7 ms·

This is very noticeable in London. It's a relative rarity to find a dev that's worked anywhere longer than a couple years. The simple economics of it is that un

This is very noticeable in London. It's a relative rarity to find a dev that's worked anywhere longer than a couple years. The simple economics of it is that until a certain salary, there is no easier way to ratchet up the pay scale then to use the negotiating leverage of having a job to get the next one on better terms. Meanwhile, the supply situation for devs is such that employers have to accept the situation. I'm not sure it's an employer led effect at all; especially given the size of the SME scene in London.

spoonie 9y ago
But how is it that there is always another company willing to pay more? Do companies hire devs with X years of experience without planning to pay more for X+1 years of experience?
- usgroup 9y ago
  Not sure X years of experience matters all that much. For example, Java dev goes to employer and adds Hadoop to her experience, then applies for other jobs for 10k more ambiently for a few months. Eventually nails one and packs her bags, and so on recursively. Sometimes dev don't add anything at all and just go for more money because of change in condition. JS or mobile app dev is a great example. Nothing changed; they just became more demanded. Meanwhile, you can't match someones salary to the market every day of the week, so they leave. From the employer side London is brutal.
  - currymj 9y ago
    What do devs get paid in London on average? I always had the impression, perhaps wrong, that software engineers seem underpaid in England relative to the US, even accounting for currency and cost of living and such (which, probably London is as bad as SF on that front). (i've also gotten the impression that there's not the same level of cultural esteem for engineers and scientists and such in England, and that this might have something to do with it. also could be wrong or outdated.)
    - wastedhours 9y ago
      I've seen RoR jobs go from £35k to £60k in London (and even ones as low as £27k...). Might just be the ones recruiters have tried to pitch though.
      - zimpenfish 9y ago
        "How does £35k sound?" "Like a three day week."
    - d4rti 9y ago
      You're not wrong.
    - zimpenfish 9y ago
      Contracting is reasonably good in London. You can easily get £5-600 a day if you're a (provably) senior Rails/Java/C++ and well above that with exotic financial or uberniche things. (Which is probably why more people are turning to contracting in London.)
      - crdoconnor 9y ago
        Contracting in London seems to have morphed from "we want somebody for a short term project" to "for the level of experience/knowledge/skills we want this is literally the only way we can get it".
    - CalRobert 9y ago
      No personal experience, but salaries in Europe seem, on the whole, utterly pathetic compared to the US, at least looking at listings. I don't get the impression London bucks this trend. That being said, I moved to Europe and am pretty happy with where I'm at. It helped that my first job was with a company that had SF and Dublin offices, and I knew what the rate in SF was. It's public sector and Ireland, but here's an example of a job paying €28k in Dublin that would be triple that in the states. Note the use of docx... http://www.museum.ie/NationalMuseumIreland/media/Corporate-Information/2017%20ICT%20Off%20Web%20Intranet%20Administrator/Appendix-3-EO-Level-Competencies.pdf http://www.museum.ie/NationalMuseumIreland/media/Corporate-I...
  - spoonie 9y ago
    Right, so does the employer not realize that the Hadoop experi nice they require is valuable? Or are they hoping the dev doesn't know it's more valuable? It seems to me hat in cases like these thare employers are hiring and training but then not compensating employees for the new skills. Thus there is always another employer willing to value that training.
    - FLUX-YOU 9y ago
      The business of course wants it for as little as possible, but pricing individual skills can be tricky unless they've done something with it you're specifically looking for. In that case, you know they can do what you want. It's difficult to know if "6 months of Hadoop XP" means more than tutorials and basic usage and if they'll be able to solve your business's problems. 10 years of experience vs. 1 year 10 times is still an issue and should affect the price of an employee, but it can be difficult to asses.
