Six to eight weeks of vacation, plentiful Holidays, a 35-hour work week. If you look beyond pay as strictly salary and break it down into an hourly rate, I'd argue that European developers make considerably more than their American counterparts.
Software Engineering Salaries in Europe vs. the United States
41–50 of 199 posts
Re: Software Engineering Salaries in Europe vs. the United States
#42Re: Software Engineering Salaries in Europe vs. the United States
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I work for a large tech company. I'm paying about $16k a year after monthly premiums and annual deductibles for a family of 3. (All but $6500 of that is pre-tax).
It's not at all uncommon for companies, even small ones, to pay 100% for the employee. Paying for spouses and children is much less common.
Re: Software Engineering Salaries in Europe vs. the United States
#44Site 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…
> government paid health care, so it works out
This argument always gets brought up. The thing is, even in much of the Europe, highly paid professionals don't use the government paid health care, but instead get health insurances from their employers, so the situation is the same as in the US. For some reason those health insurances seem to be much cheaper here than in the US, though.
Re: Software Engineering Salaries in Europe vs. the United States
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Obviously there are exceptions and not every EU dev is paid less than every US dev. The point is that there are large numbers of developers across the EU who can stand to gain a lot by working remotely for US wages. Not every last one of them, but many. Switzerland is only 2% of the EU’s population.
> Switzerland is only 2% of the EU’s population.
The Bay Area is, similarly, only 2.5% of the US' population.
Re: Software Engineering Salaries in Europe vs. the United States
#46It’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…
On the other hand, I'm based in Europe and if I decide to work remotely for a company in the US I will want a significant raise just to offset the extra costs and risks.
Re: Software Engineering Salaries in Europe vs. the United States
#47I'm a tech worker based in France.
This topic gets brought up on HN every year I think.
The answer is always the same :
- Yes , US Engineers Salary are way exaggerated compared to the rest of the world
- No US Company will never "outsource" to europe to save 50% per full time worker
This has been predicted already a millions times and has never happened. The cultural difference is so important it doesn't work.
Long time ago there was a trend to outsource to india. It didn't end well from what I remember.
Re: Software Engineering Salaries in Europe vs. the United States
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> government paid health care, Most salary comparisons are done pre-taxes. Europe has much higher taxes, in part to pay for that free education and healthcare.
> Europe has much higher taxes, in part to pay for that free education and healthcare.
That part about higher taxes paying for "free" education and healthcare had me cracking up.
Re: Software Engineering Salaries in Europe vs. the United States
#49If 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/14…
Extrapolating contract/freelance hourly pay to full-time... what a joke. These are totally different things.
Re: Software Engineering Salaries in Europe vs. the United States
#50The disparity is massive, the company I work for has an eu office (in an enormously expensive city) as well as an office in California, in an area overall less expensive than the EU city.
I found that an interns salary is the same as my base salary, which was fairly insulting, but the full time engineers got similar stocks/bonus but in addition also get about 2.5 - 3 times my base salary, while paying less tax in a slightly less expensive city. I found it quite upsetting.