Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tech Compensation in Europe

techpays.eu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 171 posts

Re: Tech Compensation in Europe

#151

Post by angarg12 »

jacquesm wrote: post #114
angarg12 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They did, but my new grants came in 2021, when stock was at the highest. Stock price more than 3x in the 4 years after I joined. Now my grants are worth less than when they were granted. So I got overpaid for a few years and now I'm getting underpaid. They supplemented me with new grants but those won't kick in until next year. But hey I am still very well paid, I don't think I have much to complain about.

Re: Tech Compensation in Europe

#152

Post by jacquesm »

angarg12 wrote: post #151
jacquesm wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They did, but my new grants came in 2021, when stock was at the highest. Stock price more than 3x in the 4 years after I joined. Now my grants are worth less than when they were granted. So I got overpaid for a few years and now I'm getting underpaid. They supplemented me with new grants but those won't kick in until next year. But hey I am still very well paid, I don't think I have much to complain about.

Ah I see, ok so then over time it sort of levels out. The big problem is always if the stock is not liquid and you want to get rid of it so if the stock is publicly traded then that's something to see as a plus and then temporary fluctuations don't matter as much (unless they are significant and going down ;) ).

Re: Tech Compensation in Europe

#153

Post by angarg12 »

gregdoesit wrote: post #86
angarg12 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Thanks! This is a tricky one as you already pointed it out. I’m voting for simplicity: capturing the number in the point of time, and also capturing whether the equity component has appreciated or depreciated. My bet is that having the date of the submission plus data on whether this was a new offer plus the indicator of how the equity changed will give a good enough sense for the sake of using this data.

Thanks, I appreciate choosing simplicity.

As a software engineer looking to optimize for comp (among others) I'm interested in how reproducible those numbers are. If someone got lucky and their initial grant is now worth several times more that's great for them, but doesn't tell me much about what to expect for myself. I agree that filtering by new offer works best when comparing offers.

Re: Tech Compensation in Europe

#154

Post by jacquesm »

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.

You know your value relative to the market. Without the market you would not know your value at all. This is different for sales people where it is much easier to benchmark individual contribution but for tech people the reality is that your individual contribution is not something that is known beforehand so it is you versus a bunch of others and unless you are exceptional (which may well be the case, I have no idea) your position is not rational and even then it does not generalize which is what we are aiming for here.

Re: Tech Compensation in Europe

#155

Post by TrackerFF »

bandris wrote: post #5

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

Kinda, sorta. The public tax returns we have in Norway do not say:

- Where the income comes from (could be many sources)

- Whether or not there were any serious deductions

At the very best, you'll get a figure with lots of variance.

Say you sell a house / apartment, and made $xxk on that one. That one will get lumped in with your regular income. Same if you sell some stock / equity.

Re: Tech Compensation in Europe

#156

Post by RestlessMind »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #145
RestlessMind wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 mi…

> With sufficient competition cost savings on labor turn into consumer surplus.

Nice theory. Though consumer surplus is not evenly distributed which creates problems.

> 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.

Again, wealth gained goes to a different set of people than the ones who need to reinvest in additional training. Also, if you are worked until the age of 45 in a certain field, retraining and becoming expert in another field is near impossible given how much time you have to spare with other commitments in life. So again, a cute theory but fails in practice.

> I am of the view that the US is a net beneficiary of globalization

Citation needed. Maybe there are benefits in the short term but I am afraid we have destabilized our society for the long run.

> I would prefer those companies to fail and new ones with new management who can more accurately assess costs and value to replace them.

Sounds good in theory. Haven't seen it working in practice over the last 2-3 decades across the Western world.

Re: Tech Compensation in Europe

#157

Post by tiborsaas »

mustafa_pasi wrote: post #148
tiborsaas wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't understand what you mean by enormous costs. Yes, permanent moving is not exactly cheap, but it depends very much on the individual's life situation: age, social connections, home ownership, having a car, furniture all matters and all differs. Based on this one might move with a single backpack or it might take a few months to prepare.

Most companies are happy to pay your relocation costs and / or get you a place till you find one on your own.

You can also fly rather cheaply if you miss your family, so this reads very weird to me.

Re: Tech Compensation in Europe

#158

Post by cjbgkagh »

RestlessMind wrote: post #156
cjbgkagh wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mi…

> With sufficient competition cost savings on labor turn into consumer surplus. Nice theory. Though consumer surplus is not evenly distributed which creates problems. > 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. Again, wealth gained goes to a different set of people than the ones who need to reinvest in additiona…

A lack of consumer surplus creates far more problems.

Again, lack of wealth causes more problems across the board.

I cite myself for my opinion.

I’ve seen a lot of failed outsourcing over the last 20 years. It’s not like companies haven’t been trying and it’s not like they won’t keep trying. In any case, I’m not sure how effective spreading the wealth through labor restrictions will be if developer salaries normalize after the next recession. I think it is probably a moot point.

Re: Tech Compensation in Europe

#159

Post by akmarinov »

ksdnjweusdnkl21 wrote: post #126
akmarinov wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I think his argument is that in general their results would be worse because of the timezone and culture difference, thus earning less on average. I think there might be an element of truth there, but probably not enough to explain the entire difference, only a small part of it.

You know, there are a lot of cultures in the US itself - should we pay them differently based on that?

Re: Tech Compensation in Europe

#160

Post by mustafa_pasi »

tiborsaas wrote: post #157
mustafa_pasi wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't understand what you mean by enormous costs. Yes, permanent moving is not exactly cheap, but it depends very much on the individual's life situation: age, social connections, home ownership, having a car, furniture all matters and all differs. Based on this one might move with a single backpack or it might take a few months to prepare. Most companies are happy to pay your relocation costs and / or get you a pl…

I couldn't give a rat's ass about relocation costs, or furniture, or even home ownership tbh. Those are all relatively minimal costs.

But if you have a nice life, a nice social circle of friends, ...etc, do not take all that for granted. You won't magically get all that back once you move. You probably never will to be honest. You will meet other people but building a social life from scratch in a new country is hard and you will end up with a lot of shallow relationships, or maybe nothing at all.

But it really depends on your personal situation. If you are a 20 year old nerd with barely any social life to begin with, go ahead. It might even improve your life.

Post reply on HN