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Is it possible that this experience was influenced in any way by the fact that they're trying to find a "Senior iPhone Developer" for under £40k? That's ~$65k,

Is it possible that this experience was influenced in any way by the fact that they're trying to find a "Senior iPhone Developer" for under £40k? That's ~$65k, and thus roughly $100k shy of what you'd need to offer before you started to pique the interest of any good iPhone Developers in the current market.

patio11 16y ago
This is the same thing I think every time someone says "Why is it so danged hard to find a developer that knows SEO or an SEO who can program their way out of a paper bag. It's like nobody has even heard of any, when we'd gladly reward any with $80k and all the soda they could drink!" If you think you are paying market, and you can't find a candidate despite using all the normal channels, you by definition are not paying market.
- mgkimsal 16y ago
  Spot on. I've been in this field for too long, and can bring too much value, to sell my services at way under value, even if it includes a lot of free drinks. It's hard for companies to recognize extra value they could possibly be getting from senior/older developers, but also requires a commitment that they actually try to get extra value from them. Whether that's proactively, or just reacting positively to observations/input, and I've not found many companies interested in doing that. It's cheaper/easier/faster to hire the younger kids looking for their first or second job. That used to be me, and I understand those advantages, but I also see the problems associated with those sorts of hires. An ideal org would have a nice balance of all experience levels, but few that I run in to have that balance.
ido 16y ago
I don't know about the UK in particular, but salaries in Europe are in general lower than in the US. 40k gbp is almost 46k eur, which is not a bad salary in Vienna.
- tomjen3 16y ago
  Yeah, but thats still more than 11000 pound less than the starting salary for a Danish computer programmer. For a senior programmer, thats a joke.
  - ido 16y ago
    Denmark has an unusually strong economy, iirc it has the best employment market in the EU. Even in Malmö which is right next door 46k euros/year is not a bad a salary for a programmer.
    - _delirium 16y ago
      The tax system is also considerably different. Danish nominal salaries are higher than the UK, but take-home pay is much closer and sometimes actually lower, because taxes are about twice as high in that bracket. Someone making 40k pounds in the UK, for example, will take home around 31k. To take home 31k pounds (265k kr) in Denmark, you'd have to make over 60k pounds (500k kr) nominal salary. However, the social services the two countries provide differ as well.
- dspillett 16y ago
  It depends where you are living. In London 40K is a lot less attractive than in York (where I live and work) where it is probably very good, and in somewhere like Grimsby it might be considered particularly high. The cost and hassle of working in a particular place (i.e. either rent or property purchase prices, and/or the convenience/availability/cost of transport options, access to good social facilities, and so on) make a huge difference and vary by a surprising amount from place to place even within a relatively small country and this factors into what an acceptable salary is. Of course a good benefits package can affect the acceptability of a given rate significantly too, potentially offsetting the geographical differences - you need to consider a lot more than the one headline figure when judging if the offer is fair.
dspillett 16y ago
Irrespective of the appropriateness or not of the rate actually offered, the edited version is quite simply a lie perpetrated by lying liers and unfortunately this sort of behaviour seems to be the norm for the recruitment industry in my limited experience. The amount of blatant untruths I've had to be polite about as I've taken calls from recruiters trying to hawk their wares. Actually, I've stopped being polite: responses like "speaking to him an hour ago were you you lying git? Only he is sat opposite me all morning and hasn't taken a single call. Would you like to start telling the truth or just hang up now and save us both some time?" are common from me. Next time I'm looking for work I plan to try stay as far away from that sort of company as possible - I'd feel morally dirty just thinking abut dealing with them. Unfortunately I'm not sure how effective other paths are, but fortunately I don't expect to need to know for some time! Opus is most definitely on the "would not deal with even if desperate" list after having read this post.
- bugsy 16y ago
  Recruiter repostings are completely irrelevant to the problems they are having. The article makes it as if that is the problem they are having, but their woes have nothing at all to do with recruiters. That recruiter that reposted "up to £40k" was a good guy who was doing them a big favor by making clear that the biggest problem with their ad, that which most needed to be changed was the salary offering. And he didn't even charge them for that insight. What a nice, generous fellow.
  - dspillett 16y ago
    I hope I detect an air of sarcasm there, otherwise I'd have my water supply checked if I were you!
