The 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.
It's the legacy of the old class system rearing its ugly head. No matter how well educated, and from what prestigious colleges, (software) engineering is blue-collar work and will never be as well paid as the "graduate management fast-track" type with a sociology degree from a "red brick".
Finance isn't highly paid for software work, it's fairly paid, by world standards, only because they contrary to popular belief, don't have any class hangups there and are comfortable with the notion of playing in a free market.
I remember a story that the no2 guy at Martelsham Heath wife was asked what he did for a living she said hes an engineer. The response was thats nice what sort of cars does he work on.
Martelsham is the place where Tommy flowers used to work its the equivalent of ATT labs.
Please do note that I said 'similar term', I didn't say it was a direct equivalent. I was just providing an example that someone from the US might immediately understand.
It's a phrase that someone from the associated region of the world can generally go "Oh, you attended a <terminology> school?" and immediately have certain stereotypes and assumptions (accurate or not) come to mind.
What makes Edinburgh special in that regard? As far as I can gather the admissions standards and support levels aren't in the same league as Oxbridge. League table results are fairly high for most subjects, but not any more so than some other russell group members.
According to various world rankings, it's top 20-40 and 5th or 6th in Britain and Europe.
But it's quite strong for CS/AI, as they have the largest CS department in Europe, producing the largest amount of world-leading research (according to the latest government-organised Research Assessment Exercise).
For undergrads that means there is an unparalleled variety of courses you can take, both in depth and breadth. I remember I had a choice of about 25 courses in my 3rd year and over 50 in my final year. For most British universities, your choice is rather limited - usually between 8-12 courses each year. Another bonus is that you get to work with leading researchers on your final year project. E.g. some of my friends were supervised by Phil Wadler - the guy was one of the principal inventors of Haskell and, with Gilad Bracha and Martin Odersky, designed Java generics and the extensions of the Collections framework.
So, Edinburgh is quite special and CS/AI is a particular focus at the University, so it's a shame not enough people know it.
Edinburgh is definitely not quite Oxbridge level on those factors. But it certainly is higher than the 'Red brick universities'. There are 24 universities in the Russell Group, and none of the red brick universities fall in the top 5 as it is an outdated term. It could be argued that Edinburgh falls in the top 5, which are comparable to the Ivy League.
Erm, no. Red Bricks are ex-polytechnics or newbuild universities, generally specialising in quality degrees like urban forestry and golf course management. Oxford BROOKES is an example of a red brick. But not Oxford.
No. Just no. You are wrong. Red brick universities are not ex-polys. Just read the Wikipedia link in the parent post. I went to University of Sheffield, which is one of the Red Brick Universities and it has always been an Uni. Sheffield Halam, however, is the ex poly.
In common usage the term "red brick university" is at least a little bit disparaging . It tends to be used to emphasise that we are not talking about the entrenched, traditional universities of proven excellence - Oxford and Cambridge. So likening the term to "ivy league" is very confusing. Better to say "red brick university" (UK) = "not ivy league" (USA). Note that I don't buy into this judgmental attitude myself.
It used to be disparaging (compared to Oxbridge) I don't think it has those connotations any more - the few red brick universities in the uk place highly in rankings.
This applies to the US as well, but probably not as severely since software engineers aren't as underpaid in the US.
Finance pays a fair market wage, which seems high by comparison to all the unfair players out there, but isn't actually that unreasonable.
Startups pay a theoretically fair wage (if you accept valuations at face-value and exclude liquidation preferences). It's when you see the equity/cap table (2% for useless VPs and 0.03% for engineers)-- as well as what the founders have done to ensure their careers no matter what happens to the business-- that you pick out the classism of the well-connected. If you look at salaries alone, though, you won't see it.
Outsiders complain about finance "bonuses" (finance salaries are only at-market) while failing to account for the fact that that's a much fairer compensation system than whatever they get at their corporate jobs. Granted, the banking bonus system is horribly corrupt in practice; but in theory there is nothing wrong with it, and I'd rather have a corrupt profit-sharing system like that in finance than none at all.
This comment nicely captures a misconception about how employment markets work.
If, stipulating the dollar value of the whole comp package, a comp package appears fair, it is still fair no matter what that company pays anyone else. Wages are "fair" or "unfair" based on prevailing rates and supply/demand.
