These salaries are terrible, how is it possible to get away paying such low salaries in London? In the US (not even San Francisco) I'd expect nothing less than 125k USD (105GDP)
For a PHP developer with 3 years commercial experience?
Ask HN: Average Salary for PHP Dev in London?
31–40 of 56 posts
Re: Ask HN: Average Salary for PHP Dev in London?
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also you need to realise that the wage in the Uk is lower than elsewhere. They have lower employment tax, etc. The average wage in the UK is £24k. This is take home more money than people who get paid €45k in Germany.
But that's pretty low salary for london. Bankers/Accountants/Professional services, 45k is first job level for london. It's just programming in general in UK, isn't that highly paid.
> It's just programming in general in UK, isn't that highly paid.
Why is that? Lack of demand/anaemic tech industry, lack of respect for developers, or too many developers?
Re: Ask HN: Average Salary for PHP Dev in London?
#33PHP Dev here with similar experience as yours. I used to work/live in London and stayed there for a bit less than ~2yrs. My salary was 50k in a well respected big US-based corp. Mine was the highest salary in the team, other members were between 35 and 45k. Honestly, be well-aware that the value of your salary is going to remarkably decrease if you relocate to London. Mainly because of rent. I used to pay 1.5k to liv…
35k is not nearly as much as I expected, with those living costs
Re: Ask HN: Average Salary for PHP Dev in London?
#34These salaries are terrible, how is it possible to get away paying such low salaries in London? In the US (not even San Francisco) I'd expect nothing less than 125k USD (105GDP)
$125k for a PHP dev with 3 years experience? Where do I apply for that job?
Re: Ask HN: Average Salary for PHP Dev in London?
#35These salaries are terrible, how is it possible to get away paying such low salaries in London? In the US (not even San Francisco) I'd expect nothing less than 125k USD (105GDP)
It's a different world. It is important to known if this is before or after taxes and healthcare is free (or rather: paid for by taxation) in the UK.
I've only ever heard of salaries being quoted before taxes in the UK - same as the US.
Re: Ask HN: Average Salary for PHP Dev in London?
#36PHP Dev here with similar experience as yours. I used to work/live in London and stayed there for a bit less than ~2yrs. My salary was 50k in a well respected big US-based corp. Mine was the highest salary in the team, other members were between 35 and 45k. Honestly, be well-aware that the value of your salary is going to remarkably decrease if you relocate to London. Mainly because of rent. I used to pay 1.5k to liv…
Or just ride a bike to work to save on transport costs! London has good enough weather that you can bike year round (with a waterproof jacket :P).
Re: Ask HN: Average Salary for PHP Dev in London?
#37The UK is all about the contracting market. PHP isn't the best paid gig in the world but you'll do £350 to £450 a day if you're resonably good and if you can do a bit of AWS you're a lot more hireable. So that's about £88k a year.
Word of warning though, the contracting market doesn't suffer fools gladly, and at 3 years commerical experience you're a baby. Thus, unless you're actually really quite good, you're doing well at £40k.
Edit: I can recommend you a company in a town 40 minutes outside London. PM me if you're interested.
Re: Ask HN: Average Salary for PHP Dev in London?
#38These salaries are terrible, how is it possible to get away paying such low salaries in London? In the US (not even San Francisco) I'd expect nothing less than 125k USD (105GDP)
PHP devs in the US generally get paid a lot less. 45-75k on the junior end and 80-105k on the senior end. I took a job in PHP/Wordpress/Salesforce because I liked the company and the people and I'm paid like half of what you said. In New York.
I can manage but yeah, I'm asking for more money soon. 125k as a baseline, especially in PHP, seems absurd to me. Sure, I could switch to any of the stacks that I'm more familiar with and make way more, but with a lot more hours and stress added.
I get my work done in ~30-33 hours, am not on call, have a lot of influence over our products and like absolutely everyone at the job. From my perspective, more pay seems like golden handcuffs. Here I am free to live my life.
Re: Ask HN: Average Salary for PHP Dev in London?
#39These salaries are terrible, how is it possible to get away paying such low salaries in London? In the US (not even San Francisco) I'd expect nothing less than 125k USD (105GDP)
It's a different world. It is important to known if this is before or after taxes and healthcare is free (or rather: paid for by taxation) in the UK.
Fun bit of trivia: the UK government spends less tax money on everyone's health per capita than the US government does (before you even add on health insurance)
Re: Ask HN: Average Salary for PHP Dev in London?
#40These salaries are terrible, how is it possible to get away paying such low salaries in London? In the US (not even San Francisco) I'd expect nothing less than 125k USD (105GDP)
That's actually 88K GBP which I guess might be doable as PHP dev in London if you are working for a major US company and are very senior.