Hacker News Reader

Comment by esskay | Hacker News Reader

They're in the extreme minority. Most software dev roles in the UK top out between £40 and £50k, £60k if you're lucky.

That bad? Huh. Last time I was a permanent employee in the UK was nearly a decade ago now, and I think I was on something like £37k, I think some of my friends (Cambridge graduates and slightly older than me), even back then, were on £65-75k.

I kinda assumed inflation would have raised all of those by about 50% since then.

I am not a top software engineer( (otherwise I'd be working fang tbh) and I earn 85k up north. Hybrid role that's local as well.

I know people that earn a lot more than me.

It's just the recruiters are a joke and advertise silly salaries from local companies that are out touch. You have to know what companies are serious or not, and just apply direct or via recommendations.

I used to work at bet365. They don't even offer that to the permies (65K for Senior), if you stay there a bunch of years maybe 85k is doable.

365 are probably the best playing place outside of Manchester in the NW. So I find this rather hard to believe.

Took me about 5 seconds

https://www.civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk/csr/index.cgi?SI...

Those are government, so probably have even better pensions than private sector.

And there was job advertised for lead software engineer by computer futures(probably an agency) for 80k

I didn't even look deep. I know there are even better jobs.

There are jobs that pay more than 65k. Just have to know where to look.

If you're working for undercapitalized local private companies, then yeah not going pay very much.

I'd also recommend looking at remote jobs. My really smart friends who can beat the competition got 100k+ jobs working remote that are officially based in London but they work up north. Then come down for meeting once or twice every few months.

A lot of the fintechs allow for fully remote and pay well.

We are comparing salaries of Software Engineers between the US and the UK. A Senior Developer position won't pay more than 90K in the UK outside of London. In the US I see well over that for a Senior Developer position.

Even in your examples (which are higher position than what was being discussed) they didn't top out past 90K (just like I said). Whereas in the US you can earn much more quite easily.

You've moved the goal posts. You said 60k if your lucky.

I just found multiple jobs that pay more than that easily.

85k job up north is a comparable lifestyle than 100k+ job in London.

> You've moved the goal posts. You said 60k if your lucky.

No I didn't. I suggest you re-read the thread. I said 75K-90K max.

> I just found multiple jobs that pay more than that easily.

There are always certainly outliers. However most of those places usually have a bunch of iffy things going on e.g. you have to live at your workstation/laptop, or they are in the middle of no where. Enforced pair programming (fuck that btw), or have a stupid interview process (no I won't go through the humiliation rituals anymore).

However the vast majority of positions are paying max 65-70K for a Senior Dev.

I am glad that you managed to find something. But the rest of us haven't been as lucky.

"Most software dev roles in the UK top out between £40 and £50k, £60k if you're lucky" was the comment I was replying to.

But I agree we don't compete with the USA. Even London struggles with that.

Yeh I figured that. No worries.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com