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Comment by Iftheshoefits | Hacker News Reader

What about pay, though? Here in the US, at least from my perspective, .NET contracting is slightly better than PHP contracting. That is, most of the .NET jobs are (relatively) poor paying with the kind of cheap, demanding client we've all had horror story experiences with. Exceptions would be in finance, where you get to be treated like shit because you aren't a tradeer.

One of my colleagues lumped "webdev" (of the sleazy WP theme shop variety) and .NET jobs in the same category as a "cesspool". I can't disagree.

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Pay is good. If you're good at it, it's pretty amazing. You can pull £650/day on contract if you know your shit. If you don't but can drive Visual Studio, £400/day is easy.

Are those figures for London, or are you seeing them UK-wide?

Take 20-30% off for outside M25 i.e. in line with cost of living reduction.

And another 20% off if any further north than Oxford or Cambridge.

Please add a note to that £650 - financial experience required. I can pull £800 with Scala and Java.

Though I am not about to sell my soul for the £200 difference to spend that on psychotherapy afterwards.

How much / what sort of financial experience is required?

Incidentally bugger all in most cases I reckon unless you're working in trading. There's a bit of a vacuum at the moment so standards are low. Most orgs are willing to drag you through the relevant training.

In all my years of working in the financial sector (NOT trading I will add!), about as complex as it got was numeric precision, rounding, equation of a line and curve fitting which was all pretty easy. Oh and deciphering lots of poorly written regulation and rules.

Don't hit trading unless you like snorting coke and 100 hour weeks.

You can learn brush up on the terminology pretty quickly - the IBs will hire any solid developers who know their platform well enough (so java devs who appreciate core java + modern ecosystem; python devs who have experience with scipy/numpy etc. A big part though is willingness to jump in and remain for a while, to be able to tolerate the mindless processes and procedures that come with massive companies in a regulated industry.

"How much / what sort of financial experience is required?"

One year perm at a bank or a project in a bank as a consultant. Investment banking and FX experience is valued much more.

If you never worked in any financial institution(like for an insurer), then there is maybe 1% chance you're getting a contract in one.

For £800 that's 5-10 years of experience with majority of it with one of the big consultancies(IBM GBS, Accenture, Deloitte) and a few big financial projects. Granted that's an introduction rate, that can go up if you negotiate well.

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