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Poll: Full-time software engineers in London, what's your annual salary?
Inpsired by the poll of SF & the Bay Area, this poll is targeting current full-time software engineers and software developers in London, UK.
Base salary only, pre-tax. No options, shares, bonuses, adjustments for inflation, or benefits.
(Don't forget to up-vote the poll to get more data.)
- dregin 13y agoIn which currency?
- SideburnsOfDoom 13y agoIn London UK, I will assume £, Pounds Sterling, GBP.
- chrisdevereux 13y agoThe available options suggest this too. OP should probably edit to clarify though.
- basicallydan 13y agoMy bad. It's too late to edit now. Yes, GBP is what I meant :) the original one didn't specify Dollars though, and I think anybody who is answering would probably expect to answer in GBP anyway.
- xkcdfanboy 13y agoWe really need unions. These polls only help so much. Unfortunately also, there are both retard programmers, and actual programmers. I worked with a retard programmer, he thought that learning Django was a feat of strength...sigh..when I told him about OOP he almost shit his pants.
- beaumartinez 13y ago> I worked with a retard programmer, he thought that learning Django was a feat of strength. Maybe it was for him? You shouldn't be so hard on someone else. I'm sure there are people here way smarter than you or I, and they don't call us "retard programmers".
- barking 13y ago> he thought that learning Django was a feat of strength...sigh. Unbelieveable, pulp fiction or Jackie Brown if you really must, but really why bother?
- _progger_ 13y agoUnions ain't gonna happen. Not accepting low salaries could be a start.
- walshemj 13y agoProspect represents people in the IT TMT industries http://www.prospect.org.uk/ http://www.prospect.org.uk/
- hucker 13y agoNorway has unions for IT-workers. The union base pay of around 470k NOK (~52K GBP, ~80K USD) is pretty much guaranteed straight out of university if you have a masters degree. In general I think it is a good thing, although I dislike the biggest one (Tekna) (that I was formerly a member of) because they supported the DRD[0]. I have since become a member of a different union (NITO). [0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive
- upthedale 13y agoGiven the way the City works, do you really want us to not include bonus?
- calinet6 13y agoWait, could you explain to us outsiders "the way the City works?" Are bonuses that important?
- OrsenPike 13y agoSome places have very big bonus' with average salary. I have a few friends on 35-45% bonus on £35k a year as swdevs.
- swombat 13y agoIn the City, you get hired based on a "total comp" package that includes salary and a practically guaranteed bonus, that can be as much as your base salary or even more.
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- beaumartinez 13y ago"At least 200k" full-time, wow. For anyone who's on that type of salary, what role and industry is it? CTO-level?
- OrsenPike 13y agoThe only SE roles I know if that sort of salary range is in financial services for a couple of the top guys in the company. No way is that anywhere near standard salary for 99.99% of employees.
- strongvigilance 13y agoLondon has a big financial sector, so a lot of the big pay packets probably come from there - hedge funds, banks, HFT etc. See here: http://jobs.efinancialcareers.co.uk/Information_Technology.htm http://jobs.efinancialcareers.co.uk/Information_Technology.h...
- bloat 13y agoI've been in working in investment banks for 10 years and I've never seen any base salaries this high. If these answers are true then they must include a very generous bonus or be at hedge funds.
- mkonturek 13y agoDefinitely hedge funds as they rely on algorithmic traders rather than traders. Interestingly BB IBs are starting to follow the trend...
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- OrsenPike 13y agoSalary: £85k + bupa + pension and a 25% of gross salary (£~21k) a year paid each quarter if objective are met (70% or above). Tech: Primarily Java with some C, C++ and more recently Go (although Go is only in our code playground, nothing even close to production yet) Location: West London Company: Small but well established (since 1996). There are 4 developers including myself. One software is one part of what we offer. Edit: I know you said without benefits, etc. but I included it for others as well. Just look at the £85k figure if you want a hard number.
- FrankenPC 13y agoYou are making decent money compared to SF. According to the poll, not many are though. Does the UK not value intellectual workers?
- OrsenPike 13y agoThe UK isn't the best place for software people in my opinion. I have been around for a little over 10 years in the field now and worked for big, medium and small companies. I think this is because people seem to gamble more in SF by investing in companies which we don't really have much of in the UK. You don't get the big angel investors or VCs sticking a million £ into a start up. I know of a few start ups that got some VC funding but most were small under £100k investments and normally by many people. Crowd funding seems to be picking up a bit here though. I certainly feel valued as an intellectual everywhere I have worked but I may just be lucky?
- doktrin 13y agoDisclaimer : I'm not from the UK, nor have I ever worked there The UK as a whole has long had a reputation for having low wages relative to the US. Anecdotally, I recall coming across a mention here on HN where certain dev jobs were being classified as "clerical" and offered at around ~$20k - $25k USD equivalent.
- oesmith 13y agoLondon's an awful lot better than most of the rest of the UK. I'm on a similar package as the post above, but only since moving to London. Working anywhere else in the UK, I'd struggle to get half that.
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- ultrafez 13y agoWow, that's well above the norm. What job is it?
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- OrsenPike 13y agoThat is a good starting salary. Make sure you stick to your guns when you move about. If you are staying in your area of expertise you should never take a pay cut. Ever.
- tomp 13y agoI've heard that their hours were rather long. Is that true? I myself am considering getting a job in finance in London, so I'd like to know what I can expect.
- pledg 13y agoGraduation from a BSc? I didn't realise Bloomberg made offers this high to graduates. I thought the square mile standard was still the 25-30 range.
