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It depends who you ask, I guess. There's a definite shortage outside of London, although few companies seem to want to up their salaries to attract experienced

It depends who you ask, I guess. There's a definite shortage outside of London, although few companies seem to want to up their salaries to attract experienced talent. One of the reasons I switched stack was because I would get recruiters emailing every day with new roles, but rarely anything that paid over £45k in Bristol. In your experience, as a Londoner, is there a demand for experienced devs? I would've thought that big companies would always be looking for developers.

Distozion 7y ago
There is for sure enough opportunities to move around, but it will all depend on how well you match what the company needs (Had 3 perm positions in last 2 years in London, every move increasing my take home) Even right now the publicly owned bank that I work for is constantly hiring mid+ developers and in two weeks we get like <10 applications for some positions. So I'm guessing it would heavily depend what kind of company are you targeting. From experience I can say that we refuse experienced devs only if they want to do a career shift while getting the same or higher wage without showing that they actually did some learning before applying (example would be moving from backend Java/c# stack to Frontend JS role). Remember, if taking a chance, it's cheaper to take on a promising junior to train than an experienced dev that puts no effort upfront. Are you looking to go straight to £70k+? Then better have the experience / match the stack / have the personality and sell yourself (I kinda feel that I got my current role more through selling myself than my CV, since I got the offer after ~1.5h talk with a few higher-ups, no coding, whiteboards or anything) Are you a senior dev who's willing to work in a new stack on an experienced mid wage? Then you shouldn't have a lot of problems finding you next role.
pyb 7y ago
There is always a fair amount of demand, but from the way hiring companies act, one can feel they have many decent candidates to choose from.

Distozion 7y ago

There is for sure enough opportunities to move around, but it will all depend on how well you match what the company needs (Had 3 perm positions in last 2 years in London, every move increasing my take home) Even right now the publicly owned bank that I work for is constantly hiring mid+ developers and in two weeks we get like <10 applications for some positions. So I'm guessing it would heavily depend what kind of company are you targeting. From experience I can say that we refuse experienced devs only if they want to do a career shift while getting the same or higher wage without showing that they actually did some learning before applying (example would be moving from backend Java/c# stack to Frontend JS role). Remember, if taking a chance, it's cheaper to take on a promising junior to train than an experienced dev that puts no effort upfront. Are you looking to go straight to £70k+? Then better have the experience / match the stack / have the personality and sell yourself (I kinda feel that I got my current role more through selling myself than my CV, since I got the offer after ~1.5h talk with a few higher-ups, no coding, whiteboards or anything) Are you a senior dev who's willing to work in a new stack on an experienced mid wage? Then you shouldn't have a lot of problems finding you next role.

pyb 7y ago

There is always a fair amount of demand, but from the way hiring companies act, one can feel they have many decent candidates to choose from.