pouët.net

If you're a new graduate in your early twenties who's studied in a non-vocational or non-industry orientated field and you'd refuse to accept that, then congratulations! You're a better class of human being who deserves (and presumably earns) more money and doesn't need to apply for this crappy job!

If not, then your objection is a little specious ;)

Go work for Slummy, he'll make you filthy rich, and a demoscene superstar!

Ok, all you greedy scums 8)
Industry is nice (yep, depends...). Academia has a lot of advantages too. But even if you think it's much better in the "industry-oriented" field, you are not completely correct.
I know many students who have been doing computer animation and visual effects on a postgraduate level (MSc/MA). Some are artistic (compsitors, animators, modellers etc) others are more technical (rigging/scripting, pipelines, renderman shader writing, into R&D etc). Good students with nice portfolios got their job in Soho – at all these major VFX companies working on shots for hollywood blockbusters and Harry Potter sequels. None of them is earning more than £23k-£25k gross. Surprise!
And it’s London, not Newcastle. Sure, their salaries will be increased over time, at some point they might start getting small bonuses etc. But that’s the way it is right now. And don’t even get me started on crunches and overtimes in this industry.

Yeah, one last thing - many of them do their best to leave the UK for US or Canada. Guess why.

BTW Would be interesting to hear about the situation from guys working in gamedev

KILE/Ithaqua: speaking about consultancy agencies... of course you can get more than that (I do, and this is a very small company), but that's an average. I've been offered that salary (as a default standard) in Madrid many times, by different consulting companies, and that's being a head of department with several senior and junior programmers below me :-)

And KILE, I'm in Murcia, can't be much southern (although this is the worst salary experience in Spain... I was offerred 12k gross a year for a programmer position, a few months ago, and i'm not kidding :-) )

You CAN get more than 18k/year... but the average programmer on the average consulting company will not get much more than that :-)

(i could give names for those companies, if asked... but I won't :-) )

Actually a sounds like a good job. They offer a very good salary. 25k or so a year would leave you with about 1600-1700 pounds a month. In Newcastle you could get a house for half that, and spend the rest on whatever rocks your boat.

The only issue is that you have to move to Newcastle (haven't been there, but had a traumatic experience from a couple of weeks I spent in Middlesbrough).

Fucking WHOAH there. Middlesbrough is to Newcastle as Chernobyl is to, I dunno, fucking *anywhere else*. I'm not surprised you had a traumatic experience in Middlesbrough - it's a shit hole. Don't judge one city many miles away, and even many accents/dialects/city-councils/thousands of people away from another, by your experience of that other city.

Oh, and your experience of Middlesbrough is probably even more profoundly traumatic than any of mine have been - the most I've ever been able to spend there is a few hours, and fortunately you don't have to travel through it to drive to the South of the UK. My sympathies.

ok fair enough. After all Newcastle gives us brown ale and VIZ magazine ;-)

well, i just don't see how it's possible to live of of that kind of money. admittedly, i'm in central London but the price of essentials (bar boozing and clubbing) is pretty much uniform throughout the country. i was looking at rent prices in central Derby just the other day, and they're not that far off London's.

just seems crazy to expect anyone who isn't living with their parents to live of money like that. but i guess the "credit crunch" rationalizes insulting wages in the eyes of many.

c'mon, the 25k on offer for this job is perfectly acceptable. I can't think of that many other jobs that would offer a much higher salary to a graduate.

Most of the jobs (probably more like 90-95%) offered to graduates across the whole spectrum of industries (not only CS) would get you a lower starting salary. Actually with or without a degree. Even postgrad degrees don't help much: you may be a chemical scientist with an msc but chances are you'll end up with 20-25k for at least 2-3 years.

You can live ok (as long as don't have a family) with that sort of money outside London, and as long as you don't spend half of your salary on loan repayments. I was living on my own for 3 years for less than 12k (a third of which went to tuition fees) - it was a struggle but I survived.

Well what I hear from others is that London's way more expensive than the rest of the UK.
But for 1500GBP a month it should be easy to find a nice place to live and have more than enough to spend on anything else - outside London of course.

I have about 1000 pound a month which pays my rent (240 in a shared house) my tuition fee (440) and household stuff (about 150) and I've still enough to live a nice student's life.

Anyone who hasn't got themselves into loads of debt, doesn't spend a shitload of money on commuting, doesn't smoke and doesn't live in an unnecessarily fancy place can live extremely easily on that.

