Where is the money at these days in computing?

[act smiley]

Ah of course.

PITA to get into though, without business experience. I've been in Business Intelligence for seven years now, but can't get into finance as I haven't had any pure investment bank client work.

The providers tend to be a usual way in; I worked for one for a few years and lost count of the people who ended up leaving to work for investment banks. Won't have the big salaries, but gets the right bits on the CV.

 

[Haircut]

lol this is rubbish. no one in london walks in a 40k development role!

20-30k yes but 40k? nope.

u can however demand 60-70k if u are a senior

At a previous job (large investment bank) we had an industrial placement student on my team.
He was on £36K for his sandwich year and this was 3 years ago now.
Graduates were on a bit more, there are starting salaries like that if you work at the right places.

 

[megakid]

lol this is rubbish. no one in london walks in a 40k development role!

20-30k yes but 40k? nope.

u can however demand 60-70k if u are a senior

I can assure you that it does happen. How? Personal experience, I was on £35k during my internship and £38k straight out of university. 14 months later I moved to another firm on £60k (albeit this was in Australian $100k) - this new job wasn't got through any special means - just a bog standard 'cold call' from a recruitment agent.

So yes it does happen, and you don't even have to be that 'senior' to command 'big' salaries.

Edit: just seen the other comments confirming my experiences

 

[D.P.]

lol this is rubbish. no one in london walks in a 40k development role!

20-30k yes but 40k? nope.

u can however demand 60-70k if u are a senior

I have had friends walking into roles 37-45K range in London, a good 5 years a go mind.

I also had similar offers that I turned down to do a PhD. Post PhD I was looking in the 50-80K range depending on size of company and location (Mostly Switzrland and USA). I'm somewhere in the middle of a that bracket for my first Job after my PHD, in the US but a low-cost small town so I get paid less than the like of Google in the SF bay area but have much lower living costs. A colleague left our company to work for Google at Mountain view and is earning substantially more than me with a few years extra experience but no PhD or MSc.

 

[D.P.]

And if you area really bright, have a PHD in physics/maths or CS form a top tier UNi than you can start out as a Quant on Wall Street at around $250K USD (like 150K GBP)

 

[triggerthat]

I recommend checking out Glassdoor.com if you want to see what companies are paying.

 

[wozzizname]

I think some of the quoted starting salaries just aren't around anymore (or at least are very rare now). A few years ago they were fairly common, but the recession has really taken its toll now.

 

[Tikkabhuna]

lol this is rubbish. no one in london walks in a 40k development role!

20-30k yes but 40k? nope.

u can however demand 60-70k if u are a senior

Yes they do. My placement was 30-40k and my grad scheme is going to be 40-50k.

 

[Nitefly]

Lots of money in SAP/ data migration contracting... if you can stomach the insane hours.

 

[Squid]

Yes they do. My placement was 30-40k and my grad scheme is going to be 40-50k.

yep sounds right.

40k right for london starting out, if you aint ****.

 

[aln]

Well if they'd made us do something a bit more challenging than VB scripting in MS Access...

I'm with you, college was fairly boring. Still, they let us leave when we were done and despite it being tedious ( not unlike work, sometimes ) every year I did in college was a year I got to skip in Uni, so I stuck with it.

@topic - Wages obviously a lot higher in London but I guess the real question is how much do you have left at the end of the month after bills and stuff?

 

[MofoKilla]

Do what ever this guy does it seems to be working for him

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7VALEyxc9I

 

[oldbag]

Don't do any form of IT Support, you'll instantly be thought of as a lazy **** and people will constantly moan about how **** the system is and will not know/care how complex a problem is to solve. Or, do IT Support where your client base are clued up (e.g a technology business), its slightly better then as they will appreciate how complex some issues are.

 

[Deleted member 77746]

Don't do any form of IT Support, you'll instantly be thought of as a lazy **** and people will constantly moan about how **** the system is and will not know/care how complex a problem is to solve. Or, do IT Support where your client base are clued up (e.g a technology business), its slightly better then as they will appreciate how complex some issues are.

Know the feeling.

 

[Mr^B]

I'm with you, college was fairly boring. Still, they let us leave when we were done and despite it being tedious ( not unlike work, sometimes ) every year I did in college was a year I got to skip in Uni, so I stuck with it.

@topic - Wages obviously a lot higher in London but I guess the real question is how much do you have left at the end of the month after bills and stuff?

The difference in wage more than makes up for the difference in either general London costs or commuting costs. Unless you particularly want to live in Belgravia...

My train ticket is about 5% of my take-home pay. Mortgage (large-ish) is 25%.

I would be earning probably 50k+ less working elsewhere in the country (for similar job roles), judging by the plumes of recruitment emails I receive each day...

 

[jonneymendoza]

Yes they do. My placement was 30-40k and my grad scheme is going to be 40-50k.

No they dont. that is pure nonsense. Not even Google hire grads for 40k.

 

[dowie]

lol this is rubbish. no one in london walks in a 40k development role!

20-30k yes but 40k? nope.

u can however demand 60-70k if u are a senior

You don't really know what you're talking about tbh... There are any number of IT grad roles at banks/other financial institutions that refute your claim. (or at least there were)

I work at a vendor... last grad intake varied between 33 and 38k and we tend to pay less than the banks do.

 

[jonneymendoza]

Besides bank who else does grad roles offering that salary?

U have got to be a proper genius to work in a hedge fund/investment bank.

i work in the banking industry myself building software for other banks and we offer only 20k for grads.

i also did a quick google on cwjobs and it came up with only 2 graduate roles

http://www.cwjobs.co.uk/JobSearch/R...10&Rate=40000&RateType=1&LTxt=London&Radius=5

out of the whole of London.

It shows that those roles are rare, very very rare and not a common thing.

Why preach to people saying they can walk out of uni in a 40k role? be real my friend. those are the exception not the norm.

 

[dowie]

Besides bank who else does grad roles offering that salary?

U have got to be a proper genius to work in a hedge fund/investment bank.

No you don't. Remember we're talking about people working in IT in banks not quants/traders etc...

i work in the banking industry myself building software for other banks and we offer only 20k for grads.

Well I presume you're talking about retail banking or you might well have an issue retaining those grads.

 

[Mr^B]

No they dont. that is pure nonsense. Not even Google hire grads for 40k.

We hire grads for more than that, base is 35-40k depending on where they work, plus bonus takes it to well over 40k.

Investment banks have had to raise salaries because bonuses have gone down. 45-50k for the best candidates.

This ISN'T common though, there will be 1,000s of applicants for these roles and only a few percent will get them. The average will be what the average actually is (obviously) which is somewhere in the 20-30k region.