    - bugsy 16y ago
      No sarcasm at all. What is the problem the author has? The problem is he is unable to hire a senior iPhone developer with a deep and broad skill set. What is his analysis of the problem? His analysis is that recruiters are to blame. Recruiters are not the problem. The salary is. The recruiter that changed his ad gave him free information about what the problem is. The flaw in this article complaining about recruiters being responsible for his problems is that recruiters are not responsible for his problem. His problem is that his offered salary is not even close to be in line with what he would need to offer to attract the candidate the ad indicates they require. Not sarcasm. Common sense.
Silhouette 16y ago
Your point is valid, but those in the US often have a highly distorted view of IT salaries anywhere else if you just translate US dollar salaries into the native currency. The going rate for a senior software engineer who is decent but doesn't have particularly specialised skills, in the UK but outside London, is probably somewhere between £45k and £60k depending on where in the country you are. In London, you probably shift everything up by £5k-£15k depending on the job and conditions.
- ig1 16y ago
  Those in the US have a highly distorted view of IT salaries in the US... There's a bias effect caused by the fact that the only people willing to talk about salaries are those with high salaries. Government based salary data often shows much lower salaries than sites like GlassDoor report.
- Stormbringer 16y ago
  Even in the US there are only a few places where you can get that kind of money. I hear Silicon Valley is having a massive shortage of devs right now, so maybe you can get ~$150k right there right now. But what about buttfrack ohio? Or outer michiganstan? You ain't gonna see 150k dev jobs out there.
ig1 16y ago
The salary is inline with market rates. It's crazy to compare salaries across cities and sectors let alone across countries without taking into local factors (for example paid holidays and sick leave). Plus I think you have a vastly skewed market view, even in places like SF and NY very very few companies are hiring iPhone developers for $165k USD (feel free to post examples if you disagree). What do you think the average salary for a developer in the US is ? (disclaimer: I run a developer job board; the company in question Engine Room Apps advertises with us)
- waterlesscloud 16y ago
  If they aren't finding people, they aren't offering enough. I know no business wants to hear this, but it's the simple truth.
- ig1 16y ago
  For the curious I pulled the US govt salary data: 75% of developers in the US earn less than 100k/year. 10% of developers in the US earn more than 130k/year. To get in the top 10% of developers in the UK you need to earn £60.5k (about 100k USD). So developers do earn more in the US than the UK (although once you take into account things like greater holiday allowance, etc. the difference comes down to about 10%).
  - jasonkester 16y ago
    Indeed, that's the range you get if you include PHP devs and corporate IT folk. For specialist iPhone devs who are provably good at what they do, however, $150/hr is a pretty good starting point, and there are plenty of companies willing to pay more than that. With that in mind, I don't imagine you'd find many good devs with solid iPhone experience willing to work for less than $75/hr, which coincidentally translates to about $165k/year. Incidentally, if you're a company looking to put out an iPhone app, you absolutely should seek out a guy who's good enough to demand $150/hr. Given the esoteric nature of the platform, you'll probably find you save money in the long run going with a guy who doesn't need to train himself up on your dime. He might be 4x as expensive, but he's probably also >4x as fast.
edderly 16y ago
The UK has relied for too long on relatively cheap but willing tech. labour. I believe one major factor that enabled this was the boom in home computing in the early 80s. I don't know whether it is fair to call this unique (to the UK), but it certainly helped to have the BBC heavily involved with the BBC Micro effort and even TV coverage: 'http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Computer_Programme http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Computer_Programme. I remember back then even the shallowest computer user might have had a go at typing in a program from the back of a magazine. This provided two generations of willing workers, the first being the adults taking up computing, a few would become entrepreneurs and many of the rest would see it as a career transition and happy enough to get a "bump" in wages for skills in a new domain. For some, this "bump" was pretty significant for them personally, I've known good people in the UK tech sector who started out as car mechanics, waitresses and the like where IT has improved their personal circumstances no end. Then there's the second generation, these are the kids who grew up in the 80s boom time and it would seem natural for many of these people to make their hobby their career. But the problems start here. Firstly, there was no third generation to follow on, both mainstream culture and even schools completely forgot about