- SandB0x 13y agoThe software industry here in London is really badly paid, for salaried jobs outside finance at least. I know plenty of developers who started at £20-25k as graduates from decent universities and whose salary has slowly risen to 40k over quite a few years. PhD graduates making £35-45k too.
- vallejos 13y agosfghdfgh
- beaumartinez 13y agoI'd add that for jobs in startups (a focus for the HN crowd) salaries are particularly low.
- _progger_ 13y agoIndeed. It's a shame to see that they manage to hire some young talented people. I'd rather go to Google. Better experience regardless of future path.
- yashodhan 13y agoWhy is this the case? I'm a frontend dev for a startup in London and I make 18k annually (80% of that because I only work 4 days a week). It's peanuts, but luckily I don't mind being poor.
- ValentineC 13y agoDo you mind sharing whereabouts in London you're staying? (Zone x, or slightly outside London...?) I was there for some years, and my rent was always around 8k a year. I find trying to live in an expensive city while on a low salary admirable.
- Anderkent 13y agoI guess it depends on your requirements. If you're young and without dependants it's much cheaper. I live in a flatshare, 40 minute door-to-door commute (via overground, luckily, not the tube) and the rent is about 4k a year.
- xSwag 13y agoAs someone debating whether to do a Mathematics vs Computer Science vs Joint Honours, I'd really like to hear from graduates what worked out for them. - As a developer, how often are skills from CompSci degree applied on the job? - What do you wish you knew about the job market as an undergrad? - How much part did the prestige of your university play in your current salary?
- beaumartinez 13y agoI did two years of computer science, then quit. I use very little of what I learnt, and the personal development (no pun intended) outside of what I was taught at university has been far more important to my career. If money is your goal, knowing how to sell yourself (in job applications and interviews) is very important. For job security and progression in general, people skills are essential. My advice? Don't bother with university, start work ASAP, and keep learning in your spare time.
- azatris 13y agoCould you please refer to any good sources or books that you've worked through for people skills? Thanks!
- beagle90 13y agoHow to win friends and influence people - Dale Carnegie. I found this book quite brilliant.
- rbsn 13y agoWhat about job applications? Almost every job application requires a degree in CS?
- wavefunction 13y agoIf you have some experience you can point to, say contributions to open source projects, your own personal website (that isn't just a generic blog site) or maybe some volunteering for a non-profit or something like that, you can get around it. Well, I guess it depends geographically where you are as well as what sort of position you're applying for. Maybe also consider getting your foot in the door via QA?
- LukeWalsh 13y agoThis is surprising considering cost of living in London is higher than San Francisco (at least by my perception and a quick google search). http://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/comparison/san-francisco/london http://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/comparison/san-fran...
- cpdean 13y agoIs this poll in pounds or USD?
- polshaw 13y agoI think most people have taken it to mean GBP, but I wish it was explicit in the description.
- ralph 13y agoHere's a £ sign for someone to edit in.
- junkilo 13y agoshitballs people are making more than 200k sterling in the UK?
- shrikant 13y agoYeah, that's really hard to believe. I know some 3rd year associates (meaning they've been coming up the ranks for about ~6 years) in Goldman Sachs who don't make that much.
- _progger_ 13y agoStarted on 30k progressed to 60k in London. People who stay in one place for more than 1-2 years without decent raises do a bad favour to everyone except for employers. Do move around and get what you deserve along with varied experience! Companies do shell out on contractors when there is a need and can keep them for years. I think it is some sort of misrepresentation that leads people to think that it is OK to pay less then 50k to a decent dev in London.
- nawitus 13y agoIs there a point when moving around too much is starting to look bad on your resume?
- rboulton 13y agoWhen interviewing candidates, staying under 6 months makes me slightly concerned. But only slightly; there are many good reasons a good developer might only stay somewhere briefly.
- _progger_ 13y agoYes, you need to use your best judgement. I would spend at least a year at each place depending how good it is. I think changing 4-5 jobs before you turn 30 is good enough, would've looked weirder when you are 40. It should come across as normal during interviews as well. How do you know you are doing what you really want/should be doing if you did not try multiple things? How do you know if a small/mid/large company is your favourite environment? Have a story/plan and have some achievements at each place, always leave on good terms. PS: contractors move around at least once a year on average and it is considered normal (unfair).
- nawitus 13y agoI wasn't trying to argue against you, I was just asking for opinions on the limits of changing jobs too much. My own estimate is something like 1-2 years minimum per job.
- sbanach 13y ago80k base, 130k last bonus. I'm 2 years into doing mostly Java, Python and C++ in a hedge fund. I left a small non-finance software firm where after a few years I was on 25k.
- thinkersilver 13y agoI'm thinking of moving across from a financial IT consultancy to a hedge fund. What are the hours like? I'm not that interested in working in a large IB (e.g RBS,CS pr ,MS) I've done that before and the work in that space is a lot less interesting now and has stagnated somewhat. I know this is a bit long winded but your skill-set matches exactly what I have but I don't have much opportunity to use it on a daily basis. Any comments or pointers will be really helpful.
- sbanach 13y agoMy hours are pretty heavy: 55ish hours is an easy week, bad weeks can get a lot worse. It really varies team to team and I think a lot of people in my firm do 9-6 consistently, so if it's a dealbreaker then just ask about it explicitly during the interview. I'd definitely give it a shot (or a few shots, since the recuitment process is indeed a lottery)
- _progger_ 13y agoIs that 130 on top of 80? Are you doing trading systems / algo trading?
