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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?

#931

Post by comp_throw7 »

crossroadsguy wrote: post #486
comp_throw7 wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a sense in which a non-trivial chunk of those productivity gains are eaten up by rent-seeking (in SF/NY, the high rents are literally rent-seeking in that they're the result of deliberate manipulation of local laws & regulations around housing & zoning for the benefit of existing homeowners). Even there, though, a single person can live quite nicely on 100k USD (or 120k USD, if going from 100k Euro), if they…

You were comparing apples and oranges in living standards. The moment you inserted roommates, it became apples and bananas. By the time you will reach public transport, safety etc - it will be apples and cookies.

The person I was replying to didn't specify any particular baseline for living standards, so I reject the assertion that my example was inappropriate.

If you want to raise a family in SF proper, I agree that 100k/yr total income would be insufficient for what most people consider a reasonable QoL, even if one spouse stayed at home to take care of the children to avoid childcare costs.

Of course, in SF, 100k/yr is "entry-level engineer at an early stage startup" territory in terms of earnings, which is not the typical profile of someone trying to raise children. You'd have to be trying really hard to not make double that as a mid-level engineer in the Bay, though.

Keep in mind that even once you get past the flashy comp numbers at FAANG, there are a huge number of publicly-traded tech companies in the Bay which pay enough that you could afford a mortgage to buy a house in SF on a single engineer's earnings without breaking 35% of post-tax take home pay. (A bit of a stretch at 200k, easy at 250k.) Even startups are getting there: a friend of mine recently got a new job in the Bay (not in SF, but close) paying over 200k in cash comp (base + bonus) with less than 5 years of experience, plus some options (which are probably not worthless, but can't immediately be used to pay a mortgage). He's a good engineer but this isn't an unusual outcome; some of the engineers I know aren't as good, but they make more money because they took the interview grind seriously and went for companies with publicly-traded stock.

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

#932

Post by cjblomqvist »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #577
cjblomqvist wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure about that? Sure, not the top elite, but there's still a significant gap between upper middle class and lower in for example Sweden, which I believe is one of the more equal countries. FAANG level salaries would significantly widen that gap.

Not really true. Being a dev in sweden does not put you in the mid-upper class (lawyers, doctors, footballers, celebrieties, bankers, management consulting) FAANG salaries would help close that gap.

Based on my insights (I'm actively recruiting software engineers, my dad used to run a health clinic as a doctor, I'm educated and have many friends within management consulting - in Sweden) that's at least not true for doctors - at least it's in the same ballpark (in contrast with FAANG-level salaries).

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

#933

Post by cjblomqvist »

sidlls wrote: post #828
cjblomqvist wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure about that? Sure, not the top elite, but there's still a significant gap between upper middle class and lower in for example Sweden, which I believe is one of the more equal countries. FAANG level salaries would significantly widen that gap.

Yes, I am quite sure. The typical FAANG developer is not earning $200k base and $200k RSUs per year. It's more like $130k - $180k and maybe $80k to $150k RSU. You have to be pretty senior to reach top 5% income at FAANG in the US--it isn't as common as HN would have you believe. And as I've noted in another comment, top 10% doesn't put you in the same socioeconomic class as the actual wealthy ( https://www.investoped…

I guess it all comes down to which unequality we're talking about. Sure, if does not significantly affect the difference between the very top and the rest. But there are a lot of differences between different brackets from the ones at the bottom up to 99% too.

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

#934

Post by benzoate »

ilikeerp wrote: post #926
benzoate wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+9% if you’re still repaying student loans, which is common until 40s. Student loans operate like a tax in the U.K., taking 9% of your pre-tax income above 15 or 25k directly from your payslip.

If you hit 100k by the time your 30 you won't be paying it off into your 40's... Tech / consulting etc, not too hard to hit that number.

You aren’t wrong, but hitting 6 figures at age 30 is very far from the typical experience. Outside of London it’s not guaranteed you’d even hit £60k.

Plan 2 students are screwed, with the high interest rates and slower repayment schedule I wouldn’t even be sure non-London devs would finish paying it off.

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

#935

Post by knuthsat »

thargor wrote: post #911
knuthsat wrote: post #820

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, having a GmbH does not really allow a clean profit extraction without having employees, so when you eventually employ yourself you'll get to around 70%. Austria is one of the worst countries in the world to do any kind of small business. Self-employment is also taxed aggressively. A form of self-employment in Croatia allows a fixed tax payment of about 5k EUR a year with an income cap of 39k EUR per year, leavi…

39k EUR a year in Austria is 33% tax+insurance+pension: 20% "forced savings" (Pension + Vorsorgekasse) 7% health insurance 6% income tax But 39k a year is definitely not a freelance programmer in Austria. 80-120k is the average I see at my colleagues and enterprise customers for freelance programmers with regular working hours compared to regular employees (5 week vacation, sick absence, ...). I know people scratchin…

Well, 34k after taxes in Zagreb, Croatia is about 50k after taxes in Vienna. Given the increased cost of living and quite similar bureaucratic and regulation heavy state I'd say the self-employment is very aggressively taxed. For 50k after taxes you need to earn quite a lot compared to 39k in Croatia and the benefits are not that much different.

