Poll: Full-time software engineers in London, what's your annual salary? • Hacker News Board

Re: Poll: Full-time software engineers in London, what's your annual salary?

#101

Post by blibble » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 5:02 PM UTC

OrsenPike wrote: post #49

xSwag wrote: post #17

As someone debating whether to do a Mathematics vs Computer Science vs Joint Honours, I'd really like to hear from graduates what worked out for them. - As a developer, how often are skills from CompSci degree applied on the job? - What do you wish you knew about the job market as an undergrad? - How much part did the prestige of your university play in your current salary?

To answer you questions... 1. Hardly ever. Then again I am not doing anything amazingly special or complicated. Just standard business apps. 2. That experience is worth double what theoretical education is. So make sure you DO STUFF and stick it up on github. Write a blog about what interests though. Writing a blog is great at improving your language skills. Also take some presentation skills courses while you can as…

while an elite degree might not get you the job, it does help in getting your foot in the door, and it's likely to get you a higher base salary.

the data I have shows me that my (non first) Cambridge degree allows me to command a 10-20% higher salary than my non-Oxbridge colleagues.

Re: Poll: Full-time software engineers in London, what's your annual salary?

#102

Post by justincormack » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 5:03 PM UTC

nicholassmith wrote: post #92

SandB0x wrote: post #13

The software industry here in London is really badly paid, for salaried jobs outside finance at least. I know plenty of developers who started at £20-25k as graduates from decent universities and whose salary has slowly risen to 40k over quite a few years. PhD graduates making £35-45k too.

£40k is not badly paid. It's significantly less than SV sure, but it's a lot more than the average UK salary.

Apparently it is about average for London http://www.london24.com/news/business/london_has_uk_s_highes... - London salaries are much higher than UK average.

Re: Poll: Full-time software engineers in London, what's your annual salary?

#103

Post by jckt » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 5:05 PM UTC

SandB0x wrote: post #27

egwor wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to compare like with like: number of days holiday is different (we have different numbers of public holidays); you don't have to pay for health insurance; the numbers here are in sterling not USD; do we value experienced developers more than very new ones; how many have bonuses as a major part of their salary [which this doesn't show]?

Sure, a lot of things here are taken care of. But compared to other jobs for smart graduate in the uk, e.g. law (£35-40k as a graduate trainee), investment banking (£40+k as a graduate, rising very quickly and with significant bonus) it is poorly paid.

What about cost of living in general in UK/USA (or perhaps more relevant, LDN vs SV)?

Re: Poll: Full-time software engineers in London, what's your annual salary?

#104

Post by borsuq » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 5:08 PM UTC

I live in Central Europe (Poland) and fortunately, there are cities where IT jobs are very well paid. I work for 10 years in IT and can easily make equivalent of £25K per year - which is more than decent salary here.

UK recruiters are very active here (most my fellow developers are regularly contacted), but even though I was considering moving to London or SF, it has to be something really exciting - majority of well paid s/w engineering here is boring "typical" business stuff.

I wouldn't expect any significant financial boost, but possibility to work for LinkedIn, eBay (Google maybe :) is an advantage.

Re: Poll: Full-time software engineers in London, what's your annual salary?

#105

Post by ronaldx » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 5:09 PM UTC

xSwag wrote: post #17

As someone debating whether to do a Mathematics vs Computer Science vs Joint Honours, I'd really like to hear from graduates what worked out for them. - As a developer, how often are skills from CompSci degree applied on the job? - What do you wish you knew about the job market as an undergrad? - How much part did the prestige of your university play in your current salary?

Freelancer here: the prestige of university is certainly very useful for getting more work and commanding higher pay - some people use it as a simple marker for quality.

Re: Poll: Full-time software engineers in London, what's your annual salary?

#106

Post by buro9 » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 5:09 PM UTC

Yhippa wrote: post #94

Wow, I am shocked at the low salaries. There go my fantasies of doing software development in London. From what I've read about there's no way I could afford rents there on that salary.

And yet, I can do a bootstrap startup and my girl is unemployed (just finished her PhD and now looking for an academic position) and we do alright on a combined salary around ~£1.1k per month take home.