- mpeg 13y agoNice. Are your people hiring? :)
- kenshiro_o 13y agoThat's quite impressive! I work in an investment bank (my team is the only one that sits on the trading floor) developing low latency systems in Java. I get around 65K pre-tax in salary and bonus is not even 10K (I have about 4.5 years of Java experience and started working on this job about 2 years ago). I have been interested in moving to a hedge fund for a while and even had a telephone interview with one of them. I thought I did really well and it did seem like they agreed with me in their feedback to my recruiter but they also declared that "while I was an outstanding candidate, I was not what they are looking for and will come back to me once they have a more suitable role". I just don't understand what that means. From chatter with recruiters and friends, your best change of getting into a hedge fund is through personal contacts. Can you confirm this theory?
- davidshariff 13y agoI also see a lot of contracts around 400GBP a day in London for front end folks, thats around the 100K mark per year.
- _progger_ 13y agoFront office rather?
- tome 13y agoAs a contractor you can spend a lot of time just marketing yourself, invoicing, etc. I'd imagine this is more like 50k per year in practice.
- _progger_ 13y agoAlso there is a risk of being fired with a one week notice and not being able to find next gig for a couple of month. So 400 is not a lot, it is just an adequate minimum for London.
- john_flintstone 13y ago>and not being able to find next gig for a couple of month In London? Sure, you could be laid off anytime, but if you can't land a new contract in two weeks then there's something wrong with you. Contract market in London is buzzing.
- nicwise 13y agoI'm calling BS on this, being a contractor. I spend around 10 mins a week invoicing. Nearly no time "marketing myself". I DO spending a bit of time saying "no, I have a contract" to recruiters tho.
- tome 13y agoHow many billable hours a week do you tend to work, and what's the average number of working hours for employees in your locality?
- conjugate 13y agoIf you are based in London and you're not working in finance, then you are getting screwed over.
- Stevens 13y agois £50k enough to live in London on your own? (i.e. a one br flat)
- kar1181 13y agoNo.
- CWIZO 13y agoBollocks. My gf and I are currently living off of my 40k since she's unemployed. In zone 2. It's totally doable and you'll have money to spare if you're alone with that kind of salary.
- SandB0x 13y agoYes. A reasonable one bed (not a studio) flat in zone 2 will be around £1000-1200 pcm.
- _progger_ 13y agoBarely, if your lifestyle is western (can't leave in bad area), you like to have holidays abroad and what to save some money as well.
- Alan01252 13y agoI lived comfortably in zone 2 on £40k a year. I was paying £250 a week rent for a one bedroom flat in a complex with gym + pool in zone 2. Rent prices are a little higher than they were two years ago now though!
- Alan01252 13y agoNo longer full time, but I thought I'd share my salary journey. Graduated ( computer network management and design ) working in Portsmouth started on £16k (software developer). Three years with the same company progressed to £25k. Moved to London salary £33k Two years with the same company salary rose to £40k Went travelling, came back, started freelancing/consulting earned ~£50k last year.
- nicwise 13y agoIf you live in London and do software for a salary, you better LOVE what you are doing and where you are doing it, 'cos you aint doing it for the money. You might want to also ask daily rates for contractors... most of the salary rates I've seen are around 60-75% of what contractors go for, and London has a crazy number of contractors (I'd guess 75% contract, 25% full time?)
- stevenwilkin 13y agoThe contract market here is pretty vibrant. I'm on close to a 100% premium to the permanent employees sitting in the same office, doing the same work.
- aphro 13y agoA lot of my colleagues have said it's not just about the money. That is important, and OK when your on your own, <30 and trying to make a name for yourself. But I know of some SHIT and I mean AWFUL programmers who get paid thrice as much as I and some colleagues, it often seems experience, or years count more than actual talent sometimes. I'm between 20-29k.
- mseebach 13y agoSample size=1, I've found that the "idols" of the developer community in London work for gov.uk or the BBC. I respect both very much, but you can't optimize for "soft" values and cash at the same time. It's a bit tautological, but if you want to make a lot of money, you have to go do that. You can't optimize for a fun, "meaningful" (hugely subjective, obviously) job with short hours and expect the money to just come rolling in. Note on finance: It's not as bad as some people like to make it sound, and if you're ruling it out wholesale, either for ideology or prejudice, you're doing yourself no favours salary-wise. Banks (by which I mean investment banking, retail is not even on the radar) are by no means a singular working environment, it matters a lot which team you join. Banks works on absolutely massive problems, and have plenty of new work going on. There are tons of opportunities that don't involve sitting in a basement, fiddling with a 20 year old Java 1.1 codebase under a psychopathic boss. The reason banks can pay well is that it's generally pretty easy to follow the money, and if you get yourself in a position where you pretty clearly create value, you can (almost) write your own paycheck. Alternatively, if you're still not going for the banks, there is a huge cottage industry of companies catering to the banks: financial services. They will be a lot more "normal" than the banks, but they still pay decent money. EDIT to add: Finally, obviously, contracting. If you have a couple of years of solid experience, you can make £500+/day. Add a good blog, a few conference talks, maybe a book and you can easily 50-100% to that. That's £110-220k/year, with 8 weeks off.
