Their source of salaries is Glassdoor which seems to be focused on base salary alone.
They should have used levels.io for a better source. It includes bonus and rsu.
Software Engineering Salaries in Europe vs. the United States
121–130 of 199 posts
Re: Software Engineering Salaries in Europe vs. the United States
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 really not the norm though, to be clear. 500k-1M is really outliers (senior staff engineer with 20 years career in a private bank etc...)
Most of the jobs are "normal bay area" salaries, but cost of living in Switzerland is as high or worse as San Fransisco, roughly.
Re: Software Engineering Salaries in Europe vs. the United States
#123Earlier 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.
Salaries in Switzerland reach $500k-$1 million/year? Honest question, I know nothing about Switzerland.
For the bankers they do :-).
Re: Software Engineering Salaries in Europe vs. the United States
#124Earlier 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 Twitter and the health coverage is quite good. Max annual out of pocket is $2000 and mental health is covered 90% from the first dollar.
I pay $1000/year for my policy.
Re: Software Engineering Salaries in Europe vs. the United States
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Not sure about SF arrogance but the whole “Your job is going to get outsourced to India don’t get into IT/Software Dev” thing has been around since the 90s. It’s 20 years later and the job market is better than ever, salaries are better than ever, and a lot of companies who fully embraced the IT outsourcing trend are realizing it actually hurt them in the long run. Short term it helped but now they have lost their ma…
distributed working is a totally different thing than outsourcing. We are talking about companies having more options for their mode/base of operation and talents. We are not talking about corporates sacrifying quality control by adding layers of managerment in other countries in an attempt to abstract away the development process.
Re: Software Engineering Salaries in Europe vs. the United States
#126It’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 a macro scale this is happening in every field in America. Any knowledge worker job that doesn't need to be done in person can be outsourced to the billions of people in the rest of the world. Radiologist, Accounting, Law, Animation, etc. What is the value of a U.S. Hacker News moderator in the valley, for example, over a smart Croatian or Latin American person who will work for a fraction of the price? Many peopl…
> The ultimate result in my opinion, when no job is safe from outsourcing, is going to be the decline of wages and the middle class in America.
This result has been evidenced already over the past 5 decades or so.
Re: Software Engineering Salaries in Europe vs. the United States
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not sure about SF arrogance but the whole “Your job is going to get outsourced to India don’t get into IT/Software Dev” thing has been around since the 90s. It’s 20 years later and the job market is better than ever, salaries are better than ever, and a lot of companies who fully embraced the IT outsourcing trend are realizing it actually hurt them in the long run. Short term it helped but now they have lost their ma…
If you know what you are doing by building an organic team in a foreign country, you can still get real bang for the buck. If you try the traditional outsourcing model by offloading shit to a 3rd party, you will get hurt.
Agreed. There’s no way you can get away with not having a global team unless you’re a small company operating in a small market.
The company I work for now has a team in India and the difference in skills is night and day compared to my last job. The turnover is much much less as well. I suspect they pay better and don’t rely on scummy 3rd party “coach you to pass the interview but have no real experience” providers.
Re: Software Engineering Salaries in Europe vs. the United States
#128It’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…
> 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.
And this fact that the site is down PERFECTLY highlights the [insert derogatory adjective here] of some development and design mindsets floating around in SV. Rather than having some content laoded by an HTTP server, we send over a javascript framework that then PULLS the content and lays it out, and we show a LOADING SCREEN in the meantime. It's using the web server and browser to completely reinvent the webserver and browser, for no gain and an inarguably worse user experience.
The fact that part of the throbber image is the "object not found" placeholder from browsers is so perfect for the site that the irony is absolutely self-recursive.
Re: Software Engineering Salaries in Europe vs. the United States
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not sure about SF arrogance but the whole “Your job is going to get outsourced to India don’t get into IT/Software Dev” thing has been around since the 90s. It’s 20 years later and the job market is better than ever, salaries are better than ever, and a lot of companies who fully embraced the IT outsourcing trend are realizing it actually hurt them in the long run. Short term it helped but now they have lost their ma…
distributed working is a totally different thing than outsourcing. We are talking about companies having more options for their mode/base of operation and talents. We are not talking about corporates sacrifying quality control by adding layers of managerment in other countries in an attempt to abstract away the development process.
The parent comment said displace place jobs just like Chinese manufacturing did to US manufacturing.
Re: Software Engineering Salaries in Europe vs. the United States
#130Obviously people look at Bay Area or Seattle salaries and see people that make $350k+ total comp or whatever insane numbers they are.
But even in second and third-tier places, it's relatively easy for a software person or even just a vaguely tech-adjacent role to make over $100k. I'm way, way out at the very edge of the exurban zone of Boston, and that's where I am, and my fiancé who is a non-technical project manager at a tech company is right behind me.
Typically the comeback from UK or German tech workers is that they have government health care and benefits, but they make half of what I make, pay higher taxes, and I have 100% paid employer insurance, four or five weeks of vacation, paternity leave, work maybe 35 hours a week, etc.
Europeans (and also Canadians) are wildly underpaid for their abilities.