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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?

#341

Post by crooked-v »

irrational wrote: post #171
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…

I graduated with 2 bachelors degrees and a masters degree with no debt through scholarships and grants. I have saved nothing for my children’s education. If they want to attend college, it is on them to pay their way just as it was for me. I’ve told them that I will help a bit during their first year. My company matches my retirement savings up to 5%. I save nothing else for retirement. I should have millions of doll…

> If they want to attend college, it is on them to pay their way just as it was for me.

You seem to be completely unaware of how wildly the cost of education has increased even over just the past decade, especially for 4-year institutions.

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

#342

Post by dnpp123 »

drdaeman wrote: post #307
KronisLV wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> That's really low, even for poorer European countries

He said net salary. I know a lot of engineers from C schools in mid-size towns in France who are paid less than 2k euro net.

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

#343

Post by ff232fffffrt »

joelbluminator wrote: post #105

Stop skilled visas and free movement of people within the EU.

Skilled people usually pass by the Europe, because they can make much more money somewhere else. It's poorly educated people who move to Europe to get free social services.

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

#344

Post by arcticbull »

Izikiel43 wrote: post #330
s17n wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

What kind of CEO makes 250 million? Microsoft's CEO made ~44 million last year, and Microsoft is a trillion dollar company ( https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2020/10/20/microsof... .)

Well, there's papa elon who made $2.3B in 2018. Though, I agree, that's a massive outlier :) Zaslav at Discovery was next in line with $129M total comp in 2018 [1]. Sounds like Satya needs to ask for a raise ;)

[1] https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/discovery-ceo-david-z...

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

#345

Post by gorgoiler »

From what I know of the UK, professionals, executives, and the professional service sector are some of the best compensated roles. This may be the case for any EU economy with a burgeoning financial service sector, too. It’s a similar story in NYC though the city has more and more developer presence than 10 years ago.

The more your SWE role can look like that of an auditor, accountant, management consultant, or financier, the more you will be valued. (Literally: valued.)

I think the traditional solution along these lines is to become a contractor, which I don’t think is out of line with the reasons given here for why US entrepreneurialism is so well paid.

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

#346

Post by tomcam »

winston_smith wrote: post #305
anoncake wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’m willing to do without the blackjack but that’s my final offer

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

#347

Post by tomcam »

peterlk wrote: post #331
dcolkitt wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Academic research shows that US multinationals consistently lead in adapting the best corporate management practices of any major country.[1] Germany and Scandinavia come in a distant second, with Southern Europe falling significantly behind. The disparity in IT-intensive industries is particularly large.[2] This is true even when comparing the productivity of workforces within the same market. I.e. European who work…

> Academic research shows that US multinationals consistently lead in adapting the best corporate management practices of any major country.[1] Your source points to an article about horseshoe crabs... Can you update it? I'd be interested to red about your claim.

Read the article carefully. American horseshoe crabs are about 217% more productive than the indolent European horseshoe crabs.

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

#348

Post by tomcam »

Bakary wrote: post #260
username90 wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A larger fraction of Americans have a tertiary degree than almost all European countries. Not if you only count STEM degrees, then USA is far behind. https://www.businessinsider.com/most-technological-countries... I'm not sure why American's don't study STEM, you'd think they wanted to study something that pays off. But maybe it is the other way around, with government funded education they only offer STEM degrees…

Most people are made miserable by studying STEM. And if it makes you miserable, you are unlikely to get good enough at it to get the purported payoff.

It is not my experience that their chosen field makes them miserable. Would you mind illuminating your point? My experience is anecdotal and not very helpful.

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

#349

Post by fy20 »

comp_throw7 wrote: post #242
ahupp wrote: post #222

Major US tech companies earn a profit-per-employee of $200-400k[0]. That's across every employee, so depending on how you attribute value the profit-per-SWE is much higher. That gives a lot of headroom to drive up salaries when competing for hires, and in part sets the market price. I suspect that low European software salaries are just a function of low profitability of European software companies. e.g, spotify is (…

This is the correct answer. To put it another way, US companies are more productive (in the economic sense) than EU companies, and that gap is even wider for tech companies (& those that rely heavily on employing software engineers). Putting aside the question of whether EU companies have higher overhead per employee (probably true on average), they also derive significantly less value from their employees. This is t…

Reading your comment gave me a thought... maybe a better way of looking at the difference in salaries is that living in the EU is better value for money than living in the US.

In pretty much all of the EU, even in expensive cities like Stockholm or Dublin, if you earn a salary of €100,000, you can live a pretty decent life. Heck even on €50,000, you can do well in a lot of places.

Good luck doing the same in any of the top 10 most expensive cities in the US.

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

#350

Post by zensavona »

arcticbull wrote: post #85
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…

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…

We seem to have it both ways in Australia somehow
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