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

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

#211

Post by yashodhan »

mseebach wrote: post #198
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.

It's good that you don't mind being poor, 'cause that's what you're gonna be. I hope that start-up is worth it.

Good bunch of guys, and they're helping me add backend development to my skillset. That's how I look at it. Don't care much for equity.

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

#212

Post by cs02rm0 »

tome wrote: post #141
stevenwilkin wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ditto, I don't need to put a huge amount of time into the admin side of things. The volume of recruiter emails & calls can be oppressing at times haha

Well it's genuinely great to hear you two have got so much work on. May I ask why you have not doubled your rates?

Probably because they prefer to spend their time working in a stable contract rather than out of work marketing themselves.

My current contract is for a year and I invoice monthly. If I doubled my rate I'd be out of work.

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

#214

Post by walshemj »

FrankenPC wrote: post #10
OrsenPike wrote: post #7

Salary: £85k + bupa + pension and a 25% of gross salary (£~21k) a year paid each quarter if objective are met (70% or above). Tech: Primarily Java with some C, C++ and more recently Go (although Go is only in our code playground, nothing even close to production yet) Location: West London Company: Small but well established (since 1996). There are 4 developers including myself. One software is one part of what we off…

You are making decent money compared to SF. According to the poll, not many are though. Does the UK not value intellectual workers?

NO unfortunately the "two Cultures" divide in the UK is very strong!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures

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

#215

Post by mseebach »

tome wrote: post #141
stevenwilkin wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ditto, I don't need to put a huge amount of time into the admin side of things. The volume of recruiter emails & calls can be oppressing at times haha

Well it's genuinely great to hear you two have got so much work on. May I ask why you have not doubled your rates?

Recruiters generally aren't interested in you at any advertised rate, or even for any particular skill. They just see Java (substitute as necessary) and contracter in the general vicinity of each other and decide to call you up and smooch you, even if the job is not a good fit and pays half what you charge. Problem is, you often have to keep in touch with recruiters to keep the flow of work, so you can't just cut them off entirely.

Burner phones and email addresses for recruiters is certainly a thing, though.

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

#216

Post by lkozma »

hnriot wrote: post #187
lkozma wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am from Europe but have friends in Ukraine.. Ukraine is in Europe.

Maybe geographically, but it's not in the EU and nobody in/from Europe or the Ukraine would ever say it's in Europe. Just like Russia is also geographically (at least in part) in Europe, but it's by no means European. Google (or books) are your friend :)

I think your condescension is unnecessary, you know nothing about my reading (or Googling) habits.

By any reasonable definition, Ukraine is in Eastern Europe, whether you use geographical, political or historical definitions. This is what Wikipedia says, as do most atlases and the CIA world factbook, in fact I've yet to see a source saying otherwise, but you can surely provide links to one. The EU is not the same as Europe, by that narrow definition, Switzerland is not Europe. Your statement that nobody in/from Europe or Ukraine would say it's in Europe can be disproved with a simple counterexample: I'm from/in Europe and I say so, just as a random sample of my Ukrainian acquaintances.

No comment on Russia being "by no means" European. I guess you'll need to do a lot of Wikipedia editing to remove all references to Tolstoy from the pages on European literature.

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

#217

Post by walshemj »

egwor wrote: post #21
SandB0x wrote: post #13

The 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.

You have to compare like with like: number of days holiday is different (we have different numbers of public holidays); you don't have to pay for health insurance; the numbers here are in sterling not USD; do we value experienced developers more than very new ones; how many have bonuses as a major part of their salary [which this doesn't show]?

er you do have to pay insurance NI is 12% its not as ruinious as the USA I will give you.

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

#218

Post by pointyhats »

polshaw wrote: post #43
SandB0x wrote: post #13

The 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.

The rest of the UK seems much worse.

It's not as bad as you think. The number of applicants is lower per position outside London and the ratio of muppets to positions is higher.

If you're not a muppet, it's quite easy to land 50k+ in any major city.

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

#219

Post by mseebach »

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…

These companies exist outside of finance too, which is why I made a point out of how it's not a homogeneous job market.

No, don't work on crap, but also don't write off half the SW engineering job market on the back of an anecdote.

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

#220

Post by pointyhats »

benjaminwootton wrote: post #140
api wrote: post #134

This surprises me given how god-awful expensive London is. I remember it being one of those cities I've visited where I was like "how do people live here? what do all these people do?" Or maybe, like New York, you actually can live there fairly reasonably if you really know the place and know how to do it. As a visitor maybe I was paying tourist prices.

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…

The cost of living is absolutely awful in London.

You'll be fine doing a flat share etc in some of the nicer metropolitan bits, but if you have 3 children like myself, things get expensive awfully quickly.

You have to fish out £1500/month for a 3 bedroom house in a suburban area (zone 5/6) which you won't get stabbed in.

If you want something really nice, say Richmond/Strawberry Hill, try £2250 for the same.

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