programming. Kids grew up with consoles, with few having an idea what it takes to make the games they play. Schools replaced programming with "IT skills", meaning spreadsheets and Word docs, ostensibly because it was easier to train teachers to 'teach' this. Secondly, there is often a working class attitude in UK tech which shares some similarities with Jante Law. This is debatable, but I do think part of that comes from the first generation, who never thought they would be doctors or lawyers so had lower aspirations and feel pretty grateful for having a 'decent' albeit moderate wage. However, for the second generation, they would more likely have gone to university and studied Comp. Sci. or a.n.other course and entered the industry. When they look at their similarly educated peers, they will often find themselves on a lower rung than those who chose to go into management or one of the older traditional professions. That second generation now have kids going to University, and I am guessing that they have a slightly less rosy perspective on the IT sector than when they first started out. So the net effect of this is that the number of Computing graduates is declining http://www.cphc.ac.uk/docs/cphc-computinggraduates-june08.pdf http://www.cphc.ac.uk/docs/cphc-computinggraduates-june08.pd... . Perhaps the same thing is happening elsewhere, but I think in the meantime it is time for UK tech. to start weaning themselves off mediocre salaries for tech. sector professionals.
Jabbles 16y ago
£28k will get you a reasonable graduate. I don't understand how they're offering a salary range that starts with that for a "senior" position.
- tsiki 16y ago
  Agreed. I'm a second year CS student and my summer job salary isn't far from that.
gcheong 16y ago
That and there was no mention of any equity. Is that normal for UK startups? Also, for me at least, I always find some way to exclude myself going through those "everything we want you to be an expert in before we'll even consider talking to you" laundry lists.
- tobinator 16y ago
  Good points. Equity (options) aren't anywhere near as popular in the UK as in the US. Yeah, I'm not sure about the laundry list either. You have to start somewhere with these job descriptions, but it's a learning curve.
wildjim 16y ago
I would say a Senior iPhone Dev in London would be £60k+ but since the number of com's who need ObjC is pretty small (even though London has a lot of Mobile dev's) then I wouldn't be surprised if it topped-out at £50k. In London, a £75k job is very well paid, even in finance, therefore a £100k job (I assume you meant $160k) is getting into higher-management or Contractor territory, not Senior Dev.
tzs 16y ago
They are looking for a permanent employee, not a consultant. Is $165k (presumably plus benefits) really the going rate for that?
- bugsy 16y ago
  $165k is indeed the minimum rate for iPhone developers with experience, as employees with benefits. Realize though that taxes come out of that, whereas I understand that in EC salaries are posted as after-tax values. For an iPhone consultant with experience shipping real products, expect to pay $150/hr minimum. Top guys are quite a bit more.
  - ig1 16y ago
    Care to post some link to employers hiring in the $165k+ range?
    - bugsy 16y ago
      adobe.com apple.com google.com microsoft.com facebook.com
      - Silhouette 16y ago
        Those are hardly typical employers writing typical mobile apps. Three of them write mobile operating systems, after all.
      - ig1 16y ago
        I meant link to job ads, etc. which provide backup for the statement you're making ? For example Facebook on Glassdoor (which tends to overestimate salaries), doesn't have a single developer on $165k+. As it happens I've got Apples H1B filings for last year handy, of all of their H1B employees the highest paid software engineer is at $155000 and he's a specialist in wifi technology. The average H1B developer at Apple makes $88,000/year. Do you have any evidence at all to back up you ?
        16y ago
sdizdar 16y ago
You are wrong. This is called "war on talents". OK. I'm not adding anything to discussion and my post should be down-voted, but I agree with comment that the main problem of finding a good engineer is salary offered.
tobinator 16y ago
Our blog post was mostly expressing our shock at the dirty recruitment tactics. But I think you're right about the salary; we should have researched the job posting more thoroughly to get the title, expectations and salary aligned. £38K goes much further in Leeds than in California and even London, but we're learning that we need to offer a better package to get the right people. We're also new to all this, and sharing our experiences and blunders as we go...
akronim 16y ago
Maybe £40k is too low for London, but they're in Leeds which is a different story. It you look on itjobswatch.co.uk for "developer" the average in London was £50k, in Leeds £32,750. (I don't think you can use "iPhone" as a keyword sensibly given that most of the ads for Leeds are probably this one and its clones)
- bugsy 16y ago
  How much developers make on average in Leeds (a town not known as a center of innovative high tech development any more than Detroit currently is) is not relevant to the acquisition of highly skilled and sought after talent that does not exist in Leeds.

