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Comment by Jabbles | Hacker News Reader

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.

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. :)

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.

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