An engineering manager with Meta, who moved from Bengaluru to London six months ago, recently took to X to highlight the difference in tech culture he has experienced in both the cities. Arnav Gupta said he was happy to find that senior techies and those who held leadership positions in London, genuinely liked what they did and did not consider "deep diving" related topics even for the sake of discussion. Moreover, the pay disparity between tech and non-tech jobs was not as wide as is witnessed in India, he said.
"The biggest 'vibe shift' for me was to see the average level of passion for the 'work' (not for the job, or the product, but just the work itself - and I am sorry if you don't get the difference) is just off the charts, in comparison to what I have seen back in India," Gupta wrote. "Some of my interactions involved some casual sparring over pair programming, or collaborating over a design diagram over a whiteboard. I was so happy to find everyone deeply interested in getting into the details, discuss every little tradeoff, discuss their 'taste' in code."
He added that even when some of these interactions were formally framed as interviews with him being the candidate, the discussions still were "passionate back-and-forth on tradeoffs of implementations".
"Also unlike India, tech here doesn't pay 10-20x of literally every other job," Gupta added. "Tech pays well here, but it isn't like 95 percent people just do it for the money, without actually liking it. It makes a lot of difference."
The Meta employee also noted a tendency among people working in the tech industry in London to ask questions about their work -- a factor that their counterparts in Bengaluru missed. Gupta associated this with being passionate about their jobs. "In general a lot more people love their craft, they also argue a lot more about the process, the quality, the architecture - they give a shit about 'how' it is done, beyond just getting it done in time," he said. "Also because, even though tech pays really well, but not really 10-20x of other things, people do not necessarily need to cling on to the job for dear life, unquestioningly. So they question 'why' for the asks a lot more - in turn gathering far more product/business context."
Gupta's perspective struck a chord with users on X and several users thanked Gupta for sharing his insight of the western tech culture. His thread soon went viral, garnering close to 2.5 lakh views.
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