patio11 16y ago

This is the same thing I think every time someone says "Why is it so danged hard to find a developer that knows SEO or an SEO who can program their way out of a paper bag. It's like nobody has even heard of any, when we'd gladly reward any with $80k and all the soda they could drink!" If you think you are paying market, and you can't find a candidate despite using all the normal channels, you by definition are not paying market.

mgkimsal 16y ago
Spot on. I've been in this field for too long, and can bring too much value, to sell my services at way under value, even if it includes a lot of free drinks. It's hard for companies to recognize extra value they could possibly be getting from senior/older developers, but also requires a commitment that they actually try to get extra value from them. Whether that's proactively, or just reacting positively to observations/input, and I've not found many companies interested in doing that. It's cheaper/easier/faster to hire the younger kids looking for their first or second job. That used to be me, and I understand those advantages, but I also see the problems associated with those sorts of hires. An ideal org would have a nice balance of all experience levels, but few that I run in to have that balance.

ido 16y ago

I don't know about the UK in particular, but salaries in Europe are in general lower than in the US. 40k gbp is almost 46k eur, which is not a bad salary in Vienna.

tomjen3 16y ago
Yeah, but thats still more than 11000 pound less than the starting salary for a Danish computer programmer. For a senior programmer, thats a joke.
- ido 16y ago
  Denmark has an unusually strong economy, iirc it has the best employment market in the EU. Even in Malmö which is right next door 46k euros/year is not a bad a salary for a programmer.
  - _delirium 16y ago
    The tax system is also considerably different. Danish nominal salaries are higher than the UK, but take-home pay is much closer and sometimes actually lower, because taxes are about twice as high in that bracket. Someone making 40k pounds in the UK, for example, will take home around 31k. To take home 31k pounds (265k kr) in Denmark, you'd have to make over 60k pounds (500k kr) nominal salary. However, the social services the two countries provide differ as well.
dspillett 16y ago
It depends where you are living. In London 40K is a lot less attractive than in York (where I live and work) where it is probably very good, and in somewhere like Grimsby it might be considered particularly high. The cost and hassle of working in a particular place (i.e. either rent or property purchase prices, and/or the convenience/availability/cost of transport options, access to good social facilities, and so on) make a huge difference and vary by a surprising amount from place to place even within a relatively small country and this factors into what an acceptable salary is. Of course a good benefits package can affect the acceptability of a given rate significantly too, potentially offsetting the geographical differences - you need to consider a lot more than the one headline figure when judging if the offer is fair.

dspillett 16y ago

Irrespective of the appropriateness or not of the rate actually offered, the edited version is quite simply a lie perpetrated by lying liers and unfortunately this sort of behaviour seems to be the norm for the recruitment industry in my limited experience. The amount of blatant untruths I've had to be polite about as I've taken calls from recruiters trying to hawk their wares. Actually, I've stopped being polite: responses like "speaking to him an hour ago were you you lying git? Only he is sat opposite me all morning and hasn't taken a single call. Would you like to start telling the truth or just hang up now and save us both some time?" are common from me. Next time I'm looking for work I plan to try stay as far away from that sort of company as possible - I'd feel morally dirty just thinking abut dealing with them. Unfortunately I'm not sure how effective other paths are, but fortunately I don't expect to need to know for some time! Opus is most definitely on the "would not deal with even if desperate" list after having read this post.

bugsy 16y ago
Recruiter repostings are completely irrelevant to the problems they are having. The article makes it as if that is the problem they are having, but their woes have nothing at all to do with recruiters. That recruiter that reposted "up to £40k" was a good guy who was doing them a big favor by making clear that the biggest problem with their ad, that which most needed to be changed was the salary offering. And he didn't even charge them for that insight. What a nice, generous fellow.
- dspillett 16y ago
  I hope I detect an air of sarcasm there, otherwise I'd have my water supply checked if I were you!
  - bugsy 16y ago
    No sarcasm at all. What is the problem the author has? The problem is he is unable to hire a senior iPhone developer with a deep and broad skill set. What is his analysis of the problem? His analysis is that recruiters are to blame. Recruiters are not the problem. The salary is. The recruiter that changed his ad gave him free information about what the problem is. The flaw in this article complaining about recruiters being responsible for his problems is that recruiters are not responsible for his problem. His problem is that his offered salary is not even close to be in line with what he would need to offer to attract the candidate the ad indicates they require. Not sarcasm. Common sense.

