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A note on programmer salaries

stephaniehurlburt.com

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Re: A note on programmer salaries

#141

Post by Swinx43 »

Sholmesy wrote: post #129
ohthehugemanate wrote: post #119

I am continually surprised that _anyone_ in tech signs employment contracts in Europe. If you're good, and know how to work well remotely, contract work at 130-150€/hr is plentiful. Working 32 (billable) hrs/wk with 6 weeks vacation - more or less what you'd do as an Employee - that's an income between 190-220k. But every employment contract I've heard of here (France and Germany) maxes out at 90-100k for even direct…

Hey there, Londoner here feeling quite constrained with salaries, curious where you find 130-150/hr remote gigs. Mostly through a personal network? Or a recruiter? Really curious.

Same here. I would love to find those remote gigs at that price. I am contracting in London in the data space and would jump at the opportunity to work remotely for that amount.

There definitely is a very real salary ceiling in the tech world in London.

Re: A note on programmer salaries

#142

Post by Sholmesy »

Swinx43 wrote: post #141
Sholmesy wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey there, Londoner here feeling quite constrained with salaries, curious where you find 130-150/hr remote gigs. Mostly through a personal network? Or a recruiter? Really curious.

Same here. I would love to find those remote gigs at that price. I am contracting in London in the data space and would jump at the opportunity to work remotely for that amount. There definitely is a very real salary ceiling in the tech world in London.

How do you like contracting?

I'm on salary at the moment, but it would take a lot for me to make anything near what the day rates for 3/6 month contracts are paying.

Re: A note on programmer salaries

#143

Post by anotheryou »

vostok wrote: post #133
bronz wrote: post #100

i think programmers and a lot of other people get paid way too much. i used to wash dishes and the other guy who washed dishes, who worked right next to me, was an immigrant. he worked 12 hours a day every single solitary day. without him, the restaurant would grind to a halt. so, like stephanie, he was a huge part of all the money that was made. and yet, he gets paid less than minimum wage. he works harder than anyo…

I don't think you're actually arguing that programmers get paid too much. You are arguing that dishwashers get paid too little. Your argument is that dishwashers produce a lot of value and you're right about that. The restaurant is willing to pay probably as much as $50/hour for a dishwasher if not more. The problem is that people are willing to take the job at $15/hour so there's no incentive for the restaurant to p…

You just said it yourself: the market dictates the price and it is not tied to effort or anything just.

People mostly get paid just the right ammount according to the market, but from any other percepective the numbers are pretty aribtrary and by no means justifiable. At most one could say that some people don't work hard on their carrees and e.g. try to make a living from beeing an artist (or in oter words: don't optimize for money). But this is not true for the dishwasher either.

Re: A note on programmer salaries

#144

Post by Swinx43 »

Sholmesy wrote: post #142
Swinx43 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. I would love to find those remote gigs at that price. I am contracting in London in the data space and would jump at the opportunity to work remotely for that amount. There definitely is a very real salary ceiling in the tech world in London.

How do you like contracting? I'm on salary at the moment, but it would take a lot for me to make anything near what the day rates for 3/6 month contracts are paying.

I am really liking contracting. It is just a different way of working compared to permanent but I prefer it. I am ex consulting so like the ability to have new projects / clients on a 3 to 6 month basis. It also allows for a lot of freedom.

One thing to remember though is that those day rates do get taxed pretty much the same as a permanent job if you pay all your earnings out to yourself. The tax laws have closed a lot of the loop holes.

I would be very happy to discuss contracting further if you were interested. Drop me an email if you want.

