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Tech Compensation in Europe

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Re: Tech Compensation in Europe

#111

Post by piaste »

Jyaif wrote: post #80
dijit wrote: post #20

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

I'm with you. At Thales (big french tech company), AFAIU there's essentially no way of reaching 60kEUR/year without becoming a manager. And even then, reaching 100K requires climbing a lot more levels.

> At Thales (big french tech company), AFAIU there's essentially no way of reaching 60kEUR/year without becoming a manager.

You're probably thinking of after-tax salary, also known as take-home pay (5k/month in your example).

Salary is almost always discussed in pre-tax terms, because two employees with the same salary can get very different tax deductions based on their family situation etc. This website is no exception, as far as I can see.

(Of course, this makes sense when comparing within the same country. When comparing different countries, tax rates are already different before you consider discounts.)

Re: Tech Compensation in Europe

#112

Post by RestlessMind »

dominotw wrote: post #81
paxys wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly what has been happening frequently in our company's Slack channels. Highly paid Bay Area developer moves to elsewhere in the US and complains that they got a pay cut. Developer in low cost US city agrees and says they should be paid Bay Area salaries as well. Canadian developer points out that they get paid lower than anyone in the US despite having very high costs of living. Someone else says think o…

> we are very happy with our salaries, I don't understand why this could be. Speaking up publicly is definitely a cultural no no in india. so maybe that's why?

Because if you have to pay SV salaries, why bother hiring in India and deal with the hassle of timezone disparities? Companies would just hire in SV...

Re: Tech Compensation in Europe

#113

Post by RestlessMind »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #54
shmatt wrote: 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

There will always be someone somewhere who will offer to do your work cheaper than you. I would much rather be paid based on skill than based on location. I think people should be able to make the case that indeed they are more productive than X people from Y location. If not, by all means higher the cheaper people and see how that turns out. For those middling developers who are adversely affected it would make sens…

> I would much rather be paid based on skill than based on location.

And that is how societies, especially middle class, gets decimated. Look at what happened to midwest when The Capital discovered that chinese workers are equally skilled at manufacturing stuff at a fraction of the cost.

Sometimes, you don't need skillset beyond a certain level to do a job. And I would rather have that job stay in my community to ensure its stability, rather than outsourcing it so that a few in my community get fabulously wealthy while a big chunk suffers unemployment and all that it entails.

Re: Tech Compensation in Europe

#114

Post by jacquesm »

angarg12 wrote: post #65
gregdoesit wrote: post #42

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 wh…

They didn't offer to do another equity round after year 4? I really wonder what their motivation there is, it is almost as though they are incentivizing people to quit at that point.

Re: Tech Compensation in Europe

#115

Post by RestlessMind »

akmarinov wrote: post #52
mbg721 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you tell your Kentucky-based employees at that point? "Look, 30 cents a week is our business model. You don't see Harbaglarb in Racetothebottomland complaining,"??

Well yeah, if Harbaglarb does the same job as the Kentucky person why shouldn’t they be paid the same?

Burden of proof is on you to demonstrate why they should be paid the same. Employers (aka Shareholders/owners) are always going to maximize money going to their own pockets. Why should they give more of it to Harbaglarb?

Re: Tech Compensation in Europe

#116

Post by ryanwaggoner »

bchanudet wrote: post #88
rr888 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I may be wrong, but I think there is also a cultural difference: everything here revolves around your gross income. You'll hear "I win 100k a year", not "I win 181k a year". During hiring, you negotiate on the 100k number. Your contract mention this number. In the end, if there is a tax raise on the company part, they have to maintain your salary to the same level, even if it ends up costing them more than before. Th…

This is exactly how it works in the US. Salaries here are listed and negotiated around the gross amount that the employer pays to the employee, without any regard for the employer taxes. The difference is that employer-side taxes on that salary are about ~8% (and most of this is capped at the first $147k), not 45%.

Sadly, US salaries don’t just seem much higher than Europe: they are much higher. Take home pay after all taxes for a senior engineer at a large public tech company can commonly be $250k+ per year, in addition to benefits like health insurance and 6+ weeks off once vacation and holidays are taken into account.

Re: Tech Compensation in Europe

#117

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

mbg721 wrote: post #82
akmarinov wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well yeah, if Harbaglarb does the same job as the Kentucky person why shouldn’t they be paid the same?

From a rational economic standpoint, they should, but that isn't the fight that the anti-Harbaglarbers wanted; there's an assumption that there's culture in common between SF and KY that gets lost somewhere overseas to the cheapest bidder.

It wouldn't get lost if you didn't go for the cheapest bidder. And you don't have to go as far as paying US salaries to get that talent as well.

Eastern Europe is full of top devs who who work remotely for SV companies and understand US culture (New Yorkers couldn't believe I was a foreigner) and deliver value, while being paid half of what their US team members are getting and are (mostly) happy with that since 80k-150k is still way more than what local companies pay there.

Re: Tech Compensation in Europe

#118

Post by ksdnjweusdnkl21 »

__derek__ wrote: post #78
gregdoesit wrote: post #42

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…

Why build something new rather than encourage folks to submit on levels.fyi? There's already data for EU-based roles.[1] [1]: https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html?track=Software%20Engineer&c...

I welcome any competition on the space.

Edited out: Levels is just full of dark patterns.

Re: Tech Compensation in Europe

#120

Post by zuhayeer »

closewith wrote: post #11
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #8

Weird to generalize this over "Europe", since you better live in very specific countries/cities in the UK, Switzerland, Ireland, Netherlands, Luxembourg or Germany, otherwise those salary ranges are completely meaningless to you/your employers, especially the Tier 3 wages. Better naming would be "Compensation across Europe's biggest tech hubs".

Does it support Ireland? I couldn't see figures for that country.

We have some data points here: https://www.levels.fyi/Salaries/Software-Engineer/Ireland/
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