Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 420 posts

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

#171

Post by yashodhan »

ValentineC wrote: post #131
yashodhan wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Currently way out in the boondocks (zone 8). I'm looking to move into Zone 2/3 East London (Shoreditch/Bethnal Green area) to be closer to work. There are quite a few flat shares available for £500-600 pcm, which is my budget. That leaves me with £400/month to live off, which is good enough I suppose.

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

#172

Post by djhworld »

DrJokepu wrote: post #154
benjaminwootton wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Public transport in London is anything but cheap. It is simply the most expensive urban public transport system I know of in terms of cost of monthly passes (or travelcards). Currently a monthly travelcard in zones 1-2 is £116.80 ($177.30). In comparison, a similar monthly pass in New York costs $112, $74 in San Francisco, $167 in Tokyo, $84.50 in Paris, $99.95 in Berlin, $100 in Chicago, $67.96 in Melbourne and so o…

Buses in London are a lot cheaper, it's £1.40 a trip, but the trips can be much longer than the relative speediness of the tube.

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

#173

Post by ubercow13 »

vineel wrote: post #166
ubercow13 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

For a hard STEM degree, a 2.1 is considered about what you should get at minimum if you have done enough work, and a first is good. A third most likely not worth having and you will have to explain in interviews why you didn't do any better, most likely. A 2.2 is "okay" but won't help you much in finding work in general. That's how I have come to understand it anyway.

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

#178

Post by cityboy »

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…

Direct contract rates are even higher, somtimes > 100% higher. The pimps (contracting agencies) really screw over contactors on London. My personal experience: went from £30/hr to £100/hr by bypassing the former pimp and contracting directly to a London oil company.

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

#180

Post by me2i81 »

justincormack wrote: post #107
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…

When I worked for a large multi-national (quite a few years ago) I brought some software engineers working out of one of our UK offices onto our team because of some collaboration initiative. I was surprised not only at how much lower their salary was than in the U.S. (I was in Palo Alto, CA at the time) but how much shit they put up with that software engineers in the US would say "fuck off" to, hoops they had to jump through to advance, wearing neckties, yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir, etc. It felt like being in high school or something. I felt bad for them, and they were good engineers.
Post reply on HN