Re: A note on programmer salaries

#145

Post by melkiaur »

ohthehugemanate wrote: post #119

I am continually surprised that _anyone_ in tech signs employment contracts in Europe. If you're good, and know how to work well remotely, contract work at 130-150€/hr is plentiful. Working 32 (billable) hrs/wk with 6 weeks vacation - more or less what you'd do as an Employee - that's an income between 190-220k. But every employment contract I've heard of here (France and Germany) maxes out at 90-100k for even direct…

I can't speak about other European countries, but in France, an employment contract gives you an insane amount of security. If you're made redundant, you get paid 60-70% of your salary for up to 2 years, you get loads of paid maternity leave. You get a nice state-funded pension. You get free healthcare (including dental and glasses). You get 100% sick-leave coverage. You get mandatory training. You get access to job promotions inside companies. It's much easier to get a mortgage or just to rent. And you don't have to also work on finding the contracts. So, you need to more than double your salary to get the equivalent billable rate, and that's assuming you never have issues finding work to do.

Re: A note on programmer salaries

#146

Post by majewsky »

acchow wrote: post #87
taeric wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this is a simplistic view that might help you feel good about taking advantage of someone, it is ridiculously easily abused. And, quite frankly, scares me if I think about it for too long. I don't want a society where there are people left behind simply because they did not make a job out of making more money. Nor do I want a society where services performed by folks leads to a massive wealth imbalance in workf…

As software engineers in America, you have quite a great deal of financial freedom. No one is coercing you into accepting a job offer because life is hard and you just don't have the time to shop around for job offers. If both parties sign an agreement with complete agency, who is getting abused? How can it be "unfair" if you both parties freely agreed to the exchange?

That's assuming that job openings are aplenty. The reality in most cases is that if the company doesn't like me, they can just wait for the next candidate. But if I don't like the company, it doesn't really matter because I need to pay the bills next month.

(inb4 "What happened to your fuck-you money?" As if it's always the employee saying "fuck you".)

Re: A note on programmer salaries

#147

Post by majewsky »

purple-again wrote: post #34
BurningFrog wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "that's what you're worth" Your argument is sound, but this is really unfortunate phrasing. It's actually what your work is worth. Not what you as a person is worth, and it's important to keep those things separate, both for sanity and rigor.

Your value to society is the value of your work which in everyone else's context is your value. No one cares if your apartment is clean which is why no one pays you to clean your apartment.

So no one cares if I let my parents rot to death once they cannot take care of themselves anymore. Got it.

Re: A note on programmer salaries

#148

Post by Swinx43 »

kayoone wrote: post #126
Swinx43 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of interest which European tech hub did you move to? Berlin? I am currently looking at making a move and would love to hear some first hand experience of the tech hubs in Europe that people have moved to.

Yes Berlin, i make close to 70k which is decent here for senior devs without management responsibility i guess and that amounts to ~3300 after taxes, health insurance etc. I could save more by getting a private health insurance, but that has its downsides too. The main reason why this works is that Berlin is still really cheap compared to London but even compared to Hamburg or Munich. Rents are getting up though, sti…

Fantastic, thank you very much for replying. It is true that Berlin is much better than London at that salary range. The average London tech job really doesn't pay enough to have as nice a life in London as you can have in Berlin for the same money.

I would be very interested to hear your view on how the contracting market is in Berlin.

Re: A note on programmer salaries

#149

Post by majewsky »

ajdlinux wrote: post #77

I'm a junior developer in a megacorp, where I sometimes think about how I'm not getting the salary I could be getting if I moved to SF, negotiated a bit harder, pushed for quicker promotions... But I'm not the lowest paid person in the office. Even the junior devs who started well after I did and haven't had as many raises aren't the lowest paid in the office. I'm fairly sure the lowest paid people in the office are…

> how they're going to negotiate their way up to being in the global 0.5%

Reality check: Most of us are already in the top 0.5% of the global income distribution, even with a relatively meager salary like 30k or 40k. You can check for yourself at http://www.globalrichlist.com/

Re: A note on programmer salaries

#150

Post by ManlyBread »

yxhuvud wrote: post #111
snowglobe789 wrote: post #36

And meanwhile I'm dreaming about making more than 500 euro/month working as a ASP.NET/C# dev

Eastern europe?

In Eastern Europe he'd be severely underpaid unless he is an intern or has less than a year of experience, I have 1.5 years of experience and just landed a job where my net pay is more than 1k EUR - and I'm a fairly average programmer
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