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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?

#721

Post by imtringued »

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…

As others have pointed out, people don't actually want "a nice car, a big house with a view on the ocean, 100% organic food and access to top level healthcare and education." all at once. They want a "good enough solution". Some of them are fine with an apartment with a view on the ocean. Some of them are fine with a house without a view on the ocean. Some of them want organic food, a lot of people eat junk food or processed food and like it.

This is basically a strawman that you built so that you can easily defeat it.

Think of the most extreme possible scenario. An economy where no human workers are needed and only capital is needed to build robots that are equally good workers as humans. The rich will own a lot of robots and no longer be dependent on human workers. Here is the problem. Since everyone else is unemployed, nobody can afford to buy your products. It is actually possible to get wealthier by giving to those who have nothing in this scenario because although the rich own robots, the robots are effectively worthless if they don't do any work. You don't even have to give that money away for free, you can just lend it out.

Lending doesn't work in existing economies because it is very difficult to get access to capital if you have no money to begin with. It's also a chicken and egg situation because you need money in consumer hands to drive demand which then drives more loans. If you spend your loans wastefully then the money will arrive in consumer hands by mere chance. So in theory if you just print an infinite amount of money some of it will trickle down eventually. That's the idiotic policy central banks around the world are following instead of giving out just (emphasis on just) enough money to get everyone back to work.

>Giving more money to everyone is easy, everyone was a billionaire in Zimbabwe few years back. That did not make them "rich".

There is an easy indicator for when to stop. You can stop handing out money once you have reached the 2% inflation goal.

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

#722

Post by littlestymaar »

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.

> 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.

I would consider Paris a top-tier city, and while none of my friends make more than 100k, half of us bought our house already (we're all late 20s, early 30s, with a few kids starting to pop-up).

If you make 80k€[1] pre-tax in Paris (that's a good salary for SWE here), you can borrow more than 300k€. For a couple, that means buying a 700k€ flat/house, you can even live in the middle of Paris for that price! And we're talking about one of the most expensive city in Europe, with a massive housing bubble since 2000 (where the price was 2.74 times lower, adjusted for the evolution of salaries[2]).

In Europe, you are affluent with less than 100k€.

[1]: I'm talking about «super brut», which is how much money you cost to your employer, not the «brut» which appears on your working contract (which would be around 57k€ in this example)

[2] https://stymaar.fr/net/Capture%20du%202021-01-14%2012-11-55...., source Jacques Friggit (http://www.cgedd.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/prix-immobili...)

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

#723

Post by alkonaut »

esoterica wrote: post #203
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 have worked 20 years in the same job and so have my colleagues. This is a cultural difference I feel. I think this is part of your company's culture, not your society's culture. There are also lots of Dunder-Mifflin type companies in America where nobody has any ambition and everyone just coasts until retirement.

I think it's a bit weird to associate "ambition" with the propensity to switch jobs. I'm in a "traditional" industry so product and project cycles last decades, not just moths or years. It takes a couple of years for a new hire to be really productive. I can't compare it to some other places I have worked where half the staff would change every year and a large project would ship in 6 months.

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

#724

Post by throwawayzRUU6f »

xyzelement wrote: post #363

This is a pretty simple topic if you have a good understanding of what enabled developers to pull in large comps, and what kinds of employers pay such comps. I comment on comp threads on HN frequently and don't want to rehash my entire advice, but I can illustrate one example that can be generalized to Europe and America. Consider two hypothetical employers: Employer 1: - We want to hire only the best. - We expect pe…

In my experience, the share of employers with culture like 'Employer 1' who pay like 'Employer 2' is much higher than the amount of all-around 'Employer 2's.

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

#725

Post by killtimeatwork »

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…

Most of Western/Westernized world is going to shit. Western Europe and Japan in particular have terrible demographics, which means that, unless some miracle happens (like a massive influx of immigrants who integrate well and become productive members of society), that less and less working people will have to maintain more and more non-working population. Obviously, it will lead to radical decrease of standard of living and gutting of the welfare programs across the board. Just watch it happen across the next 30-40 years.

There was even a leaked secret recording of heads of banks, where they basically agree that the party is coming to an end for Western Europe (due to demographics) and admire Merkel and Holland for hinting that to the population, as opposed to ignoring the problem altogether.

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

#726

Post by imtringued »

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.

This is the wrong mode of thinking.

>I expect most of the additional pay will end up in higher housing prices.

It will _justify_ existing house prices. If inflation picks up the interest rate will rise and the cost of housing will stop growing. The increased wages can still afford the same housing price, but not a cent more.

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

#727

Post by learnstats2 »

nicoburns wrote: post #695
beagle3 wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Op did say “marginal rate”

Yes, but you'd be amazed at how many people don't understand what that means. No doubt it's not true on HN, but a lot of people among the general public seem to be under the impression that the effective rate jumps at thresholds.

I personally know someone who turned down a payrise for this reason.

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

#728

Post by iso1631 »

blunte wrote: post #90
iso1631 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$200k is £146k I've seen mid-level tech jobs in London banks for £146k which come with 34 days off including state holidays like new years day, christmas, etc £146k for a full time contractor on 226 days a year isn't that much at all - £650 a day, which is in the "Senior developer" range [0] With 30% tax in the US and the cost of health insurance, that would be $68,400 For a staff employee on £146k (which is quite ac…

London is hugely expensive, so tech salaries should be higher there to attract workers. Also, finance generally pays better than other industries (although banking in Netherlands pays typically low-average); but trading and investment companies pay above average.

Median wage pre-tax in London is £736 a week, or £38k a year. It can't be that expensive if half the people live on that.

Median rent for a 2 bed in London is $1976 a month

Average rent for a 2 bed in San Francisco is $3772 a month

[0] https://www.london.gov.uk/what-we-do/housing-and-land/improv...

[1] https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-san-francisco-ren...

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

#729

Post by killtimeatwork »

taneq wrote: post #645
killtimeatwork wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument is a fallacy. There's plenty of stuff stopping me from being a successful hunter-gatherer: 1. HGs are very skilled, and they build their skills throughout their lives - crucially, starting with childhood and adolescence. I, an adult brought up in a Western civilization, would be totally clueless in a rain forest the same way that those HGs would be totally clueless in our world. 2. HGs live in groups. I…

I guess I should have said "there's nothing stopping them except lack of will to do the required work." Which I guess makes sense since the motivation generally seems to be a desire for a return to some noble-savage-in-Eden life of plenty and ease.

How do you integrate with a HG community that doesn't care about you or, even worse, kills you and eats you? It's not only about "required work" but also about serious life-threatening risks involved. Whereas if you were born as a HG, those risks aren't there.

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

#730

Post by winter_blue »

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 (…

Yup, this is likely indeed the correct answer.

The real question then becomes: how do other countries cultivate highly-profitable tech companies (similar to the ones in the US)?

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