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?

#131

Post by ValentineC » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 6:08 PM UTC

yashodhan wrote: post #117

beaumartinez wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd add that for jobs in startups (a focus for the HN crowd) salaries are particularly low.

Why is this the case? I'm a frontend dev for a startup in London and I make 18k annually (80% of that because I only work 4 days a week). It's peanuts, but luckily I don't mind being poor.

Do you mind sharing whereabouts in London you're staying? (Zone x, or slightly outside London...?) I was there for some years, and my rent was always around 8k a year.

I find trying to live in an expensive city while on a low salary admirable.

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

#132

Post by alexmorse » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 6:08 PM UTC

A friend of mine built a pretty good tool for this sort of research and sharing long ago if any of you are interested:

http://salaryscout.com/

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

#133

Post by gaius » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 6:09 PM UTC

pudquick wrote: post #115

vineel wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a "red brick"?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_brick_university One of 6 particular universities. A similar term in the USA would be something like Ivy League: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_League

The analogy to the Ivy League is the Russell Group.

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

#134

Post by api » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 6:09 PM UTC

This surprises me given how god-awful expensive London is. I remember it being one of those cities I've visited where I was like "how do people live here? what do all these people do?"

Or maybe, like New York, you actually can live there fairly reasonably if you really know the place and know how to do it. As a visitor maybe I was paying tourist prices.

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

#135

Post by ralph » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 6:11 PM UTC

polshaw wrote: post #46

cpdean wrote: post #34

Is this poll in pounds or USD?

I think most people have taken it to mean GBP, but I wish it was explicit in the description.

Here's a £ sign for someone to edit in.

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

#136

Post by stevenwilkin » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 6:12 PM UTC

nicwise wrote: post #69

If you live in London and do software for a salary, you better LOVE what you are doing and where you are doing it, 'cos you aint doing it for the money. You might want to also ask daily rates for contractors... most of the salary rates I've seen are around 60-75% of what contractors go for, and London has a crazy number of contractors (I'd guess 75% contract, 25% full time?)

The contract market here is pretty vibrant. I'm on close to a 100% premium to the permanent employees sitting in the same office, doing the same work.

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

#137

Post by mseebach » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 6:13 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…

They're not lower than in the States, they are lower than the bay area, which is a very, very small bit of the States. Also, it's dominated by a particular kind of business (VC funded startups) that have the cash and mandate to spend a lot of money on engineering salaries. These are not too common outside the bay area, and certainly not as concentrated anywhere.

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

#138

Post by doktrin » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 6:15 PM UTC

shubb wrote: post #71

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.

But competitively is the word. They can attract software engineers at those low wages, therefore they are competitive. This seems strange to me, as it takes a few years for someone to get good at software (the supply is constricted), and where I've been involved in recruitment, finding good people is difficult. It's also interesting to see that people get paid so much more in finance, or at American companies. That i…

How familiar are you with the finance industry? I'm not currently under the impression that anyone with C++ experience is interchangeable with a C++ dev with finance experience.

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

#139

Post by stevenwilkin » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 6:16 PM UTC

nicwise wrote: post #72

tome wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a contractor you can spend a lot of time just marketing yourself, invoicing, etc. I'd imagine this is more like 50k per year in practice.

I'm calling BS on this, being a contractor. I spend around 10 mins a week invoicing. Nearly no time "marketing myself". I DO spending a bit of time saying "no, I have a contract" to recruiters tho.

Ditto, I don't need to put a huge amount of time into the admin side of things. The volume of recruiter emails & calls can be oppressing at times haha

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

#140

Post by benjaminwootton » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 6:18 PM UTC

api wrote: post #134

This surprises me given how god-awful expensive London is. I remember it being one of those cities I've visited where I was like "how do people live here? what do all these people do?" Or maybe, like New York, you actually can live there fairly reasonably if you really know the place and know how to do it. As a visitor maybe I was paying tourist prices.

London cost of living isn't so bad.

Public transport is cheap and abundant, competition keeps prices down for restaurants and shops, and there are a lot of free events to keep you busy.

The main expense is in the accomodation, which most people in their 20s combat by sharing houses in undesirable areas. (This is a problem UK wide though as they have managed to keep our housing bubble inflated unlike in the US.)

London is expensive for tourists though. A ride on the Heathrow Express, a few nights in a 3* hotel, and a spin on the London Eye would be enough to make Zuckerberg wince.