      - spoonie 9y ago
        Indeed! But who is the greater fool in this case? The job-hopping employee looking for money, or the new employer willing to pay more for the job-hopper?
        FLUX-YOU 9y ago
        It's difficult to say by predicting. You'd need to know what every business would pay for your skills at any given time, plus what everyone else was paid for their skills, and the rate of false positive hires or hires that ultimately hurt the employer's bottom line (false positive hires, negative productivity devs, bullshit artists, etc.). That kind of price information just isn't available. Otherwise the market would be closer to efficiently pricing developers, matching devs with jobs, and would be more accurate with what individual skills are worth.
- wonderwonder 9y ago
  They will pay you the range you ask for. If Joe is offered a job at 50k but he does not know the position range is 50 - 70k, he might accept it. Joe now has a job making 50k a year with the potential to earn 3% raises annually. Bob might be offered the same position, but right from the beginning he has indicated he expects to earn 67k or more, they will offer him 67k. The company will hire you for as little as they can. Which is logical for the company. Often there is a range but the employee will not know it unless they insist on asking for what they perceive they are worth. Lately I have seen a trend where people wont even ask the salary until they have interviewed because they don't want to appear rude. I just don't get it. You should provide your salary expectations prior to reaching the interview stage otherwise you are potentially wasting your time.
  - maxsilver 9y ago
    > Lately I have seen a trend where people wont even ask the salary until they have interviewed because they don't want to appear rude. I just don't get it. This cuts both ways too. If a candidate asks the salary before the interview, many companies will perceive the candidate as not caring about the work, and being "only in it for the money". And if a candidate doesn't wait until the interview to discuss money, they have very little to justify the average market-rate wage they're trying to convince the company to pay them.
    - wonderwonder 9y ago
      I hear what you are saying and agree with you. A company though for the most part is "Only in it for the money" and I can't feed my family with work satisfaction. I would caution against working for a company that has a problem with me asking for the salary range. The entire point of a job is to earn money. This is just my opinion though and is in no way a road map for others.
    - FLUX-YOU 9y ago
      If a company believes I'm only in it for the money, I'm likely to think that company is using "caring about the work" as a way to reduce my salary. Salary translates to investment. Caring about the work won't grant me another 100k at retirement. The only reason to show that I care about the work and take potentially less salary is if I think the economy is going to take a turn for the worse and I need a job for 3-10 years to ride out the storm. In which case I have to take a lower salary, but at least I have a job. Remember, I can't know how much the company is able/willing to afford. And just to clarify, not caring about the work doesn't mean doing a terrible job. It means giving them what I'm paid for, but I'm not going to go the extra mile for them (overtime) because there's no incentive to do so.
TomSawyer 9y ago
I'm reminded of the Netflix slide deck that was making the rounds, last year. Adjusting pay, yearly, based on the market value of the employee seems like an ideal solution to this problem. If you stay at a typical company for a year you might get a 5% raise and have some seniority and relationships under your belt. This model tends to undervalue the true costs of replacing you and the likelihood that there's another company willing to pay 10%+ over your current pay.
- usgroup 9y ago
  Well said. Also think that the cost of replacement is usually not included in decision calculations at almost any point in time. Perhaps paying N above market may actually be the cheaper thing to do.
- sgt101 9y ago
