Wait, could you explain to us outsiders "the way the City works?" Are bonuses that important?
Some places have very big bonus' with average salary. I have a few friends on 35-45% bonus on £35k a year as swdevs.
In the City, you get hired based on a "total comp" package that includes salary and a practically guaranteed bonus, that can be as much as your base salary or even more.
Well that changes everything, maybe we should reboot this entire thread.
That is a minority of programmers, even for London.
"Practically guaranteed" nowadays means about 70% probability in finance :). There are almost no hard guarantees anymore.
"The City" is usually taken to mean the world of London finance, and in finance, bonuses are generally huge.
"The City" is a small area of London, in terms of business, the US equivalent of a financial district.
It's the UK term for Wall Street. It doesn't have as much of the geographic connotation these days - working in Canary Wharf or a Mayfair hedge fund can all come under the phrase of 'working the in the city'
The city is certainly a geographic area. It's the City of London, an entirely separate city with it's own government and everything.
Unless the devs in question are building trading algos or other front-line work the bonus isn't often much more than other industries. The idea you're going to get a 100%+ base salary bonus when you work building order resolutions for a T2 investment bank in the City is laughable.