
Ask HN: Does the Glassdoor UK average software engineer salary seem low to you? - J-dawg
National Avg: £35,000 (US $49,921)
London Area Avg: £37,220 (US $53,087) [0]<p>In particular, I am surprised by how the London average is only slightly above the national average.<p>[0] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.glassdoor.co.uk&#x2F;Salaries&#x2F;london-software-engineer-salary-SRCH_IL.0,6_IM1035_KO7,24.htm
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mashgin
It does look pretty low if you assume that you only need 1.25x the salary in
SF vs London to maintain the same standard of living [1],[2].

I worked in EU (Belgium) for 7 years before moving to the Bay Area. In my
personal experience (so it cannot be generalized!), I definitely felt that CS
folks are highly undervalued in EU. The starting salary for a CS grad (or
equivalent by experience) was no more than 1.5x that of say a bartender who
never went for higher education. Over time the more "competitive" people did
complain about being paid way too less. And companies offered no significant
distinction / appreciation for being a great engineer vs an average. On the
whole though, most people seemed pretty content. I guess coz you are getting a
pretty good deal unless you are a good software engineer :)

[1] [http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-
living/compare_cities.jsp?coun...](http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-
living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+Kingdom&city1=London&country2=United+States&city2=San+Francisco%2C+CA)
[2] [https://angel.co/salaries](https://angel.co/salaries)

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dfraser992
I've lived in the UK for about 10 years now and though I'm not sure I read or
picked up this idea, it has felt "true" in a truthy sort of way - the UK,
culturally, regards software engineers or those similar to be little more than
educated manual labor. You're not in management, so you're labor. It's a
result of the significance of "class" here in the UK and the different ways to
define that. And "middle class" here is roughly the equivalent of "upper
middle class" in America and IT folks don't make enough to be in the "middle
class".

"Lions ruled by donkeys" \- this saying about British society is still true
today and has its roots in the class divisions and structure. I have heard it
said many times by now that Britain is still fundamentally a feudal society,
certainly on the psychological level. (And I can see it) So that is going to
certainly influence what management pays labor...

It has made me very appreciative of the strengths of American culture/society,
though there are lots of things to complain about America as well.

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J-dawg
I think you're right, and it's something I've only started to realise very
recently having lived in the UK my whole life (a culture is hard to understand
when you've only ever experienced the world from inside it).

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brudgers
I suspect that HN'ers are a skewed sample set because I think there are fewer
of what Hanselman calls "dark matter programmers" on HN than in the wild.

~~~
J-dawg
Good point, but it seems low in absolute terms as well. £37k really isn't a
lot of money to live on in one of the most expensive cities in the world

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J-dawg
Answering my own question, but this Quora thread contains some good answers:

[https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-salary-of-software-
engineer...](https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-salary-of-software-engineering-
jobs-in-the-US-double-that-in-the-UK)