  In fact you can pay under the market, a bit, if you treat your people like humans, develop them, stretch them and insist on a positive working environment (no rudeness, fair dos for everyone even if they look, talk or smell different). People will not switch away for minimal reward and considerable risk of being landed in a dead end with a bunch of sociopaths. Also many people realise that their current track has 5/10 years of seniority to build - and then that's your lot. The option of switching to management or to tracks like architecture or even non-functional work like finance or intellectual property is attractive to many people.
tradesmanhelix 9y ago
> I'm not sure it's an employer led effect at all; especially given the size of the SME scene in London. In the US at least, my experience has been that most employers would rather let a good dev walk than raise his/her salary to match the going market rate, even if said dev has copious amounts of domain knowledge, works well with the team, regularly receives positive feedback on performance reviews, and consistently ships high-quality code. This is sad to me, but I also think employees are right to vote with their feet and seek jobs elsewhere in such circumstances. Maybe the high turnover will raise some red flags and cause the employer to implement changes. If not, then these employees are smart to leave what I think will prove to be a sinking ship in the long run.
- Clubber 9y ago
  In my experience, the executives in companies don't even consider that, the only consider the total cost of development. Whether it's a good developer or a bad one doesn't even enter their thinking because they are so far removed from it. They don't have nuanced thinking in those regards or long term planning what so ever. It's quite old fashioned. It's up to individual managers to stick their necks out, and they most likely won't. They are told to reduce costs and they do. Middle managers are trying to hold on for dear life, their future prospects are much worse than a developer in high demand. My experience is working at small, great companies that get acquired and the acquiring company usually wrecks everything. But hey, if you need justification to not stay at a company, there it is. Unfortunately for me, I'm just about capped. Contracting or building a company is the only way up from here on. Having survived the dot.bomb, I can tell you both have a lot of risk that needs to be calculated.
nikon 9y ago
I can't help but think contracting is becoming more popular in London. I've been doing it myself now since 2013. I've seen a couple of perm staff walk out of jobs due to petty reasons in the last year, both were <1 year into their roles. Actually trying to move into more of a consulting role going forward, but there is such a demand for contractors IMO it could be shortening the availability of good developers in London.
pm90 9y ago
London seems like a place that could easily attract amazing developers simply by raising salaries. The money is there...it is the fucking financial capital of the world (well maybe 2nd after NYC). If the executives at UK financial companies wouldn't artificially hold down salaries, there could probably be a lot more innovation and a much better marketplace for tech workers.
- nfriedly 9y ago
  Yea, seriously. I've gotten multiple recruiter spam emails that offer the equivalent less than half of my current salary for an engineering job in London. No, thanks.
- jazzyk 9y ago
  Has it occurred to you that they hold down salaries, because they can? Apparently there are many people willing to work for that money. The word "market" assumes that each party can walk away from the deal. But if you are the sole bread-winner and jobless, you are not in a position to walk away.
  - pm90 9y ago
    > Has it occurred to you that they hold down salaries, because they can? Can we please have a conversation without the snark? Thank you. > Apparently there are many people willing to work for that money. I understand that they probably do find workers willing to work that wage. But what I'm stating is: they can have much more, a thriving hub of tech innovation much like SV, if they were to pay more, and attract talent from around the world, like SV does today. That talent and ecosystem would probably help them a lot more overall.
    - jazzyk 9y ago
      There is more to creating "another SV" than just paying more, and it is quite complex and not precisely measurable. If you are interested, The Economist had a cover story on this a couple of years ago, explaining it much better than I ever could.

