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Software Engineering Salaries in Europe vs. the United States

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Re: Software Engineering Salaries in Europe vs. the United States

#101

Post by [deleted] »

JofArnold wrote: post #52
echopom wrote: post #47

I'm a tech worker based in France. This topic gets brought up on HN every year I think. The answer is always the same : - Yes , US Engineers Salary are way exaggerated compared to the rest of the world - No US Company will never "outsource" to europe to save 50% per full time worker This has been predicted already a millions times and has never happened. The cultural difference is so important it doesn't work. Long t…

They do though. They've been doing it for years. I mean UK's no longer in Europe so your point may technically be true but I've had plenty of recruiters contact me from big US tech co's who operate via EU/UK (sometimes shell) entities. EDIT: to further qualify, those orgs base salaries have typically been in the range £120k-£150k if a quick scan through my notes is in any way representative. And obviously the FAANGs…

[deleted]

Re: Software Engineering Salaries in Europe vs. the United States

#102

Post by nickthemagicman »

foxyv wrote: post #96
roenxi wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a counterpoint, software engineering saleries will fall. There isn't a shortage of clever people, it is a desk job, very low stakes and lots of opportunities. Lots of people want in on this. I'd guess the actual reason that US software developers make more is that it is easier to make lots of money in the US generally, so the profitable companies go there & then the developers make excellent wages due to geographi…

Yes, we have tons of people who can code at a proficient level in one language. However, don't underestimate the difficulty of software engineering. The people who we need to build our applications are getting really hard to find and especially keep around. Sure I can get someone who will code a basic Spring Boot application in a pinch. But do they have the excellent communication skills, knowledge of build systems,…

It seems like it would be more value efficient to train a person making 40k a year how to do that then pay someone hundreds of grand a year who already knows how to do it.

Re: Software Engineering Salaries in Europe vs. the United States

#103

Post by thrower123 »

ren_engineer wrote: post #39
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #17

It’s funny to see this site gather so many upvotes while the server is down. I think by now everyone knows very well that software engineering salaries are higher in the United States. If the shift toward remote work really comes to fruition, I fully expect EU software salaries to rise. I’ve hired a lot of excellent remote developers in European countries. The trick is to pay them American-level wages, which are ofte…

Silicon Valley engineers are for the most part arrogant, they sound like factory workers who said Chinese manufacturing would never displace their jobs and "made in America". Companies have shown again and again they are willing to sacrifice quality if it increases profit. In this case I'm not even sure quality will be sacrificed in most cases because as you said there are tons of great engineers available

And then the managers that cut cost jump up or over the ladder out of the department, and the next person deals with the smoking wreck of the situation, and they insource everything again. Then two years later, the cycle repeats.

The counterpart of this is that initially, the outsourcing group brings their A-team to bear, in order to win the deal. Those folks are generally as good as the people that they replaced. Six months later, those top operators are shifted to the next deal, and the C-team takes over, and then churn and attrition reduces it to a D or F team in short order.

Re: Software Engineering Salaries in Europe vs. the United States

#104

Post by tmottabr »

jimmaswell wrote: post #68
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #17

It’s funny to see this site gather so many upvotes while the server is down. I think by now everyone knows very well that software engineering salaries are higher in the United States. If the shift toward remote work really comes to fruition, I fully expect EU software salaries to rise. I’ve hired a lot of excellent remote developers in European countries. The trick is to pay them American-level wages, which are ofte…

> There is a lot of underpaid, highly qualified talent on the international remote market Maybe the laws need to be updated. Nobody anticipated remote work when the laws on visas/green cards were written. It seems like an exploit that you don't need any to work for an American company potentially taking the spot of an American worker. American taxes aren't even withheld in this case apparently.

remote work makes local laws useless.

If they make laws in the US to make it harder to have remote workers to protect local people then the companies will use an existing foreign office or open a shell office some place where laws are friendlier and hire from there.

Re: Software Engineering Salaries in Europe vs. the United States

#105

Post by classictraffic »

maxehmookau wrote: post #88

Sure, I get that salaries are higher in the US. Overall quality of life though? I'd take europe, personally. My salary is 50% lower than my SF-based colleagues but my quality of life is amazing. Large house, green open spaces, my taxes pay for high-quality healthcare and a _relatively_ equal society. I'm far richer here, in many ways, than I would be if my bank account were a bit larger.

