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

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

#161

Post by ivix »

mrstew wrote: post #93
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.

Hmmm, this is pretty different to my experience (as both employee and employer), perhaps it depends on the skillset and exact location. I have a (non-finance related) start-up in central London and it's pretty difficult to find skilled developers with 4-5 years experience who are asking for less than £50k p/a.

Yeah, that would be the threshold for me to begin to consider commuting to central London (I'm in Cambridge).

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

#162

Post by buro9 »

eterm wrote: post #130
buro9 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 =…

You can definitely afford to rent in a shared house or rent a 1-bed, you can't afford rent if you need to support others.

And yet, the post you are replying to shows 2 people living on ~£1.1k Net monthly income in London, and already shows rent isn't as extravagant as people think.

You can support someone else, on a single £40k wage, in London, in an 1-bed place (assumes you're supporting a partner).

Maybe you can't afford a car, or to eat out several times a week, or to take lots of holidays... but £40k goes pretty far and providing money isn't being spent frivolously it easily supports 2 people in 1 flat in London.

When ~£13k per annum can support 2 people, £40k is a very high standard of living for 2 people.

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

#163

Post by vallejos »

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.

sfghdfgh

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

#164

Post by petercooper »

john_flintstone wrote: post #144
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.

Contract wages are considerably higher, especially in London. In some cases, twice as high. If you have a little fire in your belly, and don't mind living with some uncertainty and a lot of change in your life, contracting in London can be great -- financially and otherwise. Ex: City (finance) contract rates of £500-£700 per day are far from uncommon, if you have finance experience. Non finance, £400+ per day is not…

Just for reference, I don't think I've seen a rate of under £400 per day for Ruby/Rails developers, and I used to get £400/450 several years ago when I was still doing that, even outside of London.

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

#166

Post by vineel »

ubercow13 wrote: post #120
vineel wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the 2.1 number you refer to a GPA? What's it out of?

UK degrees are classified into four classes: 1st, upper and lower 2nd, and 3rd. A first corresponds to about an average of 70%, 2.1 60%, etc.

So then is a 2.1 considered impressive?

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

#167

Post by lucian1900 »

MrQuincle wrote: post #125

Nice attempt, but how do you correct for bias here? What type of people visit HN? What type of people visit HN that come from the UK? At what point of the day? Which people are happy to fill in a questionnaire that shows how little they earn? It is probably skewed in the direction of high wages. To know that I would recommend at least the same poll for another European city and for several American cities.

Why would anyone avoid telling others how much they make? For example, I make £32k (£1900/month) and I pay £800/month rent.

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

#168

Post by growse »

Nursie wrote: post #122
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.

Tell me about it. I moved overseas to Australia from London a few years ago. Same job, same company, 60% pay rise. Now I'm back in the UK the permanent salaries on offer seem like an insult. I have to go contracting to match it.

But isn't Australia 60% more expensive to live in than London? I know salaries are sky-high, but I'd heard there were living costs to match...

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

#169

Post by lkozma »

draugadrotten wrote: post #108
krzyk wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I am from Europe but have friends in Ukraine..

Ukraine is in Europe.

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

#170

Post by djhworld »

benjaminwootton wrote: post #140
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.) Londo…

> London cost of living isn't so bad.

Really? London has the highest rent and house prices in the UK.

The average rental for a 1 bedroom flat is about £1200 a month, if you attribute that to the average UK salary of about £26k that's about 70% of your take home (monthly) pay.

I agree that the other costs are mainly in line with the rest of the country, although the tube is very expensive (buses are much cheaper)

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