> 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.
Salaries in Switzerland reach $500k-$1 million/year? Honest question, I know nothing about Switzerland.
For software engineers it's not unheard of, but that will be at banks (in specific cases), or FAANG (who have offices in Zurich, typically)
EDIT: I'm a Swiss software engineer if that wasn't clear. I don't make that much though unfortunately :)
Sure, I get that salaries are higher in the US. Overall quality of life though? I'd take europe, personally. My salary is 50% lower than my SF-based colleagues but my quality of life is amazing. Large house, green open spaces, my taxes pay for high-quality healthcare and a _relatively_ equal society. I'm far richer here, in many ways, than I would be if my bank account were a bit larger.
Large houses with open green spaces seem much more attainable in the US then Western Europe. Additionally, if you're an American SWE you would have pretty great healthcare benefits anyway. In terms of average care outcomes, moving to Europe might be a step backwards in that regards.
As is often the issue with articles like this, it discusses salary rather than compensation (sourced from Glassdoor). Since compensation at the high end is disproportionately in equity (or in finance, bonuses), this makes the range of compensation look artificially small. Differences between e.g. junior and senior devs are probably bigger than this article lists, and I suspect there might be bigger differences betwee…
Well salaries also ignore health insurance, unemployment benefits, pensions etc. which artificially inflate the difference between the US and Europe. Also other things like childcare and schooling. I mean just the difference between what one has to pay for childcare per year can amount to several $10k and then there is college. So these calculations are definitely not so straight forward.
While that's true (and on the other side, the analysis also doesn't consider tax rates), I think those are fairly minor compared to the effect of equity on compensation. Looking at Dropbox as an example of a U.S. tech company that I picked at random-ish, I see compensation range from 40-165% higher than salary, which means a huge difference.
Why are lead engineer salaries lower than senior engineer's? Senior Software Engineer Average: $126,000 Lead Software Engineer Average: $109,000
That could be a 'translation' issue. In some companies 'staff engineer' is top elite. Where as in other companies it is entry level. Could be something similar?
Salaries in Switzerland reach $500k-$1 million/year? Honest question, I know nothing about Switzerland.
For software engineers it's not unheard of, but that will be at banks (in specific cases), or FAANG (who have offices in Zurich, typically) EDIT: I'm a Swiss software engineer if that wasn't clear. I don't make that much though unfortunately :)
Cool, thanks for sharing. It's nice to hear salaries like that are not limited to SV.
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…
> There is a lot of underpaid, highly qualified talent on the international remote market Maybe the laws need to be updated. Nobody anticipated remote work when the laws on visas/green cards were written. It seems like an exploit that you don't need any to work for an American company potentially taking the spot of an American worker. American taxes aren't even withheld in this case apparently.
Most companies don't hire international remote workers directly because of the costs associated with international tax reporting. If a worker is in another country, that means tax withholding / reporting in multiple places. So it's usually done as contract work through an international recruitment firm which handles all the payroll / tax stuff, or not at all. In any case, even if an American employer hired an American on contract, the full brunt of payroll tax would be on the contractor. Companies only pay half the payroll tax for employees classified by W-2s.
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…
Silicon Valley engineers are for the most part arrogant, they sound like factory workers who said Chinese manufacturing would never displace their jobs and "made in America". Companies have shown again and again they are willing to sacrifice quality if it increases profit. In this case I'm not even sure quality will be sacrificed in most cases because as you said there are tons of great engineers available
Also Americans don’t realize the scale of transformation that is going on in places like India and China. As far as making consumer web apps goes India is increasingly the place where unicorns emerge every week and some companies operate at very large scales.
Thanks to the internet knowledge is spreading quickly and remote work is a booster.
The gap in terms of knowledge and networks is closing with places abroad.
Yes, we have tons of people who can code at a proficient level in one language. However, don't underestimate the difficulty of software engineering. The people who we need to build our applications are getting really hard to find and especially keep around. Sure I can get someone who will code a basic Spring Boot application in a pinch. But do they have the excellent communication skills, knowledge of build systems,…
It seems like it would be more value efficient to train a person making 40k a year how to do that then pay someone hundreds of grand a year who already knows how to do it.
This information seems like it would be of interest to the board of directors at companies paying hundreds of thousands of dollars per year to employees.
I assumed that they would have hired management that takes labor costs into account.