This is how I feel as an American too. If i didn't have such strong ties here (family, friends, etc.), I'd move to Europe in a heartbeat and take the lower salary for QoL improvements.

Re: Software Engineering Salaries in Europe vs. the United States

#106

Post by keewee7 »

echopom wrote: post #47

I'm a tech worker based in France. This topic gets brought up on HN every year I think. The answer is always the same : - Yes , US Engineers Salary are way exaggerated compared to the rest of the world - No US Company will never "outsource" to europe to save 50% per full time worker This has been predicted already a millions times and has never happened. The cultural difference is so important it doesn't work. Long t…

>Long time ago there was a trend to outsource to india. It didn't end well from what I remember.

This is a narrative that often gets repeated on HN and reddit but IT outsourcing to India has been increasing in the past 20 years. IT outsourcing now makes up 8% of the Indian GDP, 50% of Indian exports, and is on the receiving end of half of the Foreign Direct Investment into India.

Within India people from other fields are rushing to coding bootcamps because salaries in IT outsourcing are so much higher than any other field.

Re: Software Engineering Salaries in Europe vs. the United States

#107

Post by rgrmrts »

volta83 wrote: post #94
rgrmrts wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on reported data from levels.fyi, senior SWE salaries in the US go up to $600k whereas in Switzerland they max out at around $400k. If looking at averages, there’s about a $50k difference.

There might be more data for levels.fyi in the US than EU. 600k$ is 480k EUR. I know SEs in Germany doing more than 400k EUR at FAANG.

I wondered about reporting biases, which makes sense - I suppose levels.fyi is more popular in the US. Thanks for sharing that data!

Re: Software Engineering Salaries in Europe vs. the United States

#109

Post by hirako2000 »

300bps wrote: post #64
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #17

It’s funny to see this site gather so many upvotes while the server is down. I think by now everyone knows very well that software engineering salaries are higher in the United States. If the shift toward remote work really comes to fruition, I fully expect EU software salaries to rise. I’ve hired a lot of excellent remote developers in European countries. The trick is to pay them American-level wages, which are ofte…

This is also why I don’t believe the rise of remote work (if it actually happens) will be as good for US workers Beyond just time zone issues, there are substantial legal, cultural, language and other issues that will prevent this from happening on a wide and sustainable scale. I have worked with many companies that tried this and failed spectacularly. Examples of problems encountered: 1. Having to explain every litt…

I concur, my experience too. Cultural differences is a big one. Both for the finished product, and with regards to organisation costs which are often invisible, just felt and never accounted for with numbers.

I'm less familiar with 4. But seen many cases of data leaks. It's very challenging to figure out the purpose, competing is only one.

Re: Software Engineering Salaries in Europe vs. the United States

#110

Post by JoeAltmaier »

keewee7 wrote: post #106
echopom wrote: post #47

I'm a tech worker based in France. This topic gets brought up on HN every year I think. The answer is always the same : - Yes , US Engineers Salary are way exaggerated compared to the rest of the world - No US Company will never "outsource" to europe to save 50% per full time worker This has been predicted already a millions times and has never happened. The cultural difference is so important it doesn't work. Long t…

>Long time ago there was a trend to outsource to india. It didn't end well from what I remember. This is a narrative that often gets repeated on HN and reddit but IT outsourcing to India has been increasing in the past 20 years. IT outsourcing now makes up 8% of the Indian GDP, 50% of Indian exports, and is on the receiving end of half of the Foreign Direct Investment into India. Within India people from other fields…

I'll add to the narrative. IT outsourcing has been an unmitigated disaster for Engineering departments I've been part of. Losing control over your own hardware and network, putting it into the hands of a cut-rate operation managed by a non-Engineer, it seems obvious. Necessary changes are too late to matter or never happen. Resources get locked in a closet to "keep Engineers from messing with them" which means to reboot the crashed server it takes a call to somebody in a different timezone who creates a 'ticket' that gets prioritized later and eventually happens next Tuesday.

I waited a month for a RAM upgrade so I could scan GB log files from lab hardware and solve an issue. Long after the need was past our (formerly self-directed) local IT guy came with the new RAM. I mentioned I'd long since had to work around it, and he just grunted. He'd heard it all. And been looking for work since the change.

This experience repeated again and again and again, and you see how the 'legend' builds.

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