
Ask HN: How much do you make in London? - ldneng
There&#x27;s recently been a lot of discussion about how much people are making in different areas of the US, but the threads about London are either outdated or not too comprehensive.<p>Please include your company (be it BigCo, startup, finance) &#x2F; contractor status, level &#x2F; years of experience and compensation breakdown in GBP.<p>I&#x27;ll start: Investment bank front-office, 3 years experience: £59k, ~10% annual bonus, no stock.<p>Links to previous somehow related discussions on HN:<p>- https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=7672167<p>- https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=11317897<p>- https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=5804134
======
gringofyx
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.

~~~
gokhan
Any recommended locations to look at?

~~~
gringofyx
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.

~~~
dnnrly
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.

~~~
noelwelsh
What is the company? Recently moved to Nottingham. Not looking for a job but
curious to learn more about the tech scene.

~~~
londonite
Alliance / Boots maybe?

------
throwawaylon3
Senior Software Engineer (and manager) at Google, ~15 years experience. 100k
GBP salary, plus 20% bonus and stock vesting. Gross 200k+ GBP.

~~~
thrwaynow
how's this compare with your colleagues on the state side?

~~~
throooaway
London Googlers get paid significantly less than their CA counterparts for the
same roles.

~~~
spoonie
It's not like there are zero benefits to working in the UK vs the US though.
University tuition is cheaper being one example.

~~~
Nicholas_C
Way more vacation as well I would presume.

~~~
throooaway
Nope - 25 days for the US (assuming >5 years employment) versus 25 days in UK.

------
LondonTA77
ASIC design, 7 years here now. £45k + bonus + pension + healthcare. Without
the bonus it isn't anywhere near what you'd get in a bank, explains why so
many of my university mates took their EE degrees into finance. Probably
partly due to the lack of hardware jobs in the capital. I've always found the
name 'Silicon Roundabout' very ironic.

~~~
ShinyCyril
Where do you work? There seems to be a significant lack of hardware jobs in
London.

~~~
LondonTA77
Nokia (and it's only just about in London). Other than Cambridge, Langley and
Bristol there's very little in the UK at all.

~~~
ShinyCyril
Ah interesting, I didn't realise they had an office in London. Are there any
engineering vacancies at the moment?

~~~
LondonTA77
Graduate positions - yes. Otherwise I'm not sure.

------
frowaway_lon
This is a bit depressing. In 2010 I retired from full-time post as Investment
Bank, front office senior dev on £100K with 30-50% bonus, 20 years experience.
C++, Java, Sybase, finance tech and domain knowledge, and colleagues in hot
areas were getting way more than that. My impression that rates are dropping
seems to be confirmed.

~~~
thrwaynow
today you can still get £100k+ as a senior developer in a bank for doing c++,
java, with or without domain knowledge, but bonus is likely to be a lot less,
more like 15-30%, of course exceptions apply

~~~
strongai
Pure curiosity - is this for an 8 hour day? or 10? or more? Just wondering
what the downsides are to working for a bank.

~~~
thrwaynow
everyone's experience is different, but usually the pain is not from long
hours, but from bureaucracy, old technology and some hostile colleagues.

~~~
strongai
It's the hostility that would kill me.

------
strongai
Senior technical author. I freelanced from 2004-2013. My very first London
contract in 2004 was at £350 a day. Nowadays, it's crazy bad - anything from
£200 to £400, maybe £450 if your domain knowledge is spot on. And Google - I'm
looking at you - contract rates of £20-£25 an hour have been bandied around in
conversations with recruiters. So, no real market uplift in more than 10
years, which is why I'm now a permie (not in London) on £55K basic plus 20%
bonus, no stock.

------
throwawayberlin
Degree in Graphic Design, 8 years industry experience, started with Flash /
ActionScript and moved to JavaScript about 5 years ago.

Freelance Flash animation / dev for big digital agencies and ad companies (5
years ago) - £250 p/h, with 3 years experience.

