Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: How to increase SWE salaries in Europe?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

731–740 of 974 posts

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

#731

Post by imtringued »

Jasp3r wrote: post #664
ako wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Increasing wages for everyone doesn't inherently mean everybody will earn more. Less money will go to shareholders, decreasing inequality

It can be difficult for shareholders to earn money if there is high CPI inflation.

If the previous year over year ROI is 7% and inflation grows by 3% then you have to increase your ROI to 10% just to catch up with inflation. This means only the most productive companies will actually maintain their existing growth.

Compare that to a deflationary environment where every warm body with a big bank account can get 7% ROI without even trying or even do annoying things like employ workers.

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

#732

Post by littlestymaar »

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.

> Europe doesn't value property ownership like the UK/USA/AU does

It's funny, because my father in law (French, but who spent quite some times living in the US) often says the opposite: “Americans don't value property ownership. That's because they have wooden houses that last for a few decades and get replaced, while in Europe we buy stone that last for centuries”.

Clichés are clichés.

UK is in Europe btw ;)

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

#733

Post by ACS_Solver »

KronisLV wrote: post #231
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…

That does sound like a pretty stress-free way to live! That said, living in Europe doesn't always equal good living conditions and stability - it depends on the particular country you're in as well. My net salary is just over 1000€ per month as a software dev. My living expenses eat up around half of that. If a quick search turns up that in USA the median salary for a dev is around 100k$ per year ( https://money.usne…

> My net salary is just over 1000€ per month as a software dev.

You're way underpaid even for Latvia. The national average now is 1100 EUR gross, or 812 EUR net (https://www.lsm.lv/raksts/zinas/ekonomika/videja-alga-uz-pap...), but for the IT field the average gross is 1829 EUR, which I believe is around 1300 net. Unless you're somewhere in Latgale where everything is much cheaper, or unless you just graduated last year, your net income should be at least some 20% higher.

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

#734

Post by artemonster »

ivan1783 wrote: post #487
artemonster wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a salary range for a hardware engineer? Can you shed some light, just a rough number?

I work at a unionised company, our union is called IG Metall. You can google the EG (entgelt) levels - engineers range from EG14-17 + an additional % each month (depending on your productivity range from 10-25% of brutto on top) + we get 14 salaries instead of 12 (roughly - union agreement). https://www.igmetall.de/download/docs_MuE_ERA_Entgelte_Juni2...

I always was confused when somebody told me exactly like you did. These levels are inconsistent across different lands. How much brutto is that practically? My calculations are 75-90k, but this is a huge spread :) Anyways thanks for the insight!

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

#735

Post by arp242 »

globular-toast wrote: post #717
arp242 wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you can't save, you are entirely dependent, in a broader sense, on the government's stability (I am not using this sentiment in a pejorative sense like some might.) I managed to save about €10k/year on a €42k/year salary (and I was being woefully underpaid even by European standards for what I do, but that's a different story, I should have earned at least 60k, but ah well) which I used to fund my business. Maybe y…

Yeah. I've managed to save £12k a year just by keeping my lifestyle at a minimum. The big one to avoid is paying for a car, which is actually realistic in Europe.

I hardly lived a "minimal" lifestyle, I just did what I wanted, including paying for my holiday with my girlfriend (who earned much less) and selling my house with a loss to move country (which also wasn't cheap in itself). I could have saved more if I wanted.

I also don't have a car – I don't even have a driving license – and that's indeed quite a large cost-saver. I also don't really have too expensive hobbies or need a new iPhone and macbook every year, so that helps as well.

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

#736

Post by benhurmarcel »

tsjq wrote: post #573

Stop accepting low salaries. Do not allow the H1B-kinda cheap-labour visa for tech workers. Perhaps be extra careful with those tech-body-shop companies like IBM, Accenture, Cognizant, Wipro, HCL, TCS , Infosys, and their smaller siblings

> Stop accepting low salaries

Ok, now I'm unemployed, then what?

Salaries are determined by how much they'd need to pay someone else to replace you. It's an auction, not something you can set yourself by being stubborn.

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

#737

Post by agilob »

brianmcc wrote: post #698
agilob wrote: post #585

Europe doesn't have Amerikan Dream fallacy, that by moving to a country you become rich if you work hard enough, we also don't go bankrupt after breaking a leg twice in 5 years. Worst student debt you can get is in the UK, its fees are capped at £9k for each academic year. I paid off my student debt in 4 years after graduation, while financially supporting my family and saving for a house in top5 biggest city, which…

I don't think Americans really comprehend the shock and horror that many of us feel about the state of their healthcare and the lack of vacation time, or other European norms such as maternity/paternity time or sick pay. 100% Would Not Swap. Compulsory nit-pick that not all UK nations charge tuition fees to their residents btw :-)

>Compulsory nit-pick that not all UK nations charge tuition fees to their residents btw :-)

True that, Welsh government can also cover 2/3 of tuition for students from poor families.

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

#738

Post by wnnzl »

flr03 wrote: post #712
wnnzl wrote: post #703

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 p…

Same situation as you here, 10y xp, free education, girlfriend SWE as well... We have a household income around 190k euro before tax, no kids. The only reason why we could wish to earn more is to afford a nice flat in London, it makes you wonder who can really afford it.

I’m from southern Poland, flats are dirty cheap here. I bought one for 35k euro 4 years ago.

However, we are about to become expats in one month so I kind of think of selling now (few reasons, government taxes, house prices went up). I think that renting is way better in a long run (unless you plan to live in one city for more than 10+ years). As for buying, maybe some small house in my 50s in some less populated area like mountains or forest :)

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

#739

Post by hgretg3443 »

ivan1783 wrote: post #459

Been working in Europe for about 10 years now with "low" wages as a Hardware Engineer (6 figures US). Sorry but America seems like a third world country compared with what we get here. I have: 35 days vacation per year, 35 hour work week, overtime pay, free education, childcare money each month, healthcare that wont bankrupt me if I lose my job, up to 3 years in parental leave (6 mo. paid), probably other things whic…

Only a very few developers in Europe have 35 hour week and many have to do unpaid overtime.

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

#740

Post by thomasahle »

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 don't think those numbers are accurate.

Google and Facebook both have as many contractors as employees: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/28/technology/google-temp-wo...

> But the company’s increasing reliance on temps and contractors has some Google employees wondering if management is undermining its carefully crafted culture. As of March, Google worked with roughly 121,000 temps and contractors around the world, compared with 102,000 full-time employees, according to an internal document obtained by The New York Times.

Accounting for those would reduce profit-per-employee to half. Furthermore, those contractors earn a lot less, further boosting the wages for the full-time employees.

Post reply on HN