In my recent Promotion Special blog, I discussed how I was underpaid by my employer and I am going to end up with £12k extra for doing exactly the same job as before.
When I have looked at Job Adverts for developer roles of my level of experience, it seems I could possibly get an extra £5k-10k if I went elsewhere (~£50k). However most of these adverts seem to imply I would need to learn a few more programming languages and could have extra responsibilities like line management, or dealing with Senior Managers, possibly even relocate. It’s not worth it.
My first job out of uni was £18k and that was a hybrid role of Tech Support and Junior Software Engineer – I additionally spent a fortune in travel costs (I think it was like £80 per week). Last year, we hired loads of Apprentices so I thought they could be on about £18k, but when I stated that to my Apprentice, he said it was £23k. I couldn’t believe it. That was my salary when I was about 25 and I had to work hard for that. These youths have it easy these days.
The thing is, we got these Apprentices via a Bootcamp company so we pay the Bootcamp a premium too for commission. It’s bizarre, because we are well known to be cheap, so why are we paying a 3rd party, and giving a high salary to unskilled developers. Mental.
Quite often when you watch Youtube videos or read blogs, Americans often come up with salaries like $100k+. I think there was one video that said a Google salary was $230k – mental). I guess you need to take into account what a dollar means over there – ie cost of living; but these figures do sound crazy. You can look at jobs in London, England and you can easily see £60k-100k, or sometimes even more if you know an obscure language where the “supply” of developers is limited so you can demand a premium.
These wages can be misleading though. I have a friend that is a Senior Software Developer and his partner is a Lawyer. I went to stay at their house in Bermondsey, central London, and expected he was living the high-life, but he lived in a rough-looking area in an apartment block. It was cramped and looked quite dark and drab. I don’t remember the exact figure, but he said it cost something like £1600 per month in rent alone.
Recently at work, we had a casual chat and talked about wages. One Tester sounded a bit outraged at the wages we pay and she said “Testers should be paid as much as developers”. I strongly disagree with this. I think Manual Testers really could earn £30,000 max. I used to be a Tester and for the most part, I see it as low skilled. Maybe the best testers like myself (arrogant) use better analytical skills, and can read the code and understand how to possibly find gaps and therefore find the most bugs. However, most Testers I work with don’t really think and they just do what you tell them. So it mainly involves mindlessly clicking buttons in the UI.
Anyway, this outraged Tester then stated she didn’t mind disclosing her salary and she gets paid £40,500 for a Senior Tester – which is going to be higher than many developers! Senior Developer wages start at £39,000 where I work, and I was under the impression that Senior Testers were more like £32k. How she managed to wrangle that wage is anyone’s guess. Why she thinks she deserves more is even more baffling.
Stranger Coding Tings 