Reading some of the amounts listed is a bit depressing, I thought that the increased cost of living in London would justify salaries and rates much higher than the average.
By contrast I know from personal experience you can earn the same or better than what's listed here outside of London and enjoy the lower cost of living.
In my experience, contract rates in London have been dropping like a stone in the last 2 years. I'm still not sure why that is, but feel forced to start planning my escape...
Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle, Bristol, Liverpool... probably in that order. I've heard good things about Glasgow, Birmingham and Cardiff too. The North West has been good to me and I've never really had to leave the area because there's pretty good transportation links over a wide area with a large population.
And I've lived and worked in Berlin too, it's nice, but by no means the perfect solution. And y'know... it means I can live close to family by being in the UK.
I think you're missing a word .. but yes, parts of the highlands and islands are definitely further away in time from London than Paris is. I think even Manchester may take longer, at least until HS2 is operational.
(The first link isn't very encouraging! "As a consequence I had to visit my dear friend the physiotherapist to check my displaced vertebrae and super swollen trapezius muscles that didn’t let me get off my bed after travelling nonstop for 6 months"!)
lol yeah! I would never commute from Barcelona like this guy, but just puts into perspective how fast can you be very far.
I once had to visit a customer a Friday and a Monday (so there was no big point on staying the whole weekend in a hotel), having to drive each day 5 hours each direction. That was without leaving the UK. Apparently this guy makes it quicker from Barcelona to Bracknell (not even London, which would take less time IMHO).
Edinburgh works for me, although it seems skewed towards multinationals and banks rather than small companies. I nearly went to work for "Clydespace" in Glasgow.
I too have heard good things about Liverpool these days.
You should try Nottingham too. There is at least 1 major brand with deep pockets offering very interesting amounts of money for developers at the moment.
I'm in nottingham. Would be interested in any opportunities or some ideas. Boots, capital1, reuters seem to be the major ones. I'm currently contracting in smart metering.
Either way it's a losing game, consider a company like Google - how would they attract new employees on either scheme given that the company has been around for 15+ years?
The only people who win are those who get in early, or invest big. Any IPO ultimately results in people earning money who don't "work" for that money - that means the actual workers lose out everytime.
So getting paid way above market and working at a place where software engineering talent is highly respected and valued is "losing out"?
I'm sorry but this entitled attitude just grates at me. If you are in SV getting paid 3-5 times the median household income you already are in the 1% and you already have all the advantages in terms of upward mobility. If you want to earn millions go out and start your own company, it is ridiculous to demand a high salary and a high equity payout. You are not entitled to anything except what you can negotiate.
There is nothing inherent in software engineering that makes it worth $100k minimum per head, it is only worth that much if it supports a business that can earn that much. The fact that SV is one of the bright spots in the economy of the last decade has really started to go to software engineers heads. If you believe you are worth more than what you are being offered, the only way to prove it is to go out and build a business yourself. You can't look at the 1% of the 1% who got a lucky windfall from being in the right place at the right time, and use that as your baseline for "fairness". Try facing the economic struggles that 50% of the country is dealing with, and then tell me how bad Google is screwing its employees.
2. Working somewhere that software engineering talent is highly respected is no measure of fiscal compensation
3. Those advantages of upward mobility are learnt, or acquired skills that people work at. There is no opportunity for them to be in the same position as a 1%er living off their parents money to invest and then continue to get rich(er)
4. You imply that employees have the ability to negotiate on-par with any investor
5. Your last point about $100k is odd, that's just supply and demand in a free market - and the sentiment is doubley-odd given that employee salaries have stagnated since the 70's, SV salaries have been proven to be (somewhat) rigged, also it is in any companies corporate interests to pay the lowest possible amount for any resource.
Lastly, your point about the 1% of the 1% is off-topic - and I agree that they're not necessarily to blame for the widening gap between rich and poor - but without proper incentives for the 99% to go to work, then that 1% of wealth could become worthless if society revolts because of the disproportionate distribution.
My point is simply that alternative vehicles for employee remuneration need to exist beyond the status-quo that's legally existed for decades.
You specifically called out Google in your comment. As a result your arguments feel odd, since Google has a reputation for high salaries and high quality of life. If you specifically mention Google as a problem, you must hate the vast majority of the industry that both doesn't compensate as well and doesn't offer comparable quality of life. In other words, if you aren't happy as a software engineer at Google, where would you be happier?
I did not say Google is a problem, I said that either the current mechanism or the proposed mechanism would present a problem for companies (such as Google) when hiring new staff.
> Any IPO ultimately results in people earning money who don't "work" for that money - that means the actual workers lose out everytime.
It is wrong to believe that people would invest large amounts of money randomly without spending significant amounts of their time to make sure the investment will create them some returns.
Also they have the risk to actually loose 100% of their investment, which some guy employed at Google with a 6 figure income doesn't have.
Of course they'll need more profit to cover for the risk.
Think about it this way: If there were no investors there wouldn't be a Google or Facebook as we know it today as these companies didn't make a dime for the first 5 or 6 years of their existence.
You can be critical of these two companies (I am) but there are thousands of other companies in the IT sector that just wouldn't exists if they had to make profit right from the start and grow organically.
Your argument is surely moot because it assumes that startup employees take on no risk. Not to mention conflating IPO with startup options/shares. There are many companies out there that have never, nor will, take investment or IPO yet are still successful. There's also an argument to say that any company that isn't profitable from day one shouldn't exist in the first place.
Your argument also suggests that founders must go "cap in hand" to investors to beg for startup capital. In all scenarios I do not see a positive outcome for the employee, and it seems only more and more difficult to attract new talent
> Your argument is surely moot because it assumes that startup employees take on no risk
I wrote "which some guy employed at Google with a 6 figure income doesn't have." -> you are free to work at an established company and have no risk, I didn't say that startup employees have no risks.
