At least you can drown your network sorrows in (relatively) affordable pints of Guinness and the healthy craft beer scene.

Separate note, but I am astonished by how expensive London is - I can pay engineers Bangalore level salaries but they have to deal with Chicago level CoL.

Ireland's the same now :( Cost of living is insane, especially rent. It's still aftershocks from the financial crash in 2007, the whole economy was leaning on the housing development industry and that has never recovered. So there's a huge backlog in new developments.