Sadly Scotland's other unicorn, FanDuel, looks set to close its hq in Edinburgh after merging with draft kings. However, that will probably release a lot of talent to help smaller co's
My experiences with Ctrip includes regular price revisions after booking (and after they ensure they have all of your personal information), added fees for "discount coupons" which can't be removed and are only included after they have your payment information, regular spam despite opting out, and various other deceptive behaviors.
Unlike most booking engines, they often advertise firm prices for hotels, flights etc, but don't actually have confirmed inventory and often take days to confirm (or cancel or revise) the booking despite having taking your payment information already. This is only revealed after taking payment info.
There are also reports of them illegally selling children's tickets as adult tickets and trying to sell tickets purchased via mileage. [1]
[1] http://www.shanghaidaily.com/metro/society/Flyers-left-in-lu...
According to https://angel.co/skyscanner-2 they last raised almost 200m at a 1.6b valuation. I wonder what kind of terms were attached to that. I'm guessing investors will have walked away with a pretty large chunk of the sale.
Does that mean you're living there? I'm curious what the prospects are like there.
There's been more discussion lately about us Americans looking for work abroad. My wife is finally on board with making a move out of the US as a family, so I'm glad it's being discussed more.
It's not London but then a developer up here should have no problem owning a house, raising a family and having a decent quality of life. All while working a 35 hour week so you actually have time to enjoy living here.
Salary is not going to be as high as Silicon Valley, but living expenses are much lower[1]. A senior developer can expect to earn around £40k
I actually live in Glasgow and work in Edinburgh, and both cities are fantastic. Glasgow has more vibrant nightlife and music scene; while Edinburgh is so historic with beautiful architecture.
Also our politicians are not as bat shit crazy as the rest of the UK which is nice.
[1]: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...
There's a pretty cool tech scene, much of it spinning off the University of Edinburgh (great school for AI). Also, a friend gave me a tour of the Amazon Edinburgh office while I was visiting- it's 11 years old (first non-US office), still growing and seems to be doing some neat stuff.
Real estate is different from America. People live in much smaller spaces and generally don't have yards if you live in a city. You'd have to accept that, or commute into the city. That said, Edinburgh is a beautiful city architecturally (the New Town especially). I also found the food to be pretty fantastic.
The biggest difference is the market. Expect to get paid 1/3 to 1/2 of the US.
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EDIT that being said, contracting can pay well if you have the right skills and don't mind who you work for.
And if you're thinking of relocating your family from the US, there are 5 American schools in and around London[2], whereas I believe the only one in Scotland is in Aberdeen[3].
[0] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-37380696
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edinburgh
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_School_in_England
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_School_of_Aberde...
However, your biggest difficulty will be being an immigrant to the EU. These days it's a pretty damn arduous process.
I think the tech scene is quite strong and growing - as well as the multinationals and start-ups, there are a lot of well-established small/medium tech companies based here, too.
[1] https://www.uswitch.com/media-centre/2015/10/edinburgh-best-...
Lessons: scratching a trivial-seeming personal itch can pay off handsomely in the long term. And it takes a loooong time to make it big in travel.
Like most travel startup founders who've attended industry events over the past few years, I've crossed paths with Gareth and Barry a few times, and found them to be thoroughly warm, supportive and decent people.
This result is fully deserved.
During my interview process, I had an hour session with Gareth, and since joining the company in February, have had several opportunities to work with him directly.
He is a very kind person, and works hard to take care of both his team and our travelers. It's actually a core part of how we do business: the needs of the traveler come first, and our profit metrics come second.
I'm glad to see people like that be successful.
So it's hotels only? No flights, cars etc?
Otherwise where are people seeing all the tech jobs?
I have no idea how that even works. Every time I got a job from a recruiter in the UK I got 100% of the month. Recruiters get paid on top of what you get paid, not you paying them.
So the company that employs you was obviously willing to pay a higher salary than they one they gave you.
"Scottish technology firm Skyscanner sells out to foreign interests".
vs.
"British technology firm Skyscanner does something the media sees in a positive light"
I tried also other metasearches, but they mostly have offers from rubbish sites that show good prices and then you get a huge CC bill.
I've tried using other sites before and while the UI on hipmunk is nice my experience was that skyscanner normally found options which were cheaper or didn't show up at all.
But I live in the UK and typically I'm booking long haul to Asia, I don't know if the situation is different elsewhere in the world or if perhaps skyscanner is concentrating on the UK market as its home market to an extent.
