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Comment by timruffles | Hacker News Reader

Definitely higher than half that. SWEs at FB, Google etc will get >100k. Even aside from that I regularly see higher than half that - e.g random example from a quick Google at 85k https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Salary/Travelex-Backend-Engineer... - 90th percentile of Java roles are over 100k - https://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/jobs/uk/java.do.

Secondly a pretty average contractor day rate is 500pd, which is over 100k, and there are a lot of contractors. I think it makes eng salaries in the UK seem lower than they are. Many of my friends went contract and would never go back. The senior market is therefore hard to hire for, outside trendy/exciting companies, unless you pay for contractors.

That said, we should all be asking for raises <3! By all I mean everyone apart from the C suites of public companies

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I've been contracting for just over a year in London as a JS dev. £500 is a good day rate, I've seen as low as £250 advertised. It also varies a little, for example front-end gigs using React will generally pay better than Vue (a shame for me in particular as I prefer Vue).

With the IR35 changes I've been looking at switching back to full-time, but the salary ranges are just so low in comparison, it's quite disheartening really. Most comparable full-time positions offer about a third of what I make contracting.

I also expected contractors to be more highly skilled, but in my experience it's almost the opposite. I recently worked with a devops contractor earning probably around £100k who had set the organisation wide SSO administrator password to "Password1".

If I didn't have so many commitments in the UK I would seriously consider trying to move to the US. The market here seems completely bizarre.

Seconding this comment. Equal Experts, which is a large consultancy / contracting firm pays around £500 per day or a bit higher if my info is correct. I know people working in finance whose rates range up to around £1000 per day. Earning around £200K per year as a contractor is not unusual. I know many people who do this.

That itjobswatch java London: London median annual salary £75,000

I'm not sure big tech and finance are representative of London.

Sure, but since that’s a median not a cap, doesn’t that point to ‘a more realistic cap is not even half that’ (75k) being a bit pessimistic?

There are a lot of people in finance in London, also a lot of big tech (seen the current, and new, Google buildings at KGX?), quite aside from a lot of contractors :)

Not really. My intention was to clarify that's not what most people should think of as potential earnings. ~1 000 000 businesses in London - how many are big tech or finance? Even ftse 100 which are not big tech/finance don't pay as high as median. Others on that board: C# £65, python £60, php £60, erlang £80. In fact, the more I think about it the more I think there's something fishy about that site.

edit: ah, those stats are based on advertised salaries, not actual salaries after the bait and switch - so they're all inflated.

The answer to how many places are big tech or finance is a truckload.

There are 10 000 employees in every building in canary wharf (the financial center with tens of banks). There are a similar amount of employees in the new buildings of Google, Apple and co. Plus multiple large companies but not necessarily as great. That's tens of thousands of roles to fill.

Those buildings are hardly full of developers. Most of them are accountants and boatfuls of bullshit jobs. I know because I work among them.

Look at Canary Wharf at lunchtime and tell me with a straight face that those are developers.

Of course no building is full of a single thing. The one I worked in had full floors full of developers, that adds up to quite a decent amount.

Ironically, accountants and finance folks eat at their desks, so if you see people outside at lunch time, they might very well be technology folks. They'd be wearing shirts though, easily confused with business people.

Please. 75k is the package good people can get 1-2 years after moving to London, basically when leaving their first company -whatever job they could get really- to move to an actual company that doesn't screw them over.

It's true that there are startups that try to get away with hiring people out of school for peanuts, from all across Europe. They often have a turnover of half the staff leaving within a year and it's no coincidence.

That hasn't been my experience. 75k is not earth-shaking, but also not something that i would expect someone with 2 years of experience to get in London. What companies do you think would pay that to such a person?

How about every single company? The better ones give 10% or 20% bonus annually, so really easy to get there, even while unaware of it.

I worked in startups. I've seen first hands employees being abused and leaving in drove after 1-2 years to get significantly more, literally anywhere else. Name any company in London, probably have some ex colleagues there.

That being said, I am talking about developers who can handle a HackerRank test and a coding interview on the whiteboard. It's not a high bar by any means but it is something.

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