Actually @mark rised very good point - you should sell location. I, personally, would like not to go to SF - its too far, a bit crazy in my opinion, far from Europe. *
I would emphasis such advantages of London market (based on opinions from my friends, who where working in London):
experienced people you could learn from - in Poland, I never met 20+ years experience developer in RoR or JS. In London, I know they exists - learning from people with such experience is great.
much more happens - in London tech talks about some technology are given by its core developers (they come i.e. from SF ;)). In Poland, its rather guy who used given technology two weeks ago (maybe it changed now, I haven’t been in tech talks here since 2012)
multicultural working environment - you can meet people from all over the world
bigger chances for big projects, and try interesting solutions (but it may be beyond rails)
Also its worth to mention, that connections to Poland are really good from London - often faster than between major polish cities.
Sadly for you, right now every week there is lot of job offer with very good salary, so you won’t have easy job to find people, as well salary is not crucial since after all you will save same amount of money at the end of month. If not, the difference is often not worth to leave friends and family…
However, working there for few months would be nice experience.
For example: today I just got a role in today for a senior £100k working for a startup.- Looking for a super experienced Ruby Developer.- This is on the high side of things (probably the highest i can get right now for a permanent developer)
This is the tax breakdown accoring to a tax calculator
How does this compare to Poland? (I’m not sure of the tax situation with you guys)
@mark I’d say 60% of rent (in Inner London); rent prices are extremely high in London due to so called housing crisis.
The main problem with that £100k role ist that there’re just a few of them per year and most likely they will be filled soon by someone local. Mid- or Senior- level Developer coming from Poland (or basically any non-native speaker) is more likely to earn somewhere in £45-65k range. Assuming it’s 55k pa. (~£3,250 pcm after taxes). After renting a flat and covering increased living expenses (incl. a few trips to home country per year and transportation costs) you end up being able to save similar amount of money, as you would save from being a contractor in Poland (after deducting taxes and covering living costs, of course). It’s still a great salary, but I believe it just doesn’t justify moving to London for most people.
If your goal @LouisRoR is to find new or best selling points for perm roles, I would suggest stressing out personal development opportunities, scale, future career prospects (including deep specialisation path) and a chance to learn from the best people in the industry. Basically, there just a few companies in Poland that could match any fairly successful start-up in London in terms of technical mastery or even management system.
No they don’t The first stable version of RoR was released 10 years ago. Internally it was used for 2-3 more years. I started with 0.13beta ~11years ago. So if someone is claiming 20+ years of expirience he’s lying through his teath.
Javascript indeed was released 20 years ago. But I guess there’s a handful of people in USA that used it then, and all of them worked for Netscape.
I do agree though that it’s very hard to find people with this kind of expirience in Poland. Several people I knew in Kraków with 9+ years of expirience either moved to London or USA already
@LouisRoR few more info for you for better recognition in situation. In Poland, ie in Warsaw you can buy really nice flat for like 100_000 pounds. In other cities, its cheaper. Leaving abroad is much harder, and I really would say that even having more money won’t price it if you don’t have any other motivation. Such motivation is better technical level and more opportunities, but, here we are starting other aspect - probably top offers, like this 100k are not 9am-5am jobs, right? So sometimes it is better to have different, less stress job…
Maybe it would be good idea for you to simply come here (flights are direct and cheap) and give some presentations on local *RUGs, there is bunch of them. You can then demystify some facts about London, and anwser questions directly. And don’t focus on money, rather on adventure and personal management aspect (but sure, money is important)!
It’s easy for, say, junior / middle level developers to move. They are younger, no / smaller family, no mortgage, no permanent attachment to any particular place.
The older, the more experienced person, the more attachment to a particular place. Also, I love Warsaw and I would really have hard time leaving it.
That would be great. I get many offers from HR’s on Linkedin and they never have remote jobs. Euros, Dolars, Pounds are really nice if i can have them in Poland. For example 3K EUR in Poland is good cash, but in Germany it’s nothing special
Sorry but we can’t be so materialists In Germany you have better medical care, better highways, better cars (most cars in Poland are from Germany… ). Please don’t compare like that. I have an impression that RoR developers in Poland are looking only for money - life is not only money!
Highways are not useful during programming Health care - true, but in Germany - I heard a lot bad about UK health system. However its not enough to leave the country.
@rafau you’re right. On the other hand British healtcare is a complete disaster. If you think polish one is bad, the british one is abysmal. I personally know 2 people who came back to Poland solely because they were afraid for their life after going to British hospital. In Poland public health care is often better then private one in UK (that’s why recently some of my British friends started going to Polish doctors in UK), and on senior developer salary you can easilly afford private health plan.
@swistak84 I probably live in different Poland…
I have personal experiences with public and private (sometimes very expensive) health care and I have my opinion what health care in Poland looks like. But it’s not the topic. Everybody focused on flats which are expensie - that’s true…but in UK things like clothes, cars, home electricals are cheaper - you should take it into account also.
Even with tho 100k role, a person who would be good enough to fit the position would surely be able to get another job that doesn’t pay as much, but lets him have a higher standard of living in Poland, for example. The high salaries only fool young people, who aren’t gonna fill your senior roles.
However, there are still some crazy people who’d prefer the hustle and bustle of London to living in Poland and they are your hope. Or, convincing the companies to hire remotely, then this forum would be your gold mine
Personally, I moved out of Poland for financial reasons when I was young and stupid. Now I know there’s no economic sense for me in living abroad, but I just like it
I haven’t seen a single job offer from UK that would be even close to what I can make by working remotely for clients from USA and (in my case) Norway. So that’s pretty simple for me
But yeah, location location location. If a given city has something unique to offer I’m sure it could do the trick for many people. I would love to spend some time in UK (funny but I’ve never been there hah!). In any case it would be really difficult for me as I have children and I’m sure lots of seniors are in a similar situation. So, the offer would have to be absolutely outstanding to convince me to pack my stuff, take my family and move.
The first stable version of RoR was released 10 years ago. Internally it was used for 2-3 more years. I started with 0.13beta ~11years ago. So if someone is claiming 20+ years of expirience he’s lying through his teath.
). Please don’t compare like that. I have an impression that RoR developers in Poland are looking only for money - life is not only money!