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Senior developer salaries in my local area (Edinburgh, Scotland, UK) are £30k-£40k which is about $42k - $56k USD. On a £40k salary you pay roughly £9,500 in ta

Senior developer salaries in my local area (Edinburgh, Scotland, UK) are £30k-£40k which is about $42k - $56k USD. On a £40k salary you pay roughly £9,500 in tax. Ive no idea what the tax rate is in America but the difference in salaries between the UK and the US is astounding.

Nursie 9y ago
The UK mostly pays developers a derisory salary. Australia seems to pay roughly on a par with the US, or did when I lived there. But most of the UK is dreadful - software folks are paid poorly and treated like drones. Unfortunately there are enough people that will take the bad salary, have mediocre performance and deliver mediocre software slowly, that a lot of British companies now expect to pay peanuts and get monkeys. I've found the only way to replicate the money you can get elsewhere is to be a contractor. You can make about double your quoted figure outside London (my experience in the Hampshire/Wiltshire/Dorset region), or triple or more if you land something bank related in London. No idea what might be available in Edinburgh.
- crdoconnor 9y ago
  The contractor premium will get dragged down in a year or two as well - the Tories are planning on kicking up taxes for them in order to bring in an extra £200 mil. That will probably lead to an exodus of the experienced developers from the UK. This will not only have a negative effect on UK software houses it will also exacerbate the existing problems with UK government IT projects, which have already have a multibillion-pound problem with failure to deliver and cost overruns as it is. Meanwhile, Russian oligarchs are still paying peanuts for their empty central London mansions and big companies are barely paying any corporation taxes.
  - user5994461 9y ago
    Not so sure. People who've been living here often can't just go back to where they come from. They wouldn't have moved to the UK if the situation in their countries was better. The effect so far of Brexit is to stop the flood of newcomers, not making establishing people leave. It's good as a developer, less competitors for the same amount of jobs.
    - crdoconnor 9y ago
      I get what you're saying, but contractors by their nature tend to be mobile and motivated by pay. This strongly increases the likelihood of an outflow, especially if companies don't react to the extra taxes by raising pay. The effect is compounded because a) good techies really like to work with other good techies and b) losing most of the good ones also means losing all of the people who can recognize other good techies and hire competently and c) there's a scarcity of mentors too, impeding the ability of junior techies to develop. The UK is still a tech center in spite of Brexit. For now. I've worked in markets before where there's a scarcity of high end talent because it all got sucked away elsewhere and software-wise, these environments produced mediocre crap.
      - user5994461 9y ago
        Contractors are mobile in the sense that they can change company every 3 months. They stay in the same area. They are not mobile to move themselves and their family across the border periodically.
        crdoconnor 9y ago
        shrug half the ones I know have done precisely that already and I've done it too. I don't doubt that there will always be some that won't or can't cross a border though.
  - Nursie 9y ago
    If taxes go up, I'll need to charge more. I think we should probably pay similar tax levels, but I'm not willing to let it affect my take-home!
  - MrMorden 9y ago
    Has any party even suggested moving council tax to a percentage of assessed value rather than the band system?
    - crdoconnor 9y ago
      Yeah, and the Daily Mail went apeshit over the so called "garden tax". Lord Rothermere's country estate is taxed enough already, see.
- muse900 9y ago
  Completely agree with you. In the London area it’s white expensive to live due to how expensive housing is. Contracting might be a good thing for a tech guy with a specific skill but a lot of people like me like to have something standard and be more secure in a way that they won’t need to search for another gig in 3 months. I guess the more contracting you do the more reliable you become and you constantly close down gigs knowing your intake for a year before signing any contracts, but I’d say it’s still a bit hard. From what I’ve seen if you are a developer going to Manchester or Birmingham or something like that and getting a gig might be the best thing you can do, since the cost of living goes heavily down and the salary drop is not that massive unless you were working on finance tech which tends to pay higher.
  - badpun 9y ago
    In my experience, most contracts in enterprise Java typicaly last 6-24 months, some even longer. 3 months and gtfo is not standard.
  - Nursie 9y ago
    (Trying not to sound patronising but...) I used to think thay way, until I got confident in my own abilities. It helps I enjoy interviewing and seem quite good at it. --edit-- it also helps I don't have a family to support, so consistency of income is less of a concern for me.
ldarcyftw 9y ago
What's the point in getting all those $$$K if a single major medical event (like cancer) will bankrupt you? Ah, and I just checked my retirement calculator. It claims that once I retire at 67 I'll have to pay $8K/month for my medical insurance.
- aianus 9y ago
  If you're getting $$$k in salary, you're also almost certainly getting top notch medical insurance. Also, you don't need private insurance when you're 67, that's what Medicare is for.
  - sethammons 9y ago
    And you pay for Medicare after you are eligible for it. My dad just hit Medicare age and was surprised to find out he gets to pay for it.
    - aianus 9y ago
      It's not $8,000 a month though. I'd still take a developer career in the US over Europe any day.
      - ldarcyftw 9y ago
        Well, it is a number adp.com (site which helps to manage your retirement/payroll data) tells me.
    - TheCoelacanth 9y ago
      Seems like the absolute maximum for that is a bit over $1k/month, and that's only if you didn't Medicare taxes for less 10 years, have an income of over $214k/year and get the most expensive part C and part D coverage. A typical amount would be roughly $200/month, less than even someone in their early 20s would typically pay for health insurance.
      - 9y ago
chucksmash 9y ago
The difference in pay between US and EU has always left me scratching my head. Is development universally treated as a cost center by business people there? Isn't there anybody trying to attract those top N% of engineers with big salaries so those engineers make them a fortune? A 50-80% haircut on salary is a big whammy for the same position in places with similar COL.
raverbashing 9y ago
I thought it would be at least £50k, that's not a great salary (city isn't very cheap as well)

