Ask HN: How to increase SWE salaries in Europe? • Hacker News Board

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

#701

Post by Aeolun » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 10:48 AM UTC

IMTDb wrote: post #593

thomasahle wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't have low inequality by definition if you decide to start paying one group a ton of money. You can, if you give the other groups a ton of money too. Wages in Europe have stagnated compared to GDP [1] too, so it's not unreasonable to fight for higher wages. [1]: https://www.robert-schuman.eu/en/european-issues/0289-labour...

There is only so much "richness" you can share. You can't give 400 million american a nice car, a big house with a view on the ocean, 100% organic food and access to top level healthcare and education. Unless you produce those thing at that scale, and some things are by definition not scalable (there is only one "best medical school in the US"). So some people have more power to get access to/acquire those desirable…

The US has around 150000km of shoreline.

There are roughly 350M inhabitants, but only about 120M households.

If you want to give everyone a house with a view of the ocean, with plots 10m wide, you need to build them around 8 deep to give everyone a view of the ocean.

It may be easier to do if you stagger the plots.

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

#702

Post by tiborsaas » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 10:48 AM UTC

sparkling wrote: post #511

fy20 wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading your comment gave me a thought... maybe a better way of looking at the difference in salaries is that living in the EU is better value for money than living in the US. In pretty much all of the EU, even in expensive cities like Stockholm or Dublin, if you earn a salary of €100,000, you can live a pretty decent life. Heck even on €50,000, you can do well in a lot of places. Good luck doing the same in any of t…

> In pretty much all of the EU, even in expensive cities like Stockholm or Dublin, if you earn a salary of €100,000, you can live a pretty decent life. Define "decent". In the top tier cities in western EU countries, buying even a modest apartment that will house a small family will be a challenge on €100k (pre-tax!). It is certainly doable, but you will not be able to afford any other luxuries.

You make it sound like you must buy a home with a years worth of salary. Vast majority of people gets mortgages to finance their homes.

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

#703

Post by wnnzl » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 10:48 AM UTC

I’m SWE for 10 years. I started with very low salary, and I’m about to start a new job in next month and be at the very top (7k euro net, monthly).

TBH I do not need that kind of money. I do it for new challenges that come with it. I live with my partner, we both had our higher education for free, we plan no children, and we both have 80k euro in our saving accounts.

Why would I need to earn more? I would prefer to pay more taxes so everything is growing more evenly - less poverty = less crimes, more happiness.

Just my $0.02

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

#704

Post by thomasahle » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 10:50 AM UTC

ako wrote: post #609

thomasahle wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't have low inequality by definition if you decide to start paying one group a ton of money. You can, if you give the other groups a ton of money too. Wages in Europe have stagnated compared to GDP [1] too, so it's not unreasonable to fight for higher wages. [1]: https://www.robert-schuman.eu/en/european-issues/0289-labour...

Everybody earning more will just lead to more inflation. I expect most of the additional pay will end up in higher housing prices.

> Everybody earning more will just lead to more inflation.

Normally we measure wage growth adjusted for inflation.

In my case I referred to wages as share of gdp, which has been going down over the last decades. There is no reason that shouldn't at least be a fixed amount. If it's not, it means that people who make money outside of wages (shareholders etc.) are capturing a steadily larger part of the total economy.

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

#705

Post by tiborsaas » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 10:50 AM UTC

marcus_holmes wrote: post #530

sparkling wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In pretty much all of the EU, even in expensive cities like Stockholm or Dublin, if you earn a salary of €100,000, you can live a pretty decent life. Define "decent". In the top tier cities in western EU countries, buying even a modest apartment that will house a small family will be a challenge on €100k (pre-tax!). It is certainly doable, but you will not be able to afford any other luxuries.

Europe doesn't value property ownership like the UK/USA/AU does - it's perfectly normal to rent for your entire life, and owning your own home is not seen as a requirement for a good life or even a wealthy one.

In Hungary the reverse is true. Owning a home gives you benefits a rental will never can. Plus you are gaining capital compared to using your salary and considering it as an expense.

It's not required to own, sure, but it increases your comfort level significantly.

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

#706

Post by alexgmcm » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 10:52 AM UTC

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?

It's economic productivity, not worker productivity - so it has more to do with the circumstances of the company in the market than the employees.

The companies are bigger with much larger market share (often a significant fraction of the Earth's population) and benefit from the economies of scale that go with that - it's not like Facebook needs a million times more employees than a tiny web service a fraction of its size - tech work benefits massively from scale.

