[thelist] Web work in London?

martin.p.burns at uk.pwcglobal.com martin.p.burns at uk.pwcglobal.com
Wed Jan 10 10:20:49 CST 2001



Memo from Martin P Burns of PricewaterhouseCoopers

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Subject:  RE: [thelist] Web work in London?


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>2 things *not* to do in Britain from a price
>point of view are driving (petrol costs about
>4x what it does in North America)

And you'd have to be stark raving bonkers to
have a car in London anyway. Outwith the rush hour,
public transport is quite good, and during it, driving
is just not going to happen anyway.

>and smoking
>(pack of 20 now costs about $6.50).

Smoking attitudes are generally somewhere between
the US and Europe - you won't be able to smoke in an
office.

>(there's still something of
>a shortage of web designers who can find their
>own arse with both hands)

+42 on that one.

>- but if you can code
>ASP as the questioner can or (better still) know
>a lot of Perl, then I've seen recruitment agencies
>usually offer ?35-42k.

Reasonable permanent work. Low-ish contract work
When I was contracting (skills used were
* reasonable HTML (better than most people's skills to be sure),
* Good HTML editor (FrontPage is liked in a lot of corporates -
   InterDev if you're doing ASP)
* Good negotiation skills with business people (ie basic project/
  relationship management)
I was on 750 a week (=36k) with a lower tax burden than the permies.
And that was Edinburgh, not London (ie lower rates).


>Beware, however: those
>are usually dull blue-chip gigs.

 Some of the blue-chips are dull. A lot are actually not too bad, if you
can see past the *content* of what you're working on. And if you can
get in a central web team, you get a lot of variation.

There are lots of banking houses in London, so that's where a lot of
the work is. But there are also plenty of others (telecoms particularly,
but also new media agencies), so don't worry. And because the skills
are in demand, changing jobs is *easy* - easier than stopping ****ing
agencies calling you. I had to put this page up:
http://www.easyweb.co.uk/index.html
and change my mobile number to get away from them.

Cheers
Martin


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