Finding rates at £550+

[edison]

Personal networks matter at the senior level

Personal networks play a big part at the more senior levels. A previous manager of mine is now CIO at a FTSE 250 company. They recommended three of my ex-colleagues to a friend who happens to be the CIO at another large company. All three work there now as a contract Solutions Director, contract senior Programme Manager and perm divisional Head of IT respectively.

I've seen it too in other companies where new members at Leadership team level will bring in several past colleagues or acquaintances either as contractors or permies. Jobserve can't compete with that!

[Scrag Meister]

The best rate I have ever gotten was 2x normal London IB rate, but then again I did have to fork out for hotels and flights, still ended up being approx. 1.5x after expenses.

IMHO Unless you are senior management material then I think even £700pd is pretty good.

[JoJoGabor]

The kind of stress and politics you would have to put up with for £700 is not worth it in my opinion. Work out what makes you happy for a decent wedge rather than thinking of the rate first.

[BlasterBates]

Basicallly unless there's a booming market you're going to get more or less the rate you're on now. "Good Bank" is not going to pay 700 quid a day to anyone who was working at "Bad Bank"....by the time you can charge 700 quid you know you can, i.e. you have to go to "Good Bank" on a cheaper rate and work your socks off first, then start sticking your rate up.

Basically when your colleague is on 700 quid a day you know you're on the right route.

[gareth1981]

In terms of increasing your rate, what do you all do?
I've tended to try adn ask for a rate rise of between 5-10% every 6 months.
Is this the norm?

[MyUserName]

Personal networks play a big part at the more senior levels. A previous manager of mine is now CIO at a FTSE 250 company. They recommended three of my ex-colleagues to a friend who happens to be the CIO at another large company. All three work there now as a contract Solutions Director, contract senior Programme Manager and perm divisional Head of IT respectively.

I've seen it too in other companies where new members at Leadership team level will bring in several past colleagues or acquaintances either as contractors or permies. Jobserve can't compete with that!

I watched this happen at a place I used to be at. New Managing Director brought in his mate who became CTO, he then brought in engineers whom he used to work with. Part of it was just mates helping mates but part of it was that he knew and trusted these guys so it made sense to him to bring them in.

[oracleslave]

+1 to that. I can't remember anyone saying even close to that.

Just me and sas then

[doodab]

£650-700 is about the going rate for an established coder in the IB / hedge fund world (based on what I'm told by friends in that area), but established means years of industry experience, detailed knowledge of the financial products, maths and systems they are dealing with and expert level knowledge of multiple languages and technology stacks i.e. pick two or three of C++, Java / JEE, C# / .Net, Scala and various other functional languages and all the other bumpf like ORM, XML, messaging that goes with them. All the guys I know have good numerate degrees in maths, science or engineering as well.

Unless you're pretty senior £550 is a bloody good rate outside of the city TBH. Clients will generally expect a business savvy consultant with at least one expert level technical skillset and a good range of secondary abilities for that sort of money in my experience.

[d000hg]

Considering just how much money £500/day actually is, it really shouldn't be surprising that most of us won't be finding roles paying that
You lose track when just playing the numbers game of trying to maximise your rate sometimes... I do anyway and I expect others must do.

[BlasterBates]

..and don't forget a lot of it disappears in tax.

When you think of the blood sweat and toil and maybe the additional expenses, eg living in London, your net rate might no be as great as you think.