Nursie 9y ago

The UK mostly pays developers a derisory salary. Australia seems to pay roughly on a par with the US, or did when I lived there. But most of the UK is dreadful - software folks are paid poorly and treated like drones. Unfortunately there are enough people that will take the bad salary, have mediocre performance and deliver mediocre software slowly, that a lot of British companies now expect to pay peanuts and get monkeys. I've found the only way to replicate the money you can get elsewhere is to be a contractor. You can make about double your quoted figure outside London (my experience in the Hampshire/Wiltshire/Dorset region), or triple or more if you land something bank related in London. No idea what might be available in Edinburgh.

crdoconnor 9y ago
The contractor premium will get dragged down in a year or two as well - the Tories are planning on kicking up taxes for them in order to bring in an extra £200 mil. That will probably lead to an exodus of the experienced developers from the UK. This will not only have a negative effect on UK software houses it will also exacerbate the existing problems with UK government IT projects, which have already have a multibillion-pound problem with failure to deliver and cost overruns as it is. Meanwhile, Russian oligarchs are still paying peanuts for their empty central London mansions and big companies are barely paying any corporation taxes.
- user5994461 9y ago
  Not so sure. People who've been living here often can't just go back to where they come from. They wouldn't have moved to the UK if the situation in their countries was better. The effect so far of Brexit is to stop the flood of newcomers, not making establishing people leave. It's good as a developer, less competitors for the same amount of jobs.
  - crdoconnor 9y ago
    I get what you're saying, but contractors by their nature tend to be mobile and motivated by pay. This strongly increases the likelihood of an outflow, especially if companies don't react to the extra taxes by raising pay. The effect is compounded because a) good techies really like to work with other good techies and b) losing most of the good ones also means losing all of the people who can recognize other good techies and hire competently and c) there's a scarcity of mentors too, impeding the ability of junior techies to develop. The UK is still a tech center in spite of Brexit. For now. I've worked in markets before where there's a scarcity of high end talent because it all got sucked away elsewhere and software-wise, these environments produced mediocre crap.
    - user5994461 9y ago
      Contractors are mobile in the sense that they can change company every 3 months. They stay in the same area. They are not mobile to move themselves and their family across the border periodically.
      - crdoconnor 9y ago
        shrug half the ones I know have done precisely that already and I've done it too. I don't doubt that there will always be some that won't or can't cross a border though.
- Nursie 9y ago
  If taxes go up, I'll need to charge more. I think we should probably pay similar tax levels, but I'm not willing to let it affect my take-home!
- MrMorden 9y ago
  Has any party even suggested moving council tax to a percentage of assessed value rather than the band system?
  - crdoconnor 9y ago
    Yeah, and the Daily Mail went apeshit over the so called "garden tax". Lord Rothermere's country estate is taxed enough already, see.
muse900 9y ago
Completely agree with you. In the London area it’s white expensive to live due to how expensive housing is. Contracting might be a good thing for a tech guy with a specific skill but a lot of people like me like to have something standard and be more secure in a way that they won’t need to search for another gig in 3 months. I guess the more contracting you do the more reliable you become and you constantly close down gigs knowing your intake for a year before signing any contracts, but I’d say it’s still a bit hard. From what I’ve seen if you are a developer going to Manchester or Birmingham or something like that and getting a gig might be the best thing you can do, since the cost of living goes heavily down and the salary drop is not that massive unless you were working on finance tech which tends to pay higher.
- badpun 9y ago
  In my experience, most contracts in enterprise Java typicaly last 6-24 months, some even longer. 3 months and gtfo is not standard.
- Nursie 9y ago
  (Trying not to sound patronising but...) I used to think thay way, until I got confident in my own abilities. It helps I enjoy interviewing and seem quite good at it. --edit-- it also helps I don't have a family to support, so consistency of income is less of a concern for me.

ldarcyftw 9y ago

What's the point in getting all those $$$K if a single major medical event (like cancer) will bankrupt you? Ah, and I just checked my retirement calculator. It claims that once I retire at 67 I'll have to pay $8K/month for my medical insurance.

aianus 9y ago
If you're getting $$$k in salary, you're also almost certainly getting top notch medical insurance. Also, you don't need private insurance when you're 67, that's what Medicare is for.
- sethammons 9y ago
  And you pay for Medicare after you are eligible for it. My dad just hit Medicare age and was surprised to find out he gets to pay for it.
  - aianus 9y ago
    It's not $8,000 a month though. I'd still take a developer career in the US over Europe any day.
    - ldarcyftw 9y ago
      Well, it is a number adp.com (site which helps to manage your retirement/payroll data) tells me.
  - TheCoelacanth 9y ago
    Seems like the absolute maximum for that is a bit over $1k/month, and that's only if you didn't Medicare taxes for less 10 years, have an income of over $214k/year and get the most expensive part C and part D coverage. A typical amount would be roughly $200/month, less than even someone in their early 20s would typically pay for health insurance.
    - 9y ago

chucksmash 9y ago

The difference in pay between US and EU has always left me scratching my head. Is development universally treated as a cost center by business people there? Isn't there anybody trying to attract those top N% of engineers with big salaries so those engineers make them a fortune? A 50-80% haircut on salary is a big whammy for the same position in places with similar COL.

raverbashing 9y ago

I thought it would be at least £50k, that's not a great salary (city isn't very cheap as well)