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Tech Compensation in Europe

techpays.eu

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Re: Tech Compensation in Europe

#141

Post by __derek__ »

gregdoesit wrote: post #100
__derek__ wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building a brand is a fine answer, but this is incorrect: > The most obvious answer: TechPays caters for countries not present on eg levels.fyi - see how there are no data points for eg Estonia, Hungary, Belgium etc. All three of those countries have submissions on levels.fyi.[1][2][3] [1] Estonia: https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html?track=Software%20Engineer&c... [2]: Hungary: https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html?track=Sof…

I had no idea. Always assumed it was limited to these countries listed here: https://www.levels.fyi/locations/ The point stands that I’m building an Europe-focused site, being a former hiring manager based here. Eg in Hungary, the compensation data is in HUF for most companies with local contracts. On TechPays, this information is in HUF. On levels, it seems to be in USD. It’s a different site. I’m building it becaus…

Localized currencies is very useful! It seems like such an obvious thing, and yet.

Re: Tech Compensation in Europe

#142

Post by drakonka »

gregdoesit wrote: post #100
__derek__ wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building a brand is a fine answer, but this is incorrect: > The most obvious answer: TechPays caters for countries not present on eg levels.fyi - see how there are no data points for eg Estonia, Hungary, Belgium etc. All three of those countries have submissions on levels.fyi.[1][2][3] [1] Estonia: https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html?track=Software%20Engineer&c... [2]: Hungary: https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html?track=Sof…

I had no idea. Always assumed it was limited to these countries listed here: https://www.levels.fyi/locations/ The point stands that I’m building an Europe-focused site, being a former hiring manager based here. Eg in Hungary, the compensation data is in HUF for most companies with local contracts. On TechPays, this information is in HUF. On levels, it seems to be in USD. It’s a different site. I’m building it becaus…

I am glad that you are building this. Often websites are built for a US market and then try to shoehorn EU usage into it. Sometimes that works, but aside from things like currency issues you also often end up with a user base/community that is just primarily interested in the US, with very little activity around other locations. I think it would be great to have this kind of thing specifically tailored to an EU community.

Re: Tech Compensation in Europe

#143

Post by mustafa_pasi »

ribfeast wrote: post #132
bandris wrote: post #5

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

Helps with salary gaps within those countries, but salaries are still laughable compared to US software engineering salaries. Does anyone know why that is?

Demand: US has much more investment in pure-tech. In EU a lot of SWE are working in IT offices of non-tech companies. So the job market in the US is more competitive.

Supply: In the EU university is easily accessible, meaning that there are thousands of universities pumping hundreds of thousands of graduates a year. Plus, now they even invented the Blue Card to make it easy for skilled second/third worlders to immigrate to the EU.

Re: Tech Compensation in Europe

#145

Post by cjbgkagh »

RestlessMind wrote: post #113
cjbgkagh wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ens…

With sufficient competition cost savings on labor turn into consumer surplus. It’s incumbent on those who wish to remain in the middle class move up the value chain. This is supposed to be done by using the wealth gained by being early to the middle class to reinvest in additional productivity and specialization. Unfortunately a lot of that wealth has been squandered so those same people are now falling out of the middle class.

A case could be made for maintaining an inefficient and underproductive middle class as a more efficient tax on the productive middle class (as opposed to a less efficient direct redistribution). I am of the view that the US is a net beneficiary of globalization and Americans would have to be prepared to be a lot poorer on average in order to wind it back. I’m also of the view that subsidies for unproductively is long term counter productive.

I think management often overestimates the savings of cheap labor, but instead of legislating nationalistic hiring practices, I would prefer those companies to fail and new ones with new management who can more accurately assess costs and value to replace them.

Re: Tech Compensation in Europe

#146

Post by ge96 »

paxys wrote: post #129
dominotw wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Here's a data point that may help put things into perspective – one of our employees in India lives in what would be considered a mansion when compared to silicon valley housing. His family has the best private medical insurance, and his kids go to the top private school in the city. He employs a driver to take him to work everyday. He has multiple full-time household help. His disposable income puts him in or close…

If I had that kind of money ratio locally, I would personally blend in eg. "stealth wealth" to avoid being a target. Probably self limiting to feel that way.

Re: Tech Compensation in Europe

#147

Post by bbarn »

aantix wrote: post #140
jacquesm wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I negotiate for myself and my family. No, you don't. I get where you are coming from but you are not just negotiating for yourself and your family, others have fractionally negotiated on your behalf in the past and have set expectations that you are going to have to meet or exceed to be able to get hired and the same goes for those that come after you. You do not operate in some kind of idealized vacuum, you are pa…

>If you are fighting against location based pay, you should be asking your employer to pay all employees on similar teams worldwide the same My response to the OP is to the above. I don't have to advocate for others. I don't even know the others capabilities, so I can't make an honest case for/against them. I know my skills. I know my value.

Your value is not dictated by you, but by the market. The above poster pointed that out much more eloquently than I, but it is a fact.

Re: Tech Compensation in Europe

#148

Post by mustafa_pasi »

tiborsaas wrote: post #10
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".

Since the EU is a free market for employees with no immigration laws and mostly using the same currency, it's not weird at all.

Only if you ignore the cost of moving, which is enormous. Basically dropping your whole life to get maybe 20k€ more, abroad. If you are happy with your life, not even 150k€ would justify a move because good money ain't going to buy you the same friends and family.

Re: Tech Compensation in Europe

#149

Post by jacquesm »

zuhayeer wrote: post #127
ksdnjweusdnkl21 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I welcome any competition on the space. Edited out: Levels is just full of dark patterns.

Hey, one of the founders of Levels.fyi here, anything in particular that you didn’t like that we can look into?

You could start by not threadjacking this posting.

Re: Tech Compensation in Europe

#150

Post by haspok »

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 Gergo, thanks for this, and keep up the good work! It blows my mind that nothing like this exists yet that is primarily focused on the EU - tech still seems to be biased towards the US. The Tier-info is also exceedingly helpful (for those of us sad souls who are starting out in a new country and have limited information and no connections...).

I was also wondering how you are planning to cover remote jobs, because it further complicates things - maybe info about average cost of living per country would be useful. Or info about taxation. Etc.

(So for example I could see that if I move to my farm in Portugal I won't need to worry about finding a remote job which only pays €2K per month, as the cost of living there is so much lower than anywhere else in Europe.)

Maybe you could have a separate country entry for remote jobs, as long as they are available within the EU... I hope I'm banging on open doors here :)

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