Tech Lead - Digital Agency in Shoreditch (1.5 years ago) doing Node / Ember /
Angular / DevOps - £45k, however I chose a lower salary for more leave and
flexible working hours.

Freelancing JavaScript dev (Node, Angular etc), digital agencies - aprox
£300-350 p/h

Now I work in Berlin in a dev role doing Node / React / Redux. €57k. My living
expenses are 1/2 what they were in London, and I live in a central Berlin 1
bedroom apartment rather than shared housing.

~~~
Peroni
>Freelancing JavaScript dev (Node, Angular etc), digital agencies - aprox
£300-350 p/h

I assume you mean per day and not per hour right?

------
bugahdug
PHP Developer in the Southwest of UK (Devon, Cornwall, Somerset etc) 25k, no
bonus - and that's about average. Living here isn't the cheapest either,
£600pcm for a 2 bed flat, over £1,000 a year for water.

Really need to move towards the midlands (Bristol, Birmingham, Leicester,
Staffordshire - cheaper rent, cheaper water, higher pay)

I've been a Dev for 7+ years.

~~~
J-dawg
That does seem awfully low given your experience. I hope you could double that
by moving to one of the places you mentioned.

------
contingencies
Hadn't worked in the western workforce in 7 years. Turned up in London in
2009, got £40k, kicked ass, had £60k within 3 months, up from there. These
days I honestly wouldn't live in London for under £100k. I think the thing to
do is contract work, live out of London (even in mainland Europe) if at all
possible.

------
londontosser
Yet another throwaway acct. 20+ years large-scale ops and security, last five
with one of the "big five" tech companies. £100K base plus stock worth
£150-200K/year depending on which way the market wind was blowing on vesting
dates.

Currently doing my own startup and cyber-security consulting for £750-900/day.

------
infinii
This thread has me thinking whether all those claims that financial
compensation isn't that important in job satisfaction is true or not. How
often do we see threads asking about non-financial benefits.

------
TamDenholm
Contractor, PHP/Full stack, 11 years exp, £350 - £400 a day in London. Not
risen much in 5-6 years which is why i started doing other things like
business consultancy.

~~~
1_player
How's business consultancy doing for you? Seems it's better paid, but I prefer
the technical side personally.

You surely have more experience than me, but what I personally do is increase
my rate by X% every 6 months or so, non-negotiable for new clients, with fair
warning for existing ones. I often start a contract on tech X, and after some
time I'm touching other parts of the business, so the rate increase makes
sense.

~~~
TamDenholm
I actually prefer the business consultancy now. I got bored of writing code
all the time, i still do it for fun, but only about 1/3rd of my time for my
business is coding now.

------
ShinyCyril
While we're on the subject of tech jobs in London... does anyone work with
FPGAs?

~~~
gadders
Some investment banks do.

------
lozette
Developer (currently at a startup) £62k, no stock but I do have a
pension/healthcare.

17 years experience, initially as a general web developer, then front end, now
more back end. Currently Ruby on Rails but I can turn my hand to almost
anything.

Not a manager, not a senior developer, not a tech lead. No desire to be.

I work quite short hours (9.30-5) and that's what's most important to me.

~~~
Peroni
A startup in London that has both a pension and healthcare scheme in place
where you work 9.30-5? That's a pretty rare beast.

~~~
lozette
I know! I am very very lucky, and I scouted around for a long time before I
found it.

------
ThrowAwayLondon
(throwaway account for obvious reasons)

Web Developer in London for a dating company - £75000 pa (with bonuses it's
around £110000 pa)

~~~
throawaylondon3
Are you a team lead or architect or similar? This seems high for just a web
developer

~~~
dan_b
More importantly, are they hiring?

~~~
ThrowAwayLondon
Actually no :( we just finished hiring some new candidates to fill our team.
Like I mentioned in the earlier comment I am an outlier because I do end up
working a lot with architectural tasks so maybe my job title doesn't justify
my work.