spoonie 9y ago

But how is it that there is always another company willing to pay more? Do companies hire devs with X years of experience without planning to pay more for X+1 years of experience?

usgroup 9y ago
Not sure X years of experience matters all that much. For example, Java dev goes to employer and adds Hadoop to her experience, then applies for other jobs for 10k more ambiently for a few months. Eventually nails one and packs her bags, and so on recursively. Sometimes dev don't add anything at all and just go for more money because of change in condition. JS or mobile app dev is a great example. Nothing changed; they just became more demanded. Meanwhile, you can't match someones salary to the market every day of the week, so they leave. From the employer side London is brutal.
- currymj 9y ago
  What do devs get paid in London on average? I always had the impression, perhaps wrong, that software engineers seem underpaid in England relative to the US, even accounting for currency and cost of living and such (which, probably London is as bad as SF on that front). (i've also gotten the impression that there's not the same level of cultural esteem for engineers and scientists and such in England, and that this might have something to do with it. also could be wrong or outdated.)
  - wastedhours 9y ago
    I've seen RoR jobs go from £35k to £60k in London (and even ones as low as £27k...). Might just be the ones recruiters have tried to pitch though.
    - zimpenfish 9y ago
      "How does £35k sound?" "Like a three day week."
  - d4rti 9y ago
    You're not wrong.
  - zimpenfish 9y ago
    Contracting is reasonably good in London. You can easily get £5-600 a day if you're a (provably) senior Rails/Java/C++ and well above that with exotic financial or uberniche things. (Which is probably why more people are turning to contracting in London.)
    - crdoconnor 9y ago
      Contracting in London seems to have morphed from "we want somebody for a short term project" to "for the level of experience/knowledge/skills we want this is literally the only way we can get it".
  - CalRobert 9y ago
    No personal experience, but salaries in Europe seem, on the whole, utterly pathetic compared to the US, at least looking at listings. I don't get the impression London bucks this trend. That being said, I moved to Europe and am pretty happy with where I'm at. It helped that my first job was with a company that had SF and Dublin offices, and I knew what the rate in SF was. It's public sector and Ireland, but here's an example of a job paying €28k in Dublin that would be triple that in the states. Note the use of docx... http://www.museum.ie/NationalMuseumIreland/media/Corporate-Information/2017%20ICT%20Off%20Web%20Intranet%20Administrator/Appendix-3-EO-Level-Competencies.pdf http://www.museum.ie/NationalMuseumIreland/media/Corporate-I...
- spoonie 9y ago
  Right, so does the employer not realize that the Hadoop experi nice they require is valuable? Or are they hoping the dev doesn't know it's more valuable? It seems to me hat in cases like these thare employers are hiring and training but then not compensating employees for the new skills. Thus there is always another employer willing to value that training.
  - FLUX-YOU 9y ago
    The business of course wants it for as little as possible, but pricing individual skills can be tricky unless they've done something with it you're specifically looking for. In that case, you know they can do what you want. It's difficult to know if "6 months of Hadoop XP" means more than tutorials and basic usage and if they'll be able to solve your business's problems. 10 years of experience vs. 1 year 10 times is still an issue and should affect the price of an employee, but it can be difficult to asses.
    - spoonie 9y ago
      Indeed! But who is the greater fool in this case? The job-hopping employee looking for money, or the new employer willing to pay more for the job-hopper?
      - FLUX-YOU 9y ago
        It's difficult to say by predicting. You'd need to know what every business would pay for your skills at any given time, plus what everyone else was paid for their skills, and the rate of false positive hires or hires that ultimately hurt the employer's bottom line (false positive hires, negative productivity devs, bullshit artists, etc.). That kind of price information just isn't available. Otherwise the market would be closer to efficiently pricing developers, matching devs with jobs, and would be more accurate with what individual skills are worth.
wonderwonder 9y ago
They will pay you the range you ask for. If Joe is offered a job at 50k but he does not know the position range is 50 - 70k, he might accept it. Joe now has a job making 50k a year with the potential to earn 3% raises annually. Bob might be offered the same position, but right from the beginning he has indicated he expects to earn 67k or more, they will offer him 67k. The company will hire you for as little as they can. Which is logical for the company. Often there is a range but the employee will not know it unless they insist on asking for what they perceive they are worth. Lately I have seen a trend where people wont even ask the salary until they have interviewed because they don't want to appear rude. I just don't get it. You should provide your salary expectations prior to reaching the interview stage otherwise you are potentially wasting your time.
- maxsilver 9y ago
  > Lately I have seen a trend where people wont even ask the salary until they have interviewed because they don't want to appear rude. I just don't get it. This cuts both ways too. If a candidate asks the salary before the interview, many companies will perceive the candidate as not caring about the work, and being "only in it for the money". And if a candidate doesn't wait until the interview to discuss money, they have very little to justify the average market-rate wage they're trying to convince the company to pay them.
  - wonderwonder 9y ago
    I hear what you are saying and agree with you. A company though for the most part is "Only in it for the money" and I can't feed my family with work satisfaction. I would caution against working for a company that has a problem with me asking for the salary range. The entire point of a job is to earn money. This is just my opinion though and is in no way a road map for others.
  - FLUX-YOU 9y ago
    If a company believes I'm only in it for the money, I'm likely to think that company is using "caring about the work" as a way to reduce my salary. Salary translates to investment. Caring about the work won't grant me another 100k at retirement. The only reason to show that I care about the work and take potentially less salary is if I think the economy is going to take a turn for the worse and I need a job for 3-10 years to ride out the storm. In which case I have to take a lower salary, but at least I have a job. Remember, I can't know how much the company is able/willing to afford. And just to clarify, not caring about the work doesn't mean doing a terrible job. It means giving them what I'm paid for, but I'm not going to go the extra mile for them (overtime) because there's no incentive to do so.

