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Ask HN: How to increase SWE salaries in Europe?

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Re: Ask HN: How to increase SWE salaries in Europe?

#321

Post by frombody »

sidlls wrote: post #274
arcticbull wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of folks here are calling out the lower pay for SWEs in Europe and Canada as a failure - but also praise the low wealth inequality and low income inequality in Europe and Canada. You can't have low inequality by definition if you decide to start paying one group a ton of money. Well, this is a lot like the housing conversation in the US. "I want my house to go up in value, and be a great investment!" Also: "Why…

Paying laborers more does not lead to the kind of inequality we see. "You can't have low inequality by definition if you decide to start paying one group a ton of money." Very few of even FAANG-level salaries are high enough to put them in the same bucket as the people who wield power through their wealth. Paying the entire field of SWE laborers even 50% more salary is not going to appreciably change the inequality g…

Marginal tax rates are much higher in Europe at lower levels, so in order to pay someone 50% more, you would have to pay them 100% more for them to get a 50% pay increase to make up for the money taken by taxes (the mechanism that prevents wealth inequality)

Re: Ask HN: How to increase SWE salaries in Europe?

#322

Post by onion2k »

xwdv wrote: post #225
alkonaut wrote: post #55

I got my higher education for free. I expect to save nothing for my children or their education. I expect to have to put aside very little for retirement. The thing is, I just can’t find an argument why I should be able to get very rich doing my job. It’s a comfortable job. It pays a good salary. I got here by taking no risk at all. I wouldn’t want to switch jobs just to drive up my pay even if I could. I have other…

You are taking a risk. The risk is that you assume your government will be able to provide you with a comfortable life even when you can no longer work. And when the time comes for your children to get higher education and retire themselves eventually you hope the government will also be there to step in. It works, until it doesn't. In America you can compensate yourself for this risk by simply getting a job where yo…

In America you can compensate yourself for this risk by simply getting a job where you are paid a higher salary than the average.

If everyone does that then it just drives the average salary up. In other words, the system can't survive unless there's a strata of people at the bottom who are below average and, by your definition, relying on a government that possibly won't help them.

In Europe as most people rely on the government everyone has an incentive to vote for parties that won't fail those people.

Re: Ask HN: How to increase SWE salaries in Europe?

#323

Post by dcolkitt »

qafy wrote: post #272
ahupp wrote: post #222

Major US tech companies earn a profit-per-employee of $200-400k[0]. That's across every employee, so depending on how you attribute value the profit-per-SWE is much higher. That gives a lot of headroom to drive up salaries when competing for hires, and in part sets the market price. I suspect that low European software salaries are just a function of low profitability of European software companies. e.g, spotify is (…

I would love to see some research on the factors that contribute to this. Work culture? Leadership culture? Rigor in interviewing process? Education? There has to be a reason US tech employees are 5x-10x as "productive". What are we doing differently?

Academic research shows that US multinationals consistently lead in adapting the best corporate management practices of any major country.[1]

Germany and Scandinavia come in a distant second, with Southern Europe falling significantly behind. The disparity in IT-intensive industries is particularly large.[2]

This is true even when comparing the productivity of workforces within the same market. I.e. European who work for American multinationals tend to be more productive than those who work for local multinationals. The short answer is that American management culture is really world-class. And, I think in software in particular, good management is a major force multiplier in terms of output and execution.

[1] https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.24.1.203

[2] https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.102.1.167

Re: Ask HN: How to increase SWE salaries in Europe?

#324

Post by mc32 »

webmaven wrote: post #289
throwaway45349 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In totalitarian states, everyone is equally poor.

> In totalitarian states, everyone is equally poor. Not quite. In totalitarian states, typically everyone's income is fairly equal. Wealth, however, is often another matter. In the soviet Union, party apparatchiks often had very nice dachas to live in, fancy cars, exclusive shopping venues with imported goods, vacations abroad, etc. But these things weren't necessarily purchased with disposable income, per-se. At lea…

I would quibble with the "fancy cars" part. Only the nomenklatura got government owned fancy cars and other perks --that reverted to the state if they lost the position. So it was a kind of state wealth that you temporarily had custody over.

Re: Ask HN: How to increase SWE salaries in Europe?

#325

Post by ff232fffffrt »

anonuser123456 wrote: post #104

Be more productive. Companies can only pay more when they make more. SV is awash in capital because it grows earnings in the 20+% YoY basis. Euro zone companies don’t seem to do this. My understanding is that EU regulates high growth away too early in corporate life cycle, so anyone wanting to grow fast goes somewhere else.