------
throwmeaway9
Contract Senior Developer, stack is usually SPA (Angular/React) with "modern"
.NET.

Current gig £475pd, to be honest I had better leads but the client offered the
same day of interview and I started the following day.

I have 6 years experience and no degree.

Guy next to me does the same job for 53k.

Edit: media type of industry. Work normal hours, usually 9-5:30.

------
londonite
Throwaway for obvious reasons.

No degree. Around 10 years experience in Network Security.

\- BigCo

\- Permanent position

\- Cloud stuff

\- £66k plus bonus et al which pumps it up to around £88k

~~~
londonite
Adding some important things:

\- Stock

\- Up to 10% pension match

\- I work from home most of the time (got a little kid, so I can enjoy more
time around him)

------
thrwwyldn777
"Lead Developer" with a startup, £55k (I refused options in preference of
salary).

I have a PhD (4 years programming), and ~4 years professional experience as
well.

Previous roles: Fresh Graduate: "Developer" £28k + £3k bonus. Fresh PhD
Graduate: "Senior Developer" £40k.

~~~
Peroni
Mind if I ask what the tech stack is? I wonder if there's significant
disparity in relation to the tech stack.

~~~
thrwwyldn777
Oldest job was SQL/.NET and ActionScript, Post-PhD was mainly Python/C on
Linux (I did a lot of that during the PhD too) and latest one is C++, PHP, SQL
and little bits of others.

------
ldn_throwaway
1.5 years experience, full-stack web developer at a startup (Ruby, some Go),
earning £25k in Central London. I'm broke and it sucks. I've tried
interviewing other places but haven't found anywhere offering above £30k.

------
asldfkweiorz
Throwaway. Data Scientist, Insurance, FT, 39k a year, approx 3 years
experience.

~~~
asldfkweiorz
Oh, yeah, also got a PhD in Maths. And am looking for a new position.

~~~
strongai
Shoot me an email (see profile). Medium sized company - analytics, financial
services, other interesting data science stuff. Offices in London and
elsewhere :-) I'll help steer you to our HR people and if you're successful,
will receive a modest introduction bonus. We pay well, but not investment bank
salaries. We have lots of PhDs - they're coming out of our ears, so you'll
feel quite at home. It also seems that the planets are in alignment for our
tech and its place in the market, so things are very upbeat right now.

~~~
asldfkweiorz
tried, I seem unable to find any email.

~~~
strongai
Sorry old.lag@gmail.com

------
throwaway_27Sep
Currently Senior Dev at a startup: £50k + 3.5% equity. Previous Hedge Fund:
£95k + 25-50% bonus. Investment Bank: £80k + 25% bonus

Experience: 20 years as a dev. Skills: full stack dev .net, angular, iOS etc.

------
ijuhoor33
Senior iOS, contract, last year: £575 per day in a medium sized company
Switched to a smaller company as Team Lead for £500 per day

------
Throwaway33333
£650 / day, almost all remote doing Hadoop and Redshift Consulting and POVs.
Coding for 15 years, in Big Data for the past 5.

~~~
ionwake
How is the contracting market health these days?

Are you finding it easier or harder to find contracts? What is your average
downtime between contracts?

~~~
Throwaway33333
I had 15 unpaid weeks this year wrapped around the referendum. Last year I had
7 unpaid weeks.

~~~
ionwake
Do you rely on random calls from agents throughout the day to setup your next
role or do you have a couple you rely on? How many calls / emails do you get a
day?

~~~
Throwaway33333
Half my contracts are through agents, I spend a lot longer than I'd like to
admit on my LinkedIn profile. One agent has admitted they have a 30% margin
which explains the ~1,000 phone calls and emails I got last year.

I run a blog, I'm active on Twitter and I've worked with a lot of different
businesses and coworkers since I started my career so this is where the other
half of my contracts come from.

I've heard from someone at (Big Hadoop Consultancy) that they send consultants
out to train and do POVs paying the consulant £1,200 / day so there should be
some growth in my day rate to come.

It's probably worth mentioning I only sell my time in one week blocks. I had
two contracts this year where a client was having some troubles with Kafka on
AWS. The first problem was taken care of in an hour in a half but they were
still billed for a week. Same thing a few weeks later when Zookeeper was
feeling upset.

