Reasonable Salary for Entry Level Programmers?

A question that concerns a good few forum members and the SlashDot crowd, what is the state of play in the UK?

Auric

 

Im not sure if it has picked up at all in the last year, i gave up looking and continued with hardware engineering.
But, last time i looked it could be from 14k to 16.5k ish depending on experience and languages known. Always got me that one, if i had experience i wouldnt be looking for junior positions

A friend is currently looking for a job, he has 13 years experience covering C, and (obviously not as long) also visual/dotnet suit and AS400. He cant find anything in Bristol

 

Depends entirely on the industry. If you were to start as a graduate at the place I work (an investment bank in London) I think you'd probably start at around £45K. I imagine the situation is similar at other major financial institutions in London (and New York if you're talking stateside).

OTOH, if you were to start at a software house somewhere outside of the South East (of the UK) then you could well be looking at half that amount or quite possibly less.

Michael.

 

The problem is knowing one language inside out is often not enough these days they want you to know more. It depends on the exact industry as well. For example an investment bank would probably want you to mainly specialise in one language such as Java or C++ where smaller companies are probably looking for less specialised people.

I work part time (7.5 hours a week) for an information company specailising in producing accesebility reports for education establishments.

I am mainly a CSS/HMTL coder but do a bit of photoshop work as well. I currently get £8 an hour for this job.

I am hoping to start doing some PHP stuff soon which should get me £10 an hour.

The problem is they all want experience, even this job required experience but because I am doing a degree in web development they counted it.

To earn £45k starting these days you have to be a graduate from some where like Imperial with a very strong acemedic record throughout life.

I've seen junior trainnee C++ programming jobs which pay less than £10k full time but these are modern apprentiships, these jobs are often more 'coding' than programming as well.

I think the average graduate starting salary for programming is around £20k, but if you're good this soon rises. I know a 23 year old who was on £40k a year two years after graduation. However he was very good but they was made redundant.

 

When I was a nipper starting salaries were excellent, I was being billed out by the company I worked for at the time for £150 an hour in my very first programming job circa 1987, and my degree was in philosophy rather than computer science.

Salaries seem pretty depressed nowadays. Even in London, it seems most programming jobs pay no more than around £20K - £25K as a starting salary, outside banking that is. But there is a real shortage of good programmers. People with project management, analysis, and client management skills in addition to good coding skills can still expect to command a very good salary in a relatively short space of time. Trouble is, most programmers are rubbish at those other things...

-- Ian

 

When I went for the interview for the job I do now, they asked me more about project management and team work than they did about web development. I guess this is why.

 

A couple of my friends who got firsts at university (one in computer engineering, one in electronic engineering) have gone to work at IBM starting on £24k, but that's out of Southampton's Electronics and Computer Science department (which is an employer's favourite).

It depends on qualification level, experience, and as Ian said, skills other than programming. The shabby, disorganised, overly relaxed image of the computer programmer is not the one that makes the big money now.

 

grad trainees here 6 years ago was £18k, dont know if changed much.
average programmer here now, high £20's, circa £27k

anyway, programming is not the thing to be getting into right now. more and more are outsourcing to india. u need to be into project management.

 

It just depends on the exact circumstances. There is still work out there I know young people in programming jobs working for large comapnies. However you have to be good.

You can still get an average wage working for a smaller company or setting up your own business which is what a lot of web developers do.

I expect to earn around £30k from software devepment a few years after graduation but no more. However I still believe £30k is a very good wage considering most people in the UK are on less than £20k.