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Software Engineering Salaries in Europe vs. the United States

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Re: Software Engineering Salaries in Europe vs. the United States

#21

Post by MattGaiser »

geoduck14 wrote: post #4
city41 wrote: post #2

Site seems down, possibly HN hug of death

Same here. I'll have to guess at an insightful comment. Here goes Sure Europeans get paid less - but they also get a bunch of great benefits like time off and government paid health care, so it works out Also, the average salary in America is skewed by FANMAG paying really high salaries In the end, I'm happy with my work and paid fairly. I deserve a 10% raise, but I'm not pressured to switch right now HN of the futur…

How is health coverage for FAANG level and other large tech companies in the USA? That has always been a concern of mine moving to the USA.

It wasn’t for a FAANG, but one company I interviewed for in the USA wasn’t going to give me health coverage for 6 months.

Re: Software Engineering Salaries in Europe vs. the United States

#22

Post by rb2k_ »

geoduck14 wrote: post #4
city41 wrote: post #2

Site seems down, possibly HN hug of death

Same here. I'll have to guess at an insightful comment. Here goes Sure Europeans get paid less - but they also get a bunch of great benefits like time off and government paid health care, so it works out Also, the average salary in America is skewed by FANMAG paying really high salaries In the end, I'm happy with my work and paid fairly. I deserve a 10% raise, but I'm not pressured to switch right now HN of the futur…

my two cents as someone that worked in Europe and the US:

> time off

I get 21 days in the US, but any holiday that falls on a weekend I am guaranteed to get on a weekday.

Ultimately it ends up somewhere around 30 paid days off I would guess. Back in Germany, if a holiday fell on a weekend, I just lost it.

> government paid health care

In Germany I had to pay 7.5 percent of my salary + my employer had to match that. When I was freelancing I had to do the full 15%.

The US clearly has the worse healthcare system overall, but I pay a LOT less for MUCH better service. That is however just because of my employer and on a population level it's a catastrophe.

That being said, my impression is also very skewed by FANMAG and the average experience is probably worse.

Re: Software Engineering Salaries in Europe vs. the United States

#23

Post by jamesrr39 »

tut-urut-utut wrote: post #3

Without reading the article (site is down) my expectation is that the data will show significantly lower salaries in Europe than in the USA. One of the explanations is that there are almost no genuine software development companies in Europe. Software jobs there are mostly internal (enterprise) software development or customization, and not software product or service development. Being a cost centre instead of a pro…

> no genuine software development companies in Europe. Software jobs there are mostly internal (enterprise) software development or customization, and not software product or service development

There are plenty of companies who make software product(s) as their main/only line of revenue in Europe. What there isn't, however, is FAANG style companies that are huge, very high profile companies (there are big technology companies, e.g. SAP, but none that I can think of that are so consumer-facing as FAANG).

> In Europe, you go, where? In another company that is not different from previous one.

Yeah, this simply isn't the case. Different companies are different to work for.

Re: Software Engineering Salaries in Europe vs. the United States

#24

Post by eterevsky »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #17

It’s funny to see this site gather so many upvotes while the server is down. I think by now everyone knows very well that software engineering salaries are higher in the United States. If the shift toward remote work really comes to fruition, I fully expect EU software salaries to rise. I’ve hired a lot of excellent remote developers in European countries. The trick is to pay them American-level wages, which are ofte…

> I think by now everyone knows very well that software engineering salaries are higher in the United States.

It depends. In Switzerland for example salaries as as high as anywhere in the US while the taxes are somewhat lower.

Re: Software Engineering Salaries in Europe vs. the United States

#26

Post by mistrial9 »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #17

It’s funny to see this site gather so many upvotes while the server is down. I think by now everyone knows very well that software engineering salaries are higher in the United States. If the shift toward remote work really comes to fruition, I fully expect EU software salaries to rise. I’ve hired a lot of excellent remote developers in European countries. The trick is to pay them American-level wages, which are ofte…

my own software development specialty (in California) was massively outsourced to the Ukraine in the late 90s. So, your prediction is old news.

Re: Software Engineering Salaries in Europe vs. the United States

#27

Post by langitbiru »

If you want to check the software engineering salaries in Europe, you can go to this page:

https://techpays.eu/countries/netherlands (Right now, it only has Netherlands)

The owner of the project is Gergely Orosz. He likes to talk about salaries on his Twitter account: https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/

One of his tweets that contrasts the salaries in Europe vs US is this one: https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1424751510995406850

I also made a similar project. It has mostly the salaries data in Indonesia, but there are few salaries data in Singapore and US. This is the project: https://predictsalary.com/salaries

Re: Software Engineering Salaries in Europe vs. the United States

#28

Post by lhorie »

MattGaiser wrote: post #7

Now, is Europe higher or lower than Canada? We have some software developers working here incredibly cheaply, especially in USD terms.

Looking at [0] and [1], it looks like Canada is ahead on average, but not by much. But also note that software development salaries can be bimodal (or even trimodal) depending on where you are[2]

[0] https://www.daxx.com/blog/development-trends/it-salaries-sof...

[1] https://www.payscale.com/research/CA/Job=Software_Developer/...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8Xpapy6I9E

Re: Software Engineering Salaries in Europe vs. the United States

#29

Post by [deleted] »

ndr wrote: post #9
tut-urut-utut wrote: post #3

Without reading the article (site is down) my expectation is that the data will show significantly lower salaries in Europe than in the USA. One of the explanations is that there are almost no genuine software development companies in Europe. Software jobs there are mostly internal (enterprise) software development or customization, and not software product or service development. Being a cost centre instead of a pro…

I have similar expectation, but note: 1. Many of the FAANG have presence in Europe 2. There's a lot of fintech in Europe

[deleted]

Re: Software Engineering Salaries in Europe vs. the United States

#30

Post by adithyasrin »

I'd love to integrate some sort of salary scale into my job board [1] - this seems difficult since there's no open data for it. Google on it's jobs network shows something like "this salary lies on the x%"

For this, I'd love if companies shared salary information, or I could parse it from text in a reliable way. Any thoughts?

[1] - https://arbeitnow.com/

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