If you're fine living in Zone 2 or 3 ( the grey concentric circles on this map: http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloads/oyster-rail-services-... ).

Then rent in London: Shared house/apt = ~£650 per month, private apt = ~£1.2k per month. Deals are to be had if you can wait for them and do the legwork... those are the averages my friends pay.

Now... on a £40k salary, the PAYE tax calculator here: http://www.listentotaxman.com/ shows that you'll be taking home £2.5k per month.

You can definitely afford London rent on £40k.

Re: Poll: Full-time software engineers in London, what's your annual salary?

#107

Post by justincormack » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 5:12 PM UTC

sopooneo wrote: post #90

Why are the salaries so much lower than in the States? I know part of it is that demand outstrips supply here, so perhaps my question resolves to why there is less demand. I assume that the point of software is that it can be an efficiency multiplier, so if you hire someone to automate a process, that is either reducing costs or increasing revenue, which should be fundamentally valuable. I am deeply ignorant here and…

Outside of finance most profitable businesses do not have a culture of paying out those profits to the workforce, they pay management a lot and everyone else as little as they can. And don't forget that most businesses are not very profitable anyway. Europe has very few large profitable internet businesses, and not many small ones either. Bootstrapped businesses like to invest in growth not salaries. Many non startup businesses have low productivity.

London also has a large supply of people coming from other countries as the job market is much better here, and these people will often accept fairly low pay as it is higher than what they would have got at home.

Re: Poll: Full-time software engineers in London, what's your annual salary?

#108

Post by draugadrotten » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 5:13 PM UTC

krzyk wrote: post #78

VexXtreme wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That tends to be the case mostly everywhere in Europe. For that matter, most places in the world outside the US (and Silicon Valley) tend not to pay software engineers very competitively. I am from a fairly small central European country and programmers there barely make more than other professions; the salaries often amount to the national average.

I'm also from Europe and in our country it's the contrary, one of the companies was few years ago advertising that they give developers salaries that are at least two country average. And that wasn't even in the capital (but a 2nd largest city). Here I think we are one of the best paid non-management people (apart from doctors/lawyers) Edit: Forgot to mention the country - Poland

I am from Europe but have friends in Ukraine among other places. In Ukraine, programmers are paid very well compared to the national average. So well paid that the 20-something programmers gets rockstar status with girls, and rockstar habits with vodka and drugs. This isn't very good for Ukraine startups.

Re: Poll: Full-time software engineers in London, what's your annual salary?

#109

Post by blindhippo » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 5:14 PM UTC

blibble wrote: post #98

mebassett wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that skills from more traditional, hard degrees (maths, physics, chem, history, philosophy) translate into high-level employable skills more than raw computer science. raw comp sci (and basic programming jobs) is a useless skill without advance business domain knowledge (and the traditional hard subjects provide the scaffolding, if you will, to pick that up more quickly.) One think I wish I knew about the job…

and my experience is that the people with hard degrees tend to write bad code, as a result of not really understanding what's going on. this may not matter for some CRUD website, but does when you're pushing the limits...

This is entirely anecdotal so take it for what its worth. In Canada I've noticed that graduates of Computer Science programs can barely operate a computer by the end of things. They can write and explain some pretty cool advanced algorithms and explain it in Big O notation - yet the business value of this knowledge is almost nil.

On the other hand, skills schools and engineering programs churn out better programmers by far. They are trained to know how to dive into other peoples code, work with a project team and generally apply methodologies to improving code wherever they encounter it. From day 1.

And yet some how managers still cling to the dated notion that a university degree guarantees return on investment.

Re: Poll: Full-time software engineers in London, what's your annual salary?

#110

Post by basicallydan » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 5:17 PM UTC

chrisdevereux wrote: post #9

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In London UK, I will assume £, Pounds Sterling, GBP.

The available options suggest this too. OP should probably edit to clarify though.

My bad. It's too late to edit now. Yes, GBP is what I meant :) the original one didn't specify Dollars though, and I think anybody who is answering would probably expect to answer in GBP anyway.