You just can create a competitive business in Europe. Everything is overregulated and you will spend 70% of your time to comply with laws, instead of developing your product. Even in China companies have more freedom that in Europe. All that will end like Soviet Union.

Re: Ask HN: How to increase SWE salaries in Europe?

#326

Post by Izikiel43 »

arcticbull wrote: post #85
alkonaut wrote: post #55

I got my higher education for free. I expect to save nothing for my children or their education. I expect to have to put aside very little for retirement. The thing is, I just can’t find an argument why I should be able to get very rich doing my job. It’s a comfortable job. It pays a good salary. I got here by taking no risk at all. I wouldn’t want to switch jobs just to drive up my pay even if I could. I have other…

A lot of folks here are calling out the lower pay for SWEs in Europe and Canada as a failure - but also praise the low wealth inequality and low income inequality in Europe and Canada. You can't have low inequality by definition if you decide to start paying one group a ton of money. Well, this is a lot like the housing conversation in the US. "I want my house to go up in value, and be a great investment!" Also: "Why…

Canadians are kind in a shit position. Real state is stupidly expensive everywhere where you would like to live (Greater Vancouver, Greater Toronto, Ottawa is getting more expensive), and salaries are not keeping up at all. For example, cost of living in Vancouver and Seattle, disregarding the currency, is more or less the same, however in Vancouver it's like you earn 2k less than Seattle for an entry level Big 4 position. In Canada you need 2 professional incomes at least to buy a house/condo.

Re: Ask HN: How to increase SWE salaries in Europe?

#327

Post by ff232fffffrt »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #221
6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #170

Do engineers in Europe get as much of their comp in stock as the do in Silicon Valley? My hypothesis on why salaries have gone up so high here is if you want to hire folks away from successful companies, that success means their stock grant is likely worth loads more than it was when they signed on, which you now have to match to compete. If hypothetically every engineer at Apple hired in 2017 got $100k/yr (say $70k…

> If hypothetically every engineer at Apple hired in 2017 got $100k/yr https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Apple&track=Software%20Engin... ICT2: $165k ICT3: $214k ICT4: $315k ICT5: $440k ICT6: $681k Point: $100k/yr total comp is pretty low for Apple's standards.

I am a software developer for 15 years and I don't know a single developer who make more than 100K$ a year in Germany (I only talk about regular employment and not about freelancers, because freelancers can work overtime and get bills from other countries including USA).

Re: Ask HN: How to increase SWE salaries in Europe?

#329

Post by rodgerd »

pavlov wrote: post #267
xwdv wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are taking a risk. The risk is that you assume your government will be able to provide you with a comfortable life even when you can no longer work. And when the time comes for your children to get higher education and retire themselves eventually you hope the government will also be there to step in. It works, until it doesn't. In America you can compensate yourself for this risk by simply getting a job where yo…

I'm a European living in USA working for a FAANG. Frankly, my assessment is exactly the opposite from yours. United States is the country that's most likely to go to shit. All of us wealthy professionals here are sitting on a powder keg of inequality and delusional politics, and nobody will be decoupled from it when it blows up. I plan to stay for a few more years, then return to my safe North European home country w…

This is why the actual billionaires - including and particularly the ones who setup ycombinator - such as sama and Peter Theil have bunkers outside the US that they plan to flee to (and in some cases did at the start of COVID) to avoid the mess that they've created in the US.

The people cosplaying here by repeating the values that Peter et al want them to quake will be the ones left behind.

Re: Ask HN: How to increase SWE salaries in Europe?

#330

Post by Izikiel43 »

s17n wrote: post #237
arcticbull wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of folks here are calling out the lower pay for SWEs in Europe and Canada as a failure - but also praise the low wealth inequality and low income inequality in Europe and Canada. You can't have low inequality by definition if you decide to start paying one group a ton of money. Well, this is a lot like the housing conversation in the US. "I want my house to go up in value, and be a great investment!" Also: "Why…

A SWE might make like 5 times what a teacher makes but a CEO can make like 1000 times what a SWE makes (eg $50k for the teacher, $250k for the SWE, and $250M for the CEO).

What kind of CEO makes 250 million?

Microsoft's CEO made ~44 million last year, and Microsoft is a trillion dollar company (https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2020/10/20/microsof....)

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