- pointyhats 13y agoFinancial services? A typical financial services company in London this fine day (no names mentioned): Still has classic ASP deployed, VB6 COM is the backend, "extreme waterfall" is the process and integration via CSV files (using ' as a quote char of course!) over FTP is the mutt's nuts. Add to that a security policy which involves a large brush, a fucking huge rug and a copy of the production SQL Server 2000 database on every laptop. The system build is the "secure windows XP build" which is XP SP1 with no patches other than to put the company logo on the background, some bastardised IEAK'd up IE7 build, content filters which understand HTTP like Manwell from Fawlty Towers understands English. The price of muttering Linux, Python or even Windows greater than XP in the office is to be whipped by lengths of state of the art 10base2 with BNC plugs on the end until you submit that there is only Windows. Management is entirely powered by crack dust and "champers". And the architect to monkey ratio is at least 10:1. The architects don't even know what the hell an HRESULT is. A good day is when SourceSafe doesn't try and fuck you. Fortunately we only have to integrate with them... Stay away. You have been warned.
- anonymuzz 13y agoIn Canada you can expect to start at $40k-$50k (CAD) and top pay I've heard is about $125k for more mentoring/managerial type role.
- sopooneo 13y agoWhy are the salaries so much lower than in the States? I know part of it is that demand outstrips supply here, so perhaps my question resolves to why there is less demand. I assume that the point of software is that it can be an efficiency multiplier, so if you hire someone to automate a process, that is either reducing costs or increasing revenue, which should be fundamentally valuable. I am deeply ignorant here and will gladly learn from relevant links or responses.
- justincormack 13y agoOutside of finance most profitable businesses do not have a culture of paying out those profits to the workforce, they pay management a lot and everyone else as little as they can. And don't forget that most businesses are not very profitable anyway. Europe has very few large profitable internet businesses, and not many small ones either. Bootstrapped businesses like to invest in growth not salaries. Many non startup businesses have low productivity. London also has a large supply of people coming from other countries as the job market is much better here, and these people will often accept fairly low pay as it is higher than what they would have got at home.
- me2i81 13y agoWhen I worked for a large multi-national (quite a few years ago) I brought some software engineers working out of one of our UK offices onto our team because of some collaboration initiative. I was surprised not only at how much lower their salary was than in the U.S. (I was in Palo Alto, CA at the time) but how much shit they put up with that software engineers in the US would say "fuck off" to, hoops they had to jump through to advance, wearing neckties, yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir, etc. It felt like being in high school or something. I felt bad for them, and they were good engineers.
- jiggy2011 13y agoUK Business also seems to be somewhat more conservative about technology choices from what I can tell. So being the type of developer who can get up to speed on new technology is not necessarily so useful as it might be in the US.
- muyuu 13y agoI'm assuming GBP, you should probably specify that.
- Yhippa 13y agoWow, I am shocked at the low salaries. There go my fantasies of doing software development in London. From what I've read about there's no way I could afford rents there on that salary.
- buro9 13y agoAnd yet, I can do a bootstrap startup and my girl is unemployed (just finished her PhD and now looking for an academic position) and we do alright on a combined salary around ~£1.1k per month take home. If you're fine living in Zone 2 or 3 ( the grey concentric circles on this map: http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloads/oyster-rail-services-map.pdf http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloads/oyster-rail-services-... ). Then rent in London: Shared house/apt = ~£650 per month, private apt = ~£1.2k per month. Deals are to be had if you can wait for them and do the legwork... those are the averages my friends pay. Now... on a £40k salary, the PAYE tax calculator here: http://www.listentotaxman.com/ http://www.listentotaxman.com/ shows that you'll be taking home £2.5k per month. You can definitely afford London rent on £40k.
- eterm 13y agoYou can definitely afford to rent in a shared house or rent a 1-bed, you can't afford rent if you need to support others.
- buro9 13y agoAnd yet, the post you are replying to shows 2 people living on ~£1.1k Net monthly income in London, and already shows rent isn't as extravagant as people think. You can support someone else, on a single £40k wage, in London, in an 1-bed place (assumes you're supporting a partner). Maybe you can't afford a car, or to eat out several times a week, or to take lots of holidays... but £40k goes pretty far and providing money isn't being spent frivolously it easily supports 2 people in 1 flat in London. When ~£13k per annum can support 2 people, £40k is a very high standard of living for 2 people.
- lucaspiller 13y agoI lived in South Wimbledon (the not so nice part, but still better than surrounding areas - i.e. you won't get stabbed) paying £400 for a double bed in a shared house. It is zone 3, so 30 mins to get to zone 1 on the tube, but I liked it.
- Tichy 13y agoCurios about the 200k group - what kind of things do people who earn so much do?
- __alexs 13y agoLie on polls and/or work in finance at companies with generous bonus packages.
- borsuq 13y agoI live in Central Europe (Poland) and fortunately, there are cities where IT jobs are very well paid. I work for 10 years in IT and can easily make equivalent of £25K per year - which is more than decent salary here. UK recruiters are very active here (most my fellow developers are regularly contacted), but even though I was considering moving to London or SF, it has to be something really exciting - majority of well paid s/w engineering here is boring "typical" business stuff. I wouldn't expect any significant financial boost, but possibility to work for LinkedIn, eBay (Google maybe :) is an advantage.
- ogreface 13y agoI earned between 35-50k when I was there ('08-'11). Salaries are crazy low. The secret is actually contract work. Friends of mine were doing bog standard java dev work, and taking home between 80-100 £/hr. It was big company work so it was full time, 40 hours a week type of work. As others have said, finance is the way in London. Better salaries, better perks.
