Salaries are increasing slowly in London due to the realities of market competition, but not as fast as they should be. I think it is important to note that investors and indeed managers/founders tend to erroneously focus on quantity over quality when it comes to engineers. Instead of paying two very good senior engineers 200k each, they think they can get away with the same quality and quantity of work by hiring four mediocre or entry-level engineers at 50k each, saving 200k.

I suspect this is because they consider the work that an engineer does as auxiliary in nature and that Taylorist presumptions can be applied to them (modern day factory workers).