[mrstew]

Hmmm, this is pretty different to my experience (as both employee and employer), perhaps it depends on the skillset and exact location.

I have a (non-finance related) start-up in central London and it's pretty difficult to find skilled developers with 4-5 years experience who are asking for less than £50k p/a.

[TeamMCS]

And I would expect no less. Considering the travel card (anywhere between 1.6-3k year) and the cost of living (at least 1-1.5K/month. How can anyone honestly expect someone to work for less than 60k, even as a mid tier dev?

I hear so many companies that whine about the lack of perm developers then go ahead and hire a contract dev at 500/day. That is the market at play, if our city cannot pay our developers enough to sustain a reasonable standard of living then they wont work.

Honestly I'm glad to see it. The more developers that follow the market (contracting) the better. Hopefully that'll wake a few people up and we'll see salaries start hitting the numbers that are needed to live in this over priced city.

That said, if I WFH 100% 50-60k would be fantastic but that's not acceptable these days.

</rant>

[switch007]

Yes. Some people actually really dislike London (i.e. won't sacrifice to live/work there) and £50k is probably the minimum to consider commuting.

[adrianhoward]

Heh. That's me. I remember having a very annoying conversation with a recruiter many years back when they were trying to persuade me I should take less money since London was such a cool place, and I was saying that I wanted more money to have to put up with such an awful location ;)

[ivix]

Yeah, that would be the threshold for me to begin to consider commuting to central London (I'm in Cambridge).