4 ms·

Do you have any evidence for this? Or at least how much this underestimation is? Salaries in London are certainly higher than the rest of the country (by a com

by joshvm 9y ago

Do you have any evidence for this? Or at least how much this underestimation is? Salaries in London are certainly higher than the rest of the country (by a comfortable margin), but anywhere from £40-80k seems to be the norm. £80k being at the high end of senior. Six figures is possible, but fairly unlikely outside of finance or senior positions at the megacorps. If you don't live in London (or the South East), £40k alone would be considered a very comfortable salary. This is corroborated by Glassdoor, various sites which claim to have surveyed salaries and actual job adverts (e.g. via StackOverflow Jobs or recruiters).

user5994461 9y ago
The norm for senior is certainly 6 figures. It is ill advised to ignore finance, big companies, and contracting.
- twic 9y ago
  That doesn't contradict what joshvm said, though. Outside finance and the tech giants, my observation has been that seniors make 60-90k. Hedge funds pay 100-130k base, with cushty bonuses, but there really aren't that many jobs like that to go around. Contracting, though, yeah. 500 a day for a competent but unexceptional Java developer? 800 for Scala? More if you happen to know whatever's hot right now? A contractor friend once told me to plan around billing 220 days a year, which would see the Java grunt on 110k, and the Scala astronaut on 176k.
  - wikibob 9y ago
    London is a weird market. Don't believe the incredibly low salaries you see on Glassdoor. There seems to be a handful of places that have reasonable salaries. I don't fully understand why contract pays so much higher. One interesting thing in London is many (most?) permanent roles have a two or even three month contractual "notice period". So if you hand in your notice, you're stuck working for another three months. This causes friction in the labor market which certainly has a depressive effect on wages.
    - twic 9y ago
      I've only ever served out one-month notice periods. If i'd been a bit more senior at my last job, it might have been two. Where i am now is four and a half months or something insane like that.
      - wikibob 9y ago
        Curious why did you take it? Did you try negotiating it down to something reasonable? (two weeks to a month)
        twic 9y ago
        Getting a copy of the actual contract, with the notice period in, was fairly late in the process, after i'd already informally accepted the offer. I didn't think i had a lot of leverage to get it changed. I could have tried, but by BATNA [1] was taking another job i wanted less, whilst their BATNA was to keep looking for candidates they liked just as much. Perhaps i underestimated the strength of my hand. I'm also not all that bothered about it. I've never decided to quit a job and needed to be out one month later - i am not the sort of person who bumps into someone founding a hot new startup and decides to jump on board. Four and a half months sounds like about the amount of time it would take me to find a new job anyway! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_alternative_to_a_negotiated_agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_alternative_to_a_negotiat...
        user5994461 9y ago
        Actually, there are some legal limitations around the notice period in the UK. For instance, you can always leave during the first month without doing any notice period. >>> I've never decided to quit a job and needed to be out one month later It's a big hassle to get a new job if you can't be available before a few months. I personally had the case that a new job was terrible and left rather quickly. That would have been a problem if there were multiple months of notice.

by joshvm 9y ago

user5994461 9y ago

The norm for senior is certainly 6 figures. It is ill advised to ignore finance, big companies, and contracting.

twic 9y ago
That doesn't contradict what joshvm said, though. Outside finance and the tech giants, my observation has been that seniors make 60-90k. Hedge funds pay 100-130k base, with cushty bonuses, but there really aren't that many jobs like that to go around. Contracting, though, yeah. 500 a day for a competent but unexceptional Java developer? 800 for Scala? More if you happen to know whatever's hot right now? A contractor friend once told me to plan around billing 220 days a year, which would see the Java grunt on 110k, and the Scala astronaut on 176k.
- wikibob 9y ago
  London is a weird market. Don't believe the incredibly low salaries you see on Glassdoor. There seems to be a handful of places that have reasonable salaries. I don't fully understand why contract pays so much higher. One interesting thing in London is many (most?) permanent roles have a two or even three month contractual "notice period". So if you hand in your notice, you're stuck working for another three months. This causes friction in the labor market which certainly has a depressive effect on wages.
  - twic 9y ago
    I've only ever served out one-month notice periods. If i'd been a bit more senior at my last job, it might have been two. Where i am now is four and a half months or something insane like that.
    - wikibob 9y ago
      Curious why did you take it? Did you try negotiating it down to something reasonable? (two weeks to a month)
      - twic 9y ago
        Getting a copy of the actual contract, with the notice period in, was fairly late in the process, after i'd already informally accepted the offer. I didn't think i had a lot of leverage to get it changed. I could have tried, but by BATNA [1] was taking another job i wanted less, whilst their BATNA was to keep looking for candidates they liked just as much. Perhaps i underestimated the strength of my hand. I'm also not all that bothered about it. I've never decided to quit a job and needed to be out one month later - i am not the sort of person who bumps into someone founding a hot new startup and decides to jump on board. Four and a half months sounds like about the amount of time it would take me to find a new job anyway! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_alternative_to_a_negotiated_agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_alternative_to_a_negotiat...
        user5994461 9y ago
        Actually, there are some legal limitations around the notice period in the UK. For instance, you can always leave during the first month without doing any notice period. >>> I've never decided to quit a job and needed to be out one month later It's a big hassle to get a new job if you can't be available before a few months. I personally had the case that a new job was terrible and left rather quickly. That would have been a problem if there were multiple months of notice.