4 ms·

- get a new job - it's easy for me to recommend this because I don't have a family to support, and I don't have to deal with the same amount of risk/uncertaint

by jstx1 4y ago

- get a new job - it's easy for me to recommend this because I don't have a family to support, and I don't have to deal with the same amount of risk/uncertainty of potentially landing at a worse company - £60k is low for 15 years of experience - 13 employees = tiny company, not not even close to calling it medium-sized - find a new job first, then quit the current one

onion2k 4y ago
£60k is low for 15 years of experience £60k is the lower end of senior outside of London. It's not surprising at all. £60k in a company that's making more than £1m per employee though, that's definitely "Fuck this" territory.
- mkl 4y ago
  £15m turnover, not profit.
  - onion2k 4y ago
    I know. I can read. It doesn't matter whether it's turnover or profit. No one should stay at a company that's doing that much business with so few people without being paid more than that salary. Even if the company is making a loss then being paid £60k in a company with a £15m turnover is truly terrible. £15m is either a huge amount of work, in which case £60k isn't enough, or it's a reasonable amount of very expensive work, in which case £60k isn't enough. The profitability of the company that you work for should have absolutely no impact on your salary if it's not making a profit. Do not accept less money for the value you generate just because the company can't sell it at a good price that makes a healthy profit. Your earning potential is not dictated by someone else's ability to sell.
    - quickthrower2 4y ago
      If they are in low margin retail, or the "turnover" is really the turnover of their customers whose money they are handling - like for example an Amazon marketplace kind of thing, then 15m might be just a million of gross profit which is about about 70k per person. "Profit is sanity..."
- cehrlich 4y ago
  Are salaries in the UK really that low? I live in the EU, my salary is similar to the OP and I just started working as a developer _this year_, with 5 years of a fairly unrelated career prior to that.
  - onion2k 4y ago
    Yes and no. The range for a senior web dev outside of London writing PHP and JS is pretty big - jobs start at about £40k for someone building Wordpress sites and a bit of JS, and go up to £90k for someone working on full stack JS apps in fintech or ecommerce. Inside of London (or remote working for a London company) it goes up to around £110k. Obviously outliers exist too at both ends of the scale. If you want more than that you're looking at 'architect' title, or maybe some sort of leadership or CTO role. To be honest, the wages are quite low compared to other tech centres. As someone in the UK I'd definitely like them to be higher.
    - ollysb 4y ago
      This is the reason most devs are contractors in London. You earn considerably more on a day rate than you generally do even as a CTO.
      - onion2k 4y ago
        This is the reason most devs are contractors in London. I'd be surprised if even 1% of the devs in the UK are contractors in London.
      - JonChesterfield 4y ago
        I get the impression IR35 killed that
  - tmtvl 4y ago
    I live in Belgium and when I started working as a developer (granted, without a higher education degree or prior experience) I got a bit over 1/3rd that amount.
mrweasel 4y ago
If it was just benefits, hours or something like that, I'd recommend talking to management and let them know that unless something could be worked out I'd be leaving. When you're bored however, and the company isn't that big, that's is almost impossible to fix. Even if management tries, the moment someone loses focus, then you're right back where you started. I'm not knowledgeable enough about the UK job market, but across the North Sea, in Denmark, you can still more or less pick and choose, there are tons of companies lacking developers and operations people. Not as many as last year, but still more than enough that you don't have to fear unemployment.

by jstx1 4y ago

onion2k 4y ago

£60k is low for 15 years of experience £60k is the lower end of senior outside of London. It's not surprising at all. £60k in a company that's making more than £1m per employee though, that's definitely "Fuck this" territory.

mkl 4y ago
£15m turnover, not profit.
- onion2k 4y ago
  I know. I can read. It doesn't matter whether it's turnover or profit. No one should stay at a company that's doing that much business with so few people without being paid more than that salary. Even if the company is making a loss then being paid £60k in a company with a £15m turnover is truly terrible. £15m is either a huge amount of work, in which case £60k isn't enough, or it's a reasonable amount of very expensive work, in which case £60k isn't enough. The profitability of the company that you work for should have absolutely no impact on your salary if it's not making a profit. Do not accept less money for the value you generate just because the company can't sell it at a good price that makes a healthy profit. Your earning potential is not dictated by someone else's ability to sell.
  - quickthrower2 4y ago
    If they are in low margin retail, or the "turnover" is really the turnover of their customers whose money they are handling - like for example an Amazon marketplace kind of thing, then 15m might be just a million of gross profit which is about about 70k per person. "Profit is sanity..."
cehrlich 4y ago
Are salaries in the UK really that low? I live in the EU, my salary is similar to the OP and I just started working as a developer _this year_, with 5 years of a fairly unrelated career prior to that.
- onion2k 4y ago
  Yes and no. The range for a senior web dev outside of London writing PHP and JS is pretty big - jobs start at about £40k for someone building Wordpress sites and a bit of JS, and go up to £90k for someone working on full stack JS apps in fintech or ecommerce. Inside of London (or remote working for a London company) it goes up to around £110k. Obviously outliers exist too at both ends of the scale. If you want more than that you're looking at 'architect' title, or maybe some sort of leadership or CTO role. To be honest, the wages are quite low compared to other tech centres. As someone in the UK I'd definitely like them to be higher.
  - ollysb 4y ago
    This is the reason most devs are contractors in London. You earn considerably more on a day rate than you generally do even as a CTO.
    - onion2k 4y ago
      This is the reason most devs are contractors in London. I'd be surprised if even 1% of the devs in the UK are contractors in London.
    - JonChesterfield 4y ago
      I get the impression IR35 killed that
- tmtvl 4y ago
  I live in Belgium and when I started working as a developer (granted, without a higher education degree or prior experience) I got a bit over 1/3rd that amount.

mrweasel 4y ago

If it was just benefits, hours or something like that, I'd recommend talking to management and let them know that unless something could be worked out I'd be leaving. When you're bored however, and the company isn't that big, that's is almost impossible to fix. Even if management tries, the moment someone loses focus, then you're right back where you started. I'm not knowledgeable enough about the UK job market, but across the North Sea, in Denmark, you can still more or less pick and choose, there are tons of companies lacking developers and operations people. Not as many as last year, but still more than enough that you don't have to fear unemployment.