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Are these normal for UK? Even for startups in SF bay area, senior engineers are making 50-100+% above that number. I've been at startups that pay these rates to
by flappyeagle 4y ago
Are these normal for UK? Even for startups in SF bay area, senior engineers are making 50-100+% above that number. I've been at startups that pay these rates to EU remote workers.
- jalev 4y agoUnfortunately no; it's on the high side for the sector. In my circle only I only see 6 figures for people working in the finance sector.
- IshKebab 4y agoThe deliveroo job is on the high side but £69k for a senior software engineer in London is definitely not! It's the government though so that's not exactly surprising. I wonder if he is not mentioning an amazing pension or something.
- nebben64 4y agoSalaries will be slightly higher in London. A mid-level engineer at a non-tech company will earn 50-55k.
- nly 4y agoDepends where he is. £90K for a remote gig is a pretty damn good dev salary by national standards. If you live somewhere cheap (outside of London and the London commuter belt, the South East, and perhaps away from a few other major city centers), you can live well on that salary. In London? You probably won't be buying a property anytime soon, unless you have a partner with a similar salary. Single and renting? You're leading a pretty comfy bachelor life For perspective though, £90K is almost 3x the national median full-time wage . Total taxation at this level is 32%.
- nonethewiser 4y agoDouble fucked then. Lower salaries and higher taxes.
- elcomet 4y agoBut free healthcare and education. Plus retirement benefits included
- generalizations 4y agoIn the us you put the money you save from lower taxes into a better healthcare plan, and get some nice quality care.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- nly 4y agoWhat's the % of total employee taxation at the 3x median salary level in say, SF or NYC?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- dzonga 4y agonot only that. you've a bunch of smart people here - who're blind. looking at absolute numbers as if they mean something. I worked in a mid-tier us city i.e Austin, Nashville and my take home pay is comparable to what I earn in london for the same role level. and same level of company profile. never worked at a mega tech - but have worked for well known ones. and better yet my standard of living is higher.
- tnel77 4y agoI wonder how much of the lower pay is tax based. Like you make less, but the company pays more in taxes for the healthcare and such that the UK provides. Not saying this is good or bad. Just curious about the reason for the pay discrepancy.
- phphphphp 4y agoThe reason for the pay discrepancy is less that the UK is an outlier, and more that the US is an outlier. Salaries in the US for software engineers are the highest anywhere in the world: salaries in the UK are very good nowadays relative to most countries, but the US is leagues ahead of everyone.
- wpietri 4y agoCould be, but I don't think it's health care. Check out the OECD stats: https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm The US in total pays $12318 dollars per capita in health care. In the UK, it's $5387 per per capita. The US's supposedly more efficient market-based system turns out to be wildly more expensive than any other country.
- phphphphp 4y agoThe caveat is that he was located in Nottingham for most of the history covered in the post, so this isn't necessarily comparable to SF -- more like, say, Colorado. That said, the most recent London (edit: sorry, Remote) salary is what I'd ballpark as average in London at the moment for that sort of position. There's been significant inflation in developer salary in London over the last few years, £100k is a reasonable total compensation for someone senior today. The salaries here are absolutely lower than in the US in raw numbers but in terms of overall position relative to other earners and quality of life, it's not much different. The biggest gulf between the UK and US is at the top end, i.e: people earning TC of 500k+ is not uncommon in SF whereas that would be quite rare here outside of the upper echelons of the big tech companies. Part of this is because stock grants are much lower here in general, but salaries are lower too. If you were an experienced software engineer in London today looking to maximise your salary, you'd have an easy time reaching £100k and you could probably touch £150k but it would take some effort.
- pcj-github 4y agoHmm, I don't think you know Colorado too well. Senior level dev makes about 2-3x of OP.
- VBprogrammer 4y agoI think you've missed the point. He was comparing cost of living rather than salaries.
- generalizations 4y agoThat would make the difference bigger, though.
- testfrequency 4y agoSounds like the company is paying HCOL salary in a LCOL state then. Colorado isn’t even comparable to California in terms of cost, it’s also a state that most companies pay a national salary band for since it’s not considered a high cost state.
