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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?

#441

Post by unishark »

benrbray wrote: post #248
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…

This "every man for himself / kicking down the ladder behind me" attitude is exactly the reason to leave America. If you slip through the cracks by no fault of your own (e.g. covid), you have no safety net to keep your life and finances from spinning out of control. > In America you can compensate yourself for this risk by simply getting a job where you are paid a higher salary than the average. Oh wow! If I want a m…

> This "every man for himself / kicking down the ladder behind me" attitude is exactly the reason to leave America.

The "ladder kicking" part misrepresents their point. I see nothing they said which would preclude another person from following their same path.

As for getting a higher paying job, the problem isn't whether you thought about this clever plan, but whether you are able to actually implement it in you country.

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

#442

Post by newswasboring »

vatican_banker wrote: post #437
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…

> I wouldn’t want to switch jobs just to drive up my pay even if I could [...] I have worked 20 years in the same job and so have my colleagues. Honestly this part of the European mentality is hard for an outsider understand. I lived there for ~10 years and heard this argument countless times. I want a fulfilling life and part of that is a fulfilling job. It's hard to believe a job on the same company can be fulfilli…

> It's hard to believe a job on the same company can be fulfilling for 20+ years.

I don't see why not. I have never worked for small companies (always 25k+ sizes ) so my view may be skewed but the scope of these companies are so large that changing a project can mean totally different ways of working and sometimes totally different industries. Can it be that it's easier in europe to change your job context within the company and not so in america?

> Changing jobs is part of professional growth IMO.

Actually it's hard for me to understand why this is taken for granted in America and my home country India. Sounds like KPI chasing to me.

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

#443

Post by robertlagrant »

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…

Risk is only one reason to potentially be worth a high amount of money.

Others are: having connections that result in value for a company, and having a scarce skill so you can do something valuable for a company. SWE falls under the latter, for the companies that can leverage them highly enough.

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

#444

Post by euengtaway50 »

In my experience, salaries start getting much more similar US ones at the staff/principal level, where salaries get into 170k ~ 200k USD/year range and total comp can go into 500~1M USD/year, at least in the main markets (UK, Germany, Sweden if you are working for Spotify).

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

#446

Post by robertlagrant »

ilikeerp wrote: post #403
strombofulous wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, I had no idea

It's not insane - it's pretty common in most developed countries. The US is a major outlier.

It's not a major outlier if it's common.

100k USD in GBP is 73347.60. In the UK you'd be taxed 30% on that, including national insurance. https://listentotaxman.com/73347.60

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

#447

Post by arp242 »

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?

There are several factors, but let's not forget that some of these companies have gotten so productive with some shady practices.

Would Facebook have become the Facebook we all know and love today if it had started in Europe? Probably not, because local legislators as well as the public would have said "whoa, we're not doing THAT!" I mean, Belgium outright banned Facebook from collecting data a few years ago, and there are other cases as well.

Companies such as Intel and Microsoft have been repeatedly fined, and it's not hard to see how they would have ben prevented getting in such a position in the first place if they had been started in Europe.

Now, according to some viewpoints profit and size is everything; I've seen this expressed on HN a few times with comments such as "all tech giants are American, Europe is shit", but what this misses is the question if we're really better off with all these tech giants in the first place, because to be honest I'm not so sure that we are. I think quite a few Europeans would see the existence of these companies as a failure of the American system, rather than a success.

So part of the reason is that the US allows for some business practices that would be very difficult (or outright illegal) if a company would be EU-based.

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

#448

Post by oblio »

winston_smith wrote: post #310
geodel wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems better than perennial back pain from sitting long hours and getting brain fried from implementing same logic of micro-service 1000th time for a 'challenging' project.

Go try it and let us know how it works out

This virtue signalling about hunter gatherers is funny. It's not the first time I've seen these kinds of discussions :-)

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

#449

Post by anoncake »

drdaeman wrote: post #319
anoncake wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That does not answer the question. Why should someone's income depend on their output? Why is that the ethically correct outcome?

Because otherwise outputs go down, with people naturally making effort to do whatever it takes to qualify for the best compensation, rather than actually doing something productive (as high outputs is not it). As the result, the whole economy (and thus, society) struggles. Check history of the Soviet Union - it was a glaring issue there.

[flagged]

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

#450

Post by titanomachy »

onion2k wrote: post #322
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…

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 t…

I've struggled with this a lot. Unfortunately, the question "what's the ideal way to run a society?" is a very different one from "where's the ideal place for me to go right now?".

I'm not from America, but moving there as a high-paid, still-young software developer was a reasonable choice for me. I might advise others in my position to do the same. I'd be less likely to tell people "you should run your country more like America".

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