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The trimodal nature of software salaries in the Netherlands and Europe (2021)

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Re: The trimodal nature of software salaries in the Netherlands and Europe (2021)

#141

Post by _vbnz »

seibelj wrote: post #120
varispeed wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The same cannot be said of the US, where people with emergencies take ubers to the hospital. It's a bit ironic as a couple of months ago I had to call for an ambulance here in the UK when I found someone extremely unwell and they told me I should call an Uber and take that person to A&E myself, because they don't have free ambulances. Then at A&E they had over 3h waiting time for majors. You pay fortune in taxes an…

The anecdotes from supposedly-superior socialized medical systems in Europe always throw cold water on USA leftist dreams. The left here has been saying it’s a utopia for a fraction of the cost for decades. The reality is so much more complex.

I mean, I'm a leftist in the EU, it's just that the system isn't working due to cuts and mismanagement, and unfortunately the "left-wing" parties here are more concerned with identity politics and policies benefiting the lumpen rather than the proletariat (mass immigration, social housing for criminals, etc.).

I support universal healthcare, but I think a lot of Americans don't appreciate the benefits they get from the sheer wealth of the USA. Salaries are so much higher, and health insurance covers much more at good companies, etc.

Re: The trimodal nature of software salaries in the Netherlands and Europe (2021)

#142

Post by FrenchDevRemote »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #116
Jacqued wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, this is mostly wrong. You don’t get 500-600k Silicon Valley offers in Europe just for being a solid engineer. You do get a total comp that is 2-3x local market if you manage to get into FAANG like companies and even the tier below. I think this is what Gergely is describing. That is still life changing for a lot of engineers, and worth the 3 month grind to get through the interviews. At least it was…

2-3x local market is doable even outside of fangs, usually with more flexibility (remote was a nice perk pre-pandemic) and no bullshit interview. If you pair it with working via your own limited company and get your taxes down to single digits or low double digits you can make as much as salaried people on 300k - and with no equity that can go up or down (sure, and no holidays or sick days if you're the kind of perso…

>(sure, and no holidays or sick days if you're the kind of person that does those).

the kind of person that does those? you mean humans?

Re: The trimodal nature of software salaries in the Netherlands and Europe (2021)

#143

Post by mupuff1234 »

ceeplusplus wrote: post #3

Unfortunately this misses the difference in taxation vs. the US. You pay almost nothing for healthcare at any tech company and pay much lower taxes (both income and sales tax). So European offers are still much less competitive than the US.

But on the other hand raising a family is probably a lot less expensive in Europe on average.

Re: The trimodal nature of software salaries in the Netherlands and Europe (2021)

#144

Post by idlehand »

2-718-281-828 wrote: post #95
BossingAround wrote: post #92

Every time I see this article reposted, I feel a pang of sadness. It's this chasing of the SF salary outside of the US that is supposed to be the holy grail of every engineer in rich EU countries. Well, if you get hired by FAANG in Germany, you don't get the SF salary. My experience is that companies that do offer extreme salaries do not do so out of competition with FAANG (since FAANG does not compete with itself gl…

> or they provide conditions very few people can tolerate. Like intimate cleaning and nursing of old and very sick people under immense time pressure and emotional stress. Oh, well ... never mind

Gentle reminder that wages are set by markets generally based on the cost of replacement. If you don't have a moat in the form of education and experience, you won't have very impressive pay. Working in the public sector just makes this worse because politicians need to keep your wages down to have room in the budget for their pet project which will hopefully get them re-elected.

Re: The trimodal nature of software salaries in the Netherlands and Europe (2021)

#145

Post by lnsru »

fnbr wrote: post #136
de6u99er wrote: post #126

Those high salaries remind me of the stories of heavy smokers who didn't die of cancer or COPD. I think it's very unlikely to get those high salaries in Europe. Comparing them to salaries in Silicon Valley without context isn't really smart. I have always tried to see bay area salaries as as risk compensation. E g. In Vienna/Austria a 2-3 bedroom apartment here is about 1-2k while in the bay area it's between 5-10k.…

Wait, really? That’s incredible! €1-2k for a 2-3 bedroom apartment in Vienna? You would barely see that anywhere in Canada, let alone a major city.

The same is valid for Munich. 2-3 bedrooms plus dining room is <2k here. However it’s not the best apartment in the city, rather okayish. Also it’s hard to hit 5k after taxes salary limit here.

Re: The trimodal nature of software salaries in the Netherlands and Europe (2021)

#146

Post by ficklepickle »

fnbr wrote: post #136
de6u99er wrote: post #126

Those high salaries remind me of the stories of heavy smokers who didn't die of cancer or COPD. I think it's very unlikely to get those high salaries in Europe. Comparing them to salaries in Silicon Valley without context isn't really smart. I have always tried to see bay area salaries as as risk compensation. E g. In Vienna/Austria a 2-3 bedroom apartment here is about 1-2k while in the bay area it's between 5-10k.…

Wait, really? That’s incredible! €1-2k for a 2-3 bedroom apartment in Vienna? You would barely see that anywhere in Canada, let alone a major city.

