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Comment by quickthrower2 | Hacker News Reader

Oh yeah 2001! 6 months and dozens of applications to get a job offer. I would have done 100s of applications had their been that many to apply to.

Low points was being rejected from a job maintaining access databases in a small town. Being rejected from another job because I hadn’t suggested manually unrolling a loop as an alternative solution to a problem and I said “oh yeah you could do that I guess” (feedback: bad communicator I withhold information), and a 2 day hoop jumping affair for a dev job involving fake meetings where you had to make up bullshit.

Fuck graduating 2001. Also probably heavily affected my lifetime earnings as I started on £18k.

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FWIW £18k in 2001 is ~£30k in today's money which is on the upper end of graduate starting salaries even for today

Im especially glad I’m not British - in America my $150k TC out of undergrad was mediocre.

Yeah America seems to have the nice combo of reasonably price places to live and high tech salaries. Since “remote, but US” is common I do t see why you can’t take your $150k and live off a quarter of that somewhere and save most!

I recently got an offer that was $175k base, full remote and felt comfortable enough declining it (though most of that is because Im optimizing for liquid total compensation so….) $200k total compensation liquid is still mediocre for a mid level engineer but at least I don’t pay London real estate prices.

It's because some areas where you can get a house for $1,500 per month instead of $4,000 come with caveats like neighbors with guns and hellish weather

Isn't it deadly ironic that the country that has such terrible health care is also the same country where people get shot all the time?

I love it that San Jose is going to require gun owners to carry liability insurance if they want to carry weapons. It's about time they started paying for the health care and rehabilitation and funerals of all the people they shoot, and stopped whining that they're victims of government is oppression, when they're perfectly complacent with everyone paying for licensing and registration and insurance of cars.

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/california/articles/...

>San Jose to Require Gun Owners to Carry Liability Insurance

>San Jose officials have passed the first law in the country that requires gun owners to carry liability insurance and pay a fee to cover taxpayers’ costs associated with gun violence.

Literally anywhere that isn't the US really. Being the world's greatest empire has its benefits.

The US isn't really an empire. Much more of a hegemony.

This article from "A Collection Of Unmitigated Pedantry" goes in depth about how historians would classify the US as a state:

https://acoup.blog/2021/07/02/collections-my-country-isnt-a-...

Just an FYI to the Brits on this post - I've found US startups are happy to hire remote engineers from the UK. Might take a little bit of effort but it's surprisingly possible to get a six figure job quickly.

How do they handle things like payroll taxes, benefits and such?

Make a UK company and they pay that as a contractor, you sort it out with HMRC yourself.

The Americans seem to be much higher paying, greater variety of roles, happy to let you remote.

Now is the time by the way, I was blown away by how hot the market is. Maybe jump in there before WFH starts to get retracted, you can do more interviews before you're back in the office.

Are you contracting as a quant dev in the US? Can't imagine how much that lands you!

Bearing in mind that 30k a year goes a lot further given that there's no need for health insurance and student loans are effectively just a 6% tax on earnings above 27k until either your loan is repaid or it's been 30 years since graduating.

While it's true that UK salaries are quite a bit lower than other countries if I'm honest if I earned £150k a year the only difference in how I live my life would be that I'd be driving a Tesla. 30k is more than enough to live comfortably on, even in areas with a fairly high cost of living.

Outside London, sure, but a London one-bed apartment 40 minutes away from city will run you ~1300/montn, that £18,000 a year with councill tax and bills.

Health insurance is generally covered by your company as a benefit, and if it’s not when you’re in your early 20s it’s generally only a few hundred dollars a month. On a salary of $150k it’s pretty insignificant. Average student loan debt in the US for a bachelors degree is $30k (too high of course) but when paid out over decades is also insignificant against $150k.

I’m not making a value judgement about whether health insurance or student loans should exist but just pointing out that your comment seems like a false rationalization about why a much lower salary in a different country is okay.

I didn’t have student loans because state schools are cheap. I pay like $75 out of pocket for my health insurance per month and most of that is my HSA contribution.

For what it’s worth I can’t afford a Tesla either making $200k now and live in a 450sqft studio.

This is only true of California, and maybe Boston / NYC.

Overall maybe, but certainly not for CS/any engineering. Even if you only count engineering employers.

>which is on the upper end of graduate starting salaries even for today

Do you have a source for this? Anecdotally, my impression is that graduates in any degree can reach £30k with reasonable effort. Specifically for graduates in tech, the top end is something like £100k nowadays, and the average would be more like £45k.

"Also probably heavily affected my lifetime earnings as I started on £18k."

I graduated in 2014 and also started on £18k, as a junior C++ programmer :P Don't beat yourself up on it.

I don't beat myself up. I had 3 offers. 2 for 18k and one for 17k for the government. The fact I had 3 offers but nothing before that for 6 months was probably an artifact of getting better at interviewing. The job I eventually got I was accused of being "too polished".

The highest starting salary I applied for was 25k, and the highest I heard anyone get was 40k, but working on a trading desk for 12 hours a day.

>6 months and dozens of applications to get a job offer.

I honestly can't tell if this is supposed to be good or bad. Graduated in 2020 and spent over a year looking for work with several hundred applications sent. Ended up enrolling in a masters because of it, only got a job last month.

Back in those days developers were still doing most of the hiring decisions so with a sanely looking resume you could get an interview and if you could pass for knowing programming you could get a job (apart from in the post-dotcom bust and 2008 when firms just didn't hire).

At some point during the 20 years since, orgs decided that HR was to handle hiring. HR trying to add value by having the BEST candidate in their mind and decides that nice-to-haves are promoted to requirements, anyone over 55 (because they would not stay long enough, even while younger ones change jobs within 2 years) is culled as is anyone with less than 5 years of experience (unless possibly if you're below 25).

Then orgs go around complaining that it's hard to recruit people, Go figure.

I thought it was bad, since most applied for jobs while studying (the big companies that come to the uni type of thing) and had jobs lined up. I decided not to disrupt my studies with this so waited until I graduated to look for work.

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