Ask HN: You make more than £150k/year in London, what do you do? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: You make more than £150k/year in London, what do you do?

23 pointslondonjobs26 comments

I'm almost at 150k, born & raised in London, and I currently live there.

I fly out to other cities on weekends to party. Berlin, Paris, Reykyavik. London is a great launchpad to check out other cities.

I'm saving & building passive income (developing mobile/web apps and charging monthly fees) so I can do this perpetually, Once I hit £10K a month passively I'm going to cut the cord and leave for good.

EDIT: I'm 27, 4 years experience as a backend software developer

Congrats! Can you share any of the saas products/web apps that you're working on? I'm going to start building a little side project this month. Really keen to hear about how you're getting users to these apps as well! Indie Hackers is a great blog for reading up about other self funded services and SAAS products.

I make apps for other people, and then charge to host them/provide minor upkeep. Things like web apps for evening classes, with schedules, integrated payments etc. So they aren't my products, I just make them for a client

Seems to be some info in his profile.

I'm guessing he was asking what line of work you are in and not what you do with your money once earned though I find your answer interesting as well.

Oh, I've edited my post in case you're right

Which industry are you in (a list of similar companies also works i.e. GOOG/MSFT/FB) and do you manage people?

£150k at 27 sounds exceptional unless you are a contractor.

I'm a contractor, staying in one place doesn't suit me

Before taxes, I guess?

Yes before taxes

Are you in finance?

Nope

Ok. Are you in a B2B business?

Right now, I'm contracting for the government

Hey, wanna grab a coffee? [Email in my profile]

I'm 28 and work as an IT Security Sales Engineer/Solutions Consultant in London. Typically I'm called when a Security Operations Centre is being built; mostly insurance/finance type companies but not always.

Previously a Java back-end dev, then Security Analyst, stint of consulting and now FTE Sales Engineer for approx 3 years.

Last year I made around £175k. This year I will definitely make at least that, but it's likely I'll be closer to £200k.

My total package is broken down roughly as 50% basic salary, 25% commission, 25% stock vesting monthly which I auto sell and take in my pay slip.

I have quite niche skills in IT Security, and I'm consistently ranked at the top of my team worldwide. Working for a major company.

Out of interest, how did you go from a back-end Java dev role to a security analyst?

Back-end dev at a security company, built a lot of software the analysts were using. Seemed more interesting at the time than development, agreed with management that I could slowly move into the role - turns out I was right, really interesting job!

Interesting, I figured that might have been the case. I'm looking for a new role at the moment and I'm trying to find something which will also allow me to pick up a niche skill while on the job. It's a strategy that I've seen work for a lot of well paid devs.

As an aside, I make just over 1/10th of that, 50km from London as a junior dev.

How many years on the job? Is it your first after university?

My first job out of Uni was with a (terrible) civil engineering firm in Merseyside that paid £19000 when I first joined. I was just happy to be getting my foot in the door.

To those who respond to this, can you also please add your age/experience/title/industry, and base/bonus %.

I work in Finance and make half of this so it would be interesting to know where the ceiling is.

Contractors aside, full-time devs have similar salaries, with bonuses in a finance sector in London. Also, usually it's "front-end", i.e. closer to the trader job. Infrastructure ("back-end") gals make less.

Working with traders is usually referred to as "front office". It's usually much more interesting, but also more demanding and stressful. Back office - trade processing, settlement, payments etc - is lower status and lower pay, but also less stressful.

Much more interesting if you're into finance. But there are people who are more interested in tech-side, infrastructure implementation, etc...

I would assume a lot would be contractors.

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