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New Remote-First Formula and Updated Salary Calculator

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Re: New Remote-First Formula and Updated Salary Calculator

#151

Post by ryanwaggoner »

hajile wrote: post #135
kowdermeister wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As worker in Eastern-Europe, their salaries look totally awesome to me. You'd be surprised for this money how many good people you could find.

There are other considerations. Most countries in Europe have lots of government services that offer non-monetary advantages. You have to buy most of those things in the US. There's no free lunch. Instead of giving the employee the money, much of it is handed directly over to the Government (then a bunch more directly from personal income taxes). If you choose to forgo those things while in the US, there is a monetar…

Serious question: I'm curious what you're talking about for high-income professionals?

If I'm making six figures as a dev in the US, I probably have fairly generous benefits, including healthcare, vacation, parental leave, retirement plan contributions, disability insurance, etc. And I'm probably paying less in overall taxes than most Europeans (though it really depends).

Of course, I don't have the safety net things that lower-income Europeans do, but I almost certainly don't need them.

So what would the equivalent person in the EU making half as much be getting from their government that I'm not getting from mine?

(Btw, this isn't an argument for the US approach being better overall, but just which system is better for the selfish high-income professional)

Re: New Remote-First Formula and Updated Salary Calculator

#152

Post by ryanwaggoner »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #136
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably mistaken to say that 10% of the software engineering workforce could become millionaires within 3.3 years if {condition}, for all values of condition ruling out survivorship bias. Have you ever earned $300k in a HCOL? Because I have (NYC) and you're doing very well if you get to save $100k of that. If you're single, by default you lose $120k to taxes, so then you need to keep your budget under $6700 / m…

And my point wasn't that 10% of engineers are doing that, but just that they are capable of getting that kind of job with some effort. If all 10% of them tried, that would push the market down, so I'm really just talking capability, not whether 10% of devs could all be simultaneously making that There's an old Feynman quote: "All the time you're saying to yourself, 'I could do that, but I won't' -- which is just anot…

So much to analyze here, but I would just say one thing: I think that the majority of devs in the US don't know or believe that there are tens of thousands of their peers making 2x - 5x as much as them. I routinely see people here on HN essentially refuse to believe that there are devs in SF getting $300k to $500k at Google/Apple/Amazon/Facebook/etc. So maybe it's more that they don't know it's an option as opposed to not being able or willing to do so?

Re: New Remote-First Formula and Updated Salary Calculator

#153

Post by foota »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #151
hajile wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are other considerations. Most countries in Europe have lots of government services that offer non-monetary advantages. You have to buy most of those things in the US. There's no free lunch. Instead of giving the employee the money, much of it is handed directly over to the Government (then a bunch more directly from personal income taxes). If you choose to forgo those things while in the US, there is a monetar…

Serious question: I'm curious what you're talking about for high-income professionals? If I'm making six figures as a dev in the US, I probably have fairly generous benefits, including healthcare, vacation, parental leave, retirement plan contributions, disability insurance, etc. And I'm probably paying less in overall taxes than most Europeans (though it really depends). Of course, I don't have the safety net things…

Vacation in Europe is _much_ nicer than here. I started with my company with 3 weeks, the equivalent role in Europe has something like 5 weeks at start.

Re: New Remote-First Formula and Updated Salary Calculator

#154

Post by fogetti »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #118
fogetti wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does it have to do with the openness of the formula/salary data if another company pays more? > there's no subjectivity in this formula Yes, there isn't. Because subjectivity in favour of someone, is to the detriment of another employee (because the budget is limited). It just usually happens to be the case that the employers somehow "magically forget" to communicate this to the employees. So you are basically k…

Because subjectivity in favour of someone, is to the detriment of another employee (because the budget is limited) This is not how salaries work. Companies don't have a pool of $x for y employees. They try to hire every employee at as low a cost as possible. If you accept a salary at $10,000 below what they were willing to pay for that role, it's not like you can rest easy knowing that the other employees will get th…

Sorry but I beg to differ. That's exactly how it works. The financial officer/controller simply allocates $x for y employees.

And they do this calculation in every quarter, adjusting it if necessary.

I don't even understand how can you think it works differently???