TomSawyer 9y ago

I'm reminded of the Netflix slide deck that was making the rounds, last year. Adjusting pay, yearly, based on the market value of the employee seems like an ideal solution to this problem. If you stay at a typical company for a year you might get a 5% raise and have some seniority and relationships under your belt. This model tends to undervalue the true costs of replacing you and the likelihood that there's another company willing to pay 10%+ over your current pay.

usgroup 9y ago
Well said. Also think that the cost of replacement is usually not included in decision calculations at almost any point in time. Perhaps paying N above market may actually be the cheaper thing to do.
sgt101 9y ago
In fact you can pay under the market, a bit, if you treat your people like humans, develop them, stretch them and insist on a positive working environment (no rudeness, fair dos for everyone even if they look, talk or smell different). People will not switch away for minimal reward and considerable risk of being landed in a dead end with a bunch of sociopaths. Also many people realise that their current track has 5/10 years of seniority to build - and then that's your lot. The option of switching to management or to tracks like architecture or even non-functional work like finance or intellectual property is attractive to many people.

tradesmanhelix 9y ago

> I'm not sure it's an employer led effect at all; especially given the size of the SME scene in London. In the US at least, my experience has been that most employers would rather let a good dev walk than raise his/her salary to match the going market rate, even if said dev has copious amounts of domain knowledge, works well with the team, regularly receives positive feedback on performance reviews, and consistently ships high-quality code. This is sad to me, but I also think employees are right to vote with their feet and seek jobs elsewhere in such circumstances. Maybe the high turnover will raise some red flags and cause the employer to implement changes. If not, then these employees are smart to leave what I think will prove to be a sinking ship in the long run.

Clubber 9y ago
In my experience, the executives in companies don't even consider that, the only consider the total cost of development. Whether it's a good developer or a bad one doesn't even enter their thinking because they are so far removed from it. They don't have nuanced thinking in those regards or long term planning what so ever. It's quite old fashioned. It's up to individual managers to stick their necks out, and they most likely won't. They are told to reduce costs and they do. Middle managers are trying to hold on for dear life, their future prospects are much worse than a developer in high demand. My experience is working at small, great companies that get acquired and the acquiring company usually wrecks everything. But hey, if you need justification to not stay at a company, there it is. Unfortunately for me, I'm just about capped. Contracting or building a company is the only way up from here on. Having survived the dot.bomb, I can tell you both have a lot of risk that needs to be calculated.

nikon 9y ago

I can't help but think contracting is becoming more popular in London. I've been doing it myself now since 2013. I've seen a couple of perm staff walk out of jobs due to petty reasons in the last year, both were <1 year into their roles. Actually trying to move into more of a consulting role going forward, but there is such a demand for contractors IMO it could be shortening the availability of good developers in London.

pm90 9y ago

London seems like a place that could easily attract amazing developers simply by raising salaries. The money is there...it is the fucking financial capital of the world (well maybe 2nd after NYC). If the executives at UK financial companies wouldn't artificially hold down salaries, there could probably be a lot more innovation and a much better marketplace for tech workers.

nfriedly 9y ago
Yea, seriously. I've gotten multiple recruiter spam emails that offer the equivalent less than half of my current salary for an engineering job in London. No, thanks.
jazzyk 9y ago
Has it occurred to you that they hold down salaries, because they can? Apparently there are many people willing to work for that money. The word "market" assumes that each party can walk away from the deal. But if you are the sole bread-winner and jobless, you are not in a position to walk away.
- pm90 9y ago
  > Has it occurred to you that they hold down salaries, because they can? Can we please have a conversation without the snark? Thank you. > Apparently there are many people willing to work for that money. I understand that they probably do find workers willing to work that wage. But what I'm stating is: they can have much more, a thriving hub of tech innovation much like SV, if they were to pay more, and attract talent from around the world, like SV does today. That talent and ecosystem would probably help them a lot more overall.
  - jazzyk 9y ago
    There is more to creating "another SV" than just paying more, and it is quite complex and not precisely measurable. If you are interested, The Economist had a cover story on this a couple of years ago, explaining it much better than I ever could.