I'd be very happy to make 2200€. I'm in France, and I'm paid barely above minimum wage. Granted, I don't have a very high level of college education, but even so, I made more when I had a job in a factory a few years ago. And the job market here doesn't seem to be that competitive, unfortunately.
Want good programmers? Then pay them.
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Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.
#12I am a Vienna-based programmer and am looking at job adverts regularly. I fully agree with what you have written, sometimes I feel they mus be joking. There is no appreciation for hackers and what they are worth. Take this advert for example: http://derstandard.at/anzeiger/derjob/d/155533/c-senior-soft... 5 years experience in C++ and only 2,500 EUR gross? Seriously?
You are right. But about that advert: Most people don't see that that's the minimum payment as demanded by the state. They actually pay more (and funnily, in that case, I know that company and they pay quite well and know to honor the skills of their developers). Kind of sad that recruiters in Austria haven't yet noticed that everybody thinks the minimum payment is not what people are interested in reading on there a…
I agree. The minimum salary notation is just stupid, but in engineering it is used often times.
In Sales/PM/BizDev I mostly read "We pay 60,000 EUR or above" for jobs demanding 5 years of experience, which makes much more sense than the "2,500 EUR per month" in this advert.
Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.
#13Some context/perspective on the Austrian employment situation:
* Salaries are typically quoted per month, but there is a bonus of 2 months's salary paid per year, so yearly gross is 14 x monthly. The bonus is taxed at a lower marginal rate (6%, no social security contribution, IIRC, vs 37.5% lowest marginal rate).
* There is no fixed minimum wage in Austria. Instead, there is a collective bargaining system, which sets minimum salaries for each industry. Within each industry there are defined categories of jobs, education and levels of experience, along with minimum employment contract conditions and payment for each. This has some bizarre consequences, such that equivalent jobs (e.g. secretary) have different minimum wages in different industries.
* Employers are required to pay a lot of social security/tax on top of what the employees themselves pay. (just checked this: 21.83% social security, communal tax 3%, about 6% other "social" contributions according to http://www.gruendungswissen.at/gruendungswissen/blog-post/20... )
* Employees are almost impossible to fire. If that programmer ends up doing negative work, he's going to be on your books for a while.
I've never been anything but self-employed in Austria (we get screwed in entirely different ways) but culturally I think there is an expectation that you won't negotiate on your salary. This is further reinforced by the built-in graduated minimum pay: why permit the employee to negotiate a raise if they'll legally be due a raise anyway?
Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.
#14There's another way of looking at this. Do you want to work with smart colleagues and good management? Work for a company that pays you & the other developers well. It'll be much more enjoyable to go to work each day.
There may be a correlation, but it takes a lot more than good pay to foster an enjoyable company.
Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.
#15I am a Vienna-based programmer and am looking at job adverts regularly. I fully agree with what you have written, sometimes I feel they mus be joking. There is no appreciation for hackers and what they are worth. Take this advert for example: http://derstandard.at/anzeiger/derjob/d/155533/c-senior-soft... 5 years experience in C++ and only 2,500 EUR gross? Seriously?
I'm in Vienna and work for a local startup in the mobile application development scene .. and yeah. Pay-rates are definitely not what they should be, here in Austria. I think it has a lot to do with the "Kollektiv-vertrag" prices being set too low by the government itself ..
+1, which comes back to the low appreciation for hackers :-)
Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.
#16Wake up, people: Are you serious? You want highly specialized people with actual skills, and expect them to be OK with that comparable low payment? If the same person sits down and starts creating his own software, he will probably earn much more one year later by himself already. Probably not. Most programmers don't have any idea what software sells and how to sell it.
You just ask people what they need and make it for them and they pay you. It's called freelancing. Almost no selling and absolutely no market research involved.
Even freelancing isn't straightforward.
It's much more difficult to independently find a good stream of customers and well paying projects than it is to get a job or a contract.
Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.
#17In my experience, from what I see in Brazil, entry-level programmers with no professional experience are paid much more than the equivalent in other professions. And, even after years of "training" in college, they will need a year of two of actual on-the-job training before they start adding enough value to justify their cost. In short, a company that hires fresh-out-of-college programmers is making an investment in…
This is probably either a symptom or a contributor to Brazil's rising prominence on the world tech stage.
Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.
#18As a 28 year old, developing part-time since 15, full-time since 22, and always self-learning in my own time i've seen lots of people in other industries with just 4 years full-time experience, not self-learning, doing nothing in their own free time getting offered a lot more for job positions. The strange thing is, often these people have trouble finding work as most industries aren't as easy as ours. I guess supply and demand is just skewed in the jobmarket. I also guess it-work is under appreciated but it's all our own fault. B.t.w. I started as a freelancer so I have only myself to blame for my income.
Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.
#19There's another way of looking at this. Do you want to work with smart colleagues and good management? Work for a company that pays you & the other developers well. It'll be much more enjoyable to go to work each day.
There may be a correlation, but it takes a lot more than good pay to foster an enjoyable company.
It's more of an indicator of negatives rather than positives; A company that pays comparatively shit (€2200/month comes out to about $35000, seriously!?) will probably not be a place that respects developers and attracts talent.
Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.
#20I am a Vienna-based programmer and am looking at job adverts regularly. I fully agree with what you have written, sometimes I feel they mus be joking. There is no appreciation for hackers and what they are worth. Take this advert for example: http://derstandard.at/anzeiger/derjob/d/155533/c-senior-soft... 5 years experience in C++ and only 2,500 EUR gross? Seriously?
I'm in Vienna and work for a local startup in the mobile application development scene .. and yeah. Pay-rates are definitely not what they should be, here in Austria. I think it has a lot to do with the "Kollektiv-vertrag" prices being set too low by the government itself ..
/agree The "Kollektiv" is nice, but not for everybody.