Earlier quoted context omitted.
The analogy to the Ivy League is the Russell Group.
I think Oxbridge + Edinburgh is closer to Ivy League
That's more like Harvard, Stanford level.
Poll: Full-time software engineers in London, what's your annual salary?
231–240 of 420 posts
Re: Poll: Full-time software engineers in London, what's your annual salary?
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's the legacy of the old class system rearing its ugly head. No matter how well educated, and from what prestigious colleges, (software) engineering is blue-collar work and will never be as well paid as the "graduate management fast-track" type with a sociology degree from a "red brick". Finance isn't highly paid for software work, it's fairly paid, by world standards, only because they contrary to popular belief,…
I remember a story that the no2 guy at Martelsham Heath wife was asked what he did for a living she said hes an engineer. The response was thats nice what sort of cars does he work on. Martelsham is the place where Tommy flowers used to work its the equivalent of ATT labs.
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Re: Poll: Full-time software engineers in London, what's your annual salary?
#23380k base, 130k last bonus. I'm 2 years into doing mostly Java, Python and C++ in a hedge fund. I left a small non-finance software firm where after a few years I was on 25k.
That's quite impressive! I work in an investment bank (my team is the only one that sits on the trading floor) developing low latency systems in Java. I get around 65K pre-tax in salary and bonus is not even 10K (I have about 4.5 years of Java experience and started working on this job about 2 years ago). I have been interested in moving to a hedge fund for a while and even had a telephone interview with one of them.…
> From chatter with recruiters and friends, your best change of getting into a hedge fund is through personal contacts. Can you confirm this theory?
During the period I worked for a hedge fund, no one we employed came from a personal connection. They did have stellar CVs with very good academic or industrial track records though.
Re: Poll: Full-time software engineers in London, what's your annual salary?
#23480k base, 130k last bonus. I'm 2 years into doing mostly Java, Python and C++ in a hedge fund. I left a small non-finance software firm where after a few years I was on 25k.
That's quite impressive! I work in an investment bank (my team is the only one that sits on the trading floor) developing low latency systems in Java. I get around 65K pre-tax in salary and bonus is not even 10K (I have about 4.5 years of Java experience and started working on this job about 2 years ago). I have been interested in moving to a hedge fund for a while and even had a telephone interview with one of them.…
You are underpaid :(.
Re: Poll: Full-time software engineers in London, what's your annual salary?
#235Started on 30k progressed to 60k in London. People who stay in one place for more than 1-2 years without decent raises do a bad favour to everyone except for employers. Do move around and get what you deserve along with varied experience! Companies do shell out on contractors when there is a need and can keep them for years. I think it is some sort of misrepresentation that leads people to think that it is OK to pay…
Is there a point when moving around too much is starting to look bad on your resume?
Yes, you need to use your best judgement. I would spend at least a year at each place depending how good it is. I think changing 4-5 jobs before you turn 30 is good enough, would've looked weirder when you are 40. It should come across as normal during interviews as well. How do you know you are doing what you really want/should be doing if you did not try multiple things? How do you know if a small/mid/large company is your favourite environment? Have a story/plan and have some achievements at each place, always leave on good terms. PS: contractors move around at least once a year on average and it is considered normal (unfair).
Re: Poll: Full-time software engineers in London, what's your annual salary?
#236Earlier 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…
It's not so much that they're paying for a C++ developer, they're paying for a C++ developer (or C#/Java/whatever developer) with a certain set of skills.
The sort of developers that get well paid in finance (it should be noted that there's a vast range of dev salaries in banking depending on the sort of roles being worked in with Quants, Quant/Devs and Front Office developers being very much at the top of the pile) are those that have Masters or PhDs in Maths and work on pricing algorithms, those who work on high frequency type applications, those who have enough maths that they can turn algorithms into solid applications that can't fall over during the trading day (i.e. solid, highly optimised software), or those who can interact with the trading desks and build anything which helps the desk make more money. One thing they'll all have in common as well is a large amount of domain knowledge about the (financial) products that they work on, as well as the ability to work in environment which are often noisy and stressful. Anyone who needs their own office and a quiet environment in order to get into the zone and hack on some code is not going to thrive at a bank.
Re: Poll: Full-time software engineers in London, what's your annual salary?
#237The 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.
And I would expect no less. Considering the travel card (anywhere between 1.6-3k year) and the cost of living (at least 1-1.5K/month. How can anyone honestly expect someone to work for less than 60k, even as a mid tier dev?
I hear so many companies that whine about the lack of perm developers then go ahead and hire a contract dev at 500/day. That is the market at play, if our city cannot pay our developers enough to sustain a reasonable standard of living then they wont work.
Honestly I'm glad to see it. The more developers that follow the market (contracting) the better. Hopefully that'll wake a few people up and we'll see salaries start hitting the numbers that are needed to live in this over priced city.
That said, if I WFH 100% 50-60k would be fantastic but that's not acceptable these days.
Re: Poll: Full-time software engineers in London, what's your annual salary?
#238Earlier 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?
Not really, since it's the most-commonly awarded grade and awarded to a clear majority of students at many schools in many subjects. Usually it means that the student was in at least the top 60% of students (but probably not the top 10%) on their course.
Since our quirky grading system leaves most students' accomplishments indistinguishable, it's the reputation of the university you studied in that matters.
Re: Poll: Full-time software engineers in London, what's your annual salary?
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there a point when moving around too much is starting to look bad on your resume?
Yes, you need to use your best judgement. I would spend at least a year at each place depending how good it is. I think changing 4-5 jobs before you turn 30 is good enough, would've looked weirder when you are 40. It should come across as normal during interviews as well. How do you know you are doing what you really want/should be doing if you did not try multiple things? How do you know if a small/mid/large company…
I wasn't trying to argue against you, I was just asking for opinions on the limits of changing jobs too much. My own estimate is something like 1-2 years minimum per job.
Re: Poll: Full-time software engineers in London, what's your annual salary?
#240Given the poll earlier today re: valley/bay area salaries, WTF, are all the "best" programmers in northern Cal?
Unlikely.
The salary disparity between London and the Valley is absolutely shocking, all the more so given that London is not at all a cheap place to live.