Ask HN: Am I underpaid? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Am I underpaid?

6 pointsrecursion18 comments

I'm a third year degree student at Dundee University, currently working part time as a web developer near Edinburgh in Scotland. It's full stack work with me writing PHP, SQL, HTML5/CSS/JS, including the use of tools like Git, Bower, Node, SASS etc. I am being paid £7 an hour. On the face of it does this seem like a low wage for the work I do?

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Yes, you are underpaid. Should you try to negotiate you salary or find a similar job that pays more? Yes. Should you quit? No. Even if you get paid nothing, the experience you gain and the fact that you can put something onto your resume/portfolio is hugely valuable.

I second this

In my opinion (of a Midwest USA programmer with no sense of the market rates/conditions or customs in your area) you are not underpaid. Your employer sees you like an intern.

People who frequent this site will say you are underpaid because they don't place much additional value in experience/education and forget that most people can rent a full house for less than half the price of a bad studio apartment in Silicon Valley.

Could you negotiate to be paid more? Yes. Will your pay at a salaried job after you graduate be totally unrelated to what you're paid now? Yes.

I went to school at a Canadian university with a coop program. Engineering coop interns were regularly paid upwards of 20$/h.

But yeah, as with all remuneration, it's always very dependent on your area.

Was it Waterloo? If so, I have a few questions I'd like to ask if you don't mind

The company I work in Silicon Valley for pays our software engineering interns $5000/month (USD).

Yes, but you'll pay a third of that for short term housing.

You are gaining valuable experience, which over the long term will be of great value. You need to have a longer term view of your situation. I know people, and I've heard and read many stories regarding folks who want to get in the tech business, but no one will give them a chance. It's not permanent, it's just a stepping stone to something bigger down the road.

Reminds me of when I was paid £6.66 / hr back in 2000 to do some VB6 work in a northern-England location. It was enough to pay for the rent / food over the summer holiday, but I appreciated the experience. So I think 7 would be underpaid compared to that, allowing for inflation. Well a true Scotsman knows how to get value for money :-)

I agree with the "ask for more but don't quit" sentiment (unless there are other reasons that make it worth quitting). It will pay dividends when you try to get your first full time job, as it proves you are employable and you will even have a reference to help you. So do good work there and be nice to them when you leave.

P.S. Try to get a MV* framework experience in PHP that will translated nicely into Ruby/.NET job rather than doing vanilla PHP ... if you can. Convince them to try it out if they are not, and then you have a nice "I'm awesome" story for your full-time job interview.

Here's another data point for you:

i was hired as a casual to develop software in an academic environment after finishing my undergrad & honours studies. I did this for a few months before lining up a permanent job. This was backend python, numpy, scipy, git, applied mathematics. & roughly full-time work, as i wasnt studying any more.

~2009; Australia; AUD$35 / hour.

pretty good money when one is still in the habit of living like a student on < AUD$15k / year.

edit: different perspective:

* what alternatives are available to you?

if you can find another place willing to employ you for more, you could switch jobs.

* what alternatives are available to your employer?

if your employer can replace you with another eager intern/student at a similar rate, they have no particular motivation to pay you more, unless you've gained relevant experience there that is valuable to them, or they consider you particularly capable and wish to keep you around, etc.

Of course it is low paid, it's lower than the living wage and you're hardly doing menial unskilled labour.

But crucially you're gaining work experience which will give you an edge when you start looking for jobs once you graduate (which if you've just started 3rd year you'll presumably be doing this time next year). Even if you stay in Scotland you should be able to find programming jobs paying in the ~£25k range for new STEM graduates.

Could you earn more? Yep. But probably more important if the hours are flexible, the work interesting etc.

Depends on your experience (lots of other comments assuming you have no prior experience as you're at Uni). It sounds low when you can get like £6-6.50 working at Tesco.

Just make sure it doesn't stay that way for long. By that I mean: gain valuable experience, work hard at being "so good they can't ignore" you" and get yourself a better position when you graduate. Good luck!

That's about a £13,000 salary. As a third year student you are probably thought of as an intern. In the UK a very good intern salary is probably £18000 in London (some would think this a grad level salary) or £15000 else where. You'll could possibly negotiate a little more but at your stage in your career the experience is far more valuable.

Its 10$ and hour US.

Just a point of reference: our bioimformatics programmer intern (in a masters degree program) make about 17$ hour (£11).

an ot silly question, just seriously curious: how is Node used in this stack? To serve php pages?, as the webserver?

Probably to run tasks e.g. gulp/grunt :)

Yes, a little but you are still a student. You should be getting paid a lot more.

Is this a "web agency" perchance?

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