I'm looking at starting to play about with Java and being used to Visual Studio on Win32 (spit) I was wondering if this sort of thing would suit my needs. If anyone has experience with such environments I'd be interested in their comments.
I think you'll find that the generalization of the North being paid less is due to demographic study and not a comparison of your wages against mine. Of course if the only comparison was you vs me then the North of England would come out as better paid...
I think that the anonimity of the web gets rid of a lot of the 'British' attitude we're supposed to have. In this case I think that specifics are Ok anyway although maybe the reticence would show through if the question was changed from 'How much do you earn?' to 'How much do you owe?'. Maybe even with that one there would be plenty of posts with details but even though the questions are very similar I don't think there would be quite the same response. The amount you owe isn't by necessity a bad thing - it just means that you are in a better financial position to make the payments. Anyway, why do we have to be 'British'? Aren't we all simply 'netizens' these days? Pick your clichè.
Just to reinforce some other comments here - I'm a programmer with around 2 years commercial experience. Most of that has been Windows programming:-( but I've just got a new job near Oxford working cross platform in C++ (no MS boxes at this place:-)). I've been on £16K for my current company and am about to get £20K. Thi sis very much the right sort of wage for the South outside of London as I've had 3 other offers in the last couple of months of the same amount. There is one problem that seems to be showing through at the moment though and that is that companies are being a little cautious in their recruitment. It seems that although the tech departments are in need of more staff to cover the workload and future plans the accounts people don't want to pay for it. I'm guessing that this will change after the millenium - maybe they just don't want to risk the extra money yet. The other thing that maybe worth mentioning is that you only want to get in touch with one or two agencies and definitely don't want to put your details on a job site that forwards stuff to agencies. I did and had my cell phone voice mail crashed by the end of the day from the bulk of messages and my mail box was getting pretty well flooded too.
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I'm looking at starting to play about with Java and being used to Visual Studio on Win32 (spit) I was wondering if this sort of thing would suit my needs. If anyone has experience with such environments I'd be interested in their comments.
I think you'll find that the generalization of the North being paid less is due to demographic study and not a comparison of your wages against mine. Of course if the only comparison was you vs me then the North of England would come out as better paid...
I think that the anonimity of the web gets rid of a lot of the 'British' attitude we're supposed to have. In this case I think that specifics are Ok anyway although maybe the reticence would show through if the question was changed from 'How much do you earn?' to 'How much do you owe?'. Maybe even with that one there would be plenty of posts with details but even though the questions are very similar I don't think there would be quite the same response. The amount you owe isn't by necessity a bad thing - it just means that you are in a better financial position to make the payments. Anyway, why do we have to be 'British'? Aren't we all simply 'netizens' these days? Pick your clichè.
Just to reinforce some other comments here - I'm a programmer with around 2 years commercial experience. Most of that has been Windows programming :-( but I've just got a new job near Oxford working cross platform in C++ (no MS boxes at this place :-)). I've been on £16K for my current company and am about to get £20K. Thi sis very much the right sort of wage for the South outside of London as I've had 3 other offers in the last couple of months of the same amount. There is one problem that seems to be showing through at the moment though and that is that companies are being a little cautious in their recruitment. It seems that although the tech departments are in need of more staff to cover the workload and future plans the accounts people don't want to pay for it. I'm guessing that this will change after the millenium - maybe they just don't want to risk the extra money yet. The other thing that maybe worth mentioning is that you only want to get in touch with one or two agencies and definitely don't want to put your details on a job site that forwards stuff to agencies. I did and had my cell phone voice mail crashed by the end of the day from the bulk of messages and my mail box was getting pretty well flooded too.