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Comment by mariogintili | Hacker News Reader

hmm it depends really, I go below and above my "market rate"

I've come to learn that your salary as an engineer is more directly tied to your company's success rather than your personal outcomes as an engineer.

I've seen people padding buttons for £700/day working for large brands

I've seen people train open weight models for £350/day trying to ship an MVP.

The last permanent role I negotiated had a TC of £160,000/year. I'm open to go down to £90,000/year or even less for the right opportunity

As for contract work, my last 3 projects were £600/day, £700/day and £550/day. Again, I can go down for something stable.

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> The last permanent role I negotiated had a TC of £160,000/year.

If you want that £160k+/year, you might as well either go to a quant firm like Citadel or Jane Street (But there is a 0% chance it will be remote) or build your own startup.

> I'm open to go down to £90,000/year or even less for the right opportunity

£90k is not bad, but not the best either, but anything higher than 120k in the UK means you lose 45% of that.

But the risk is that someone else will go even lower than your offer until the role can be done internally by another person using an AI agent.

The point is, most businesses that are non-quant and non-big tech, non-big AI do not want to pay the extortionate level of taxes in the UK and it makes SWEs in the UK look very expensive and the jobs + office move off-shore.

> But the risk is that someone else will go even lower than your offer until the role can be done internally by another person using an AI agent.

I have assessed various AI models & agents. I don't think I can be replaced by them, so I feel safe on that end.

That being said, I don't think my potential employers fully understand that.

> The point is, most businesses that are non-quant and non-big tech, non-big AI do not want to pay the extortionate level of taxes in the UK and it makes SWEs in the UK look very expensive and the jobs + office move off-shore.

Yes, this is where contract work came particularly handy. But the government made a big deal about taking them offshore due to IR35 pushing them out

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