- basicallydan 13y agoThe cost of living in San Francisco, according to Numbeo, is overall lower than London: http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+Kingdom&country2=United+States&city1=London&city2=San+Francisco%2C+CA http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?coun... Having said that, food is mostly more expensive in SF, and the results there are skewed by the cost of cigarettes being much lower. Rent appears to be higher, which I've also been told by a three or four ex-Londoners who've moved to SF.
- MrQuincle 13y agoNice attempt, but how do you correct for bias here? What type of people visit HN? What type of people visit HN that come from the UK? At what point of the day? Which people are happy to fill in a questionnaire that shows how little they earn? It is probably skewed in the direction of high wages. To know that I would recommend at least the same poll for another European city and for several American cities.
- john_flintstone 13y agoWhat would figures for another European city tell us about London? Rates for programmers in Dublin are about 20% higher than London, but that says nothing about the London figures quoted here.
- MrQuincle 13y agoOf course the data tells you something. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-response_bias http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-response_bias - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_desirability_bias http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_desirability_bias (quote: Personal income and earnings, often inflated when low and deflated when high) Something to cope with it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heckman_correction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heckman_correction
- lucian1900 13y agoWhy would anyone avoid telling others how much they make? For example, I make £32k (£1900/month) and I pay £800/month rent.
- alexmorse 13y agoA friend of mine built a pretty good tool for this sort of research and sharing long ago if any of you are interested: http://salaryscout.com/ http://salaryscout.com/
- polymatter 13y agosite is throwing "Error establishing a database connection" on pretty much every page except the front page.
- api 13y agoThis surprises me given how god-awful expensive London is. I remember it being one of those cities I've visited where I was like "how do people live here? what do all these people do?" Or maybe, like New York, you actually can live there fairly reasonably if you really know the place and know how to do it. As a visitor maybe I was paying tourist prices.
- benjaminwootton 13y agoLondon cost of living isn't so bad. Public transport is cheap and abundant, competition keeps prices down for restaurants and shops, and there are a lot of free events to keep you busy. The main expense is in the accomodation, which most people in their 20s combat by sharing houses in undesirable areas. (This is a problem UK wide though as they have managed to keep our housing bubble inflated unlike in the US.) London is expensive for tourists though. A ride on the Heathrow Express, a few nights in a 3* hotel, and a spin on the London Eye would be enough to make Zuckerberg wince.
- DrJokepu 13y agoPublic transport in London is anything but cheap. It is simply the most expensive urban public transport system I know of in terms of cost of monthly passes (or travelcards). Currently a monthly travelcard in zones 1-2 is £116.80 ($177.30). In comparison, a similar monthly pass in New York costs $112, $74 in San Francisco, $167 in Tokyo, $84.50 in Paris, $99.95 in Berlin, $100 in Chicago, $67.96 in Melbourne and so on.
- slevin8 13y ago26k before taxes. I can live without be thinking about money. I pay £700 for my flat and £170 for transport (zone 4) and I can save about £250.
- vallejos 13y agoCOMPLAINT OF HUMAN FDA CASINOS - DEA https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lpesNs8VMrhOX3l9BuibDS08v2cXnRxS2O11nchrwWw/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lpesNs8VMrhOX3l9BuibDS08... COMPLAINT OF HUMAN FCPA CASINOS https://docs.google.com/document/d/1t5Oq7BI9jeytb95gKwc4iqww6P-b7vz_HtnQUmnww8Y/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/document/d/1t5Oq7BI9jeytb95gKwc4iqww... https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FRUgMsxa1I1ljMApbrE6AoFifJGRSQsEUb372WS2sPU/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FRUgMsxa1I1ljMApbrE6AoFi... EUROPOL REPORT HUMAN CASINO https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lpesns8vmrhox3l9buibds08v2cxnrxs2o11nchrwww/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lpesns8vmrhox3l9buibds08... LIBERENLOSYA CHECKED IN FORUMS BUTTON. COMPLAINTS SENT TO THE FBI. https://docs.google.com/document/d/19NC-OxxLykGVTTWzelrZRu0E6Wim_ClP7DdCb0U1iu4/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/document/d/19NC-OxxLykGVTTWzelrZRu0E... COMPLAINTS SENT TO MINISTRY CHILEAN. https://docs.google.com/document/d/13EVQk0hibEi1x9bvLzABb1QGO-TTlbnTuSLQrC15vnk/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/document/d/13EVQk0hibEi1x9bvLzABb1QG... LIBERENLOSYA CHECKED IN FORUMS BUTTON. EXPERIMENTAL HYPOTHESIS. https://docs.google.com/document/d/14bAndrRymAuCCDDXqYhTjjIwkB8xczorZI6d-uyuOA0/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/document/d/14bAndrRymAuCCDDXqYhTjjIw... NANO PARTICLES THAT ARE MANUFACTURED IN BUSINESS WATCH THE VIDEOS ON THE OTHER PUBLICATIONS, AS SHOWN RADIATE, cauterized. THESE SENSORS THAT HAVE EVERY CAPTAN NANO DOWNLOAD IN NEURONS. FULLY TESTED. Notice how buried they expire PURCHASED FOR PRODUCTS AND THEN HIDE THESE CONTAINERS TO PREVENT SOME ARE SEEN. MANY OF PRESCRIPTION DRUGS ARE NOT TO BE VOTED BY VENEZOELANOS, STATE LOST MONEY. AND WHETHER PEOPLE DIE WITH NO DRUGS OR PRODUCE THEM DIFFERENT GENETIC DAMAGE. EARN MONEY WHEN BUYING AND THEN LET THE BEAT, HAVE THIS LOGIC. CRIMINALISTICAMENTE, CAN SEE WHY THE NADIA Ball Crimes ACT, HANDLING WILL ALGUNTIPO. LIBERENLOSYA CHECKED IN FORUMS BUTTON. EVIDENCE DEALING DISAPPEAR. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrYwsKCncKE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrYwsKCncKE
- vallejos 13y agohdfghdfh
- djhworld 13y agoI'm on about £42k + a 12% bonus, not sure if I'm going to get one this year though. My colleagues who are mainly contractors keep saying I should leave and become a contractor but I'm not sure about the uncertainty.
