I see ads for 'Senior developers' that want to pay £25-33k. Granted there also ones paying better but the highest advertised I've seen is £40-45k p/a. Obviously it will be higher in London though, and there are lots of ads for contractors at £300 per day.
Meanwhile I know people who finished their CS degree and never got a programming job. I know one guy who's a decent programmer, only got a couple of interviews, one only because he offered to work for 14k, but ended up working in a bank admin job for 13k for years before finally getting a secondment to an SQL/Excel position at 18k or so.
I don't know, man. Just seems there's a disconnection between the salaries you guys talk about on HN and the salaries that are realistic for me. Bearing in mind if it's a graduate job then there's going to be many gaps in your knowledge (unless you're exceptional), so it seems you should bite the hand off the first place that offers you a job and the chance to become a more complete developer (after which you'll have a much stronger negotiating position, but until then, as an unproven dev companies can justifiably look at you as a liability).
