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Ask HN: Moving to London. What would your salary expectations be?

6 points by greenie ↗ HN
I'm a software engineer building web apps for a UK based startup, with offices in the South West of England, London and San Fransisco. The opportunity to move to London has recently been presented to myself and the other engineers, with the overall objective to have all UK engineers in London before we start a large new project.

I understand that salaries in London are on average higher than the rest of the UK to make up for the cost of living. However, I'm not exactly sure how the salaries of London engineers in a similar job with similar experience stack up against my own.

If you're an engineer in London, I'd love to know what area you work in, your salary (if you're happy to say) and any other thoughts you have about startup salaries in London.

Myself, I have one and a half years experience and I'm currently on £20k.

9 comments

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jongold
Hard to say without seeing your code and knowing the tech you work with, but I'd assume a lot more than £20k. Is that one and a half years of coding, or one and a half years since graduating?
greenie
I graduated a year and a half ago and have been with my current company since then. I used to work part time as a developer during university so I've probably got closer to two years worth of software engineering in a business environment.

Whilst I would say that a lot of my day to day stuff is what most would consider bog-standard standard web development, we do get to dabble in dealing with big data, being our own sysadmins and bringing our software to other platforms i.e. there is a lot of emphasis put on learning where I currently am and researching and incorporating new technologies is always encouraged.

EwanToo
You might be better off not gauging yourself by what others earn (or claim to earn..), but by looking at where you'd want to live in London, how much you're willing to travel, do you still want a car, etc.

Call some estate agents or get on rightmove and look for 1 bedroom apartments near the new office location. If it's going to cost £10k per year more than the equivalent where you currently live (not your current home of course, pick somewhere nicer, it's a negotiation...), then that's a decent starting place for discussions.

London is a seriously expensive place, earning £20-£25k a year there is going to be no fun, I think you should be looking at £30k plus, and if they don't want to pay you it, then fair enough, but I probably wouldn't want to live there.

When you consider that a newly qualified teacher working in inner-city London is paid £6k a year more than the same qualified teacher elsewhere in the UK (£27k inner-city London) http://www.tda.gov.uk/get-into-teaching/salary/pay-and-benef... , then that should give you a decent idea of what you're going to want to get paid over and above your current salary.

tomfakes
I left London in 1994, and at that time I was earning 25K GBP, being 4 years out of university. 20K now sounds very low, being the US equivalent of quite a bit under $40K.
ig1
It varies a lot depending on sector/technology/funding-status, I run a job board (www.coderstack.co.uk) which is used by a fair amount of London startups (I think including yours if your company is who I think it is) and I've seen salaries range from 18k-35k for junior web developers.
Joakal
Can't really say. But I analyse wage demand based on job sites, reviews (People post salaries, fake ones too), past company history (Known for poor/good salary average?) and personal reference (like here). Hope it helps!

/IANALondoner

stoney
As a data point for your London vs not London question - if you work for a university in London (vs a university outside of London) you normally get something like an extra £2.5k per year as a "London allowance". I think public service type jobs get an extra payment too (teachers, police, etc) but I don't know how much.
azeemazhar2
that is terrible. if you are a half decent php guy you could expect 25k. if you were really good 30k. if you could demonstrate something useful like hadoop or c++ more.

what else are they offering? if you are getting stock, cost for moving and regular training sessions on growing skills like scalable, Haskell or big data stuff, then you might just as well stomach it.

if you have a CS degree and have experience with version control, coding in a team, and delivering you are being undrbumped.

come to London get a work permit, leave and get a real job with a startup that value it's team.

greenie
Thanks for the advice. Since first posting I've come to a mutual agreement with the company whereby I have left in order for me to find a role that allows me to further my software engineering skills.

Right now I'm in between jobs and looking for another position in the startup scene. I love the culture and I have a passion for learning. If anybody is able to point me in the right direction it would be much appreciated.