~~~
ionwake
Thank you for your replies, they were most informative. I'd love to read your
blog if you want add me on twitter and DM me, thanks!

------
1_player
Contractor 100% remote, full stack, 10y experience, currently £40/h, will
increase to £50 before the end of the year.

~~~
mbrain
May I ask whats your stack?

~~~
1_player
Current contracts are on PHP, Vue.js and Go. Experienced on backend systems,
C, Python, Linux sysadmin, MySQL DBA, and a security enthusiast.

I'm specialised in being a jack of all trades.

------
novapost
Senior Systems Specialist,32k pa. This is in the North East of England. Job
actually involves anything from traditional system/network admin to web
development and almost everything inbetween, supplier management, procurement.
Probably under paid for the roles covered but thankfully not in a major city.

------
gooseherald
Contractor, currently £650/day. Hoping to increase that to £850/day by end of
year. Experience > 15 yrs in web dev, though maybe only last 5 applies now (I
don't do PHP 3 or perl any more).

Edit: long term so no "off" days & 150k ish per year depending how many
holidays I take.

~~~
throwaway78978
How do you plan to get beyond £650/day?

~~~
gooseherald
Haven't increased my rate in nearly 2 years and soon will be expected to take
on extra responsibilities (herding a team etc) so going to negotiate a bump in
rate.

------
bowchickabowwow
I have a computer science degree and around 9 years experience doing full-
stack web development(Ruby, PHP, Python, JavaScript). A year ago I was making
£55k + around £5k worth of perks as permanent employee. Now I'm doing
freelance roles for £350-£400 pd.

------
mrsomeone7
Developer contractor, nearly 20 yr exp., now mainly .NET, works out at just
over £1 a minute :-)

------
throwawayPayLdn
Just switched roles so can give two:

Small Investment Bank - 61k + ~30% Bonus (3-5years experience) Java / Angular
- Back Office Developer - Permanent

Small Hedge Fund - 65k + 50%+ Bonus (expected/promised) - .Net / WPF (5years
experience although not in .Net) - Permanent

~~~
throwaway64928
What are the hours?

~~~
throwawayPayLdn
Not bad to be honest, 8-7 but I do get out for an hour or so at lunch.

~~~
jbms
Those look pretty bad to someone outside London.

How much travel on top of that?

~~~
throwawayPayLdn
I'm young, so if I'm not coding at work, I would be doing it at home most of
the week.

Travel is < 30 minutes each way.

~~~
bbcbasic
But the coding at home would be your IP and you'd have no boss to tell you
what tech to use.

------
throw9383
For comparison, in Devon. Full stack senior developer, 20 years experience,
full time - £42K.

~~~
rojabuck
(kind of off topic) considering a move? considered riverford.co.uk? if so fire
me your CV...

~~~
m_t
Riverford is hiring? Oh that's funny. Could be fun to work where I buy my
veggies.

------
wastedhours
Are we only talking programmer side?

Digital marketing, education sector, 4 years experience: £39k + healthcare

~~~
ldneng
Although I initially thought it out for tech, I think any area is relevant.
Thanks for sharing.

------
spoonie
"Intermediate" dev using Ruby-On-Rails mostly with a bit of Python, JS, and
Go: £41k for the first year and £45k for the second. EDIT: no stock, and only
benefit was WFH 1 day/week, and 1% matched retirement savings plan.

------
throawaylondon3
Senior front end developer. 4 years experience. Now a contractor on my first
project at £350/day in a big company. Expecting this to rise to 400/450 for
the next gig. A few months ago I was full time at a startup on £52K.

~~~
wannabecontract
48k, London startup, frontend, 2.5 yrs exp. Took a paycut from 52.5k (@ 1.5
yrs exp) for this role.

Off topic - As someone in your exact previous position and looking to make the
same move to contracting do you have any advice, did you find it easy to land
that first contract?