- pointyhats 13y agoYou need a big stock of cash, a hard skin and a good accountant. The uncertainty is a problem, particularly when you end up getting booted early (it does happen), but occasionally you get to sit on your arse for the last 3 months of a say a 6 month fixed term contract being paid to play solitaire because they can't get rid of you early. The agents are all asshats and will screw you for a penny if you're not careful. The hiring companies treat you like a disposable tool. Don't expect to make any friends at the companies - the permanent staff know you're making more than they are.
- petercooper 13y agoThe hiring companies treat you like a disposable tool. Don't expect to make any friends at the companies - the permanent staff know you're making more than they are. This is a key reason I got out of consulting. At least, consulting on the same things that the full-time staff were working on (so training is good because it's obviously temporary in nature and no-one in-house does it). The money might be good but there's more to life than that.
- thomasreggi 13y agoCan someone make one of these for New York City?
- gerasini 13y agoThe most interesting point is that there is a concentration in the 30-70k range and then you have a significant number in the >200k.
- petercooper 13y agoI suspect most of the >200k have "trolling HN" on their resume ;-)
- avaku 13y agoArrived and found a job for £45K Raised in one year up to £55K Next job in another year £63K Raised in one more year to £70K Plus bonus (financial industry) C#, Java, Matlab, real-time trading Now quit the whole thing and doing my startup
- pslam 13y agoThis tallies with my experience in London. In fact, at Google, where after questioning their salary scaling vs competition, we were told that financial companies where NOT included in calculations. "WTF" or words to that effect were our general response. Apparently this was eventually fixed, but not before about 80% of my ex-colleagues (I left for the Bay Area) ended up in... financial companies. Go figure. If you want the talent - put up the cash.
- tsiki 13y agoIt'd be interesting to also hear some average hours worked. I have the image that the average hours worked in the IT sector in Bay area is quite high, so it's not directly comparable to the previous poll.
- X4 13y agoFrighteningly underpaid! I am sure this is true for other parts of Europe too, especially Germany though. People undersell themselves, because they still believe in the so called "crisis", or have no clue about their own value.
- kayoone 13y agotrue! I am from germany and i believe you can transfer these poll results quite accurately to germany by just changing GBP to EUR (1 EUR = 0.85 GBP)
- jongraehl 13y ago1 GBP : 1.5 USD (I assume people answered poll in GBP?)
- virtualwhys 13y agoGiven the poll earlier today re: valley/bay area salaries, WTF, are all the "best" programmers in northern Cal? Unlikely. The salary disparity between London and the Valley is absolutely shocking, all the more so given that London is not at all a cheap place to live.
- yeureka 13y ago2007-2008: 28k in games industry. 2008-2011: 60k ( including bonus ) in finance. 2011-2012: <20k freelancing as a creative coder for museums and advertising, lost half my savings doing this... 2013: 68k in educational software used by millions of kids. As a lot of people mention here, only finance pays well in the UK. If you don't mind working in that you can earn quite a lot. The other route is contracting, but that works if you have a skill that is in demand. I am very happy with my current job though I make roughly half what I could potentially get if I went back to finance.
- macca321 13y agoNeed more info on this 200k bracket please!
- macca321 13y agoIt Jobs Watch scans job postings for London http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/default.aspx?page=1&sortby=0&orderby=0&q=London&id=0&lid=2618 http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/default.aspx?page=1&sortby=...
- WestCoastJustin 13y ago./spark 18 28 65 73 33 39 28 10 10 7 1 6 2 3 7 3 2 1 3 34 ▂▃▇█▄▄▃▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▄ ^ 40k-49k [1] https://github.com/holman/spark https://github.com/holman/spark
- beagle90 13y agoLooks like my plan for eventually moving to London and earning a £100k whilst commuting in my 911 are out of the window. How hard is it for a UK programmer to find work (not telecommute) in the US?