I'd argue the USA has these large companies for various reasons (the start-up environment with lots of VC money, supportive universities etc.) and dominates Europe because Europe doesn't engage in protectionism.

In Russia and China, where protectionism is much more common, the American tech giants are nowhere near dominant and they have their own local giants with Baidu, Yandex etc.

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

#707

Post by ChuckNorris89 » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 10:53 AM UTC

silvestrov wrote: post #672

IMTDb wrote: post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is only so much "richness" you can share. You can't give 400 million american a nice car, a big house with a view on the ocean, 100% organic food and access to top level healthcare and education. Unless you produce those thing at that scale, and some things are by definition not scalable (there is only one "best medical school in the US"). So some people have more power to get access to/acquire those desirable…

> those things at that scale When everybody have those things, you no longer think of them as "richness". Richness is what sticks out. 150 years ago very few people had running water, electricity, fridge, WC, etc. Most urban americans live "richer" lives today than the rich did 150 years ago.

>Most urban americans live "richer" lives today than the rich did 150 years ago.

This "richness" is also relative: If you own a goat in a village with no goats, you're rich. If you own an apartment in a village of McMansions you're poor.

And let's not mistake comfort with wealth. Just because I have electricity, a WC, a fridge and don't plow the fields like my grandparents did might make me seem rich, but my grandparents owned that land they were plowing while I don't own the "land" I am "plowing" at my comfy deskjob, but the corporation does, nor do I own the land I live and sleep on, but the landlord/bank does.

Our lives are now much more safe and comfortable than 150 years ago, but in the end, most of us who are not asset owners, are set to be serfs for life, just like 150 years ago except that instead of being serfs to a crown we are serfs to banks and publicly traded megacorps.

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

#708

Post by pjc50 » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 10:53 AM UTC

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…

The situation is very odd because the inequality graph is a lot steeper than anyone is willing to believe. For the UK, look up your salary on here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/percentile-points-f...

If you're a SWE on a half or even a third of an SV salary, you're still in the top 5%. Do you feel rich? No. Are you easily able to buy a house in the southeast early in your career? No. But for every person earning more than you there are twenty earning less than you.

The number of super-rich dominating the conversation, the political donations, and the housebuying is surprisingly small, and most of them make far more from investments than from salary. Actual income for "work" caps out at a few million for celebrities and sportspeople.

Even among the ordinary I know people who've been out-earned by their houses - that is, the annual rise in the value of their (mortgaged) house was more than their salaried income.

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

#709

Post by alkonaut » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 10:54 AM UTC

sajithdilshan wrote: post #668

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 got here by taking no risk at all. This is the most European thing I've ever heard. Most people would not like to take risks and would not even think about stepping outside of their comfort zone. Personally, I think this is the reason why there are less startups in Europe compared to US. No one would like to take a risk unless it's absolutely necessary. > I have worked 20 years in the same job and so have my coll…

> This is the most European thing I've ever heard.

Thank you

> This would literally be death to me

I think how often you change jobs depends on the challenges and type of work. My first project was over 10 years from start to initial release.

I don't think switching jobs is that necessary if you can be challenged in your current job. Ever changing problems are exactly why I'm staying. I tried switching to do some web work in a couple of places, but found that I really hated it and that most things in the "web stack" are just crud and it's really hard to find really hard or complex problems in the space (Where the complexity isn't in something tangential like ops/configuration/scaling...). I'm an engineering/math type person so it's a bit scarce.

I keep a constant lookout for new jobs, but I filter out 99% of positions simply because it looks like generic web tech jobs.

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

#710

Post by alkonaut » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 10:55 AM UTC

sajithdilshan wrote: post #686

politelemon wrote: post #674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see what you mean, it does however assume that staying in a job is the same as being stuck in a job, doing the exact same thing you were doing 20 years ago - perhaps this assumption is a reflection of US work culture (you tell me, I don't know)? If you have a good job with a stimulating environment, colleagues, and decent pay, then the perception of being stuck does not exist. Over time the role will change to…

> Over time the role will change to reflect the changing organisation and role. > perhaps this assumption is a reflection of US work culture (you tell me, I don't know)? I do not know anything about US work culture from first hand experience. I'm a software engineer from Sri Lanka working in Germany as a software engineer. It was my personal opinion and as I've said everyone has their own preference. > Over time the…

Yes, sorry, I meant same company. My role of course has changed although I'm still a developer/architect type, it's obviously changing all the time. I have been offered management type roles but consistently rejected them though so it's almost the same "job" too (developer). That my business card might say "Senior developer" or "Architect" doesn't really change what the job is I think.