Otherwise they wouldn't get equity, wouldn't they? So please don't twist my words.
> There are many companies out there that have never, nor will, take investment or IPO yet are still successful
Great, but how is this related to anything I wrote? My comment was about investors and companies that accept investors money, nothing else.
> There's also an argument to say that any company that isn't profitable from day one shouldn't exist in the first place.
Isn't Google or Facebook highly profitable? It's hard to imagine that a company can reach such a scale in such a short period of time without outside investment.
No society can have private property rights and freedoms without the right to private investment. If I am not allowed to decide for myself where I will invest the money I have earned then I have no money, the state owns it instead.
> Your argument also suggests that founders must go "cap in hand" to investors to beg for startup capital
No, not at all. I didn't suggest anything like that.
> In all scenarios I do not see a positive outcome for the employee, and it seems only more and more difficult to attract new talent
Sorry, but software development is one of the most privileged and highest paid professions. You make it sound as if we are all working in coal mines.
I think we're taking the extremes as the norm, and it is clouding the argument. Let's just say there is risk on both sides, nobody is entitled to anything except the chance to receive remuneration that is deemed fair, whether that's through investment or salary.
Your last point is the most interesting, though, coal-miners were paid very well and by contrast I know (good) developers that earn less than the national average. I am not arguing (in this case) about software developers, but all employees from all backgrounds.
> Let's just say there is risk on both sides, nobody is entitled to anything except the chance to receive remuneration that is deemed fair, whether that's through investment or salary.
See my previous comment to you (above) - also play out the proposal in the article over, say, 100 years, ultimately it could end up as an employee owned company.
Conflating political ideology with corporate structuring was not my point, nor my intent. Attracting staff after 100 years of operations was my point, to clarify; I said "could" (implying risk)... not "should" (implying ideology)
I know I'm going to get some backlash for this comment so hold on to your hats.
By going for a degree you're going to the route most often travelled by most developers, you'll spend three or four years trampling over territory frequently covered and thoroughly documented, you may be required to specific materials and use specific languages. Three to four years is a long time and during that time many things may have happenned in the IT industry, you may also find that your enthusiasm might have dwindled somewhat. And then you'll be faced with the biggest dilemma...
How do I get a job?
Sure, having a degree might add some weight to your CV/Resume but it will not have the same weight as three to four years of experience in a skillset that is modern and relevant.
The problem with the approach of avoiding the degree route is what some might see as a lack of depth/insight into computer science. And that really all depends on what career you want. If you want to build mobile Apps and Websites then you probably don't need the in depth computer science knowledge. On the flipside, if you want to get into games programming or device driver programming or programming of computationally intensive tasks then you need to know that computer science stuff.
People here might say that the computer science you'll learn from a degree is invaluable, but honestly it's mostly boring junk that most people sat in an lecture hall of three-hundred people will struggle to get through because of the tediosity of it's presentation. In educational institutes you (the student) are expected to go out and seek the answers to the lecturers questions - makes sense right? But you're doing the work there, and most of the time students don't know why they need to know what's been asked of them.
A few final points: most of the self-taught programmers I've known have been head-and-shoulders above their CS counterparts. They have had an insatiable appetite to learn and most have learned from a young age.
I started programming at a very young age, and actually wanted to study Physics at University because I was slightly tired of computer programming by that age... little did I know I was going to make a career out of it.
There are two schools of thought at work, and you need to decide which one is for you:
1) You're paid to do a job, in a hierarchical management structure each tier must delegate and trust the tier below it. It's not your job to criticise your manager, it's the job of your managers manager, at the end of the day none of the developers are at fault for simply being told what to do.
2) You're personally and emotionally committed, you know you shouldn't do it but you want to take on the problems of the team, and by proxy, the problems of the company. If that's the case then voice your concerns because it'll stress the fuck out of you otherwise. Don't voice them to your manager, voice them to your managers manager. Don't get all emotional when voicing your concerns just lay out the facts calmly and impartially and go with whatever they say.
My opinion on this is that if you've taken the time to submit to HN, then you're Option 2 and it's going to eat at you. Even if you leave like many people have suggested you're going to feel bad for your team. Voice your concerns and then try to emotionally distance yourself from the company (unless they get the hint and fire the idiot manager). Then start looking for another job and advise the same to your colleagues.
Lot's of people here are saying to look for a job first, if you voice your concerns now, in the UK, it's unlikely they'll just fire you without any notice or any severance pay. If you're in London and half decent, you'll find employment pretty quickly.
OP here. That's not the company in question, and if they ever read this it could cost me my job - it was a previous employer - a travel company.
For the record, my interview at Kaonix was probably the best conducted interview I've ever had. Me and the CTO sat down and basically just chatted about technology - he had some technical questions but soon gave up on them when he realised they were a peice of cake for me. Kaonix should be praised for their approach - the other company, not so much.
Yes, that sentence in the first paragraph stood out to me too, but I really didn't expect for the article to gain traction.
I want to add that I can't suit everyone, there are things that annoy me about American English grammar that I can't change, and I wouldn't think about writing in the comments suggestions on how to fix it. Maybe that's just me.
The story is certainly more important, which is presumably why the majority of redpola's comments are about it. But to be fair, I actually asked myself exactly the same question and went to your "About Me" page to check.
Try not to be offended. He's likely just pointing out what many who read the story may think, but not say. Just take it on-board as constructive feedback for future articles.
It's an interesting story. Thanks for taking the time to write it up.