Silhouette 16y ago

Your point is valid, but those in the US often have a highly distorted view of IT salaries anywhere else if you just translate US dollar salaries into the native currency. The going rate for a senior software engineer who is decent but doesn't have particularly specialised skills, in the UK but outside London, is probably somewhere between £45k and £60k depending on where in the country you are. In London, you probably shift everything up by £5k-£15k depending on the job and conditions.

ig1 16y ago
Those in the US have a highly distorted view of IT salaries in the US... There's a bias effect caused by the fact that the only people willing to talk about salaries are those with high salaries. Government based salary data often shows much lower salaries than sites like GlassDoor report.
Stormbringer 16y ago
Even in the US there are only a few places where you can get that kind of money. I hear Silicon Valley is having a massive shortage of devs right now, so maybe you can get ~$150k right there right now. But what about buttfrack ohio? Or outer michiganstan? You ain't gonna see 150k dev jobs out there.

ig1 16y ago

The salary is inline with market rates. It's crazy to compare salaries across cities and sectors let alone across countries without taking into local factors (for example paid holidays and sick leave). Plus I think you have a vastly skewed market view, even in places like SF and NY very very few companies are hiring iPhone developers for $165k USD (feel free to post examples if you disagree). What do you think the average salary for a developer in the US is ? (disclaimer: I run a developer job board; the company in question Engine Room Apps advertises with us)

waterlesscloud 16y ago
If they aren't finding people, they aren't offering enough. I know no business wants to hear this, but it's the simple truth.
ig1 16y ago
For the curious I pulled the US govt salary data: 75% of developers in the US earn less than 100k/year. 10% of developers in the US earn more than 130k/year. To get in the top 10% of developers in the UK you need to earn £60.5k (about 100k USD). So developers do earn more in the US than the UK (although once you take into account things like greater holiday allowance, etc. the difference comes down to about 10%).
- jasonkester 16y ago
  Indeed, that's the range you get if you include PHP devs and corporate IT folk. For specialist iPhone devs who are provably good at what they do, however, $150/hr is a pretty good starting point, and there are plenty of companies willing to pay more than that. With that in mind, I don't imagine you'd find many good devs with solid iPhone experience willing to work for less than $75/hr, which coincidentally translates to about $165k/year. Incidentally, if you're a company looking to put out an iPhone app, you absolutely should seek out a guy who's good enough to demand $150/hr. Given the esoteric nature of the platform, you'll probably find you save money in the long run going with a guy who doesn't need to train himself up on your dime. He might be 4x as expensive, but he's probably also >4x as fast.

edderly 16y ago

The UK has relied for too long on relatively cheap but willing tech. labour. I believe one major factor that enabled this was the boom in home computing in the early 80s. I don't know whether it is fair to call this unique (to the UK), but it certainly helped to have the BBC heavily involved with the BBC Micro effort and even TV coverage: 'http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Computer_Programme http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Computer_Programme. I remember back then even the shallowest computer user might have had a go at typing in a program from the back of a magazine. This provided two generations of willing workers, the first being the adults taking up computing, a few would become entrepreneurs and many of the rest would see it as a career transition and happy enough to get a "bump" in wages for skills in a new domain. For some, this "bump" was pretty significant for them personally, I've known good people in the UK tech sector who started out as car mechanics, waitresses and the like where IT has improved their personal circumstances no end. Then there's the second generation, these are the kids who grew up in the 80s boom time and it would seem natural for many of these people to make their hobby their career. But the problems start here. Firstly, there was no third generation to follow on, both mainstream culture and even schools completely forgot about programming. Kids grew up with consoles, with few having an idea what it takes to make the games they play. Schools replaced programming with "IT skills", meaning spreadsheets and Word docs, ostensibly because it was easier to train teachers to 'teach' this. Secondly, there is often a working class attitude in UK tech which shares some similarities with Jante Law. This is debatable, but I do think part of that comes from the first generation, who never thought they would be doctors or lawyers so had lower aspirations and feel pretty grateful for having a 'decent' albeit moderate wage. However, for the second generation, they would more likely have gone to university and studied Comp. Sci. or a.n.other course and entered the industry. When they look at their similarly educated peers, they will often find themselves on a lower rung than those who chose to go into management or one of the older traditional professions. That second generation now have kids going to University, and I am guessing that they have a slightly less rosy perspective on the IT sector than when they first started out. So the net effect of this is that the number of Computing graduates is declining http://www.cphc.ac.uk/docs/cphc-computinggraduates-june08.pdf http://www.cphc.ac.uk/docs/cphc-computinggraduates-june08.pd... . Perhaps the same thing is happening elsewhere, but I think in the meantime it is time for UK tech. to start weaning themselves off mediocre salaries for tech. sector professionals.

