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UK's hardware talent is being wasted

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Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#11

Post by cherryteastain »

alephnerd wrote: post #4
pinoy420 wrote: post #2

[flagged]

No. UK's pay is extremely low. And you know that it is VERY difficult to earn beyond £80k/yr as a SWE outside of top foreign employers in the UK like Google or Citadel. More likely, you'll stagnate at £50-60k. And when factoring the UK's CoL being comparable to some of the more expensive American cities (SF, NYC, Boston) yet salaries being a fraction of those available there, it makes sense why engineering isn't well…

Low relative to the US Tier 1 cities only. Just based on a cursory look at levels.fyi London median comp is £96k [1] while e.g. Houston is £103k [2] Toronto is £80k [3]. In fact, the only location I could find outside the US that was higher was Zurich at £126k [4]

[1] https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/london-... [2] https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/greater... [3] https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/greater... [4] https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/greater...

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#12

Post by mapt »

A lot of these complaints are not about an industry, but about late stage capitalism. About a failing society that privileges profits over social progress and material productivity because oligarchs and aristocracy own the institutions and are running this thing into the ground on base class instinct.

All these cool "save the world" school projects exist because the current people running the world are deciding what is and isn't a priority and haven't fixed the problem in question; When these students grow up and go on to work for those same people, we are shocked, shocked that it isn't to do more unprofitable school engineering projects.

Instead: Finance industry stuff. What we really need, and by we I mean the people in charge who are obsessively keeping score of imaginary numbers in an account.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#13

Post by corimaith »

alephnerd wrote: post #4
pinoy420 wrote: post #2

[flagged]

No. UK's pay is extremely low. And you know that it is VERY difficult to earn beyond £80k/yr as a SWE outside of top foreign employers in the UK like Google or Citadel. More likely, you'll stagnate at £50-60k. And when factoring the UK's CoL being comparable to some of the more expensive American cities (SF, NYC, Boston) yet salaries being a fraction of those available there, it makes sense why engineering isn't well…

New Grad SWE London salary is more realistically 35k to 60k, Small Companies and Consultants are around 35k, Big Banks do 50k, and the bigger startups do like 55 to 60k.

The 100k is pretty much the elite prop trading, that's the whole LC hard grilling that 99.9% of candidates aren't going past.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#14

Post by gjsman-1000 »

mapt wrote: post #12

A lot of these complaints are not about an industry, but about late stage capitalism. About a failing society that privileges profits over social progress and material productivity because oligarchs and aristocracy own the institutions and are running this thing into the ground on base class instinct. All these cool "save the world" school projects exist because the current people running the world are deciding what…

Yeah, yeah, the meme copy-paste problem diagnosis, but what’s the solution?

Rebuild into socialism?

Rebuild into communism?

Reset into early stage capitalism (lack of regulation and all)?

How do you know that those systems won’t also have their own late stage failure? Case in point, the NHS right now.

(Edit, posting too fast: To the person below who suggested 90% tax rates; the US never had those rates. On paper they did, but they had more and larger exceptions than now, to the point the effective rate never exceeded 45% anyway. This is also why the massive cut was politically palatable - it was cutting the rates to closer reflect the reality. At no point did the US ever have anything close, or even half close, to 90% effective rates.)

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#15

Post by alephnerd »

cherryteastain wrote: post #11
alephnerd wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. UK's pay is extremely low. And you know that it is VERY difficult to earn beyond £80k/yr as a SWE outside of top foreign employers in the UK like Google or Citadel. More likely, you'll stagnate at £50-60k. And when factoring the UK's CoL being comparable to some of the more expensive American cities (SF, NYC, Boston) yet salaries being a fraction of those available there, it makes sense why engineering isn't well…

Low relative to the US Tier 1 cities only. Just based on a cursory look at levels.fyi London median comp is £96k [1] while e.g. Houston is £103k [2] Toronto is £80k [3]. In fact, the only location I could find outside the US that was higher was Zurich at £126k [4] [1] https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/london-... [2] https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/greater... [3] https://www.lev…

First, CoL is miles lower in Houston and other tier 2 cities in America - you can buy a detached house for around $500k/£400k in a posh neighborhood. Not happpening in inner ring London.

Secondly, I've noticed issues with Levels.fyi ranges outside US/Canada and top tech hubs like Tel Aviv and Bangalore. Most markets don't have the same awareness of the tool, so salaries tend to be overestimated.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#18

Post by backwardsmoo »

pinoy420 wrote: post #2

[flagged]

Outside of finance, I generally find UK software and hardware comp to be abysmal. Especially when contrasted to the US, and even Germany.

For reference, I hold a doctorate in Engineering and a Class 1 MEng both at Oxford. I was offered £40k to work as an engineer in my niche (photonics). My lab partner who went to Germany sits on a ~€90k salary doing similar to what I would have done.

Due to the limitations of hardware career options in London, I opted for software engineering post-DPhil, but I ended up earning £42k. After two years of work, I am sitting on £52k. I don't regard myself as an "under achiever", I own a significant proportion of the product I work on and am a top contributor.

I don't think that level of comp is appropriate given the amount of work I put myself through / how much I contribute, and I think it's reflective of the UK as a whole.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#19

Post by refrigerator »

This is spot on. All the smart and ambitious people I know who studied (non-software) Engineering at university in the UK have ended up going into software engineering via self-teaching or finance/consulting because the only hardware engineering career paths seem to be working for Rolls Royce in the middle of nowhere with terrible pay, or alternatively working at Jaguar Land Rover in the middle of nowhere with terrible pay

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#20

Post by michaelt »

pinoy420 wrote: post #2

[flagged]

Maybe, but this post is about hardware engineers.

I graduated ~15 years ago with a degree from a decent UK university, and the job situation for an electronics engineer who could program and was willing to move anywhere in the country was essentially:

* Electronics graduate job, salary £25,000

* Programming graduate job, salary £40,000

Programming jobs think their competition is London fintech companies and Google with its free food.

Jobs designing switch mode power supplies think their competition is Chinese OEMs who pay experienced engineers £15k

So a lot of the electronic engineering graduates get diverted into software. They'd like to be able to own a house some day, after all.

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