How employment markets work, and fairness, are not the same thing. It's not a misconception, it's a criticism.
And of course in the real world, wages are not based on supply and demand. They're based on leverage and BATNA.
Simply put, given two equal employees (hypothetically, if it were possible to measure this), it's not "fair" to give one $50k and one $300k. It's not about the prevailing wage, it's about the contribution relative to what is coming back.
You're a $100k/yr FTE dev. A VP above you makes $200k/yr. You believe that VP should be making $50k/yr. But your position isn't improved at all if they do. You're still making $100k/yr, and someone else is taking the $150k/yr premium.
So you say, "no, I should get a share of that $150k/yr premium." Well, OK, why aren't you? What you're saying is that you're worth more than $100k/yr. You already have a way of demonstrating that: demand a raise, then start interviewing.
The flip side of this, if it helps make the point clearer: you're a $100k/yr dev. The VP at your company is already making $50k/yr. This is good how? By any logic you could employ in the above scenario, you're worth more than $100k/yr in this scenario too.
What other people in your firm make is an orthogonal concern to what you make. Clinging to the belief that pay equity is an important part of your compensation is as likely to harm you as help you; stipulating that we are all especially high-functioning professionals, the notion of pay equity is part of what puts a ceiling on what you earn now.
This is the most anti-rational anti-worker worthless "explanation" I have ever heard.
What other people make is definitely not an orthogonal concern, and is hugely relevant. Your justification of not caring about other people earning more is incredibly short-sighted. Yes, it does improve my position if other people earn less, because that money is then available for the company to use on other things, such as paying me.
Furthermore, to suggest that this is "irrational" is offensive and irrational in itself, and would not be inconsistent with psychological propaganda.
The company has an extra $150k to spend on everyone else, R&D or sales, or distribute as profit. I think it's a net positive (for the employee, company and/or society).
Before the VP got his pay cut, you made $100k. After the VP got his pay cut, you made $100k. Explain to me how this is a rational thing, in the economic sense of "rational", for you to care about.
Wanting your employer/society to perform better is pretty rational in my book, and could result in personal economic gains in the future. I think you are working with a very narrow definition of "rational" here (earning more money right now).
Here is an analogy: the business has $150k to spend. Would you rather have it spent on a pair of paintings for the meeting room, or in company-wide renovations? I think it's rational to choose the latter, though it doesn't immediately affect your bottom line.
> Explain to me how this is a rational thing, in the economic sense of "rational"
Ah, I think this explains the disagreement. That kind of "rational" has nothing to do with fairness, and everything to do with maximizing individual payoff. I think you've conflated the two, when they're almost completely incompatible. I knew you were a closet republican ;)
Maximizing individual payoff is not necessarily contradictory to more intuitive notions of "fairness". One ignored variable is the timescale you're maximizing over. If your company spends money on other things than exec pay, you (and others) are very likely to do better in the long run, in ways that are not mathematically (or computationally) quantifiable, at least by existing theories (or resources). But just because something is not quantifiable does not mean that considering it is "irrational". Rather the opposite, you are using what computational resources you have personally (emotions and intuition) to judge this, rather than ignoring it completely.
This is why I get supremely annoyed at claims that a specific non-mathematical argument is "irrational".
(Examples of non-computable things: company spends resources on R&D and makes more long-term profit; company spends resources on higher pay for everyone else and boosts morale; reputation of company increases and you attract a wider pool of potential employees; etc.)
In more mathematical terms, greedy optimisation algorithms in the name of short-term "rationality" most often lead you to a local, not global, maximum.
There is nothing irrational about equitable pay, unless you're the check-writer trying to depress wages and pay everyone the minimum that you can get away with. This is, of course, why salaries are secret.
For what it's worth, I have made substantially more than my coworkers in almost all of my jobs (based on what I could infer from watercooler talk after being around a while), and I don't think that's fair either. I actually chewed out one of my managers once when I found out a coworker was making half of what I was.
Why wasn't he paying him more? Because he could get away with it, not because it was fair. He was a hard worker, very smart, but rather timid. Put this guy against the alpha male manager, and unless the manager wants to be charitable, that guy is not getting a dime more than the manager can bully him into taking. What's worse, the guy will probably come out thinking he got a good deal.