- shadchnev 13y agoHaving read all comments, I'm somewhat lost. I was hired in London in 2008 on £37K, it was my first programming job after uni, I had clean resume. Today a competent beginner with a few web projects under his belt easily gets around £45K. I'm hiring developers for my startup – http://www.makersacademy.com http://www.makersacademy.com – and I wish I had more applicants. I'm happy to pay £350-450/day for a decent Ruby dev and or around £60K permanent for the same position and I don't get nearly as many candidates as I'd like to. I was hiring devs at Forward Labs (http://www.forwardlabs.co.uk http://www.forwardlabs.co.uk), arguably one of the coolest places in London, and I had the same problems: small number of applicants, qualified candidates asking for £400-£450 or equivalent. At SiliconmilkRoundabout, the biggest startup job fair in London, dozens of startups are fighting to find a developer, many of them happy to pay more than £40K or £50K. From what I can tell based on my experience and what other entrepreneurs/recruiters are telling me, hiring devs is incredibly hard not because the companies are unwilling to pay but simply because there are not enough devs looking for work. Occasionally I interview candidates that don't know the basics of software development, e.g. what mocking is or how to use TDD but they are asking for £400+/day because someone is going to pay that. The data by Adzuna (http://blog.makersacademy.com/what-is-the-demand-for-ruby-developers-in-london-today/ http://blog.makersacademy.com/what-is-the-demand-for-ruby-de...) shows that the average Ruby salary is over £50K, and top 30% make over £60K. How is that compatible with the results of this poll? How is it possible that there are so many complaints about low salaries in the comments, while at the same time my experience hiring Ruby devs suggests the low salary isn't a problem at all? If you're one of those devs who voted £30-39K or £40-49K above and know how to use Ruby/JS at a decent level, drop me a line, I'll have a much better offer for you: evgeny@makersacademy.com.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- adrianhoward 13y agoI agree. My experience of folk I know in London is that even vague competence is going to get you £35-40k - and being actually good is going to get you a fair bit more than that. Hell - I live in bloody Dorset and I'd be expecting to pay at least £35k for a decent dev. I'm confused about what kind of work the 0-30k folk are doing and for whom. If I were in that group I'd be seriously thinking about: * Switching jobs - I'd be job hunting right now * I'd be looking at freelancing rates and experimenting with that * I'd be taking a serious look at my skill set, and the skill set of the job adverts and doing a compare and contrast * Thinking about whether I'm selling and marketing myself appropriately Seriously - it's a sellers market in London for dev skills right now. I regularly get folk chasing me for £50-60k jobs - and I'm explicitly not looking, don't live in (or want to live in) London, and have very un-hip skills in the old CVs they have of mine (perl anybody ;-)
- newnewnew 13y agoI guess this shows that people can achieve a much higher return on capital investment in the bay area. That's the only way that they'd be able to afford the significantly higher salaries per worker.
- danbmil99 13y agowould be helpful to specify units and show $ equivalents
- tucker1128 13y agoWorking in London is not great as a dev or in technology as a whole. I'm a dev working in London. My 1st job out of Uni I was paid 15k working for a start up. After gaining an years experience I left and move onto a US company that paid me 25k initially and now after 2 years my pays 45k. Pay in London is a lot less then SV but that's acceptable we don't have as much VC funding for start ups. One issue allot UK companies/starts ups have is that they all think they can offshore all devolopment work, allot companies are slowly learning that having in-house devs are the way forwards. But the UK has got that dev is somthing we can off shore mentality an due to that pay for dev is substantially lower then some area's in the US. Also don't let some of the high flyers pay( from the banking industryy ) fool you into understanding the average wage in the UK. The average wage in the UK is fairly low.
- dxm 13y agoStarted on £17.5k in Wales and was moved to the London office for £25k, after a year I got a new job for £35k, and a year later took a new job for the same money but for a much better company. At the same company, I've reduced my salary to £32k since the pension law came in, but I take home the same amount as I did at £35k (some loophole). I hate London, and the company I work for is now allowing me to work remotely so I'm keeping my salary and moving back to Wales, where it is much cheaper to live and I will not have to share a house with people. I really don't care about money (really) and it's much more about being happy, which I will be once I move out of this city.
- lucaspiller 13y agoI have a friend who decided to stay in the area he grew up in for a better quality of life (North Devon). He is 25, now earning £35k and looking to buy a second house. No way you would be able to do that in London :) Kudos and good luck!
- SeoxyS 13y agoI think the currency should have been specified in this poll. It's a little ambiguous as to whether this should be read as GBP or USD. (Though I imaging most responses would have used the former.)
- erikb 13y agoIs that in USD, British Pounds or Euros? I think a poll with just numbers is quite worthless.
- neverminder 13y agoI'm a full stack developer from Buckinghamshire with 4 years of experience (mainly web dev), currently working with PHP/MySQL/JS/Java developing large scale enterprise software, also learning Scala on a side. I was gonna start looking for a job in central London this year, preferably Java/Scala based, but I always though that I'll be lucky to get £40K. Does this mean I can aim higher?
- MebeLou 13y agoStarted off at a consultancy company in central London in 2010 on £30K as a 'grad dev'. I know that a 'Senior Consultant' would be given between £40 and £50K at this company. Since then I've moved on, and am on £48K. Full stack developer, using mostly ruby and related tech atm, was .NET based mostly before that, but could have been thrown into a project doing anything.
- lucaspiller 13y agoWhen I graduated in '09 I accepted the first offer I got as I had no idea how the job market worked. I found it through a recruiter rather than trying any graduate programs. I started on £23k which went up to £25k after probation. After a year and a half I got promoted from a junior and was on £35k. Last year I quit to work for a friend's startup and was offered nearly double that, before I left they offered me £55k to stay. Afterwards I found one of the guys doing pretty much the same as me was getting £60k, so I made the right choice :-)
- jabbernotty 13y agoI assume a Dutch software engineer would not have problems living and working in London? I'm currently living in a remote area that I really like, but it feals a bit 'dead'. I'm yearning to get back in to a more action-packed working environment.
- crntaylor 13y agoI made a quick and filthy script[0] to pull out job listings from indeed.co.uk - it's pretty scrappy but maybe someone wants to try and improve it (or generalize it to other countries) In [348]: %run salary.py "London" "graduate developer" Job Title: Graduate Developer Location: London Salaries: 20000 - 794 40000 - 288 60000 - 85 80000 - 25 100000 - 19 Number of jobs: 1,211 Average salary: £30,057 In [349]: %run salary.py "London" "software developer" Job Title: Software Developer Location: London Salaries: 30000 - 5762 50000 - 3303 70000 - 1298 90000 - 590 110000 - 345 Number of jobs: 11,298 Average salary: £46,018 In [350]: %run salary.py "London" "cobol developer" Job Title: Cobol Developer Location: London Salaries: 50000 - 7 80000 - 4 260000 - 3 Number of jobs: 14 Average salary: £103,571 [0] https://gist.github.com/chris-taylor/5694151 https://gist.github.com/chris-taylor/5694151
- azernik 13y agoAgh - voted in the wrong poll. Not really on topic (more of a question about HN in general) - is there a way to remove upvotes?
