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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?

#861

Post by killtimeatwork »

dom96 wrote: post #145
nackerhewz wrote: post #134

One way things might become more competitive is when more people become freelancers. The freelance market is more volatile than the rigidly regulated traditional labor markets allowing for larger pay increases during good times (and also decreases during bad times), in general, it approaches a more realistic compensation of real added value. Personally I've greatly benefited from becoming a freelancer in Europe and h…

Do you or somebody else in this thread have some tips for those of us who never freelanced but would be interested in giving it a shot? What’s the best way to get started?

I think what the OP had in mind and what is actually common in Europe is "contracting". It's basically a full-time position, but you're brought in as an independent company (mostly to circumvent labor laws and sometimes tax laws as well) and not an employee. It's all basically a widespread scam to work around dysfunctional laws. BTW job sites in UK even the the "permanent employee/contractor" toggle for searching through full-time positions.

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

#862

Post by alkonaut »

pikzel wrote: post #789
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 don't get why I would get a smaller cut of the profit just because I save less for my children than Americans do. I should be paid what is reasonable for the work I do, not how much money I spent on education.

> I don't get why I would get a smaller cut of the profit just because I save less for my children than Americans do

In a sense you don't, depending on how you count. My gross salary is after the pension is deduced. The gross includes my kids university costs, but they are deduced as taxes so don't show up on the net. An american deduces the kids university costs from his net salary (and there could be more, e.g. pensions).

Comparing pay as a simple number "gross pay" is extremely difficult. Comparing net pay purchasing power or similar after necessary expenses including savings (and kids university) is probably more accurate.

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

#863

Post by nly »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #117
nly wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, and interest rates on mortgages in the UK are still like 3-4% for the longer fixes and you won't find a fixed term of more than 5 years...

No, they’re not. A 10-year fixed rate 65% LTV mortgage from Halifax is currently 2.15%

65% LTV is completely unobtainable to most people, and definitely to most first-time buyers.

The average house price to earnings ratio in the UK is over 8x, so your 65% loan becomes 5.2x earnings, which is actually higher than the 4.5x that mortgage lenders are allowed to lend by regulation (only 15% of mortgages can be lent above this).

So let's be generous and say your 65% loan is 4.5x earnings. That means the other 35% is 2.4x earnings.

2.4x earnings is equivalent to saving something like at least 15% of your gross salary for 10 years, assuming a 7% annual investment return (which in itself is unobtainable, but lets be generous).

15% of gross salary is going to be 20-25% of take-home for most people...not exactly obtainable when you're already spending 40-50% of your take-home on rent.

When you finally get the mortgage the monthly payments might be affordable, but getting there is the problem for the vast majority.

So no, most people are still looking at 3-4% mortgages with the equity they have at hand.

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

#864

Post by eloff »

Bakary wrote: post #836
eloff wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I disagree that STEM fields don't pay any better. I think it's clear they do.

Nature vs nurture. It's a mix, it's not all decided at birth. You always have the power to change your outcome. Many people will never exercise it effectively though.

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

#865

Post by RestlessMind »

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 just can’t find an argument why I should be able to get very rich doing my job

Another way to think about this is that your job generates certain value in the economy. If labor's salary doesn't capture that, then that value is going somewhere - either to your governments via taxes or to capital owners. I understand that some Europeans will not have problems with the former, but are you comfortable letting capital class capture all the remaining value after taxes? If not, that is a good enough argument because allowing that to happen is what is driving wealth inequality to high levels.

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

#866

Post by ahupp »

thomasahle wrote: post #740
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, c…

True, but remember that the initial question is about how much they pay SWE. I'd expect that the pay for contractors in e.g. the kitchen isn't subject to the same competitive forces, and won't move up as the company becomes more profitable.

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

#867

Post by [deleted] »

davidhbolton wrote: post #591
eloisant wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buying your home isn't an investment, it's only an investment if you can sell it at any time. Risks of buying your home include: - Not being able to move if you can't sell (because the market isn't right) - Being stuck in a house where you pay a high mortgage while you could rent for much less after a crash (what happened in Spain after 2008). Note than in US you can give up your house and your mortgage goes away, bu…

If you live in a country with mass migration then both house prices and rental prices increase almost constantly. I lived in London from 1996-2015. I bought a house in 2000, it tripled in value by 2015 and I sold up and moved out of London. Its kind of mad.

[deleted]

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

#868

Post by KronisLV »

gerlv wrote: post #497
KronisLV wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, my particular situation might be caused by the fact that i initially started working at my present company before finishing my bachelor's and am currently working on finishing my master's. Since the initial salary i was hired with was even lower, it has never quite caught up - job hopping might address that. But even so, the average net salary in this country is even lower than that (overall, not for software…

I was in the same position when I started working at the first company. They just continued to pay the same salary after I graduated. Until you reach senior level, the best strategy for maximising salary is to switch to better paying jobs every ~2 years. Also, I assume you are from Latvia as you have LV in your username - 1k is waaay to low. I have friends making 3.5k eur a month. You can find mid level positions tha…

Yep, that's the plan!

There is also something to be said about working for different companies and experiencing different approaches to development, different tools, tech stacks and all of the other stuff you might not see if you stick at one place for a long time.

Though that's more of an auxiliary reason for switching jobs, whereas OP was talking about finances in particular.

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

#869

Post by swat535 »

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 thing is you only see this attitude with Software Engineers and not other high paying professions such as Doctors or Lawyers.

If you were to compare the roots of Computer Science and its culture to other professions, it initially stemmed from the nerds and nerds were always trained to see themselves as low status, in fact by definition being a geek would make you an outcast amongst others..

It just so happened by pure luck that many successful startups grew thanks to our field and being a SWE became suddenly desirable.

So I'm not surprised that demanding a fair wage or forming unions are some of the things we struggle with.

Our industry is constantly trying to bring its own value down (anyone can code, it's easy,..), you never hear about other industries complaining they are "overpaid" or belittle the value they bring to people and businesses.

It's an unfortunate truth about studying CS and if I may be boldly controversial on HN, it might also one of the reasons we don't see too many women in this low status field.

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

#870

Post by [deleted] »

kodah wrote: post #191

Europeaners seem to think getting by is just fine. They're happy that they're hyper educated, that their kids are going to be hyper educated, that their healthcare is paid for, and they get lots of vacation. Because 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.) Americans want their fair share of the…

[deleted]
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