My job only exists in London

[ILikeyourHairyHands]

I see this all the time on threads. Unless you're the Prime Minister, Queen, keeper of the ravens at the tower, a genuine pearly queen or jellied eel and pie and mash slinger, I reckon that's utter bollox.

There may be more opportunities within your chosen career in London but outside very specific roles, your job does not only exist in London.

DH is a lawyer. Clearly it is possible to be a lawyer all over the UK. However he is a corporate litigation partner at a City law firm working on disputes and negotiations involving ludicrous amounts of money and global corporations. None of those clients are going to instruct a lawyer from a firm in Cambridge, which is our nearest city.

So his profession exists outside London but his job absolutely does not.

My job, however can be (and is) done anywhere...

My company supplies services and equipment to businesses all who have head offices in London. I have to see them in their offices so yes my job is London based for 2 or 3 days a week certainly

There are only about 10 companies in the entire world where my DP could work. One of these is based in London. So yes, it is plausible..

@TiddlerontheRoof OP is saying you could work in any other theatre in the world, clearly.

Unfortunately many employers don’t get that most skilled work can be done remotely. Becayse of that a lot of jobs are only available in capital cities.

Civil servant? The policy/legal kind anyway. Not much of that lives outside of London although they’ve been making noises about moving everybody to Hull etc for years.

DH works for the London office of a huge multinational. New York, Paris, Beijing and Swindon would be a weird look for them TBH.

The re are civil servants up and down the country. The dept for education for example is in Darlington and Sheffield.

There are certain jobs, especially in financial services, that only exist in London, New York, and Hong Kong. Specialist programme support roles for example, specialist research jobs, even the majority of senior risk and compliance roles (the ones in Birmingham / Manchester might have the same name but very, very different expectations - you generally only get the high profile / high quality ‘facing off to the business’ roles in London)

"TiceCream

My cousin wanted to be an interior designer. She did the qualifications but there was bugger all work in Middlesbrough where she lives. People didn’t have the money to pay someone else to pick out their wallpaper."
The poverty stricken of Yarm and wynyard?

My current job only exists in London as I doing a project which only involves schools in a certain London Borough.

@StealthPolarBear sure but it’s not all the same kind of work. I’m talking about stuff which means several meetings a week with London stakeholders/ ministers and in Parliament every other week. I know people who do this stuff from Sheffield etc and it is right pain for them. It’s the Civil Service so of course someone think it’s a brilliant idea to move everyone miles anyway and make them spend all their time on trains if it is marginally cheaper.

But everyone's specific job often only exists where they live. I work in a niche field in a niche industry and genuinely couldn't do my exact job anywhere else in the world (proprietary process for global company but has only one site for this specific manufacturing processes).

Yet, I could and have worked in multiple jobs / industries around the country as my general field is relevant and much less specific. I think this applies to most people if you have enough imagination and a good enough CV to demonstrate the value of your transferrable skills

Some jobs are in a specific location but similar roles are available elsewhere. Eg my corporate lawyer friend works in London because that's where the international banks are (her specialty) but she could work elsewhere using her skills, it just wouldn't be quite the same.

We're in tech hardware for an international company. There are only a handful of companies/branches of international companies who do similar work to mine in the UK. So if I were to change jobs, I would be limited geographically (not London, but UK SE).

And no amount of "working from home" could substitute collaborating with colleagues face to face. Not to mention the lab equipment. Design centres like ours just do not exist in every country, never mind every town.

Similarly you'll find that most manufacturing in my field happens abroad, there are a handful of locations across the world. These have evolved and / or been bought up by the big companies over the years and they definitely are location dependent.

It's a bit naïve or lacking in imagination to think like OP.

Oh and I'm not in London and all my jobs have been similarly specific but never in London

My job, which is not particularly well paid and doesn't require specific qualifications only exists in London and Glasgow. Genuinely the only places in the world. I work in remediation for a uk based compensation scheme.

My job only pays well in London- it would pay well abroad but in the UK only London really

My brother is a tube driver. I think that’s quite London-specific (and it certainly can’t be done remotely).

I’d love to know how I can avoid business travel. I’m a patent attorney. Opposition and Appeal hearings are held at the European Patent Office in Munich, Berlin or The Hague. There is currently no way of doing this remotely.

YABU and don't know what you are talking about. There are definitely jobs that only exist in London and types of company that exist in London, where moving from London to another part of the UK would make it very difficult to find an equivalent role. As PPs said, you might find a role internationally that was similar.

I have a job I could do anywhere in the world where English is the first language. Although I could,at a push, do EAL. However I would love to live in London as I visit it whenever I can. I love the tube, the pubs, the shops etc However I doubt I could afford to. My house is worth £200,000 at home but worth so much more in Lonodn so would be priced out. Plus I am near retirement so I will just keep visiting it a few times a year instead.

once you've got to a certain level in many jobs, there aren't 20/30 companies within a few miles of each other all with that position
This is my DH’s problem. There are other companies broadly within his field but he’d be unlikely to get a similar job at the same level and salary. Which sucks because his employer is horrible but he can’t leave.

Even if the jobs technically exist they might not be recruiting. I wanted to be a lecturer but there are only two universities within commuting distance of my home with perhaps a total of 30 lecturers in my subject - one of those 30 would have to leave in order for me to get their job. And once people are in a well paid job which is rarely advertised they tend to stay put - the lecturers who taught me 20 years ago are still there.