~~~
throawaylondon3
I did find it quite easy. I just followed up with a recruiter, went to
interview and got the job. You usually have to start fairly quickly so have
some holiday banked up so you can leave permanent work sooner.

The work, culture, etc is similar to any other permanent job I've had. As long
as you keep up to date and are good you'll be fine. Other companies may differ
wildly I'm sure

------
jakub_g
Semi-related question: How do you calculate taxes in UK? Is the base of the
tax the salary offered by companies in job offers? I mean, with say £60k job
offer, do I pay tax from £60k? (with the last £17k being taxed at 40%)?

~~~
matthewmacleod
Nope, you pay tax on the full amount. Each taxpayer has a personal allowance
(currently £11,000 generally, but this varies) on which no tax is paid; a rate
of 20% applies to income between £11,000 and £42,000, a rate of 40% on income
between £42,000 and £161,000, and a rate of 45% above that.

~~~
youngtaff
Don't forget you start to lose the personal allowance at 100k, so someone
earning earn between 100k and ~122k has a top rate of 60%

------
J-dawg
Front end developer, large IT consultancy, £35k, no bonus. Feeling underpaid.

------
throwaway78978
Senior Web Dev £550/day 7 years experience no degree.

Startup salaries topped out at 80k (ignoring non-liquid stock) so went
contracting. You need the stomach for it, but it pays a lot better for similar
work.

------
ldnthraway
Finance, QA, permie, 5 yrs exp., 56k + ~10k bonus.

I've been longing to go contracting in the last few months, but judging by the
sentiment on this thread, it doesn't look like it's a wise choice.

------
santiagobasulto
This is kind of offtopic, but "There's recently been a lot of discussion about
how much people are making in different areas of the US". Where can I find
that post? Thanks

~~~
resurge
Most likely this one:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12588202](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12588202)

------
noelwelsh
I don't work in London but I know many people who do. The experience Scala
developers I know who work contracts get £500-£700pd outside of banks, and
£600-£900pd in the banks.

~~~
shirlema
The Cassandra guys I know get at least £1K per day. They are the top of the
top but you can get paid serious bank doing SMACK stack type gigs

~~~
jjirsa
High demand. Very small supply.

------
throwaway782
Snr Cloud / Infra. £650 day remote working (desk in London but physically in
the office 1-2 days a month), 1 yr contract - but renewable. Annualised, £156K

~~~
londonite
Do you mind describing what are your daily tasks in broad terms?

Asking for a... uh, for a friend. Yeah.

------
p0la
Front-Office Quant Research in French bank, 4 years experience, £70k fix +
£35k bonus. Definitely lower that what you would get in a US or UK bank.

------
acta_non_verba
Startup, full time employee, called Senior but I only have one year of
commercial experience, £47,500. ~10% annual bonus & Stock Options.

------
ukthrowaway123
Lead a team of 6 in one devision of a medium sized org. Web services + api.
~10 years exp. £85k plus 30% bonus (expected), no stock.

------
throwbay654321a
70k + stock + 1% matched pension. Senior software engineer. PhD and 4 years
professional experience. Work 9:30 to 6. Ruby on Rails.

Throwaway account

------
londondev998
Senior developer with a front-end focus at a startup with some corporate
backing, 7 years of experience, ~80k plus benefits.

------
ThroAwayLondon2
Established privately held (profitable) company, full-time tech-lead, Telecoms
+ Web + Backend, 10 years experience - £50k.

------
throwmesalary
At a major retail company, here are our published ranges: Engineer £40-65K
Senior Engineer £60-80K Principal £75-95k

------
surprised_dev
7 years of experience, mostly PHP and Python. Started at 44 after 2 years 51k.
Now got offer for 80k~ as devops.

