Compared to the expenses, salaries in London seem to be pretty low. I was wondering, isn't London kind of a hotspot for high salaries in Europe?
For banking and fintech maybe.
Ask HN: Average Salary for PHP Dev in London?
41–50 of 56 posts
Re: Ask HN: Average Salary for PHP Dev in London?
#42Earlier 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.
Whilst not quite at the 45k level, I'm on more in marketing in London than I would be doing RoR work at a similar experience level. Probably better career progression and increases on the developer side though.
Think it's partly because there are very few specific dev shops, and most of the roles are in-house where development is a support activity rather than the meat.
Re: Ask HN: Average Salary for PHP Dev in London?
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
British companies aren't very tech focused and there's an oversupply of "good enough" developers for those sorts of companies.
Re: Ask HN: Average Salary for PHP Dev in London?
#44I hired many developers including PHP developers in London. I would call 3 years commercial experience below average to average. Depending on ability it would be high-level junior developer to low-level mid developer. £40-45k would definitely be the high end of what you could expect, and it would rely on you interviewing very well to get it. PHP is not a technology stack that's hard to find people in, and therefore s…
Whilst I largely agree with you, I hope you don't simply judge candidates on years of experience.
I used to PHP contract and the amount of 20 years experience devs in senior positions who were crap was extremely frustrating.
Occasionally the kid with a couple of years experience actually knows more than them.
Re: Ask HN: Average Salary for PHP Dev in London?
#45I can't believe how low these salaries are. Its not like it is a cheap place to live either.
I guess if you want to live in Europe, just telecommute to the US :)
Re: Ask HN: Average Salary for PHP Dev in London?
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Depends what part of london you live i guess.
No, not really. I seriously doubt there is any part of London where you couldn't rent acceptable accommodation and have plenty of money left over on £45k. In zones 1-2 (or 3) that'll probably have to be a houseshare - but you'd still easily get a nice private room for that. The takehome of £45k is £2,797.27 /month after tax[0]. Even if you spend 50% of that on rent (inadvisable but common in London), that's still £14…
Yep, houseshare in Zone 1, en suite, ~£900pcm here. It's not somewhere to live if you want to settle/make substantial saves for deposits or cars, but you'd still have enough to enjoy yourself.
That being said, whilst London has a nice vibe, if you don't know people here it can be isolating. Been here a few months and not really found "my people" yet.
Re: Ask HN: Average Salary for PHP Dev in London?
#47These 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?!?! That seems...pretty damn high for an intermediate level dev.
Re: Ask HN: Average Salary for PHP Dev in London?
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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?
British companies aren't very tech focused and there's an oversupply of "good enough" developers for those sorts of companies.
Sounds like the best bet for a British developer (if possible) is move to the US or work remotely for a US company.
Re: Ask HN: Average Salary for PHP Dev in London?
#49Can't speak to London particularly but my experience has been that the secret to better salaries is to be a dev that knows not a dev. It helps alot to have solid fundamentals that you can work with in several different languages/platforms and be able to demonstrate that you understand "systems" more than isolated applications. (i.e. the world of enterprise development ;)
I'd say you'd probably need to understand a lot more about distributed systems, SOA, micro-services in enterprise development than normal development.
It depends on where you're working. There are alot of companies that have "enterprisy" size systems that haven't moved into that style of development yet. Of course, that usually means working with alot of legacy code as well.
Re: Ask HN: Average Salary for PHP Dev in London?
#50£40-45k with that experience sounds about right in my experience (startups, not sure about large companies).
Is that all? In London? Nevermind, below poster stated supply/demand lowers the cost of PHP developers.
Pretty much - I've recently been through the hiring circus - the best I saw advertised was £60k (for a team lead + full stack dev (literally full-stack - devops requirements and more)). Even for positions where I was relatively overqualified, the offers were in that range.
As others have said - the big bucks here are in contracting, but personally I'm not up for that level of risk yet. In career terms I see the later-game positions as those in management or those in consulting.