[Edinburgh-pm] Local Perl job

[Jeff Parsons]

On 20/02/2013 17:38, Aaron Crane wrote:
> I'm no expert, but I think your expectation of £80k/year is a little
> high.  The highest rate I've seen quoted for full-time, salaried Perl
> positions in London is £70k + bonus.  To be honest, my guess is that
> there are very few developer jobs advertised in Scotland for which the
> successful candidate gets a salary in the £80k+ range.
>
> I completely agree with you on job adverts that don't include an
> indication of expected salary, though.  I can kind of see why some
> companies do that, but it definitely makes life harder for applicants.
>


That's unfortunate there's not that many high paying jobs in Scotland. 
You can get that in London, yeah, but living expenses are so high there. 
A decent 2 bedroom apartment is £4k/mo there, so even £70k/year there 
isn't great.

I make over £80k/year just now, but I'm a CTO for a company in the 
states. It's a practical CTO role though, I do the development myself. 
Traditional CTO roles with no development aren't quite as much fun. I 
like the small, high profit companies where you have a good mix of 
business/dev. There's a lot more money/investment in the states though. 
The company I'm working with has an investment firm behind them which is 
why they can pay a lot. It'd be nice to see Scotland's economy grow 
though with more top jobs available.

I think the companies that don't display the salary are looking to try 
and get people in on the cheap. A few years ago I applied for a job in 
Bristol that had "salary: negotiable". On the phone they said £40k, so I 
went down for the Interview and they offered me £20k, saying I was "too 
young" for £40k. (I was 23).

A lot of companies just think programmers are like factory workers, but 
they end up costing themselves sooo much. It's nothing for a decent 
company to pay £80k/year for a good developer and then have that 
software working properly and making them millions.

Anyway, IMO you can never set your expectations too high. You're worth 
what you think you're worth. If you want £100k, then set out to get it 
and you will. There's a *lot* of money out there and a *LOT* of very 
rich companies who have absolutely no clue about tech and are struggling 
with crappy freelancers. The company I'm working with just now was 
absolutely lost tech-wise, so they're happy to pay whatever to get the 
job done.

To get the good jobs you really have to just network more with business 
in mind. It's so shocking how in-demand tech really is. All the 
companies who actually advertise for Perl developers are not the ones 
that are really in the most need. The ones in need are the heavily 
business-focused ones who just have "problem X, Y, Z" to solve and don't 
know more than that. There's guys in the states, especially in the 
marketing world making £80k per DAY never mind year. :-) The programming 
for them is the difference between £80k/day and £80/day :-) So you do 
the math there and you can see why you can command really whatever 
salary you want when you find the right folks.

I'm sure a lot of you guys are amazing programmers, better than me, so 
don't sell yourselves short, the money is out there if you ask for it! :)