The main reason I quit was that I had more money than I had time to spend it in - and that includes clubbing and socialising (even the odd pocketful of drugs), which IS markedly cheaper outside of London than inside.

It also includes insuring/MOTing/taxing/fuelling a car that I rarely have time to drive (other than when playing gigs around the country), paying for my parking permit, renting a big Victorian 2-bedroom terraced flat, eating in nice restaurants, buying nice clothes, travelling abroad a few times a year, paying for broadband/mobile and buying audio production equipment that I don't absolutely need. Oh, and going approximately two demoparties a year :)

I guess I'm just trying to make the point that it's more than enough money to live off: I've even managed to save a few months' salary to see me through the next few months of freelancing, when not much work's going to be coming in. If you really can't see how it's possible to live on that, maybe you need to work on your personal budget management or something, I dunno. I'm not trying to be facetious, but it does seem like you've got a distorted view of what goes on outside London.

Maybe the commuting is a big part of it? I know people who travel 1.5/2 hours to work and the same home again every day, have to pay huge train and bus fares and essentially lose that time from their lives. My commute has been six minutes on the Metro (underground train thing) - eight minutes total from home to my desk - with a £30/month pass. That's just luck, but I'd never work for someone who expected me to sacrifice 21+ hours a week just on *getting* to the job. Fuck that.

Sorry for the detailed breakdown; I just can't see how it's possible that you can't see how it's possible :P


Oh and Navis: yup, those are at least two things to be proud of :D

Hmm, that all sounds a bit confrontational and over-defensive, reading it back, but it's not supposed to be. Also, while I say I buy "nice clothes", that's an entirely subjective assertion not supported by any photographic evidence that's in the public domain.

I do think the restaurants I occasionally eat in are nice, though, or else I'd refuse to pay the asking price. Just been to one and I sense a madras-flavoured disturbance in my force at some point in the next six hours...

Anyway, now that I'm 'freelance' (or unemployed, however you want to look at it), I can kiss goodbye to all those little creature comforts. Except for Breakpoint :)

guess my boss must have seen me read this thread, he decided to give me a raise today. still nowhever near northern europe, but then again we can get a social meal by 2,15e at an univ and 5,50e at a non fancy restaurant. pint of beer 1,50e. so i guess it's not that bad. just wish anywhere i would travel wouldnt get me feeling like a cheapskate. damn i miss eastern europe.

ps: travel to outline, a pint (or better said, half a liter) is 1eur \o/ also there is a direct flight from porto now :)

Alternatively, one could move to Alberta and make $250k a year hauling oilfield rigs. (That's about 175k in Euros.) What can I say, there's more global demand for oil than demosceners.

thom: i wonder if they take skinny computer nerds. i could literally not work for the rest of my life here in portugal after a couple years doing that. and a couple years goes by in a flash.. would finally have some free time for all those interesting project ideas that keep piling up when you're supposed to be doing something else.

and while we're talking about jobs here: if any decently experienced 3d engine / framework coder feels like taking a vacation in portugal for a couple months, we're looking for some freelance programmer to upgrade / refactor our framework.

ps: If you're serious, there's plenty of computer-programming related work in the oilfield. Vehicle tracking systems, remote well-site monitoring, bulk-plant automation, etc.. Most of it is homegrown right here in Alberta. In fact, a lot of it is exported for use in the mid-East and elsewhere.

Again, if you're serious, I can do some (light) foot work for you on your behalf.

its defnitly tempting, but im not that serious about it just yet, so please dont go out of your way on my account. but yeh, its defnitly something i will strongly consider next time im "transitioning". dont have that much experience with critical systems but i guess its a matter of reading some essentials and not getting much in over your head with accepting projects.

Well, unless someone develops cold fusion in the next few years, one can easily expect the Alberta oil economy to thrive for at least a few more decades. So feel free to take your time.

On a side note, one weird thing I've noted about most oilfield systems is the operator's interface is either Windows XP or Windows CE, but the internals tend to be Linux based. (No X-server or anything, just a terminal.) There may be some QNX stuff too, but I'm not 100% sure. (QNX is Canadian afterall, and oil companies do seem to favour homegrown.)

i thought life in england was more expensive than this.

is there such a big difference between london and small towns ?

Kuni: Keep in mind that the value of a pound dropped about 25% since 2007, so £24k would have sounded more impressive to a Eurolander then.

I always believed people in the uk would earn more money than the rest of europe. Maybe London bankers are skewing the statistics again. Duh, i have laughed off some headhunters because of UK salery that looked quite low, but I guess it was not then. Not planning to move to the UK anyways...