I don't think you addressed my point. How are you better off if a 200k/yr VP is replaced with a 50k/yr VP, and whatever benefit you get from that transition, why should it depend on what some other person makes? If you did work worth 150k/yr, you should be making 150k/yr regardless.
> The flip side of this, if it helps make the point clearer: you're a $100k/yr dev. The VP at your company is already making $50k/yr. This is good how? By any logic you could employ in the above scenario, you're worth more than $100k/yr in this scenario too.
The difference is in one scenario you're talking about a company that can pay out 300k a year, and in the other it's only 150k. Fairness is not about absolute numbers, but relative numbers in proportion to the total available.
Are you doing work worth 250k a year? Why are you accepting 100k for it? Do you think every dollar generated by a company is allocated to salary? That's a company with a 0% (or worse) margin.
Simply that in a free market, the market would clear and sellers (talent) would reach an equilibrium with buyers (employers). That cannot happen because the buyers - for ingrained, cultural reasons of reinforcing a class hierarchy - refuse to play. So the most senior engineer in an organization, no matter how much value he creates, can never be paid more than a middle or in some cases junior manager incase he gets "ideas above his station" and fails to doff his cap to his "betters". That is the #1 problem in the UK employment market, the dead weight of the entrenched management class. Only in the finance industry does the talent market operate as it should, because contrary to popular belief, that's actually the only industry in the UK where the old boys network doesn't have a stranglehold.
If you're smart enough to be an engineer, you're smart enough to realize the only way to win is not to play. So you either go into finance, or leave the UK, or grit your teeth and accept that in order to do the work you enjoy, you're going to be poor compared to someone who couldn't do your job in a month of Sundays, but has the "right" connections.
Imagine Downton Abbey with beige carpets and fluorescent lighting and that's most British companies today. Except it's not blue-blooded aristos running the show, it's old boys, school ties, golf buddies, MBAs. Contrary to popular belief the old boys network isn't actually sexist: it discriminates equally against male non-members too.
Same in out politics too actually. Might not be Lord-this or Lady-that running the show, but they all graduated in PPE from Oxford...
This applies to the US as well, but probably not as severely since software engineers aren't as underpaid in the US.
I presume the US wouldn't have as strong a class system as the UK. There's a bit in Mad Men, where the British character (Lane Pryce) complains to his wife that "I've been here over a year and no-one's asked me what university I went to!"
There is more in "the old class system" (or the caste system) than just attending elite college. It is genes.
You like it or not, breeding matters a lot. What all those companies buy is not grades, it is not even a particular phenotype, it is a few generations of fine breeding, well-educated parents and relatives, etc.
So, most of those guys "with a sociology degree" worth it, you like it or not. It is just one of these small unpleasant truths about life.
First of all: genes? Do you seriously believe that? I'd like to see some citations for that, if you don't mind. I think you're farcically misrepresenting the nature vs nurture debate here.
In general, people with well-off, well-educated parents tend to do better than people who have undereducated poor parents. If you ask me, that's an argument for making sure we have less poor parents and for making sure that more people have a proper education, and not an argument for unfounded admiration for supposedly superior genes.
Well, the well-known formula is "Nature and Nurture" - we are what we are due to genes and environment. This is, of course, huge over-simplification, almost a meme, but it is correct one.
Of course, "genes" does not mean the destiny, even if preferences and abilities are "encoded" there. There are long and boring debate about role of genes and IQ score and the consensus is that "almost everything is inherited but without proper environment, training and fertilizing the potential could not be fully expressed".
Well-off, well-educated parents, in a few generations back, is what could be called the environment. And what it amounts for is not just self-esteem and developed, refined mind, but also non-verbal behavior, which, like looks (a signal of good genes) are much more powerful drive that people like to admit to themselves.
As for ideas of so-called equality, be it socialism or equality between men and women, these are just theories. In reality (at least what we could see in labs) genes are the vehicle of evolution process, which is all about inequality.
It is correct to say that these theories, being intellectually attractive, are in contradiction with the very process which made us. So, it is better to check ones premises.)
For example, people might like it or not, a good-looking person (due to genes) will receive much more attention from people in all his endeavors, be it studying or carer building, or simply having a good time. Too much attention could ruin, and it is well-known in the field of personality disorders.
