If you have a PhD AND 20 years of job experience, I am sorry to say you are doing something really wrong if your base salary has not crossed the six figure mark. Maybe companies in the UK don't pay as much as those in the US; I wouldn't know. If that is the case though, I would suggest that you work in the US for a few years and maybe move back and try to negotiate a better offer. Having EU/UK citizenship makes it much easier for you to work in the US and I would implore you to make the most use of it.
The starting salary for a new graduate in the UK is probably in the range of £25-£33k, unless you're really lucky and do something like investment banking which is about half of what comparably qualified grads make in the US.
On the other hand, there are additional things that are paid for because of various legal differences between the the UK and the US (such as paid maternity leave, paid sick leave, and employers have to pay a tax for each employee called National Insurance which effectively funds the state pension system). The law also gives all employees 5.5 weeks of holiday (though there often some restrictions on when it can be taken).
We do have a paid maternity and sick leave in the US (well, at least in the tech companies. In my current company (IBM), we even have paid paternity leave). How expensive is the National Insurance tax? I can't imagine it being much more expensive than what my company pays for health insurance for its employees (although perhaps I'm wrong here).
> The starting salary for a new graduate in the UK is probably in the range of £25-£33k,
Are you talking about starting developer salary? That seems really really low! Why wouldn't UK devs simply relocate to the US where they could make a lot more right away?
Apologies, I don't mean to pontificate...it just befuddles me why a UK developer wouldn't want to move, if only for a little while.
Sure. How much are employer health plans in the US? Employer NI is 13% of the salary over £152 per week, so for an employee on £25000 per year, the employer has to fork out about another £2000 on top.
Almost all companies have a pension scheme too which are usually something like matched contributions - the employee contributes X% of their salary, and the employer contributes an additional X% of their salary up to some threshold (usually 5-10%).
Starting salary for any graduate job is about that in the UK, and most of Europe too. I suppose that the cost of upping and moving is significant enough to put people off. Plus, the difficulty in getting a visa is likely a major factor.
