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

331–340 of 420 posts

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

#331

Post by Too »

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…

Some suggestions. Don't know how true this is in UK but comparing US to scandinavia i think these factors weight in some bit.

Education is cheap so there are less student loans to pay back and more people get a degree saturating the market. Having a degree simply isn't that special.

Healthcare and other public services are cheap, you don't have to pay expensive health insurances which lowers the salary level for everybody, not only engineers.

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

#332

Post by _progger_ »

jamesdeer wrote: post #188
yashodhan wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm a start-up founder, and live in Bethnal Green. It's a lovely place to live (in London). Our office is just off of Brick Lane, and it's a short 15 minutes to work every morning :)

No offence, but Bethnal Green looks like an ethnic ghetto. Is it getting better further to the south?

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

#333

Post by rmc »

shadchnev wrote: post #259

Having read all comments, I'm somewhat lost. I was hired in London in 2008 on £37K, it was my first programming job after uni, I had clean resume. Today a competent beginner with a few web projects under his belt easily gets around £45K. I'm hiring developers for my startup – http://www.makersacademy.com – and I wish I had more applicants. I'm happy to pay £350-450/day for a decent Ruby dev and or around £60K permane…

So at 60k you can't find devs maybe that's not high enough. Try offering 100k, see how many applicants you get. If you can get lots of CV then you've found the market price.

Remember, to attract people you'll also need to attract people who are in jobs already. For that you'll have to offer something better than what they have.

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

#334

Post by bnastic »

pointyhats wrote: post #210
mseebach wrote: post #84

Sample size=1, I've found that the "idols" of the developer community in London work for gov.uk or the BBC. I respect both very much, but you can't optimize for "soft" values and cash at the same time. It's a bit tautological, but if you want to make a lot of money, you have to go do that. You can't optimize for a fun, "meaningful" (hugely subjective, obviously) job with short hours and expect the money to just come…

Financial services? A typical financial services company in London this fine day (no names mentioned): Still has classic ASP deployed, VB6 COM is the backend, "extreme waterfall" is the process and integration via CSV files (using ' as a quote char of course!) over FTP is the mutt's nuts. Add to that a security policy which involves a large brush, a fucking huge rug and a copy of the production SQL Server 2000 databa…

Sorry, but that's not 'typical' at all. At least not for investment banks. It's true that Python is used (when used) only for peripheral tasks, but there is a reason for that. Number of Linux vs. Windows shops in the City is about even. Banks employ some really smart developers, in general.

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

#335

Post by gaius »

tptacek wrote: post #246
michaelochurch wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This applies to the US as well, but probably not as severely since software engineers aren't as underpaid in the US. Finance pays a fair market wage, which seems high by comparison to all the unfair players out there, but isn't actually that unreasonable. Startups pay a theoretically fair wage (if you accept valuations at face-value and exclude liquidation preferences). It's when you see the equity/cap table (2% for…

This comment nicely captures a misconception about how employment markets work. If, stipulating the dollar value of the whole comp package, a comp package appears fair, it is still fair no matter what that company pays anyone else . Wages are "fair" or "unfair" based on prevailing rates and supply/demand.

Then why all the hand-wringing about a "shortage" of engineering talent?

Because the market cannot operate, it is suppressed by the class system.

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

#336

Post by neverminder »

I'm a full stack developer from Buckinghamshire with 4 years of experience (mainly web dev), currently working with PHP/MySQL/JS/Java developing large scale enterprise software, also learning Scala on a side. I was gonna start looking for a job in central London this year, preferably Java/Scala based, but I always though that I'll be lucky to get £40K. Does this mean I can aim higher?

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

#337

Post by MebeLou »

Started off at a consultancy company in central London in 2010 on £30K as a 'grad dev'. I know that a 'Senior Consultant' would be given between £40 and £50K at this company.

Since then I've moved on, and am on £48K.

Full stack developer, using mostly ruby and related tech atm, was .NET based mostly before that, but could have been thrown into a project doing anything.

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

#338

Post by shadchnev »

rmc wrote: post #333
shadchnev wrote: post #259

Having read all comments, I'm somewhat lost. I was hired in London in 2008 on £37K, it was my first programming job after uni, I had clean resume. Today a competent beginner with a few web projects under his belt easily gets around £45K. I'm hiring developers for my startup – http://www.makersacademy.com – and I wish I had more applicants. I'm happy to pay £350-450/day for a decent Ruby dev and or around £60K permane…

So at 60k you can't find devs maybe that's not high enough. Try offering 100k, see how many applicants you get. If you can get lots of CV then you've found the market price. Remember, to attract people you'll also need to attract people who are in jobs already. For that you'll have to offer something better than what they have.

Yes, I understand this, although I don't see any difference in number of applicants when I mention the salary and when I don't (I usually don't). I'm not seeing many good people who would be ready to join if I paid them more (it happens occasionally and we usually find a compromise). My recruiters are telling me that increasing the offer wouldn't give me more applicants.

However, if the harsh reality is that I must be paying more to devs, then how come there are so many devs (about 200) in this poll indicating they are getting under 50K? Why these two hundred people don't talk to me and many other companies desperate to hire developers on much better terms?

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

#339

Post by _progger_ »

shadchnev wrote: post #338
rmc wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So at 60k you can't find devs maybe that's not high enough. Try offering 100k, see how many applicants you get. If you can get lots of CV then you've found the market price. Remember, to attract people you'll also need to attract people who are in jobs already. For that you'll have to offer something better than what they have.

Yes, I understand this, although I don't see any difference in number of applicants when I mention the salary and when I don't (I usually don't). I'm not seeing many good people who would be ready to join if I paid them more (it happens occasionally and we usually find a compromise). My recruiters are telling me that increasing the offer wouldn't give me more applicants. However, if the harsh reality is that I must b…

I am receiving letters from recruiters every day. Salaries rarely exceed 55-60k. Why should I bother if I am already getting that? And that's a mainstream enterprise skill set. Also your recruiters are likely to filter out people you might like. Did you tell them that github repo trumps a degree?

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

#340

Post by alt_f4 »

leoedin wrote: post #268
walshemj wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Oxbridge + Edinburgh is closer to Ivy League

What makes Edinburgh special in that regard? As far as I can gather the admissions standards and support levels aren't in the same league as Oxbridge. League table results are fairly high for most subjects, but not any more so than some other russell group members.

According to various world rankings, it's top 20-40 and 5th or 6th in Britain and Europe.

But it's quite strong for CS/AI, as they have the largest CS department in Europe, producing the largest amount of world-leading research (according to the latest government-organised Research Assessment Exercise).

For undergrads that means there is an unparalleled variety of courses you can take, both in depth and breadth. I remember I had a choice of about 25 courses in my 3rd year and over 50 in my final year. For most British universities, your choice is rather limited - usually between 8-12 courses each year. Another bonus is that you get to work with leading researchers on your final year project. E.g. some of my friends were supervised by Phil Wadler - the guy was one of the principal inventors of Haskell and, with Gilad Bracha and Martin Odersky, designed Java generics and the extensions of the Collections framework.

So, Edinburgh is quite special and CS/AI is a particular focus at the University, so it's a shame not enough people know it.

Post reply on HN