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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?

#831

Post by johbjo »

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 (…

Profit-per-employee is not really meaningful for comparison since very few European companies are pure software, and therefore have cost structures involving much more than salaries. Relatively few employees are software engineers in Volkswagen, Daimler or Siemens, for example. Still huge employers.

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

#832

Post by timwaagh »

Basically companies do not recognize the value engineers bring. They are seen as costs which need to be minimised, when in reality it's their core business. Little is invested in helping engineers to get better. Agile practices are implemented poorly. People do not start tech companies. The average software company is a body shop that rents out to insurers, banks and the government, which aren't really tech. This model is only popular because it helps business dissociate itself from tech and gets around all employee protections. More lucrative models like Freelancing are sometimes legally restricted because of the same employee protections, so is not popular. Engineers wait for the hours to pass so they can go home. Code reviews are a tool for office politics. Software engineering is kind of a blue collar ish job which employers think anyone can do. There's just no cachet to being a programmer in my slice of Europe. Simply put, there are so many things wrong with software engineering here that I would not know where to even start to address the issues even if I had the power to do it. And it's not just about money too. It's about something being completely and utterly broken.

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

#833

Post by imtringued »

rhexs wrote: post #780
kimburgess wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% this. As an outside observer, the US is country with an almost impressive list of societal issues. Inequality aside, it's filled with a hermit-like population with little to no knowledge of the world outside its borders unless they visited it as part of military action, failing power structures, regular school shootings, suicide bombings, riots, an uncontrolled pandemic, insurrection, religious extremists and a…

Recommend you take a break from the news then.

I am more shocked how you messed up basic things like zoning.

Single family house zoning? Really? Who the hell needs that? Heck, I will go one step further and declare that nobody needs exclusive residential zoning. You are building a von Neuman bottleneck (separation of commerce and residential areas) into your society. A lot of social issues stem from this incredibly bad idea.

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

#834

Post by throwaway894345 »

oblio wrote: post #791
throwaway894345 wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was laid off recently due to the pandemic. Because I work in tech, it took me two weeks to find a new job and it ended up being a promotion and a 20% raise. I would make 40% less in Europe, even in a big city, and unless I lived in a small European town my cost of living would be quite a lot higher. Even factoring healthcare (contrary to what Europeans perceive, the healthcare system works very well for the upper m…

Just have to point out that the pandemic was not a tech crisis. If you want a point of reference, think of the dotcom bust. That was a tech crisis. White collar workers, especially STEM ones have largely coasted through this pandemic.

I’m not following your point; we might even agree. My point was: despite less legal protection, American SWEs still enjoy a lot of security even during a pandemic (which isn’t a tech crisis but still dramatically impacted many tech companies). Because I make like 80% more than what I would make in Europe, I also am able to save and invest (6 months expenses saved up in a savings account). I also give a good portion to charities and political causes (so hopefully one day America can work well for people who aren’t SWEs).

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

#835

Post by Aerroon »

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…

>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.

I think when it comes to Europe people should specificity the countries. If you take Europe or even the EU as one entity then it is one of the most unequal places on Earth when it comes to income and wealth.

Bulgaria is an EU member state and in 2018 had an adjusted net national income per capita of $8,148.[0] Luxembourg is part of the EU as well and in 2018 it was $60,189. Denmark was at $52,641. Poland was at $12,954.

All of this varies enormously from country to country.

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

#836

Post by Bakary »

eloff wrote: post #297
Bakary wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people are made miserable by studying STEM. And if it makes you miserable, you are unlikely to get good enough at it to get the purported payoff.

Doing something easy rarely pays off. The road to hell is the path of least resistance.

In this case it won't pay off either. It's a hard job market for mediocre engineers and many STEM fields don't even pay that much better.

The vast masses of people are already on the road to hell from birth no matter what choices they make in their lives so that expression ought to enter its retirement years

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

#837

Post by throwaway894345 »

burntoutfire wrote: post #620
throwaway894345 wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I considered moving to France for a few years (from the US), but I was shocked to find it would be a 40% pay cut, even after factoring in all of the healthcare and other expenses we Americans enjoy. And the cost of living is a fair bit higher in France to boot. Now that companies are cozying up to remote work, I think I’ll jist do more frequent 3 month trips and work in the evenings when I run out of vacation days. T…

> avoid dealing with VISAs VISA is a name of a company. What you mean is just "visa".

shrugs in autocorrect

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

#838

Post by 2rsf »

atomashpolskiy wrote: post #610

I don't think it's cheaper to live in Europe than in US. The reasons for lower salaries in my opinion are: - most developer jobs are in "real" businesses, which see IT as a cost center - compared to US, there is a vanishingly small number of technically innovative IT-first companies, so there's little competition for talented professionals - taxation is progressive and harsher in general due to being the primary sour…

> due to being the primary source of govt income in most (all?) European countries, and increasing gross salary kinda stops making sense at some point

It's the same in the US

> It would be great, if these issues were addressed, and there are well-known ways to do that.

How ? moving to bonuses or equity is a way to defer taxes but at the end you would pay the same

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

#839

Post by Bakary »

tomcam wrote: post #348
Bakary wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people are made miserable by studying STEM. And if it makes you miserable, you are unlikely to get good enough at it to get the purported payoff.

It is not my experience that their chosen field makes them miserable. Would you mind illuminating your point? My experience is anecdotal and not very helpful.

Most people do not have the necessary personality type/abilities/interest to do well in STEM. Doing a STEM degree is not enough on its own to get the STEM payoff. To be clear, I am not saying that STEM makes people miserable by default, just that a minority of the population enjoys such things.

However the low percentage of STEM degrees can also be explained by the fact that the college lifestyle is an institution of its own in the US. Therefore more people who won't necessarily stand to benefit from college will attempt it, and they are more likely to pick easier majors (which are overwhelmingly non-STEM)

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

#840

Post by throwaway894345 »

fulafel wrote: post #414
throwaway894345 wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Home process in the US are historically very stable. I would think this is also true in Europe? As for diversification, your house shouldn’t be your only investment. As for fires and natural disasters, this is why insurance exists. Owning a home isn’t for everyone, but I don’t think there’s anything particularly risky about it as far as investments go.

Are you looking at home prices as aggregate? It will naturally seem a lot more stable then since you are then looking at what you'd have if you had diversification! As for individual cases of housing, I think we've recently seen enough discussion of CA volatility to conclude that at least big cities have a lot of volatility in individual housing units. (Of course this all depends on the alternative too: renting regul…

I’m not talking about California (which is anomalous in many respects), but I am talking about the general market in various municipalities as well as anecdata from various people about their property values increasing from year to year.
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