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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?

#31

Post by pjhol »

quantumofalpha wrote: post #24
tolbish wrote: post #5

Careful what you wish for. The US has no guaranteed paternity/maternity leave, and the majority of workplaces have less than a month of vacation time. Then there is the healthcare system.

> Then there is the healthcare system. European healthcare systems are not exactly dream come true either. Range of treatments available/covered and waiting times can be significantly behind the US. US healthcare is actually great for an SWE making bank at a FAANG & co. Just not that amazing for common folks > The US has no guaranteed paternity/maternity leave Top tech companies all have those, it's a fairly cheap pe…

I don't really recognise the first concern you raise, but that might also be due to the fact that viewing all European countries as the same in this regard might be overgeneralising.

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

#32

Post by soinus »

elindbe3 wrote: post #23

Admittedly I don't know much about work relations in Europe but are SW engineers unionized there? A union could 1.)allow workers to aggressively collectively bargain for more money 2.)add additional requirements (licensure, education requirements, etc) to keep down the supply of labor. I'm not saying such a move would be good for everyone, but it could be good for those who become members of the union.

If anything, I've seen union doing exactly the opposite, at least in Germany for senior level jobs. Coming to work for a big company the only chance of getting a higher salary is to be above the union negotiated margin. The companies generally don't really want you to get there and it can be really tough to negotiate this. You are really well protected and basically unfirable in union but there is a top margin to your salary. If outside the margin of union salaries you're on your own with your own responsibilities. I really did not like working on a company that had a union as I've seen lots of people with zero motivation and nothing that a company could do about it.

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

#33

Post by giantg2 »

quantumofalpha wrote: post #24
tolbish wrote: post #5

Careful what you wish for. The US has no guaranteed paternity/maternity leave, and the majority of workplaces have less than a month of vacation time. Then there is the healthcare system.

> Then there is the healthcare system. European healthcare systems are not exactly dream come true either. Range of treatments available/covered and waiting times can be significantly behind the US. US healthcare is actually great for an SWE making bank at a FAANG & co. Just not that amazing for common folks > The US has no guaranteed paternity/maternity leave Top tech companies all have those, it's a fairly cheap pe…

I agree that the healthcare system isn't a dream from what I hear. The main thing I see with the parent's comment though is that in the US you might be making $100k, but paying $15-20k in insurance costs. Whereas you might only be making $80k in the EU but you don't have that same insurance costs. I see this as being the same cost (ignoring the other factors per the OPs request) but just hiding the cost from the employee. Same sort of thing can be seen in the US if you compare the taxes a regular employee pays and a self employed person pays.

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

#34

Post by giantg2 »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #12
tolbish wrote: post #5

Careful what you wish for. The US has no guaranteed paternity/maternity leave, and the majority of workplaces have less than a month of vacation time. Then there is the healthcare system.

The U.S. Wage, minus paying for your own health care, minus saving for your own (p|m)aternity leave, is still greater than the European wage, at least for the Software Engineering career track. The calculation is probably more favorable to traditional middle class jobs in Europe.

I wonder what the pension/retirement system differences would like like too.

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

#35

Post by say_it_as_it_is »

Americans are hired at-will, with barely any job protection, where as Europeans received far more protection and regulations governing paid time off, universal healthcare and so forth. You're not being paid as much as Americans in Europe but you're also treated far more humanely. I think the question isn't how to increase wages in Europe but how to get the rest of the world to adopt Sweden's labor laws, assuming it has the most progressive ones. I'm an American who would gladly accept Swedish rates with Swedish benefits.

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

#36

Post by walshemj »

legerdemain wrote: post #9

There is a reason why Poles, Bulgarians, and Ukrainians are ubiquitous on remote teams in tech: they are cheap, they are hungry for a challenge, and they get gold medals on the IOI (at least the Poles and Bulgarians do). Dramatically increasing the pay of these people would be doing them a disservice by making them less employable.

So they are not as good your saying?

From my experience eastern developers seem to need a lot of hand holding their don't seem to be many technical leads / CTO who can take broad instructions and produce a good piece of work

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

#37

Post by lazyant »

I've noticed from recruiter email that some US companies have decided to go fully remote (no doubt due to COVID-19) and have started looking for talent in Canada, offering a bit more compensation than our local one (not parity) so I expect this effect will start pushing salaries up outside the US, starting with us in Canada due to time zone/language/culture.

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

#38

Post by walshemj »

toper-centage wrote: post #18

You see low salaries, I see more salary equality between engineers and non engineers. Most engineers don't add that much more value than other people in the company to justify earning 2x or more.

Depends I and the company secretary saved one company several million in todays terms by fixing a broken BACS feed and pissed of Jack Schofield in the process

More recently I found a bug costing >£500000 for a Major UK Job listings board.

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

#39

Post by ghgdynb1 »

You say those reasons aside, but I think they’re the difference that makes the difference. No practical changes to the Euro tech job market will change the salary discount compared to the U.S. barring a dislocation in the factors you mention.

It’s generally true that the US is more comfortable with variance in outcomes than the EU. This is a cultural thing which also presents legislatively.

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

#40

Post by m00x »

quantumofalpha wrote: post #24
tolbish wrote: post #5

Careful what you wish for. The US has no guaranteed paternity/maternity leave, and the majority of workplaces have less than a month of vacation time. Then there is the healthcare system.

> Then there is the healthcare system. European healthcare systems are not exactly dream come true either. Range of treatments available/covered and waiting times can be significantly behind the US. US healthcare is actually great for an SWE making bank at a FAANG & co. Just not that amazing for common folks > The US has no guaranteed paternity/maternity leave Top tech companies all have those, it's a fairly cheap pe…

By less than 1 month vacation, I think it's closer to 1-2 weeks/year and that's at big companies. Most of the startups will give you grief if you take more than a week of vacation on top of the holidays.

Not all engineers are at FAANG, we can't compare the average to the top tier companies.

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