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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?

#351

Post by nayaketo »

pavlov wrote: post #267
xwdv wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are taking a risk. The risk is that you assume your government will be able to provide you with a comfortable life even when you can no longer work. And when the time comes for your children to get higher education and retire themselves eventually you hope the government will also be there to step in. It works, until it doesn't. In America you can compensate yourself for this risk by simply getting a job where yo…

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…

How is your assessment opposite from OPs? Just like the OP argued, if the entirety of US goes down under, you still have option of moving most of your earnings to your safe North European homeland. Perfect example of income being "decoupled" from the government.

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

#352

Post by strombofulous »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #333
frombody wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marginal tax rates are much higher in Europe at lower levels, so in order to pay someone 50% more, you would have to pay them 100% more for them to get a 50% pay increase to make up for the money taken by taxes (the mechanism that prevents wealth inequality)

That's more or less true in the U.S. too, at the rates software engineers make, at least in NY and CA. In my locality a software engineer making $100k will face a 40% marginal tax rate.

40%?! Where do you live? The effective federal income tax at 100k is 22.75%. I don't think any state has a 17.25% effective income tax, certainly not if you only earn 100k.

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

#353

Post by taneq »

etothepii wrote: post #204
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trives of neanderthals were very equal too. Obviously you have to compare apples to apples

Read "Sapiens" 35 hour working week as a hunter gather is far preferable to the 60 + home chores of the homo softwaricus.

I'm always sceptical when I see people quoting 50-60+ hours a week as a "normal" workload. I don't doubt that many people spend that much time in the office but I can't believe they're actually productive for that many hours - I know for myself (as, I think, a reasonably effective developer) I can't sustain much more than 40 productive hours a week for long.

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

#354

Post by taneq »

dantheman wrote: post #279
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure, in there own world some tribes might have been far happier than 95% of society is today

That is until they die from a simple infection.

Or starvation, or being eaten by a grue. People who think being a hunter-gatherer sounds great should go try it, there's nothing stopping them from doing so. They don't because actually, living in civilization with abundant cheap food, clean running hot and cold water, indoor plumbing, heating, air conditioning, and entertainment is great.

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

#355

Post by fy20 »

softwaredoug wrote: post #271
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 (…

My sense is there's a larger US market than a pan-Europe market. If I go from German to France to Spain, I'm almost certainly not going to see the same grocery store chains. In the US, there are regional chains, but also a high proportion of homogeneity. In Europe you have strong national and cultural differences that lead to economies more isolated from the whole. In the US, there's regional differences, but I can o…

> I'm almost certainly not going to see the same grocery store chains

That's not really true. It's fair to say that a lot of supermarket chains have operations only in a single country, but there are quite a few multi-country brands as well which aren't uncommon.

A few examples: Carrefour, Auchen, Lidl, Audi, Tesco, (Euro/Inter)Spar, Iceland, Rewe - and that doesn't include subsidiaries of the same company (e.g. ICA/Rimi).

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

#356

Post by batiudrami »

samtho wrote: post #255
anoncake wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your income should not be based on input (risk, comfort), but rather your output (scale, value). Why?

Compensation, in a perfect world, should be based on how much value you bring to the company.

It is clear that your perfect world and my perfect world are quite different.

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

#357

Post by arcticbull »

strombofulous wrote: post #352
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's more or less true in the U.S. too, at the rates software engineers make, at least in NY and CA. In my locality a software engineer making $100k will face a 40% marginal tax rate.

40%?! Where do you live? The effective federal income tax at 100k is 22.75%. I don't think any state has a 17.25% effective income tax, certainly not if you only earn 100k.

If you're making 100K in California, your marginal tax rate is:

- Federal: 24%

- State: 9.3%

- FICA: 7.65% (6.2% social security, 1.45% medicare)

- SDI: 1%

This gets you to 42%. Your employer matches the FICA payments too, so that's closer to 50% of your take-home pay.

Once you make enough to pay off the regressive FICA taxes ($142K) you get bumped back down to "just" the mid-high 30% range briefly, until you hit $163K, then its back up to 40% again.

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

#358

Post by westoque »

blunte wrote: post #262
westoque wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What does bother me a bit is seeing managers who frankly use less of their brains getting paid as much or more. The statement "use less of their brains" does not necessarily do managers justice. Managers are good at (guess what) managing people, and that takes relationship skills that some people might not have or not good at. Having being both a software engineer and a manager, I would say it takes some special sk…

Good managers are very much worth their salaries. I daresay that good managers are more rare than good software developers. Or rather, a mediocre software developer can accomplish more than a mediocre manager, since the managerial job is tougher. But good managers are rare in my experience. Mediocre or bad managers make a lot of less than ideal decisions, and those decisions ripple through the entire system. There is…

I agree with quantifying managers' performance is a bit harder than software engineers. Take it for what its worth but what I learned from Intels Andrew Groves book "High Output Management" book is that the output of a manager is the output of his team/org and team/org under their influence.

> Finally, CEOs are terrible examples. More than any other title, CEO is an echelon which once reached, by whatever means, seems to ensure that the title holder can almost do no wrong.

I disagree here. I think the CEO is a very good example since if they do something wrong, it would be very visible and that's why even high profile CEOs get fired. See Uber or WeWork or even now, Intel for example.

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

#359

Post by strombofulous »

arcticbull wrote: post #357
strombofulous wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

40%?! Where do you live? The effective federal income tax at 100k is 22.75%. I don't think any state has a 17.25% effective income tax, certainly not if you only earn 100k.

If you're making 100K in California, your marginal tax rate is: - Federal: 24% - State: 9.3% - FICA: 7.65% (6.2% social security, 1.45% medicare) - SDI: 1% This gets you to 42%. Your employer matches the FICA payments too, so that's closer to 50% of your take-home pay. Once you make enough to pay off the regressive FICA taxes ($142K) you get bumped back down to "just" the mid-high 30% range briefly, until you hit $16…

Wow, I had no idea

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

#360

Post by dragonwriter »

taneq wrote: post #354
dantheman wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is until they die from a simple infection.

Or starvation, or being eaten by a grue. People who think being a hunter-gatherer sounds great should go try it, there's nothing stopping them from doing so. They don't because actually, living in civilization with abundant cheap food, clean running hot and cold water, indoor plumbing, heating, air conditioning, and entertainment is great.

> People who think being a hunter-gatherer sounds great should go try it, there's nothing stopping them from doing so.

Well, I mean, except property rights and the people that will defend them in most of the places in the planet suitable for human habitation.

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