5 ms·

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 y

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 also could be wrong or outdated.)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...
    - _delirium 9y ago
      Salaries overall in the UK are comparable to the US (similar median), but programming falls at a different place on the salary curve. In the US, programmer is among the highest-paid professions, often earning 2-3x what would be a typical salary in other white-collar, professional jobs. In the UK that's not the case, and programmers earn just a typical white-collar salary that you'd earn in any job that requires university-level qualifications (or equivalent experience). Unlike the US, I don't believe there is much of a perception of a "STEM shortage", which may be a contributing factor. Programmers are just not seen as particularly hard to find, at least no more than any other skilled profession. Especially after the fall of the Iron Curtain, which brought in a lot of highly skilled STEM folks into the common market.
      - jazzyk 9y ago
        There is no shortage of programmers in the US, either (except, temporarily, in SF/SV). There is this myth, which uses an example of a handful of lucky "tech" people like Jobs or Gates or Zuckerberg who got rich and famous. In fact, none of them were/are programmers (though Zuckerberg _can_ hack around a bit) A few numbers to refute your point about programmers being among the highest paid professions: - doctors $400K-$800K - lawyers - starting salary $160K[2], can go into millions, if you make it as a partner - MBAs - even lowly "marketing managers" - often glorified secretaries - can make $150K or more - chemical engineers - at least comparable with SW - pharmacists https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/17/business/dealbook/welcome-to-your-first-year-as-a-lawyer-your-salary-is-160000-a-year.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/17/business/dealbook/welcome...
  - gncb 9y ago
    The average is not a very useful metric since the gap between IB/hedge fund pay and the rest is huge. It's not unheard of for developers with 4-5 years of experience to make close to £100k.
    - currymj 9y ago
      is that number supposed to be low or high? in the US $120k is a reasonable (mid-range) salary for a new college graduate in Silicon Valley, Seattle, or New York at one of the big 5 tech firms. It's comparable at financial institutions. probably $60-$70k for a more "blue-collar" programming job at a lower-profile company, or in a lower cost-of-living area.
- 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.

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...
  - _delirium 9y ago
    Salaries overall in the UK are comparable to the US (similar median), but programming falls at a different place on the salary curve. In the US, programmer is among the highest-paid professions, often earning 2-3x what would be a typical salary in other white-collar, professional jobs. In the UK that's not the case, and programmers earn just a typical white-collar salary that you'd earn in any job that requires university-level qualifications (or equivalent experience). Unlike the US, I don't believe there is much of a perception of a "STEM shortage", which may be a contributing factor. Programmers are just not seen as particularly hard to find, at least no more than any other skilled profession. Especially after the fall of the Iron Curtain, which brought in a lot of highly skilled STEM folks into the common market.
    - jazzyk 9y ago
      There is no shortage of programmers in the US, either (except, temporarily, in SF/SV). There is this myth, which uses an example of a handful of lucky "tech" people like Jobs or Gates or Zuckerberg who got rich and famous. In fact, none of them were/are programmers (though Zuckerberg _can_ hack around a bit) A few numbers to refute your point about programmers being among the highest paid professions: - doctors $400K-$800K - lawyers - starting salary $160K[2], can go into millions, if you make it as a partner - MBAs - even lowly "marketing managers" - often glorified secretaries - can make $150K or more - chemical engineers - at least comparable with SW - pharmacists https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/17/business/dealbook/welcome-to-your-first-year-as-a-lawyer-your-salary-is-160000-a-year.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/17/business/dealbook/welcome...
- gncb 9y ago
  The average is not a very useful metric since the gap between IB/hedge fund pay and the rest is huge. It's not unheard of for developers with 4-5 years of experience to make close to £100k.
  - currymj 9y ago
    is that number supposed to be low or high? in the US $120k is a reasonable (mid-range) salary for a new college graduate in Silicon Valley, Seattle, or New York at one of the big 5 tech firms. It's comparable at financial institutions. probably $60-$70k for a more "blue-collar" programming job at a lower-profile company, or in a lower cost-of-living area.
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.