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Why in the world is software money so terrible in the UK? I always look up salaries and cost of living when traveling and the UK was one of the more surprising

Why in the world is software money so terrible in the UK? I always look up salaries and cost of living when traveling and the UK was one of the more surprising instances of that. It seems like the only way to live comfortably in London is in finance.

ck425 5y ago
Software salaries aren't terrible in the UK, they're just not as crazy as the US. Most decent software engineers I know are comfortable in the 80th percentile of income or higher.
- Ekaros 5y ago
  I don't think software is terrible anywhere in the world, compared to local pay level. In many parts it's not at top, but it always decent. USA is just outlier. In other places it is comparable or slightly above other engineering disciplines...
gambiting 5y ago
London skews all comparisons though, literally move to any other city in the UK and you'll see rents drop by 50% if not 75% for not a lot less pay in salaries. Try Manchester or Edinburgh, you'll get decent pay and rent a nice place for affordable money.
- Silhouette 5y ago
  London skews all comparisons though, literally move to any other city in the UK and you'll see rents drop by 50% if not 75% for not a lot less pay in salaries. /cries in Cambridge, Oxford, Bristol...
bidirectional 5y ago
Lawyers too, though there is a similar bimodal salary distribution, so it only applies to the top lawyers. Outside of those two fields nothing in the UK compares to US wages.
Philip-J-Fry 5y ago
Well, that's because you're looking at London, infamous for how expensive it is to live in. It's fairly easy to be on £60k outside of London with a few years of experience. Moving up north towards the Midlands or even further like Manchester or Leeds and you're going to live a very comfortable life on a Software Developer salary. Yeah, it's not the US where people are on £200k at 25. But earning £60k in your 20s puts you so far ahead of almost everyone else in their 20s in the UK.
- Nursie 5y ago
  > It's fairly easy to be on £60k outside of London with a few years of experience. Yeah, but that is the point isn't it - in the US and some other countries you have the potential to earn a few hundred K per annum. That sort of money just isn't available to software people here. In fact you're more likely to be offered around £50k for a 'senior' role somewhere. IMHO it's partly because here in the UK we don't really regard software engineers as skilled professionals, most management structures seem to treat us as generic office folks, and unruly, childlike ones at that.
  - Philip-J-Fry 5y ago
    The UK does treat SKILLED software engineers as skilled professionals. It's one of the highest earning professions here. What other jobs do you know where there's an earning potential of £80K+ outside of London while working regular 8 hour days? Not many I'll tell you that. If you want to be earning £200-300k then set up your own company. Almost no one is going to be employed by someone else on that money. And those that are, big law firms etc., are working 16 hour days 6-7 days a week. Many US developers are overpaid. That's the reality. The pay floor has been shifted too high and so the ceiling is even higher. We mustn't kid ourselves, the skill floor in software development is relatively low. Why should a graduate front end developer get paid 6 figures? There's some good ones that deserve it, but there's also some really shit ones who will never learn and grow as a professional. I've worked with good graduates and I've worked with shit graduates. The good ones get rewarded. The unskilled ones who don't learn, don't. I think that's fine. 6 figures for entry level grunt work is just an unreasonable amount of money and the only reason the US gets away with it is because of the pay floor.

ck425 5y ago

Software salaries aren't terrible in the UK, they're just not as crazy as the US. Most decent software engineers I know are comfortable in the 80th percentile of income or higher.

Ekaros 5y ago
I don't think software is terrible anywhere in the world, compared to local pay level. In many parts it's not at top, but it always decent. USA is just outlier. In other places it is comparable or slightly above other engineering disciplines...

gambiting 5y ago

London skews all comparisons though, literally move to any other city in the UK and you'll see rents drop by 50% if not 75% for not a lot less pay in salaries. Try Manchester or Edinburgh, you'll get decent pay and rent a nice place for affordable money.

Silhouette 5y ago
London skews all comparisons though, literally move to any other city in the UK and you'll see rents drop by 50% if not 75% for not a lot less pay in salaries. /cries in Cambridge, Oxford, Bristol...

bidirectional 5y ago

Lawyers too, though there is a similar bimodal salary distribution, so it only applies to the top lawyers. Outside of those two fields nothing in the UK compares to US wages.

Philip-J-Fry 5y ago

Well, that's because you're looking at London, infamous for how expensive it is to live in. It's fairly easy to be on £60k outside of London with a few years of experience. Moving up north towards the Midlands or even further like Manchester or Leeds and you're going to live a very comfortable life on a Software Developer salary. Yeah, it's not the US where people are on £200k at 25. But earning £60k in your 20s puts you so far ahead of almost everyone else in their 20s in the UK.

Nursie 5y ago
> It's fairly easy to be on £60k outside of London with a few years of experience. Yeah, but that is the point isn't it - in the US and some other countries you have the potential to earn a few hundred K per annum. That sort of money just isn't available to software people here. In fact you're more likely to be offered around £50k for a 'senior' role somewhere. IMHO it's partly because here in the UK we don't really regard software engineers as skilled professionals, most management structures seem to treat us as generic office folks, and unruly, childlike ones at that.
- Philip-J-Fry 5y ago
  The UK does treat SKILLED software engineers as skilled professionals. It's one of the highest earning professions here. What other jobs do you know where there's an earning potential of £80K+ outside of London while working regular 8 hour days? Not many I'll tell you that. If you want to be earning £200-300k then set up your own company. Almost no one is going to be employed by someone else on that money. And those that are, big law firms etc., are working 16 hour days 6-7 days a week. Many US developers are overpaid. That's the reality. The pay floor has been shifted too high and so the ceiling is even higher. We mustn't kid ourselves, the skill floor in software development is relatively low. Why should a graduate front end developer get paid 6 figures? There's some good ones that deserve it, but there's also some really shit ones who will never learn and grow as a professional. I've worked with good graduates and I've worked with shit graduates. The good ones get rewarded. The unskilled ones who don't learn, don't. I think that's fine. 6 figures for entry level grunt work is just an unreasonable amount of money and the only reason the US gets away with it is because of the pay floor.