- jongjong 4y agoYes this is normal for UK. It's high compared to other parts of EU where senior dev jobs earn like 50K EUR per year. I don't know why people even bother to become developers over there... And yes, there are really talented developers there; often more talented than in the US or other places based on my experience. You can probably earn more money and have better career prospects by being a janitor in the EU. Surprise! There is no free market. We live in a global crony-communist system which decides how much money people get paid from the top down starting with US shareholders and executives at the top of the social pyramid. All based on military coercion, wars and foreign debt traps. You can thank your military-industrial complex.
- poizan42 4y agoI live in Denmark, an entry level wage for a junior developer averages around 65K-75K EUR per year here depending on which part of the country you are in.
- as1992 4y agoCost of living is crazy high in Denmark though right? How does that €65-75k compare with the actual cost of living out of curiosity? ( Eg. rent, groceries, leisure activities etc..)
- poizan42 4y agoFrom my own experience being single with that wage range I would say it was enough that i didn't have to think about how much money I used on everyday activities while still having something left over to add to my savings. Not enough to like travel all the time or buying crazy luxury items, but enough that money wasn't something I had to think about. It's obviously difficult to try to compare actual numbers, but I think I had 5-10K DKK (670-1340 EUR) in surplus at the end of every month at that time. Obviously things are different when you have a partner and/or kids - or you might just get less lucky with how cheap you can rent or buy an apartment.
- jongjong 4y ago
- dom96 4y agoAt a FAANG you can get ~£200k per year in London at a Senior level. Deliveroo doesn't pay particularly well (even though it's meant to be a competitor to Doordash which afaik does pay well). The Cabinet Office is a governmental agency and I would say it pays pretty poorly for London, but you'd probably find the same in the US. You can get a better sense of the salaries in the UK via https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/london-metro-area https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/london-...
- mindondrugs 4y agoSalaries in London != Salaries in the UK.
- dom96 4y agoDeliveroo doesn't pay well in London either.
- jmfldn 4y agoPretty normal yep. If you work in things fintech and / or are super senior then salary could be much higher. Overall this looks about right. Remember that in the UK we have access to more public services and benefits etc. Americans pay more here for better or worse eg healthcare. Many Americans also seem to have to overwork from a European point of view, so you earn more but at a cost most of us wouldn't tolerate. Lack of holidays, long hours etc. Not a judgement, just contextualising the differences and explaining why focusing solely on pay as a metric is a bit misleading.
- VirusNewbie 4y agoI don’t think American engineers pay more for healthcare at all. It’s almost all covered.
- jmfldn 4y agoWe pay zero is the point.
- junofan 4y agoI mean by that standard we pay basically zero—employer covers the premiums.
- jmfldn 4y agoYou could argue that's still paying for it and the premium will be high compared to equivalent national insurance payments here.
- xeromal 4y agoJust to give you an example, I work for a tiny software firm of 40 people and my cost for the Cadillac of health insurance is 3$ a month. Each doctor's visit is 40$ but besides that everything is covered. I make 155k USD a year.
- 4y ago
- vlunkr 4y ago90% of devs who like to talk about their salary online are in SF, and they forget that they are outliers. Even though the salary was probably a big part of why they moved there.
- CalRobert 4y agoEurope has atrocious pay in general.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- scarface74 4y agoYou realize not every one of the 2.5 million developers in the US work in SF don’t you? Most work at banks, insurance companies, government across the US.
- flappyeagle 4y agoSure, but getting a SV job living in a LCOL is easier than ever with the prevalence of remote work. The numbers I have seen are for series B startups, not FAANG companies. Also, I've worked at a bank before as a software developer and made basically the same range.
- dasil003 4y agoKeep in mind the exchange rate fluctuation makes the comparison between US and UK salaries harder to reason about. The british pound recently dropped as low as $1.07, but was $1.40 less than 2 years ago, was $1.70 in 2014 and was above $2.00 in 2007.
- SpaghettiX 4y agoThank you for outlining the dumpster fire that is the British Pound.
- JohnFen 4y agoBay area engineers tend to make much more money than in most places. The cost of living is also much higher, so it all kinda evens out. You can't really judge the value of a salary based on just the number.