Please, do not even mention that nonsense that what is considered good-looking varies from culture to culture, from age to age. Good looks are youth, health and lack of deformations ("average" face considered the most beautiful) or signs of good genes.
Actually, any modern psychology textbook treats those subjects is very clear.
That tends to be the case mostly everywhere in Europe. For that matter, most places in the world outside the US (and Silicon Valley) tend not to pay software engineers very competitively.
I am from a fairly small central European country and programmers there barely make more than other professions; the salaries often amount to the national average.
But competitively is the word. They can attract software engineers at those low wages, therefore they are competitive.
This seems strange to me, as it takes a few years for someone to get good at software (the supply is constricted), and where I've been involved in recruitment, finding good people is difficult.
It's also interesting to see that people get paid so much more in finance, or at American companies. That is, a finance house could probably hire any good 5+ year C++ developer at the 'normal C++ developer' rate of 30k, and get good results. But they choose to pay 50K for a 'finance C++ developer', whether he was earning 30K last week or not.
That says to me that pay is not set by supply by labor supply and demand but something else. That is, you don't get rich by having rare skills that make people money, you get them by knowing which industries pay over the odds for labor. I think that's a good thing to realize if you want to be comfortable.
It's not so much that they're paying for a C++ developer, they're paying for a C++ developer (or C#/Java/whatever developer) with a certain set of skills.
The sort of developers that get well paid in finance (it should be noted that there's a vast range of dev salaries in banking depending on the sort of roles being worked in with Quants, Quant/Devs and Front Office developers being very much at the top of the pile) are those that have Masters or PhDs in Maths and work on pricing algorithms, those who work on high frequency type applications, those who have enough maths that they can turn algorithms into solid applications that can't fall over during the trading day (i.e. solid, highly optimised software), or those who can interact with the trading desks and build anything which helps the desk make more money. One thing they'll all have in common as well is a large amount of domain knowledge about the (financial) products that they work on, as well as the ability to work in environment which are often noisy and stressful. Anyone who needs their own office and a quiet environment in order to get into the zone and hack on some code is not going to thrive at a bank.
In reality pay is not set by supply and demand. People have fixed ideas about what a job is worth, and refuse to pay above this. When everyone thinks like this, you have implicit collusion.
Banks, finance etc do tend think in supply and demand terms. Can't find good people? Raise the price. Hardly ever happens in other industries.
How familiar are you with the finance industry? I'm not currently under the impression that anyone with C++ experience is interchangeable with a C++ dev with finance experience.
I'm also from Europe and in our country it's the contrary, one of the companies was few years ago advertising that they give developers salaries that are at least two country average. And that wasn't even in the capital (but a 2nd largest city). Here I think we are one of the best paid non-management people (apart from doctors/lawyers)
I am from Europe but have friends in Ukraine among other places. In Ukraine, programmers are paid very well compared to the national average. So well paid that the 20-something programmers gets rockstar status with girls, and rockstar habits with vodka and drugs. This isn't very good for Ukraine startups.
Politically and culturally Ukraine is in Europe. I'm polish, visited Ukraine several times, love the people (we're very similar nations) and I think that it has a great potential. I hope it joins EU some day in the future.
> I think parent meant to say "I am from the European Union".
Not really. I don't know of anyone who identifies by EU citizenship. Not even EU top level politicians. We're all nationals, and even 3rd world refugees becomes citizen of a nation rather than EU.
When speaking to people from US, I usually identify by from [country] or "from Europe". The latter seem to be enough for most mericans that think of EU countries as US states.
Maybe geographically, but it's not in the EU and nobody in/from Europe or the Ukraine would ever say it's in Europe. Just like Russia is also geographically (at least in part) in Europe, but it's by no means European.
I think your condescension is unnecessary, you know nothing about my reading (or Googling) habits.
By any reasonable definition, Ukraine is in Eastern Europe, whether you use geographical, political or historical definitions. This is what Wikipedia says, as do most atlases and the CIA world factbook, in fact I've yet to see a source saying otherwise, but you can surely provide links to one. The EU is not the same as Europe, by that narrow definition, Switzerland is not Europe. Your statement that nobody in/from Europe or Ukraine would say it's in Europe can be disproved with a simple counterexample: I'm from/in Europe and I say so, just as a random sample of my Ukrainian acquaintances.
