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by Nursie
2794 days ago
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UK software salaries are a joke. I get a lot of feelers from agents looking for 5-10 years experienced, capable software guys and looking to pay in the range of your grad salary for them. The embedded world seems particularly bad for this but it's rife throughout. The US, Canada and Australia all pay far better, often multiples of what's on offer at home. The only way I've found to come close to the pay I could get overseas is to become a contractor and try to land work in or around finance. Even then it's hard outside of London. The problem in the UK is, AFAICT, that managers and company owners see software guys as grunts, floor staff, no different to hiring other generic office staff. They pay poorly, they have low expectations and they get people in who are broadly in line with that - demotivated, poorly skilled, unproductive. It's a viciius circle of low expectations and low rewards. |
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But to be completely fair, UK (or London, to be specific) is still the best place in whole Europe for software engineers. Nowhere in Europe you can make close to what a skilled and capable contractor in London can make.
It's not comparable to Bay Area but it's not that bad actually compared to rest of Europe. You can at least make a decent salary, although it's all cash and no stocks/RSUs... But you can invest the cash you make as a contractor into equities of companies you believe in.
Plus the flexibility of contracting is very nice. I doubt Bay Area engineers can just decide to take 2 month break and go to Bali to relax. As a contractor in London, you can easily finish your contract, take couple months off, then come back and start a new contract. That sort of flexibility is pretty nice.