There’s plenty you can pick up that isn’t a new language – docker, kubernetes, kafka, ci/cd, serverless, etc. The list is pretty endless
Potentially more important than learning new syntax.
I would guess barely 10% of my job was writing code when I joined the current place and even less now.
Learning is weighted accordingly (at least that's the idea).
Yup, it ain’t no science, it is barely even engineering.
That really does depend on how you play it. And the place you are working for. And the client's budget. Some want an engineered product, and some want a bodgy bit of sellotape to stick stuff together.
Salary discussion is a bit meaningless when no 2 organisations agree what a ‘senior dev’ is.
Yes.
In Cambridge, which is it's own tech hub, I'd expect you'd find very few SW Engineers on less than £50k (with a few years experience) and quite a few (as in 100s) on £70k-£100k. We have ARM, CSR, Microsoft Research, Google R&D, Amazon R&D, loads of small companies and consultancies etc, so a very competitive market. Some of the larger salaries are in the smaller companies as they have to buy talent to compete with the more glamorous locals eg Amazon / Microsoft / CSR / ARM etc.
Flip side is a small 3 bed 'railway cottage' terraced house will set you back £700k, so you won't necessarily feel 'rich' on those salaries. With a sub 1 hour direct train to the City, we have London suburb house prices.
Some want an engineered product, and some want a bodgy bit of sellotape to stick stuff together.
And some have no idea what they want.
Just chiming in.. self employed, turnover a decent amount.. not london wages but I stop working when I'm about to hit the VAT threshold. Mainly php, larvel, js / typescript, wordpress type stuff. Tons of holidays but usually with my laptop and a project on hand..
I really like the tech and the learning.. but I'm about 10 years in and getting fairly fed up of being on my own. My main issue is I'd really like a business partner.
I've tried employing people.. thats not for me!
I'd say stop working for an employer and give self employment a bash for probably a lot of missing flexibility.
Flip side is a small 3 bed ‘railway cottage’ terraced house will set you back £700k
Yeah that's partly what I was getting at with the life choices thing. I'm in Northumberland, 10 miles from Newcastle, and our detached corner plot 3-bed house with garage, shed and large garden was only £295k. Plus I can cycle to work in 20 minutes along a car-free Sustrans route and get a pint in the local for £3ish
I speak to other devs in London who get paid a LOT more, but also pay three times that for a smallish flat and spend two or three hours commuting every day.
Though as others point out: that consideration changes a bit now remote working is suddenly a lot more acceptable.
Though as others point out: that consideration changes a bit now remote working is suddenly a lot more acceptable.
Yep, our latest recruit (SW Dev) doesn't live in Cambridge and has no intention of over doing so, but he still gets Cambridge salary! Only ever see him via Teams meetings...
Yep, our latest recruit (SW Dev) doesn’t live in Cambridge and has no intention of over doing so, but he still gets Cambridge salary!
I've seen quite a few adverts on linkedin recently for london tech firms offering (almost) 100% remote working and I've been sorely tempted. The gap between london and the regions is closing but there's still a distinct difference.
I’ve seen quite a few adverts on linkedin recently for london tech firms offering (almost) 100% remote working and I’ve been sorely tempted.
Apply for a few. Can't hurt.
(I'm starting a new position soon).
Yep love it. I'm a front end developer. I actually love new tech in front end especially react development. Not much office politics where I work (digital agency). Someone I manage recently left and landed himself a 75k react dev job after being with us a year!! Crazy
And yes I feel the landscape has changed now. Many firms offering fully remote working. We decided to move to Wales and I'll be 1 or 2 days a week in the office in Bristol when things settle down
The gap between london and the regions is closing but there’s still a distinct difference.
There is still stuff that requires on site people such as the financial stuff. Most of my peers at uni went into quant style roles with mega hours and mega money. They were on 80+k 15 years ago at 25.
Trouble is they want to pay senior devs 40-45k, mid level devs 30-35k and grads/juniors 25-30k, which in my opinion is a lot short of what the market is demanding. Am I right or wrong?
In Bristol a front end dev can expect
Senior 55k
Mid - 43
Lead - 65k
If you know react native yoy can expect more on top of that. Senior around 65-75k
I find it interesting when people mention learning react as a skill. To be a good or competent react developer you will also need to be a good front end developer. Thats understanding all the browser API's, css + methodologies, accessibility, javascript, design patterns, http, rest/graphql, immutability, OOP, functional programming , performance, svg,
mostly summed up here:
Last month I also had a J R Heartly moment and found a book a co-authored back then and managed to buy a copy!
Oddly I learnt to program from the BBC Micro version of that.
It was a great book 🙂
(Didn't have a bbc or any computer at that time)
I don't think i've ever had stellar pay other than when i was contracting but I've had better pay/benefits than most for a looong time.
I'm currently doing IOS and android Phone stuff and it's great fun 🙂
Currently also working remotely from somewhere sunnier than Bristol/Barf.
I'm wondering how difficult it will be, post-Brexit, to work for a UK firm from Spain. I imagine tax and billing might be complicated, and I don't want to lose my right to a Spanish pension after paying into the system for so many years... but it's quite tempting as the UK IT market is definitely stronger than here, and the interesting jobs look a lot better paid!
It was a great book
It was terrible as a teaching aid! Which was a shame as it was the official book as part of the overall BBC Micro programme. My father's company published it, which was how I got involved. He was ashamed of the book, as it was well below the standard of everything else the National Extension College published back then, but the manuscript arrived very late and they had a deadline to meet, so there wasn't time to propely re-write it as a decent learning aid.
I was just paid to adapt it from BBC Basic to QBasic (IIRC) on the IBM PC.
£525 IIRC, which wasn't that bad back in 1987.
My father then re-wrote 30 Hour Basic and published a better written version himself..
http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/cgi/archive.pl?type=Books&author=Richard%20Freeman
I’ll be 1 or 2 days a week in the office in Bristol when things settle down
It's a weird world at the moment. I've not been in the office more than 1 or 2 days this past eight months. I could be living on Orkney.
We had a whole ZX81 for the entire school 🙂
I’m wondering how difficult it will be, post-Brexit, to work for a UK firm from Spain. I imagine tax and billing might be complicated, and I don’t want to lose my right to a Spanish pension after paying into the system for so many years… but it’s quite tempting as the UK IT market is definitely stronger than here, and the interesting jobs look a lot better paid!
We had an email from our HR director saying that with immediate effect we can't work out of our "home country", because of the legal, insurance and health cover issues.