- dmmalam 13y agotldr: despite the flawed stats of the poll, similar skillets are actually paid similarly between London and SV. It's hard to compare directly between SV and London because they're very different economically. SV is full of huge pure tech companies (the googles, apples, facebooks) that are hugely profitable and HAVE to spend heavily on R&D. Their product is literally technology and so they need 'high end' engineers. This therefore attracts 'high end' engineers from around the world, and the large number of these companies created a bidding war, hence wages rise. The majority of developer jobs in London (and for that matter everywhere except SV) are at enterprises where they are slogging out backend code - think projects to integrate internal systems. Most of these roles aren't particularly 'high end' and don't need guru 99 percentile programmers, and hence they can pay less. Most of these companies see tech as a necessary evil and not a competitive advantage. For these enterprise roles, base salary is also meaningless as nearly everyone contracts. A typical 'senior java dev' that pays £60k permanent, would contract for £500/day which is the equivalent of £115k [1]. Rates upto £700 are common, and £1000 isn't unheard-of for rare skills in vogue. Junior programmers should expect £350+ So comparing like-for-like skill set, London programmers are actually paid pretty well - There are many making the equivalent of $150k+ who wouldn't even pass a phone screen for Google. Now London has a few 'high end' roles that pay very well, the majority of which are in finance, with notable exceptions being the London engineering offices of big SV tech companies. Don't be mislead that all of finance is high paying, only the front office roles at the 'computationally intensive' desks are. There are also 'high end' but relatively low paying roles at game companies, F1 and GCHQ. Another factor is the financial crisis, which has hit London severely. Since 2008 a huge number of jobs have gone, and wages have been essentially flat. If you include the fact the the GBP:USD rate went from $2.10 to under $1.4 at the lowest [2], UK wages actually declined 40% in USD equivalent. This is in stark contrast to SV which in the same period saw huge growth. The funny thing is that almost the opposite was happening just a few years ago. I graduated in 2006, and London was in the middle of a huge boom. I was at Imperial College, and all the major firms would come to campus and have big flashy recruitment drives. There just weren't enough quality engineers and so starting packages for fresh graduates were literally twice what ANYONE else was paying. Also many of these roles were extremely interesting, working on real problems with cutting edge tech and brilliant people, and the firms had enough money to invest in training, extravagant grad programs etc. This has changed quite a bit now! [1] http://www.contractorcalculator.co.uk/ContractorFinancialProfileSummary.aspx?uid=0&logon=False&psalary=50000&div=1&status=OutsideIR35&pyt=LimitedCompany&expenses=3000&other=0&pension=0&tc=944L&age=30&salary=8000&rate=62.5&rt=Hourly&rt2=Hourly&weeks=44&dwpw=5&dwpw2=5&hours=37.5&dni=4000&tty=2013&rate2=25&weeks2=44&hours2=37.5&status2=OutsideIR35&psalary2=50000&mir=0.05&ma=200000&mp=25&cid=0&vat=1&vi=False&ar=1&gs1=0&gs2=0&gs3=0&gs4=0&nd=1&pbt=1&dpo=03-May-2013&dop=01-Jan-0001&inv=1&hpd=11&me=150&vt=Car&mpw=0&mpc=0&pt=Monthly&ace=500&mt=Parasol&wl=InsideLondon&uds=Basic&Host=LOCAL http://www.contractorcalculator.co.uk/ContractorFinancialPro... [2] http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=GBPUSD=X&t=5y&l=on&z=l&q=l&c= http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=GBPUSD=X&t=5y&l=on&#...
- EnderMB 13y agoIt's surprising how poorly paid developers are in this country, even in London. In Bristol I was able to earn £25k after graduating, but from what I've heard a lot of companies are now offering lower, around £17.5k to £20k if lucky. A lot of programmers with five years experience are still on around £25k, whereas a post-doc in Cardiff will be on around £32-35k fresh out of their PhD. Hell, friends of mine that went into sales instead of uni are on £40k, a salary I'd probably struggle to get in the next five years, even as a senior dev. What I also don't understand is that salaries are getting lower, and hiring is getting harder. Anyone that has hired will appreciate how difficult it can be to get good developers. Given the long hours and need for learning in development it's shocking how low the salaries are, and how it's not talked about more often by UK developers. The last time I was solely responsible for hiring was at a start-up that had just been acquired. I said that £25k was the bare minimum we should be offering for a junior to mid-level developer. We hired a really good developer, who now leads that team and landed another couple of pay rises (probably now earning a fair bit more than me). The start-up was acquired based on a product largely created by the developers, so we needed a strong developer to take over and I guarantee that if we offered the same low salary that others were offering the product would have been run into the ground. It's really bad. In my mind, developers across the board should be on £5-10k more than they are, across the country. Hopefully within the next few years the tech industry will push towards better compensation, instead of thinking a drinks fridge and a ping pong table will win other twenty-somethings with no other commitment in life than to they hand their rent to.
- tyang 13y agoVoluntary response data are worthless.