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To get an idea of comp for companies in London, levels.fyi is a good starting point. https://www.levels.fyi/Salaries/Software-Engineer/London/ https://www.leve

To get an idea of comp for companies in London, levels.fyi is a good starting point. https://www.levels.fyi/Salaries/Software-Engineer/London/ https://www.levels.fyi/Salaries/Software-Engineer/London/ Bottom line is that comp is way under what you would get for the same job in the US, but better than most other engineering jobs in London outside of certain finance roles. The market seems to have been going up a lot in the past couple of years though. The interview process is pretty much the same as you get in the US. Lots of leetcode and system designs.

mettamage 5y ago
I still wonder how to adequately prep for system design. I feel leetcode is simply practice, but system design, I can't seem to get a full hang of it. And I've noticed in my day job that I am not getting enough experience with it.
- bluehatbrit 5y ago
  I highly recommend working through https://dataintensive.net/ https://dataintensive.net/ with a pencil to make notes. It has enough information to get you through basically any system design interview at a high level. After that you want to pick a tool for each category to learn in a bit more detail and screw around with if you think the interviewers might ask for details on your specific chosen technologies. Potentially learning the basic pros and cons would be enough. If you're going for more entry to mid level you likely won't need to get into the weeds of postgres index efficency etc in the interview. Designing Data Intenstive systems will get you about 80-90% of the way there though (in the UK), certainly enough to get through the door as a mid engineer in many bigger places, although possibly not a FAANG.
- jokethrowaway 5y ago
  From my experience, system design is not too bad if you have practice building systems. You may read some of the interview preparation books to get an idea of the concepts and keywords the interviewer want to hear - but it's not too dissimilar to what you would do in practice. System design correlates to architect level work. Leetcoding instead requires you to know the basic patterns to use to solve the problems and either A. be a incredibly quick thinker or B. have memorised tons of exercises - especially if you're not super young and age and sleepless nights are starting to catch up with you. Leetcoding doesn't correlate to work in any way. You just suck it up and spend 2 months preparing for it so you can have a nice looking CV and a truckload of money after you get the job. I would weigh carefully whether you want to go to a FAANG though. Some people lucks out and they end up in a role where they do very little, others end up overworking. You can make decent money contracting for less demanding companies (both interview and work-wise) and being tax smart (I would say almost as much as a FAANG, considering half goes in taxes).
bluehatbrit 5y ago
In my experience levels.fyi is pretty shoddy for the UK, I'm pretty sure a lot of non-London employers are on there but lumped under London since there are no other UK cities listed.
yunohn 5y ago
You can also find salaries for NL and soon EU: https://techpays.eu/ https://techpays.eu/

mettamage 5y ago

I still wonder how to adequately prep for system design. I feel leetcode is simply practice, but system design, I can't seem to get a full hang of it. And I've noticed in my day job that I am not getting enough experience with it.

bluehatbrit 5y ago
I highly recommend working through https://dataintensive.net/ https://dataintensive.net/ with a pencil to make notes. It has enough information to get you through basically any system design interview at a high level. After that you want to pick a tool for each category to learn in a bit more detail and screw around with if you think the interviewers might ask for details on your specific chosen technologies. Potentially learning the basic pros and cons would be enough. If you're going for more entry to mid level you likely won't need to get into the weeds of postgres index efficency etc in the interview. Designing Data Intenstive systems will get you about 80-90% of the way there though (in the UK), certainly enough to get through the door as a mid engineer in many bigger places, although possibly not a FAANG.
jokethrowaway 5y ago
From my experience, system design is not too bad if you have practice building systems. You may read some of the interview preparation books to get an idea of the concepts and keywords the interviewer want to hear - but it's not too dissimilar to what you would do in practice. System design correlates to architect level work. Leetcoding instead requires you to know the basic patterns to use to solve the problems and either A. be a incredibly quick thinker or B. have memorised tons of exercises - especially if you're not super young and age and sleepless nights are starting to catch up with you. Leetcoding doesn't correlate to work in any way. You just suck it up and spend 2 months preparing for it so you can have a nice looking CV and a truckload of money after you get the job. I would weigh carefully whether you want to go to a FAANG though. Some people lucks out and they end up in a role where they do very little, others end up overworking. You can make decent money contracting for less demanding companies (both interview and work-wise) and being tax smart (I would say almost as much as a FAANG, considering half goes in taxes).

bluehatbrit 5y ago

In my experience levels.fyi is pretty shoddy for the UK, I'm pretty sure a lot of non-London employers are on there but lumped under London since there are no other UK cities listed.

yunohn 5y ago

You can also find salaries for NL and soon EU: https://techpays.eu/ https://techpays.eu/