4 ms·
£55k is average for someone in the South outside of London. In London you can add £20k to that, and maybe another £10k in the City. (At least you could until re
by TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
£55k is average for someone in the South outside of London. In London you can add £20k to that, and maybe another £10k in the City. (At least you could until recently.)
The answer is contract work. If someone can dodge IR35 rules and call themselves a "consultant" or a "solutions architect" they'll earn a lot more for almost identical work, with the useful option to leave gracefully if a project is toxic and on fire.
The other answer is to leave the UK. Engineering jobs pay much better in some EU countries, and engineering gets a lot more respect as a profession.
- dagw 6y agoEngineering jobs pay much better in some EU countries Which ones? £55k is a pretty decent salary ( 75-85k is a very high salary) for a developer in basically all EU countries I've looked at. engineering gets a lot more respect as a profession. But only if you are an actual engineer. Developers without the degree aren't, in my experience, given much more 'respect' outside the UK compared to the UK.
- fortnum 6y ago> much better in some EU countries In which EU countries do you earn a lot more than EUR 64,000 on average?
- iExploder 6y agoas a software dev? germany, norway, switzerland, denmark, ireland
- fortnum 6y agoSwitzerland and Norway in the EU? Germany and Ireland are the same as the UK https://www.payscale.com/research/DE/Job=Senior_Software_Engineer/Salary https://www.payscale.com/research/DE/Job=Senior_Software_Eng... https://www.payscale.com/research/IE/Job=Senior_Software_Engineer/Salary https://www.payscale.com/research/IE/Job=Senior_Software_Eng... Denmark appears to be slightly higher but Denmark is also more expensive than the UK. Overall far from the alleged big difference.
- iExploder 6y agoaha EU pass holder here so in practice for job seeking I kind of include both Switzerland and Norway, but technically it is not EU one thing is what is on payscale another is what you see on the payslip, 60k+ in DE is not hard to get for senior dev
- fortnum 6y agoStill not EU and both examples are high-expense countries where wages naturally are higher too, but that does not solve the problem. And as for Germany, it shouldn't be 60+, but rather 80+ to match the expectation of being significantly more. The suggestion of moving simply is flawed.
- iExploder 6y agoyou can get 80+ in Germany in big cities. what problem are you solving? no, you cant get rich by coding as an employee, anywhere. you can try to sweat your balls as a contractor + do tax magic and have a 'decent' living, or start a company and make a product - very risky. as job coders are 21st century factory workers, its not on lawyer/doctor/accountant level.
- fortnum 6y agoWe are talking about average here and 80+ is not average. The whole point was the the suggestion of moving would be a pointless exercise. > as job coders are 21st century factory workers, its not on lawyer/doctor/accountant level. Fair enough, but this proves the author's point. Development used to be on such a level and has steadily declined.
- iExploder 6y ago> Fair enough, but this proves the author's point. Development used to be on such a level and has steadily declined. I agree, I know a few "old timers" and they seem to have it better in the early days. I guess this is the case with all human activity, over time it becomes optimized as know-how spreads to more people. The best professions long term are those where gate keeping is employed (license, nepotism, high creativity, people able to perform at top 1%), short term profession gets a boost from being "the new thing", which programing is not anymore.