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Sample 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
by mseebach 13y ago
Sample 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.
- mseebach 13y agoThese companies exist outside of finance too, which is why I made a point out of how it's not a homogeneous job market. No, don't work on crap, but also don't write off half the SW engineering job market on the back of an anecdote.
- pointyhats 13y agoI've done contract work in London and had several permanent positions over the last 15 years. That's a BIG chunk of it unfortunately. The rest is "big names", "trendy startups" and high finance. There is literally nothing else. The best opportunity would be a small established business but they get eaten in London instantly.
- Joeri 13y agoI have similar experiences. 900 mails through many layers of management to find out after flying in for an on-site visit they were running our app on unpatched pre-sp1 ie6 which doesn't even support script tag injection properly.
- bnastic 13y agoSorry, but that's not 'typical' at all. At least not for investment banks. It's true that Python is used (when used) only for peripheral tasks, but there is a reason for that. Number of Linux vs. Windows shops in the City is about even. Banks employ some really smart developers, in general.
- adrianhoward 13y agoEDIT 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. With contracting you will end up with a lot more the 8 weeks of down time in the year unless you are in long-term engagements...
- peteretep 13y agoDoesn't match my experience, or that of any of the contractors I know (in Perl, admittedly). I've never been a week out of a contract job when I wanted one...
- adrianhoward 13y agoY'right. I'm dumb. I was reading "contracter" as "consultant" in my head.... my bad. More coffee ;)