Re: New Remote-First Formula and Updated Salary Calculator

#155

Post by fogetti »

r0m4n0 wrote: post #117
hajile wrote: post #8

Why do companies continue to pay out higher salaries to devs in high cost of living areas? In this case, their payscale pays out 30-50K more in high cost living areas vs low cost areas. Rather than blow revenue rewarding bad life choices, offer to move them to an area with lower costs of living. Do that for only 10 employees and you have 300-500K EVERY SINGLE YEAR to re-invest into your company. In practically any ot…

I’ve learned that having a presence in the Bay Area has had a significant impact on the success of my company. We raised tens of millions of dollars in funding with ease, scaled from 10 to 150 employees (half of which being software engineers) in 3 years, and were acquired by a multi billion dollar company (the company was involved in the original rounds of funding). The acquisition involves most employees continuing…

I don't see the causation in your argument. Can you elaborate? It looks like you are only implying that there is an impact, but I fail to see how.

Re: New Remote-First Formula and Updated Salary Calculator

#156

Post by Shaanie »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #151
hajile wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are other considerations. Most countries in Europe have lots of government services that offer non-monetary advantages. You have to buy most of those things in the US. There's no free lunch. Instead of giving the employee the money, much of it is handed directly over to the Government (then a bunch more directly from personal income taxes). If you choose to forgo those things while in the US, there is a monetar…

Serious question: I'm curious what you're talking about for high-income professionals? If I'm making six figures as a dev in the US, I probably have fairly generous benefits, including healthcare, vacation, parental leave, retirement plan contributions, disability insurance, etc. And I'm probably paying less in overall taxes than most Europeans (though it really depends). Of course, I don't have the safety net things…

I have 6 weeks of vacation a year (2 years out of uni) and 240 days of paid (75% of normal pay) parental leave (480 days in total for both parents). How's your vacation and parental leave in comparison?

Re: New Remote-First Formula and Updated Salary Calculator

#157

Post by tychver »

kayoone wrote: post #149
tychver wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Berlin is a bit odd because of the huge changes in the last few years in companies starting offices here and the influx of VC funding. SoundCloud for example, had a bunch of engineers earning around that. Probably all laid off now, though. There are companies on StackOverflow jobs openly advertising €80-90k for senior developers now, and occasionally over 100k for specialist roles like ML or performance sensitive dev…

yes i am sure those salaries are possible for certain specialties in high demand, but in this case we are talking about Senior Web Developers. I think for pure devs without a lead or other management role, it's hard to get more than 75k EUR or 90k USD, and in BCN i have the feeling it is at least 10k less.

Did you check stack overflow jobs? What people are currently earning and what people are openly offering now has diverged quite a bit just in 18 months or so. It’s hurting the smaller companies with less budget and it’ll only get worse when Google opens their big office.

Re: New Remote-First Formula and Updated Salary Calculator

#158

Post by ryanwaggoner »

kayoone wrote: post #150
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

European software developers seem to be insultingly underpaid. I suspect it's more cultural than economic, and relates to the relative status of the profession in the EU. I know the total costs of an employee are higher in the EU, but are they really 2x - 4x? Top companies in the US offer pretty robust (expensive) benefits, including healthcare. What would make the total cost of a dev in the EU getting paid $42k equa…

In Germany employee costs are roughly 1.5x of gross, i would guess it's similar in Spain.

That’s not drastically different from the US, especially where gross is under $100k.

Re: New Remote-First Formula and Updated Salary Calculator

#159

Post by ryanwaggoner »

Shaanie wrote: post #156
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: I'm curious what you're talking about for high-income professionals? If I'm making six figures as a dev in the US, I probably have fairly generous benefits, including healthcare, vacation, parental leave, retirement plan contributions, disability insurance, etc. And I'm probably paying less in overall taxes than most Europeans (though it really depends). Of course, I don't have the safety net things…

I have 6 weeks of vacation a year (2 years out of uni) and 240 days of paid (75% of normal pay) parental leave (480 days in total for both parents). How's your vacation and parental leave in comparison?

A lot of white collar professionals get 3-6 weeks of vacation. That parental leave is eye-popping though. I know a bunch of professional women who got 3-6 months, which I think is regarded here as pretty generous.

But my larger point stands: the average cost per worker for those benefits is only maybe 10% higher than the cost in the US for our reduced benefits. So why are salaries 50% lower?

Re: New Remote-First Formula and Updated Salary Calculator

#160

Post by ryanwaggoner »

foota wrote: post #153
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: I'm curious what you're talking about for high-income professionals? If I'm making six figures as a dev in the US, I probably have fairly generous benefits, including healthcare, vacation, parental leave, retirement plan contributions, disability insurance, etc. And I'm probably paying less in overall taxes than most Europeans (though it really depends). Of course, I don't have the safety net things…

Vacation in Europe is _much_ nicer than here. I started with my company with 3 weeks, the equivalent role in Europe has something like 5 weeks at start.

That’s not really much nicer, is it? That’s 2 weeks, which is an extra cost to the company of 4%. Hardly explains the huge salary discrepancy.
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