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

#936

Post by benzoate »

sokoloff wrote: post #680
benzoate wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+9% if you’re still repaying student loans, which is common until 40s. Student loans operate like a tax in the U.K., taking 9% of your pre-tax income above 15 or 25k directly from your payslip.

I don’t view paying my own individual debt as a tax. I have a percentage of my pay deducted and diverted to my retirement account. That’s not a tax either, even though it’s percentage-based on my pre-tax amount and directly deducted.

You can opt out of your pension contributions. You can’t opt-out of paying student loans, which is an available option with other debts.

Student loan deductions reduce a balance that doesn’t impact your credit score, can’t chase you for repayment (unless you do something stupid like move country and fail to inform them) and doesn’t impact lender decisions. Most people have no hope of repaying their ‘loan’ in their lifetimes and instead expect the loan to be written off after 25 years. U.K. student loans being debt is a technicality, it’s a tax with a countdown timer that might be shorter if you’re baller.

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

#937

Post by chupy »

krageon wrote: post #770
drdaeman wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My net salary is just over 1000€ That's really low, even for poorer European countries. Decent middle-level software engineer in, let's say, Ukraine (no offense meant - it is a good country, just isn't one famous for high incomes), easily makes at least 2k (and I say "at least" - that's awfully underpaid). > that means that i'd need anywhere from ~8 to ~14 years to save as much as they could in a year That's a bit…

If Ukraine legitimately has an average net salary of 2k for a SWE it's better than the actually good parts of the EU. I really, really doubt that this is true.

It's the same or even more in Romania (depending on the parts of the country), I do not know why everyone is surprised about it. There are a lot of benefits there that SWE (and IT in general get) - less taxes if you have a CS degree or you can open a company or be self employed and pay next to nothing in taxes. Since there is an increase demand and not enough supply salaries keep rising. In the end you might get a better deal regarding COL if you quit your western European salaried job and move to eastern Europe.

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

#938

Post by sershe »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #908
sershe wrote: post #877

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can diversify in the stock market (in fact for most people investing in funds it's the default), you cannot diversify in your housing investment.

The argument is that home ownership isn't a worse risk-adjusted investment than stocks. If you know how to reduce risk in the stock market without correspondingly reducing your returns, do share.

I believe that is also not true. Case Shiller is up barely ~x3 since 1990 including the recent large bump [1]; SP500 appears to be ~x12 since 1990. Inflation-adjusted, according to Wikipedia, Case Shiller National index is up ~25% since 2000.

Also, extreme risks is not what most people aim for in investing when most of their net worth is involved; the utility of money is not linear.

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CSUSHPINSA

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

#939

Post by seppel »

dgellow wrote: post #655
seppel wrote: post #635

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can easily get into that range as a principal software engineer in Germany. E.g, finance and car industry will pay that, depending on the niche even in a startup if you negotiate properly. 100k will also not put you in the 1% of the earners if you consider the cities where the high paying jobs are.

You mean in Munich, right? Anywhere outside of Munich €100k is a really high salary for a software engineer. Not impossible to get, I know of a few companies that offer that kind of compensation or even higher and are located in Berlin (though all of them have their HQ in the US), but that's very high income compared to the rest of the market. In any case, the point is that with €100k/year you can really have way mor…

> You mean in Munich, right? Anywhere outside of Munich €100k is a really high salary for a software engineer

These salaries are also possible in Berlin, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Hamburg, Mannheim, Heidelberg (and more, this is where I know)

> In any case, the point is that with €100k/year you can really have way more than a decent life. More like a very, very comfortable life.

Well so what? They shouldnt pay more because it is already a decent salary and give the rest to the share holders?

It's no wonder that avarage salaries are low if people approach salary negotiations with this kind of attitude.

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

#940

Post by cutthegrass2 »

ACS_Solver wrote: post #715
piva00 wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree with this take, being in the upper 10% of salaries in Sweden gave me perspective on how wide of a gap there is between myself, some friends working other office jobs (accountants, architects) and some in more blue collar work. I don't feel like I deserve a much higher salary than what I have for this society, I'll be honest and say that sometimes I feel ashamed of earning so much more than some friends given th…

Oh yes, familiar. I'm in Sweden, I definitely make good money by Swedish standards, and also have excellent benefits through work. This is, frankly, not proportionate to the value I provide to society. I work on some nice software that certainly adds convenience to the lives of many people in multiple countries. But it's by no means critical, and I generate less value for society than anyone working in healthcare, th…

I agree with this, although it's worth highlighting that sitting at a desk all day isn't "risk free" in terms of ones health.
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