No comment on Russia being "by no means" European. I guess you'll need to do a lot of Wikipedia editing to remove all references to Tolstoy from the pages on European literature.
Very interesting. You are on to something - I am using Europe as shorthand for Western Europe. When I speak of Eastern Europe I always add Eastern. Just like when I speak of [North] America versus South America or [West] Germany vs East Germany.
However I would say this type of shorthand is far more widespread than UK and Scandinavia. My German friends adds Eastern Europe when speaking of Ukraine, too, as does my Italian friends.
The cultural differences in Europe are far more complex than an East-West divide. Saying that Ukraine has a European culture is like saying India and Japan have "Asian" cultures. It sure doesn't make them the same and frankly, it does not even very similar.
They sure do :) Can't name names but I know at least one of the biggest (and wealthiest) companies in the Rails apps scene pays its remote employees a fair wage by where those employees live, not by what would be acceptable in Chicago.
Wait a sec, are you implying the remote employees live somewhere with a lower cost of living than Chicago? In my experience Chicago is pretty darn cheap, comparable to a place like Berlin.
I also work in Australia (having come from UK after finishing my uni degree last year), and am already being paid $75k AUD (nearly £50k). For this reason I was shocked to see how low the salaries were for London, and working for an Australian company remote in England is what I'll aim to do in the future. Being here has been a great way to form connections.
In Romania an entry level dev gets 30% more than the national average and that raises quickly. In 7-8 years he's able to earn 400%+ more than national average. And still be paid less than an entry level in UK.
Regarding payments to juniors and interns, I know it from the market - I know some salaries of my colleagues. When I started in IT - in 2006, I started with about 230 euros net, which was also decent.
I am talking here about Cluj-Napoca (the second largest city in the country), not the capital, where salaries are better.
So, if you want to live in a place and earn 4-5 times the national average income while doing what you like (programming), come to Romania :))
I'm a Romanian student in Bucharest and tudorconstantin's claims seem on target. The average wage for an intern is 400 euros (based on what I hear from other students) and the starting salary after graduation is about 700 euros.
Here are some internships with posted salary:
Are those internships and jobs aimed at relatively competent students/grads? I'm asking because those salaries would have been considered quite low back in 2008 before I've emigrated.
> For that matter, most places in the world outside the US (and Silicon Valley) tend not to pay software engineers very competitively.
In the US, my experience is that software developers generally are paid competitively. CS and chemical engineering graduates routinely get the highest starting salaries all around the country when it comes to four year degrees.
That starting salary may be $100k in Silicon Valley, $80k in Chicago, and $60k in Nashville, but all three numbers are competitive relative to the local market. In fact, you will find that in comparison to the cost of housing $100k in Silicon Valley is not quite as well paid as you think.
I'm from Ireland, and the government's low tax approach is great for us workers. We get lots of bit US employers setting up here, and hence increasing the competition for developers.
You have to compare like with like: number of days holiday is different (we have different numbers of public holidays); you don't have to pay for health insurance; the numbers here are in sterling not USD; do we value experienced developers more than very new ones; how many have bonuses as a major part of their salary [which this doesn't show]?
Pretty much any full-time developer gig in the US will include employee-provided health insurance in addition to salary, so salaries are still pretty much directly comparable in that sense -- take-home pay shouldn't be that different. I could see that argument being used to justify higher salaries in the UK, since employers don't have that additional expense, but not lower ones.
Sure, a lot of things here are taken care of. But compared to other jobs for smart graduate in the uk, e.g. law (£35-40k as a graduate trainee), investment banking (£40+k as a graduate, rising very quickly and with significant bonus) it is poorly paid.
With law you have to do a two year training course (so effectively two years of training) where they're usually sponsored.
Investment banking is often long hours (9-midnight) plus weekends. Many leave after a year or two or don't make it past 2 years (don't get their contracts renewed after analyst). Also, I'd consider those individuals to be some of the very smart; does this survey really allow one to filter how good they are at their job? There are different levels of software engineer from someone tweaking a wordpress blog template to someone writing assembly code on chips.
