Hacker News Reader

Comment by jaggederest | Hacker News Reader

£20k ~ $31k

To save anyone else having to do the math.

Also, yes, your rates are still very low, Mr. Hollis, although I suppose it depends on how many days you worked on billable projects. I would expect to see more like £40k for six months given your CV.

View on HN

For comparison, top† graduate software engineers (in London) will be on ~£35k/year.

†Not like "won IOI" top, but I imagine Google/Microsoft/FB etc. has a graduate starting salary around that.

From my experience that's also the very very best graduates. I don't know of anyone who's gone in at that figure.

I was earning just less than £35k two years after graduating with a 2.1 ( not sure what the equivalent is in American university terms ). And at that point was earning considerably more than anyone else I knew who graduated at the same time.

I went from GBP 33k to 40k within a year after graduating, in 2001. This was for an investment bank though. (London)

Banking/finance does seem to be the industry which breaks the standard, especially in London.

I think I've mentioned here before, but I know a friend of a friend who supposedly earns £50k a year as a Java developer for a bank, but didn't know what a constructor was.

The mind boggles.

Probably because he never used one, all his classes came from factories :)

I was earning north of 60k after ~three years experience with no degree (and mediocre grades in the courses I'd taken). London, non-bank-finance. I had literally nothing spectacular on my CV. Feel free to get in touch if you need pointers.

I work in London and from the job interviews I have been to and the people I know working in London, £35k for a graduate is very high. As others have stated, jobs in finance/banking will be paying more and might be closer to £35k.

I took a year out of Uni to do a placement / internship. Was paid 17k for that. Left uni and went straight to work at another consultancy for 34k. Lasted 10 months before going to a smaller company that are now paying me 44k.

Not a standard salary path I admit, but it is possible to play the market if you are a good technical and business person.

Edit: All salaries are in £ (pounds). Edit: I am based in London: Edit: I am not in banking.

I am very impressed.

I think some people have a natural "salesmen" inside them and when it comes to salary negotiation always do well. I don't feel I'm as fortunate, but am definitely working on it. :)

absolutely. you should look for work on jobserve. i assume you look for php work? it pays less than js, which pays less than java, but a quick look at php contracts in london shows them between £300pd to £450pd - so as above, £40k for 6m

Again this figure assumes that I've worked 9-5 Monday to Friday for six months. This has most definitely not been the case.

As for the jobs advertised on sites like jobserve. Most of these require you to work on site as a contractor which right now isn't something I want to do. Freelancing for me is a lifestyle choice, not necessarily a financial one.

Again this might change in a few years, I'm getting older and want to start a family, and so this lifestyle might not work for me then.

I just hope that my time spent freelancing is seen as a positive on my CV in future, if indeed I do need to make that jump back into full time employment.

Just to clarify something, you state that you would not want to work on site as a contractor. Have you been working from home on these jobs? If so, have you had to go on site to secure these jobs first? What has been the on site/remote ratio?

Mostly from home, some clients I've only spoken to via email, not even a skype call. Others I've had meetings at their offices, it all depends on the client.

It's an interesting, in fact it's a fascinating way of working.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com