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Tech Compensation in Europe

techpays.eu

61–70 of 171 posts

Re: Tech Compensation in Europe

#61
post #44

It seems a bit controversial to include private company equity in total compensation. For example, for Estonia, the highest TC is Bolt, but about 26% of the compensation is actually stock in this unlisted unicorn. Presumably that stock price is computed from the last funding round. Who knows what Bolt's valuation will be in the next round? That equity might be marked down 50% or more, and you still can't sell it unti…

I'm building the site (but I didn't submit this Show HN). The private part of the shares are clearly marked as private in details, and there's an explainer eg at [1]. I do think it's important to include private equity in packages. My Uber stock package turned out to be worth a lot of money once the company went public. I now have friends at Databricks with massive packages - which can go up or down, and are dependen…

Oh, cool, thanks! I didn't notice it's already there in the job posting's details.

How about promoting this flag to a column in the high-level grid display? It's pretty interesting, and would allow you to get a quick overview of the ratio of startups vs established companies. I imagine this would look rather different for Estonia vs Luxembourg, for example.

You are right about the importance of this information. But it would be even more useful if the latest funding round was included. Equity in a Series F has a very different risk/reward profile compared to equity in a seed round company.

Re: Tech Compensation in Europe

#62
post #5

Tax returns should be public. Like in Norway. That would sort out all kinds of "payment gap" issues as well.

It might work, but the presumption is that you are in a country with high social cohesion and low wealth inequality.

Otherwise, by stripping people from their privacy, you create basically a database of targets for thieves and other criminals.

Re: Tech Compensation in Europe

#63
post #20

I and everyone I know are severely underpaid, or this site is a bit wrong.

Wayfair, Amazon, and MS probably pay above the market. But I heard 100k+ is typical for senior SE. While 80k has been on the higher end just 2-3 years ago. That’s for Berlin.

Re: Tech Compensation in Europe

#64
post #57
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Most countries in Europe provide [healthcare, education and economic support] Varies state to state, in some countries there is "mandatory health insurance" which is subsidised, NHS is free at point of sale in the UK. Education is also dubious, as in some of Europe there's subsidies for childcare under school age, but it's nearly universal to have free healthcare for standard ages (school years 0 - 11); and very f…

"if you lose your job then you're really taken care of" only if you've paid into insurance: to get taken care of you need to pay into both an a-kassa and an inkomstförsäkring. Ie, two insurances. The money you get from the government is usually capped, and capped low (considering all salaries in Sweden). My source for the tax income: https://taxfoundation.org/top-personal-income-tax-rates-euro... note, it's the margi…

Your source (tax foundation) is incorrect in the way I mentioned, it takes "top personal income tax" as its only metric without consideration about where that tax rate begins to be applied.

It's also completely wrong about Denmark, where the top tax rate is actually capped at 52.07%

> Altogether, the marginal tax rate cannot exceed 52.07%

https://taxsummaries.pwc.com/denmark/individual/taxes-on-per...

Re: Tech Compensation in Europe

#65

Hi! I'm building this website, but I did not submit this show HN here. I don't think the site is ready for such a submission, it's currently in alpha - very clearly marked. It's not even beta-ready yet! The data set so far is small - limited to a few countries - and we're working behind the scenes. There are also lots of known issues, and a few data issues. I'm hoping this site will help people in tech get a better s…

Hi Gergely, thanks for bringing salary transparency to the EU! Some of those numbers make me consider moving back ;)

Since this is early stage here is something for your consideration: so far I'm not very keen on how many of these websites account for equity/RSU in the salary information. For example, during my first 4 years at FAANG, my salary increased 50% due to stock appreciation alone. But the I faced a cliff where my comp went down after the 4th year. How to represent this data accurately?

If I introduce my comp at hire I'll discount how much I truly earned during that period. But if I introduce my data on the 4th year that'll give a distorted view of how much engineers at that level usually make. It will also discount the fact that my salary went down afterwards.

I don't know the answer but it feels difficult to capture with a single number a compensation package with a large and very volatile component.

Re: Tech Compensation in Europe

#66
post #49

Info: this does not work in Firefox (102 on linux, but that's a detail) with content blocking enabled, because Firefox does not allow to load jQuery from google's CDN. > The resource at “ https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.5.1/jquery.mi... was blocked because content blocking is enabled. And then there are cascading errors.

Is that a default setting in Firefox? To not allow third-party scripts from CDNs? That seems like it would break an awful lot of sites.

Re: Tech Compensation in Europe

#67
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is 45% employer tax for France correct? Ie employer pays €181k for an employee to earn €100k, who then pays 40% income tax and is left with €60k?

You are correct for the first number (181k to 100k), but not the second one, as the income tax is calculated by brackets defined in adavance[1]. A single person with no family winning 100k would have to pay 23k, leaving them with 77k. This is more than twice the average in France[2] and nearly thrice the median salary [3]. [1] : https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F1419 [2] : https://www.insee.fr/fr/…

Thanks, I calculated 26.7k leaving 73k, so employee keeps just over 40% of what the employer pays.

If you look at income tax in high income tax states the income tax looks similar, so its the payroll taxes and VAT that really is the difference between France and US.

Re: Tech Compensation in Europe

#68
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are larger legal differences across countries that mostly dont apply between SF and kentucky. & timezone and language/cultural differences too that are not immaterial.

Is your argument that people in different timezones and cultures doing the same job with the same results should be paid less because of it?

If a part of the job is coordinating with people in a specific timezone who are ready to pay for availability during their own timezone then yes. We don't consider it abnormal that a waiter in Manhattan gets paid more than a waiter doing the same job in Prague. A more interesting question would be to ask how can we overcome these coordination hurdles between people in different regions and cultures in tech companies? It's a challenge for sure.

Re: Tech Compensation in Europe

#69
post #34

This is why I dislike the fight against location based pay in the U.S. People are heated about how they add the same value whether in SF or Kentucky, but forget there are people even more valuable than them getting paid significantly less. If you are fighting against location based pay, you should be asking your employer to pay all employees on similar teams worldwide the same

I am hyper aware of my strengths, my accolades, my career accomplishments.

I have no idea what "employees on similar teams" bring to the table. I am not going to negotiate on their behalf.

I am productive. I'll make an immediate impact on your team. I've added millions of dollars in value. I've done international product launches.

We can walk through my body of work from the past two decades in detail if you'd like.

I add the same value, independent of location.

I am not your commodity. Do not represent me. I will not represent you.

I negotiate for myself and my family.

That's it.

Re: Tech Compensation in Europe

#70

It'll be interesting when they add Southern Europe. I've seen adverts for experienced developers that pay €35k. And life isn't that much cheaper in the cities here.

That sounds ...very low, right? Given that it will be very easy to get twice that(and more) in northern Europe.
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