351–360 of 420 posts
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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.
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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.
In London, it's incredibly popular to live in roommate situations and have just a single room in a house with shared kitchen/bathroom for this reason. I know a lot of people still live with their parents into their late 20s and pay little or no rent, too.
We really need unions. These polls only help so much. Unfortunately also, there are both retard programmers, and actual programmers. I worked with a retard programmer, he thought that learning Django was a feat of strength...sigh..when I told him about OOP he almost shit his pants.
Unions ain't gonna happen. Not accepting low salaries could be a start.
In general I think it is a good thing, although I dislike the biggest one (Tekna) (that I was formerly a member of) because they supported the DRD[0]. I have since become a member of a different union (NITO).
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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,…
There is more in "the old class system" (or the caste system) than just attending elite college. It is genes. You like it or not, breeding matters a lot. What all those companies buy is not grades, it is not even a particular phenotype, it is a few generations of fine breeding, well-educated parents and relatives, etc. So, most of those guys "with a sociology degree" worth it, you like it or not. It is just one of th…
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Or just cross the border to Portugal and have them for even less. The difference between even similar countries is huge.
At one point we were outsourcing to Portugal. I asked one of the guys when he was visiting here in the Bay Area what a recent grad would be making typically. He said about 1200 Euro per month at one of the Big Four consulting companies. Now we're outsourcing to Romania. I haven't had the heart yet to ask one of them.
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I make 25k in Brighton as a graduate. Most of the jobs I applied for were 18-22k.
That does really quite grate. I got a 21k graduate software engineering job, when most graduate software jobs were in the 18-22k range, 13 years ago . It's like the salary range has been static for more than a decade, inflation be damned.
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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 don't see any difference in number of applicants when I mention the salary and when I don't (I usually don't). Perhaps potential applicants think that you, like all companies, are going to pay what everyone else is. If you don't mention salary, they presume (correctly) you're paying about the average. You don't have an opportunity to "wow" them. if the harsh reality is that I must be paying more to devs, then how c…
The 40% higher rate tax takes £6000, but the extra National Insurance contribution is just £300 (it is only 2% on earnings above £797 per week).
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In Romania an entry level dev gets 30% more than the national average and that raises quickly. In 7-8 years he's able to earn 400%+ more than national average. And still be paid less than an entry level in UK. National average net income is about 400 euros
Is this anecdotal or do you have data? If real, it's nice seeing the beginnings of programming jobs crossing arbitrary political lines.
Last year I quit to work for a friend's startup and was offered nearly double that, before I left they offered me £55k to stay. Afterwards I found one of the guys doing pretty much the same as me was getting £60k, so I made the right choice :-)
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…