Also, what about google and facebook? They pay pretty well, don't they? Also, there are other companies like linkedin and oracle here too. No idea if they pay well or not (no info to base it off)
Working for government contracts as non permanent employee ?
I've worked at investment banks. People are committed, but they're not there after 7 on the whole.
There are smart people, they're the seniors. The juniors are just like everywhere else. There are the actively clueless.
The only good thing about investment banks is that they're more agile than consumer banks. That's probably country dependent though.
Don't think it's like this special place or some crap. It's really not.
On the whole, if you have strong programming skills you're going to be better compensated in the financial sector than at google or facebook. You just have to work with a non software oriented business that doesn't give a shit, and put up with things.
All of that's true except possibly the bonuses. It's probably still worth noting that £50k is worth about $76k at the moment, so most of the London responses so far would be lumped together in the bottom category on the previous poll.
Direct comparisons are difficult though. Price of living differs dramatically. Taxes are different. The risks of switching jobs are different. (e.g. nobody in the UK has to worry about health insurance costs).
Sure is! But when you're spending a third on housing, a third on living and the last third goes to savings and international travel, well that last third goes a lot further on an Australian salary than a London one.
Why 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.
Do 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.
In London, it's incredibly popular to live in roommate situations and have just a single room in a house with shared kitchen/bathroom for this reason. I know a lot of people still live with their parents into their late 20s and pay little or no rent, too.
Currently way out in the boondocks (zone 8). I'm looking to move into Zone 2/3 East London (Shoreditch/Bethnal Green area) to be closer to work. There are quite a few flat shares available for £500-600 pcm, which is my budget. That leaves me with £400/month to live off, which is good enough I suppose.
I live in Scotland near Edinburgh, my first dev job I was earning £13k. It isn't super easy to break into development in the UK but within a year that had about doubled and that and learnt enough to be able to jump ship, which I did.
Now years later, I've happily earning more than the London average by contracting. I ate shit early on because I wanted to get somewhere in an economic time where the young are being screwed. I think it was probably worth it, but only until your experience and talent matures a bit.
I made very nearly that as a fresh graduate with an unremarkable degree and no relevant experience. Out in the sticks with more reasonable living expenses. Thirteen years ago, and I'd come close on several better paying positions. (Tip BTW, £400/mo after rent won't be enough for independent living.)
You're letting loyalty cloud your judgement; you can do better for yourself. Counting pennies isn't fun and you don't need to.
Bethnal Green isn't exactly a lovely place to live. It's saving grace is it's proximity to central London/Shoreditch, but there's nothing stand-out about it at all. It seems like no one respects it - every day I walk home from the station past at least 1 drunk/crackhead and rubbish all over the street.
Yeah this is my experience as well. I was fortunate to start on quite a good salary and have managed to maintain that while changing jobs. London certainly isn't the place if you want to make a big career though. Even a start up here is so much harder than in America. People just don't want to invest much until you have a solid business.
Employers will always have the upper hand because in the western world discussing/knowing salaries of peers is considered taboo( I never understood this as somebody who comes from the east where asking friends and peers their salary is very normal). Level the playing field. Discuss your salary more openly and you will see things get fairer( if that's a word). Not all will make the same but you will get to what you deserve very quickly. It also helps by letting you get an idea of what you need to do to get to the next level. Would love to hear the communities thoughts on this somewhat contrarian view.
Some people seem dissapointed that developers are not being paid more than airline pilots: it's just not realistic outside of a boom economy (see: bay area).
Why is that not realistic? An airline pilot can only fly one plane at a time. No matter how much he/she trains there are severe physical limitations on the value they can create. Software engineers can easily write code that generates millions of dollars of ongoing value and scales infinitely.
It is when compared to other professions a GP (family doctor) earns on average well over £120k very few devs with say 10 years experience earn any where near that.
GPs in the UK earn an average of £103k if they're a partner in a practice or £54k to £81k if they work for a primary care trust - that is if they work directly for the NHS unlike many GPs who are self employed but contract their services to the NHS but who don't work for the NHS. [1]
They also have to go through a five or six year medical school and five years of post-graduate training along with profesional exams (MRCGP exams). They're also bit of an anomaly compared to other doctors in the UK - consultant salaries are between 75k and 100k according to the official pay bands [2]. The only way that most doctors can make serious money is by having a private practice along with the risks and costs that come with it (for point of reference, my other half is an obs and gynae surgeon and in that field the private insurance is £150k a year).
