Bullish Banks Will Make It Hard For UK Startups To Lure Tech Talent

I was heartened to hear about the launch of the Silicon Milkroundabout initiative by London?s tech startup community that seeks to stem the flow of the best computer science talent to the City.

Set up by 30 of London?s technology startups, the Milkroundabout aims to draw undecided graduates away from being small cogs in enormous financial machines.

The draws of working for a startup versus the City are obvious. For a start it?s likely that you?ll get to work on a consumer product that could be used by millions (and if you are lucky hundreds of millions) of people. The software that you develop could get into the hands of friends and family rather than a faceless business elite. Secondly, startups tend to run lean operations and as such you will likely have more responsibility and less bureaucracy. You get to create something entirely new rather than operating on something that is already established. Finally there are often exciting stock options to be had for those who

Startups just cannot compete with the level of remuneration UK banks offer new grads: Almost $100,000 to start. Plus bonus

join at the beginning.

However, I fear that it will be difficult to compete with the financial behemoths and their associated recruitment budgets.

When I was a student at Oxford, I lived with a few of the players from the men?s first rugby team.? One of them was heralded as a rising star by a number of national newspapers, and a Premiership rugby club was keen to sign him up when he graduated. However because he had brains as well as brawn, the City was also courting him. Ironically it was the City?s financial brawn that won out. His starting salary was ?60,000 ($98,000). Before bonus.

That was in 2005, before the banks experienced their seismic wobble and mortgaged us all up to the eyeballs, but it?s completely typical for an entry level software engineer to earn anywhere between ?30,000 ($50,000) and ?50,000 ($80,000). On top of that, some companies also offer the golden handshake to the value of up to ?10,000 ($16,000).

The point is that startups just cannot compete with this level of remuneration.

Furthermore, the City?s milk round is an all-consuming beast that scours the land for tasty talent, dazzling them with branded stress squeezers and mouse mats and other such corporate guff that provides a constant, gleaming reminder of how much money they have to spare.

It?s not just the City that startups have to contend with, it?s also digital giants such as Google, Facebook and Microsoft. In the US,? salaries of up to $70,000 are common, with Google purportedly offering as much as $130,000 for associate product manager jobs.

With many graduates undecided about their next step, a hefty income can be exceptionally tempting, however much you want to be involved in a vibrant and creative startup environment. Artistic ambitions go out the window when you have your student loan weighing heavily on your shoulders and Goldman Sachs leaving a breadcrumb trail of gold towards its offices.

Source: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/05/bullish-banks-startups/

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