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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?

#301

Post by snicker7 »

KronisLV wrote: post #231
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…

That does sound like a pretty stress-free way to live! That said, living in Europe doesn't always equal good living conditions and stability - it depends on the particular country you're in as well. My net salary is just over 1000€ per month as a software dev. My living expenses eat up around half of that. If a quick search turns up that in USA the median salary for a dev is around 100k$ per year ( https://money.usne…

> over 1000€ per month

I would like to know what country/city you are based out of. In the US, that wage is well below the poverty line.

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

#302

Post by trcollinson »

marcinzm wrote: post #265
trcollinson wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess my point on vacation is more around the culture of using it. As a senior level engineer/architect with maybe a small team leading role, when was the last time you took a solid 2 week off without anyone calling you for work? Heck, look at the number of unlimited PTO companies out there where employees never take a day. Just as an example. The experience my friends have in the EU seems to be pretty good over al…

The VP of Eng at my current job routinely takes a week off where he is utterly unreachable (I believe he literally went to amish country last time). The same applies to the rest of the engineering team. It's been the same at my previous two companies as well. No, it's not the norm at companies but there's plenty where that's the case. In my experience, the US is a place where little is given to you but you can get a…

You make a great point and one thing I posted a bit further down was when I was a director level I did a really poor job of leading by example when it came to vacation. I would literally force people to use their pto and I didn't and they would feel weird or bad. I should have been more like your VP.

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

#303

Post by xyzelement »

anoncake wrote: post #283
MAGZine wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because people pay for output, not input. They don't care if you bought a pencil from someone else or grew the tree, made the paint, etc all yourself. They buy a pencil.

That does not answer the question. Why should someone's income depend on their output? Why is that the ethically correct outcome?

>> That does not answer the question. Why should someone's income depend on their output? Why is that the ethically correct outcome?

Because anything else is wishful thinking at best and destroys society at worst.

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

#304

Post by benrbray »

xwdv wrote: post #278
pavlov wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a European living in USA working for a FAANG. Frankly, my assessment is exactly the opposite from yours. United States is the country that's most likely to go to shit. All of us wealthy professionals here are sitting on a powder keg of inequality and delusional politics, and nobody will be decoupled from it when it blows up. I plan to stay for a few more years, then return to my safe North European home country w…

Inequality doesn’t really matter as much as people think. What inequality does is ensure that there will always be two markets of consumers: one that needs goods at low prices and one that can afford higher prices for luxury goods. As long as the lower price market exists, hoarding sufficient wealth guarantees you’ll be able to at least afford the minimum standard of living, allowing you to safely retire. If everyone…

...what about the people who can't "hoard sufficient wealth" because it's all been sucked from the market?

...what if "health care" is viewed as a luxury good as it is in the statse?

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

#305

Post by winston_smith »

anoncake wrote: post #283
MAGZine wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because people pay for output, not input. They don't care if you bought a pencil from someone else or grew the tree, made the paint, etc all yourself. They buy a pencil.

That does not answer the question. Why should someone's income depend on their output? Why is that the ethically correct outcome?

Ethically, everyone deserves all the blackjack and hookers they want, because we're all beautiful and precious creatures.

Practically, giving someone a direct incentive to do worthwhile things works out far better than some central planner deciding how much they should produce and how much they deserve. Somehow it always turns out that the central planner deserves way more than everybody else.

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

#306

Post by geodel »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #275
arcticbull wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you increase housing stock, there can be more cheap homes for new entrants in the market, meanwhile existing homeowners may still see significant appreciation on their home value, depending on lots of market variables. Wanting affordable home ownership is not contradictory to growth of home asset prices. I also think your argument about income inequality is not right. Achieving income equality by suppressing wages…

> paying below competitive market rates

That does not make sense. How is it below competitive if every company in Europe is paying in same range? By definition it is competitive.

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

#307

Post by drdaeman »

KronisLV wrote: post #231
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…

That does sound like a pretty stress-free way to live! That said, living in Europe doesn't always equal good living conditions and stability - it depends on the particular country you're in as well. My net salary is just over 1000€ per month as a software dev. My living expenses eat up around half of that. If a quick search turns up that in USA the median salary for a dev is around 100k$ per year ( https://money.usne…

> 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 exaggerated figure. It's 100k before taxes (so, around $5.8k/mo), and rent (or mortgage) costs are significantly higher (I believe it's around $1-3k/mo, highly varying depending on where you live and how comfortable you live). And it's not just rent but other expenses as well.

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

#308

Post by winston_smith »

KraftKacke wrote: post #244
zdragnar wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most hunting species are only active a few hours, because most prey species are only active a few hours a day, because there isn't exactly an excess of food or personal security in nature. Gathering also doesn't make sense as a full time occupation, as most plant species only fruit / produce edibles infrequently, and even then you are competing with wild animals (birds eat far more from the local wild raspberry plant…

The guy in the video says people played, made art and fucked. Humans are not predators, we're opportunists by evolutionary trait turning hunters rather recently.

And you too can go live in the bush and do all those things until you get a toothache, parasites and lose a few kids to infant mortality.

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

#309

Post by colinmhayes »

s17n wrote: post #237
arcticbull wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A SWE might make like 5 times what a teacher makes but a CEO can make like 1000 times what a SWE makes (eg $50k for the teacher, $250k for the SWE, and $250M for the CEO).

Almost no CEO makes anywhere close to 250 million.

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

#310

Post by winston_smith »

geodel wrote: post #296
dantheman wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is until they die from a simple infection.

Seems better than perennial back pain from sitting long hours and getting brain fried from implementing same logic of micro-service 1000th time for a 'challenging' project.

Go try it and let us know how it works out
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