3 ms·

Are you including contractors? My understanding is that tech contracting in London is where the money is at. You can make £400 a day or ~£84,000 a year. This is

Are you including contractors? My understanding is that tech contracting in London is where the money is at. You can make £400 a day or ~£84,000 a year. This is with a lower all-in tax rate so your take-home pay is higher if you take it as a dividend. I used to be a software engineer but changed to finance (asset management) to get paid more. I went from £23k a year to £50k.

zimpenfish 9y ago
You can easily make £400+ a day with tech contracting in London, yep. I've been doing it for years and I'm defiantly middle of the road. If you're a niche expert (MUMPS, KDB, etc.), you can probably make double that.
- Blackstone4 9y ago
  @zimpenfish do you have any advice on contracting? I was thinking about going into one day. I have a diverse background and have been a quantitative analyst, software engineer, and investment analyst. I have a MEng in Mathematical modelling (from a good UK uni) and a CFA Charterholder. My current tech stack (about 1 year experience) is React, JS/Typescript, GraphQL, Apollo Server all on AWS (AWS Lambda, AWS RDS and Docker on an EC2 instance). I used to work with Java, Linux servers and SQL (2 years experience). Would it be possible for me to contract? I could leverage my non-technical skills as well like my CFA and investment experience. :)
  - zimpenfish 9y ago
    > do you have any advice on contracting? If you're ok with employment gaps and the consequent lack of income, go for it. But if you have dependents and/or mortage and/or other constraints, I'd definitely put a whole lot of thought and financial planning into it first. With that list of skills, I reckon you should be able to find some interest in London, yeah. Might have to lowball the daily rate to start with just to get going but people are definitely hiring those skills.
    - Blackstone4 9y ago
      Thanks for the advice. I would be fine with the lumpy income as I have no dependents or financial commitments (mortgage etc.). I not far off affording a small 1 bedroom flat with cash so fairly relaxed.
- EnderMB 9y ago
  If you work with undesirable technology then it's entirely possible to double it. As an example, a friend of mine is a Sitecore developer. Sitecore is an enterprise-level CMS on the .NET framework that is used by large companies, and it's feature set boasts some impressive marketing tools. He recently went into contracting after around a decade of experience, and he's pulling in £400 a day in Bristol and Nottingham. This, for him, was a "really low rate" because he was starting out, and for his next contract he'll probably bump it up to £600 a day or more for London. The top Sitecore architects that contract will earn anything from £800-1200 a day, which is insanity to someone earning a fairly standard developer salary. Then again, I'd argue that dev salaries in the UK are low in general, and contractors only illustrate the huge difference.
- godelmachine 9y ago
  May I ask what's MUMPS , KDB?
  - zimpenfish 9y ago
    MUMPS is a bonkers database language popular with healthcare and banks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUMPS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUMPS KDB is another bonkers database language popular with banks and high-frequency traders. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kdb%2B https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kdb%2B (There is a common theme here!)

zimpenfish 9y ago

You can easily make £400+ a day with tech contracting in London, yep. I've been doing it for years and I'm defiantly middle of the road. If you're a niche expert (MUMPS, KDB, etc.), you can probably make double that.

Blackstone4 9y ago
@zimpenfish do you have any advice on contracting? I was thinking about going into one day. I have a diverse background and have been a quantitative analyst, software engineer, and investment analyst. I have a MEng in Mathematical modelling (from a good UK uni) and a CFA Charterholder. My current tech stack (about 1 year experience) is React, JS/Typescript, GraphQL, Apollo Server all on AWS (AWS Lambda, AWS RDS and Docker on an EC2 instance). I used to work with Java, Linux servers and SQL (2 years experience). Would it be possible for me to contract? I could leverage my non-technical skills as well like my CFA and investment experience. :)
- zimpenfish 9y ago
  > do you have any advice on contracting? If you're ok with employment gaps and the consequent lack of income, go for it. But if you have dependents and/or mortage and/or other constraints, I'd definitely put a whole lot of thought and financial planning into it first. With that list of skills, I reckon you should be able to find some interest in London, yeah. Might have to lowball the daily rate to start with just to get going but people are definitely hiring those skills.
  - Blackstone4 9y ago
    Thanks for the advice. I would be fine with the lumpy income as I have no dependents or financial commitments (mortgage etc.). I not far off affording a small 1 bedroom flat with cash so fairly relaxed.
EnderMB 9y ago
If you work with undesirable technology then it's entirely possible to double it. As an example, a friend of mine is a Sitecore developer. Sitecore is an enterprise-level CMS on the .NET framework that is used by large companies, and it's feature set boasts some impressive marketing tools. He recently went into contracting after around a decade of experience, and he's pulling in £400 a day in Bristol and Nottingham. This, for him, was a "really low rate" because he was starting out, and for his next contract he'll probably bump it up to £600 a day or more for London. The top Sitecore architects that contract will earn anything from £800-1200 a day, which is insanity to someone earning a fairly standard developer salary. Then again, I'd argue that dev salaries in the UK are low in general, and contractors only illustrate the huge difference.
godelmachine 9y ago
May I ask what's MUMPS , KDB?
- zimpenfish 9y ago
  MUMPS is a bonkers database language popular with healthcare and banks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUMPS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUMPS KDB is another bonkers database language popular with banks and high-frequency traders. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kdb%2B https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kdb%2B (There is a common theme here!)