Jabbles 16y ago

£28k will get you a reasonable graduate. I don't understand how they're offering a salary range that starts with that for a "senior" position.

tsiki 16y ago
Agreed. I'm a second year CS student and my summer job salary isn't far from that.

gcheong 16y ago

That and there was no mention of any equity. Is that normal for UK startups? Also, for me at least, I always find some way to exclude myself going through those "everything we want you to be an expert in before we'll even consider talking to you" laundry lists.

tobinator 16y ago
Good points. Equity (options) aren't anywhere near as popular in the UK as in the US. Yeah, I'm not sure about the laundry list either. You have to start somewhere with these job descriptions, but it's a learning curve.

wildjim 16y ago

I would say a Senior iPhone Dev in London would be £60k+ but since the number of com's who need ObjC is pretty small (even though London has a lot of Mobile dev's) then I wouldn't be surprised if it topped-out at £50k. In London, a £75k job is very well paid, even in finance, therefore a £100k job (I assume you meant $160k) is getting into higher-management or Contractor territory, not Senior Dev.

tzs 16y ago

They are looking for a permanent employee, not a consultant. Is $165k (presumably plus benefits) really the going rate for that?

bugsy 16y ago
$165k is indeed the minimum rate for iPhone developers with experience, as employees with benefits. Realize though that taxes come out of that, whereas I understand that in EC salaries are posted as after-tax values. For an iPhone consultant with experience shipping real products, expect to pay $150/hr minimum. Top guys are quite a bit more.
- ig1 16y ago
  Care to post some link to employers hiring in the $165k+ range?
  - bugsy 16y ago
    adobe.com apple.com google.com microsoft.com facebook.com
    - Silhouette 16y ago
      Those are hardly typical employers writing typical mobile apps. Three of them write mobile operating systems, after all.
    - ig1 16y ago
      I meant link to job ads, etc. which provide backup for the statement you're making ? For example Facebook on Glassdoor (which tends to overestimate salaries), doesn't have a single developer on $165k+. As it happens I've got Apples H1B filings for last year handy, of all of their H1B employees the highest paid software engineer is at $155000 and he's a specialist in wifi technology. The average H1B developer at Apple makes $88,000/year. Do you have any evidence at all to back up you ?
      - 16y ago

sdizdar 16y ago

You are wrong. This is called "war on talents". OK. I'm not adding anything to discussion and my post should be down-voted, but I agree with comment that the main problem of finding a good engineer is salary offered.

tobinator 16y ago

Our blog post was mostly expressing our shock at the dirty recruitment tactics. But I think you're right about the salary; we should have researched the job posting more thoroughly to get the title, expectations and salary aligned. £38K goes much further in Leeds than in California and even London, but we're learning that we need to offer a better package to get the right people. We're also new to all this, and sharing our experiences and blunders as we go...

akronim 16y ago

Maybe £40k is too low for London, but they're in Leeds which is a different story. It you look on itjobswatch.co.uk for "developer" the average in London was £50k, in Leeds £32,750. (I don't think you can use "iPhone" as a keyword sensibly given that most of the ads for Leeds are probably this one and its clones)

bugsy 16y ago
How much developers make on average in Leeds (a town not known as a center of innovative high tech development any more than Detroit currently is) is not relevant to the acquisition of highly skilled and sought after talent that does not exist in Leeds.