And would the average engineer earn any where near that given the same amount of professional development/work experiance. And professional engineers often have to have indemnity insurance.
I bet the average Ceng doesn't earn anywhere near 100k.
And your forgetting that consultants often have a private practice on the side from thier NHS gig.
Never underestimate how little some fresh faced university graduates know and how unscrupulous some employers are.
In university you're surrounded by clever people who can programme (if you're in a CS degree). It can make one think that one is nothing special, and everyone can programme.
I recently saw Accenture advertising for a load of intermediate PHP developers in my region. They were being advertised through third party recruiters, so I got to see the salary, which was around 20K. On this occasion it was even lower than design agencies, who already struggle to find developers on their pay levels.
Hmmm, this is pretty different to my experience (as both employee and employer), perhaps it depends on the skillset and exact location.
I have a (non-finance related) start-up in central London and it's pretty difficult to find skilled developers with 4-5 years experience who are asking for less than £50k p/a.
And I would expect no less. Considering the travel card (anywhere between 1.6-3k year) and the cost of living (at least 1-1.5K/month. How can anyone honestly expect someone to work for less than 60k, even as a mid tier dev?
I hear so many companies that whine about the lack of perm developers then go ahead and hire a contract dev at 500/day. That is the market at play, if our city cannot pay our developers enough to sustain a reasonable standard of living then they wont work.
Honestly I'm glad to see it. The more developers that follow the market (contracting) the better. Hopefully that'll wake a few people up and we'll see salaries start hitting the numbers that are needed to live in this over priced city.
That said, if I WFH 100% 50-60k would be fantastic but that's not acceptable these days.
Heh. That's me. I remember having a very annoying conversation with a recruiter many years back when they were trying to persuade me I should take less money since London was such a cool place, and I was saying that I wanted more money to have to put up with such an awful location ;)
At one point we were outsourcing to Portugal. I asked one of the guys when he was visiting here in the Bay Area what a recent grad would be making typically. He said about 1200 Euro per month at one of the Big Four consulting companies.
Now we're outsourcing to Romania. I haven't had the heart yet to ask one of them.
That does really quite grate. I got a 21k graduate software engineering job, when most graduate software jobs were in the 18-22k range, 13 years ago. It's like the salary range has been static for more than a decade, inflation be damned.
If you look at the stats over the past two decades nearly all wages have been near static regardless of profession. No wonder there is a credit crisis...
France is completely different, she is employed either hourly- a maximum of 35 hours/week- or employed daily, ie. 218 days a year (for starters).
EDIT: @nawitus:
Sorry but your data is totally useless for this purpose. 1) it's the whole economy, not just programmers and 2) it includes part time workers! To imply that full-time programmers in London are working on average less than a 40 hour week is so far from reality.
The average hours worked in France is 1500, UK 1600 and USA 1800[1]. Therefore if you factor in hours worked, a developer in France should be paid 83% of average salary in America and 94% of average salary in the United Kingdom. This of course assumes that everything else is equal (which is untrue). A 30k salary in UK should translate into 28k salary in France when you factor in the number of hours worked. We should really find the difference in hours worked for softare engineers, of course.
> The average hours worked in France is 1500, UK 1600 and USA 1800[1]. Therefore if you factor in hours worked, a developer in France should be paid 83% of average salary in America and 94% of average salary in the United Kingdom. This of course assumes that everything else is equal (which is untrue).
Notably, the longer hours worked in the US compared to Europe comes at the expense of less per-hour productivity in most studies I've seen, though not enough to result in less per-worker productivity. If that's true within Europe as well, the value of the time worked would be closer than the number of hours would suggest.
The total cost to her employer is probably triple what her pre-tax wage is. It's nearly triple here in belgium as well (very similar taxation system). The net wage people make is maybe a quarter of what they cost to an employer. All those government services have to get funded somehow. This is very different to the US where the gap between net wage and total employee cost is much smaller but you have to spend more of your net wage on things you would get subsidized in western europe.
Maybe not for web or mobile development, but without getting into specifics I'm thinking of friends with PhDs directly using their skills in optimization and machine learning in their jobs.