------
nicolasMLV
In 2013 I declined an offer (first job, graduate): software dev in bigco (IT
Provider travel industry), £38K

------
ldnthrowaway
Startup, Software Engineer (JavaScript), 2.5 years experience (Grad May '14),
38k, 12% bonus.

------
omurphyevans
Senior Infrastructure specialist, big bank, 14 years, £450 a day, annualises
to about £110k

------
user1728596
Software Developer - 13 years experience

One of the big tech companies

70k Base 20k Bonus \+ ~20k / year stock vesting

------
thawlondon
£52k, some stock, healthcare. Senior dev in a video game company. ~8 year
experience

------
thrwaynow
Contractor, £700/day, investment bank, back office role

10 years C++, specialised in low latency

------
throwaway723895
Full stack (mostly PHP) contractor, 15 years experience, 100% remote, £400/day

------
wissam124
Quant risk analyst for a commodities trading house

Base £67k Bonus anywhere between 15 to 50%

~~~
wissam124
5 years xp

------
ThrowAwayBlah
Contract PM in Investment Banking IT, 20+ years experience, £800/day.

------
throwawaythrowa
Senior developer in the Civil Service, 8 years experience, £60k/year

------
jalev
45k pa working as a DevOps for one of the console companies for 2 years.

------
datthrowawaytho
Mid senior Android Developer in social network £55k +12% bonus no stock

------
anonforpay
Software engineer (front-end) 8 years experience

77k basic 10k bonus plus stocks

------
le_ticket
working for an engineering consultancy at a very senior technical level,
overseeing big data projects, and doing some business development. £80k p/a
plus benefits

------
Thisisrandom8
Im not in London still in(uk), 1.5years IT Security,18k :(

------
throw31337
Full time senior Java/Scala/JS @ £48K :/

------
aprdm
Used to make £32k at startup. 3 years of experience .

------
middleman90
6 years experience. software developer 450£ per day

~~~
jakub_g
what is your stack? frontend, java, c++ (and, do you work in finance?)

~~~
middleman90
nodejs right now, but I'm full stack

I don't work in finance

------
qqqqqqqqqqq
yikes!

28k in London, full stack dev with 2 years experience... react + redux, node,
express, elasticsearch, rabbitmq, postgres, mongo etc.

------
uuidlondon
Throwaway. £79k + stock option + benefits

~~~
uuidlondon
forgot to add - startup, 16 years of experience. lead role

------
idfsifdsjio
throwaway account

Front office large investment bank. Java. Perm. 15 years in banking, 20 years
in programming

110k - no significant bonus.

------
z4n
lead developer, no degree, gaming: 75k base + 30k bonus. Mostly c++, some
objectiveC and java

~~~
z4n
7 years of experience

------
dan_b
May I suggest something more anonymous like a google spreadsheet? Or a HN
poll?

~~~
ldneng
I think keeping it in comments here is better since spreadsheets tend to to
have a lot of messed up data (looking at previous surveys). What people share
is definitely free-form, so I'd prefer to leave the data rather unstructured.
Creating a throwaway is also really easy and bogus comments are easier to deal
with than someone messing with the spreadsheet.

However, I've created a spreadsheet
([https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MAIX9UEnpq0pAsMWr1NW...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MAIX9UEnpq0pAsMWr1NWzkmQxfVXJj2CeeZGaEAHHfQ/edit#gid=0))
if anyone prefers that.

~~~
jbms
I recommend making a web form using Google spreadsheets - which takes 3
minutes, and making the spreadsheet read-only.

When I last posted an open spreadsheet to hacker news it grew, then got
defaced with all the data deleted. Someone restored it but it was work to
ensure no data was lost.

------
barpet
Those people @ 55 - 60k (EUROS) should really ask themselves if it's worth
working in London.

~~~
brianwawok
Can they do better elsewhere in the UK? Seems like many options except move to
the US

~~~
barpet
I do not have the statistics but you can earn that much elsewhere and pay less
rent & other costs of living.

Well so unless you are a briton or you love the country / city too much I do
not see a reason not to move elsewhere.

