51–60 of 80 posts
The idea of agencies copying and pasting your ads is a bit shady of course, but the takeaway from this is pretty simple - you need to pay more.
- Recruitment agencies that play dirty do so because they are unable to add real value. Avoid at all costs.
- Offer the right salary for the job, and you might have more luck.
Is it possible that this experience was influenced in any way by the fact that they're trying to find a "Senior iPhone Developer" for under £40k? That's ~$65k, and thus roughly $100k shy of what you'd need to offer before you started to pique the interest of any good iPhone Developers in the current market.
That and there was no mention of any equity. Is that normal for UK startups? Also, for me at least, I always find some way to exclude myself going through those "everything we want you to be an expert in before we'll even consider talking to you" laundry lists.
Equity (options) aren't anywhere near as popular in the UK as in the US.
Yeah, I'm not sure about the laundry list either. You have to start somewhere with these job descriptions, but it's a learning curve.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can't just compare permanent salaries to hourly rate contract roles directly (you need to take into account downtime, risk, vacation, overheads, etc. in order to make a fair comparison). I don't know what the standard is in the US but in the UK you can generally earn 1.5-2x as much contracting on a day rate as you can in a permanent job.
The rule of thumb with contracting is to take your base salary, divide by 1000, which becomes your hourly rate. This roughly coincides with paying your own benefits and 1/3 of annual downtime. Not that you're planning for 1/3 -- it's risk adjustment.
Is it possible that this experience was influenced in any way by the fact that they're trying to find a "Senior iPhone Developer" for under £40k? That's ~$65k, and thus roughly $100k shy of what you'd need to offer before you started to pique the interest of any good iPhone Developers in the current market.
The UK has relied for too long on relatively cheap but willing tech. labour. I believe one major factor that enabled this was the boom in home computing in the early 80s. I don't know whether it is fair to call this unique (to the UK), but it certainly helped to have the BBC heavily involved with the BBC Micro effort and even TV coverage: ' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Computer_Programme . I remember back then ev…
I'd love for software developer salaries to be higher, but frankly, I don't see why they should be. If everyone applying for mid/senior level software developer positions actually came with the kind of skill and experience you would expect in terms of theoretical background and practical experience, that would be one thing, but most of them don't. Heck, a very substantial proportion don't even have basic design and coding knowledge and fail the elementary programming tests at interview.
It does suck that the higher-end guys who really do have those skills and really can be several times as productive as the typical candidate still don't get paid a salary commensurate with their value, but to some extent that is a function of economics in the employment market. Those guys tend to have other options beyond simple employment, though, and contracting/consulting/entrepreneurialism can pay significantly better.
Now, back in 2001 when the tech bubble popped it was like one of those games where the music stops and there are too few chairs. All the people who'd been riding the contracting gravy train suddenly realised there were no more contracts† and they panicked. At that stage you would see the computer programmers who had a wife, girlfriend and a mortgage to support leap at a £25k job.
On the other hand, Leeds (where I have also lived and worked) was enormously much cheaper than London in a couple of respects, such as real estate. One of the places I worked had an intern, great young guy, real go-getter, would do any dirty task you set before him (like network admin ick :D ) ... and he was on £10k. When I found that out, I was amazed. I asked him how he could afford that. turns out he lived in a shared house with lots of other students or recently ex-students, and they couldn't afford to turn the heating on in winter††.
†They say that when New York sneezes, London catches a cold. They're right. All the big institutions slapped down an immediate ban on new hiring and no new contracts except for critical projects. Then after a couple of weeks it got upgraded to at least a six month ban on all hiring, even for critical projects (presumably for those they could fill them from people they already had). As contracts ended, they weren't renewed. It was brutal.
††For reference Leeds is one of those places where they get snow on the ground during winter
Is it possible that this experience was influenced in any way by the fact that they're trying to find a "Senior iPhone Developer" for under £40k? That's ~$65k, and thus roughly $100k shy of what you'd need to offer before you started to pique the interest of any good iPhone Developers in the current market.
OK. I'm not adding anything to discussion and my post should be down-voted, but I agree with comment that the main problem of finding a good engineer is salary offered.
Is it possible that this experience was influenced in any way by the fact that they're trying to find a "Senior iPhone Developer" for under £40k? That's ~$65k, and thus roughly $100k shy of what you'd need to offer before you started to pique the interest of any good iPhone Developers in the current market.
Your point is valid, but those in the US often have a highly distorted view of IT salaries anywhere else if you just translate US dollar salaries into the native currency. The going rate for a senior software engineer who is decent but doesn't have particularly specialised skills, in the UK but outside London, is probably somewhere between £45k and £60k depending on where in the country you are. In London, you probab…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are looking for a permanent employee, not a consultant. Is $165k (presumably plus benefits) really the going rate for that?
$165k is indeed the minimum rate for iPhone developers with experience, as employees with benefits. Realize though that taxes come out of that, whereas I understand that in EC salaries are posted as after-tax values. For an iPhone consultant with experience shipping real products, expect to pay $150/hr minimum. Top guys are quite a bit more.
We wish. :-/
A senior software engineer outside London with a £50k salary actually takes home around £3k/month after tax and National Insurance payments in the UK, give or take recently applied and/or soon-to-occur changes in the tax rates and allowances.
Is it possible that this experience was influenced in any way by the fact that they're trying to find a "Senior iPhone Developer" for under £40k? That's ~$65k, and thus roughly $100k shy of what you'd need to offer before you started to pique the interest of any good iPhone Developers in the current market.
But I think you're right about the salary; we should have researched the job posting more thoroughly to get the title, expectations and salary aligned.
£38K goes much further in Leeds than in California and even London, but we're learning that we need to offer a better package to get the right people.
We're also new to all this, and sharing our experiences and blunders as we go...