After 20 years down South, the last 10 working and living in London, I moved to Manchester last year.
Now overall I think Manchester is much more friendly and relaxed than London but is this true of the work culture as well?
The job I moved up here to take didn’t work out, partly because of a real lack of work/life balance, worse than any job I did in London and not what I expected.
So anyone who’s worked in both cities, is the work/life balance/work culture really that different?

I’m trying to get a view on work here so I hope this doesn’t turn into a anti-London rant like some recent threads 😉

Yeah, I’ve worked for years in both cities. I’ll be biased though because I’m local to Manchester but I certainly find a lot more that suits me up North. London is good for going out and doing stuff when you first get there but for me it was not long before I wanted to see hills and fields, something you can easily achieve in most tall buildings in Manchester.

Lot easier to get out of the city, and most people who work in Manchester, don’t live in Manchester so they’re not focussed on the city quite so much. Works for me.

edit: A’ll add that that last point about people not living in the city, is changing. Over the last ten years or so Manchester centre has been made a lot more acceptable to Yuppies (the bombs certainly helped kickstart the regeneration) so I expect Manchester will eventually follow London for that trend.

Moving from Edinburgh to London gave a good friend a nervous breakdown within 12 months. He’s never really got over it either, proper fecked. Miss you mate! 🙁

Surely this is about the company, not the location?

GeoffJ,
I think that probably is more important at the end of the day, you’re right, but I want to find out if there are any overall differences in attitudes between the two cities generally, irrespective of individual companies

I’ve worked in both and am originally from south Manchester. I found people in London work harder, had a stronger work ethic and were generally more talented.