52k.
I get that this is an average overall levels of seniority, but it’s also just your base pay. My impression from Levels.fyi is that at large US companies, base pay is only around 67-75% of total compensation.
So I guess what I’m asking is, given your experience, which of the following statements would you agree with:
The aggregate data is wrong or misleading
You’re being underpaid
There really is a huge pay difference between the UK and US
Big old US >> UK pay gap imo. Partial explanation for that: 32 days holiday in the UK vs 10 days US.
(My base pay was 85% of total; 100% seems pretty normal in UK tech.)
Other big factor: this was in a sorta sleepy industry that tacitly trades off money for working the contracted 37.5 h week, unlike say startups. Per hour it was decent, particularly given 10% study time.
If we say hustling places have a 50 h week (which is what one fancy startup actually told me they expected), then 41 looks fine.
I also had a sticker shock here at the number. Thanks for including the Glassdoor links, I was very surprised that base pay in the US overall is higher than London (which is presumably the most expensive UK market).
FWIW I made $187K/yr in total comp (£136K/yr) in Chicago as a data scientist after four years of experience. My starting salary was $83K/yr in total comp (£60K/yr) with no experience. In both jobs, I worked about 30hrs/wk. My day-to-day experience was rather identical to this post.
Thanks for the writeup. Minor point about salary, is £41k entry-level is typical for London? According to Glassdoor average base pay for US is $116k USD, equivalent to £85k. Their page for Data Scientists in London puts the average at £52k.
I get that this is an average overall levels of seniority, but it’s also just your base pay. My impression from Levels.fyi is that at large US companies, base pay is only around 67-75% of total compensation.
So I guess what I’m asking is, given your experience, which of the following statements would you agree with:
The aggregate data is wrong or misleading
You’re being underpaid
There really is a huge pay difference between the UK and US
Something else?
Big old US >> UK pay gap imo. Partial explanation for that: 32 days holiday in the UK vs 10 days US.
(My base pay was 85% of total; 100% seems pretty normal in UK tech.)
Other big factor: this was in a sorta sleepy industry that tacitly trades off money for working the contracted 37.5 h week, unlike say startups. Per hour it was decent, particularly given 10% study time.
If we say hustling places have a 50 h week (which is what one fancy startup actually told me they expected), then 41 looks fine.
I also had a sticker shock here at the number. Thanks for including the Glassdoor links, I was very surprised that base pay in the US overall is higher than London (which is presumably the most expensive UK market).
I would guess US market (at least those reporting on Glassdoor) skews heavily SF/NYC, maybe Seattle.
FWIW I made $187K/yr in total comp (£136K/yr) in Chicago as a data scientist after four years of experience. My starting salary was $83K/yr in total comp (£60K/yr) with no experience. In both jobs, I worked about 30hrs/wk. My day-to-day experience was rather identical to this post.