Canada has the lovely combo of low salaries and high rent

Re: The trimodal nature of software salaries in the Netherlands and Europe (2021)

#147

Post by lordnacho »

ido wrote: post #4

Ok let me make a probably very unpopular comment here: their 3rd point lists "companies benchmarking against all regional or global companies" but in fact what they mean is "companies benchmarking against the highest paying US tech hubs". I assure you "all regional or global companies" also include Vietnamese companies paying junior devs $300 per month - what is the advantage of the European engineer that is worth pa…

In my line of work, there are actually a bunch of Vietnamese guys making Western level quant trader type salaries, living in small castles in their home country.

The thing is, you can't suppress the wages unilaterally for someone who knows how to do things. There's always going to be some other firm offering them a similar deal, with the same capital (equipment, IP, support, trading capital etc) for them to use. So even if you know they only need a tenth of what a Western quant needs to live well, you can't just offer them that, they will end up taking an offer very similar to what they'd get if they moved to NYC or London.

The $300 people are victims of supply and demand. Often it's cookie-cutter type contract work that many people know how to do, and the real problem they have as a supplier of that knowledge is how to get in the front of the queue to be the guy to help a western small-time entrepreneur build his website. When this is the case, the organiser, basically the owner of the outsourcing company, has all the negotiating leverage and sets the price accordingly.

The difference is that the firm with very specifically exploitable capital needs specific knowledge to operate that capital. You need devs with certain skills, and there's only so many of them, especially as your process gives a lot of false negatives. As such devs are rarely identified, you are wasting a lot of money not splitting the pie generously when you find one. I was talking to someone the other day and the agent told me there were 40 candidates interviewed for three roles, which is a huge amount as I had 5 one-on-ones plus a takehome.

Firms that don't really have anything special will not pay anything special, in relation to where the employee is based.

Re: The trimodal nature of software salaries in the Netherlands and Europe (2021)

#148

Post by tomtheelder »

seibelj wrote: post #120
varispeed wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The same cannot be said of the US, where people with emergencies take ubers to the hospital. It's a bit ironic as a couple of months ago I had to call for an ambulance here in the UK when I found someone extremely unwell and they told me I should call an Uber and take that person to A&E myself, because they don't have free ambulances. Then at A&E they had over 3h waiting time for majors. You pay fortune in taxes an…

The anecdotes from supposedly-superior socialized medical systems in Europe always throw cold water on USA leftist dreams. The left here has been saying it’s a utopia for a fraction of the cost for decades. The reality is so much more complex.

I mean I could tell almost the exact same anecdote from when I had to have my appendix out in the US. The key difference is that I ended up with a fucking insane bill to pay at the end of all of it.

Plus the NHS was better historically. The conservatives have been playing starve the beast with it, and Labor is about as impotent as the Dems are in the US.

Either way they still spend less and have better outcomes, so that part at least isn't very complex.

Re: The trimodal nature of software salaries in the Netherlands and Europe (2021)

#149

Post by sidlls »

UweSchmidt wrote: post #139

Have we discussed the requirements for those fancy "Tier 3" jobs? I suspect it's overall a lot harder than most regular dev jobs. Many developers are medium sized fish in small ponds, where they can get away with moderate effectiveness, bad programming habits and little study, or, if they are good, they easily stand out and enjoy the honor of getting the harder tickets assigned, yet may not ever be really challenged.…

I work at such a "tier 3" company. It's not about the complexity of the tooling or the code. Most of that is stuff the typical Enterprise Java Dev can "grok" easily enough with just a bit of a learning curve. The problems of scale and infrastructure are mostly abstracted from engineers at these places already, and that's where the complex tooling comes in. The rest of it is unnecessarily complicated, mainly because these companies have two problems. One: they've made a point of hiring at the high end of the education pool (masters, PhD) to work on what amounts to glorified CRUD--these people are bored, and add complexity where it is unnecessary. Two: the promotion mechanism depends on running a technically complex, "needle moving" project--this also promotes unnecessary complexity.

The real reason the salaries at these companies is higher is also two-fold: 1) "everyone" wants to work there, so they can be selective and use salary as a justification for that selectivity; 2) they want to keep their overqualified staff happy enough to not start competitors.

Re: The trimodal nature of software salaries in the Netherlands and Europe (2021)

#150

Post by mupuff1234 »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #104
BossingAround wrote: post #92

Every time I see this article reposted, I feel a pang of sadness. It's this chasing of the SF salary outside of the US that is supposed to be the holy grail of every engineer in rich EU countries. Well, if you get hired by FAANG in Germany, you don't get the SF salary. My experience is that companies that do offer extreme salaries do not do so out of competition with FAANG (since FAANG does not compete with itself gl…

Base level compensations for FAANG positions outside of SV are indeed pretty typical and humdrum. But they contain a large equity portion. And over 2-3 years that equity portion ends up being more than the base salary, and you can get pretty close to a Bay Area compensation range. e.g. I was L4 @ Google Waterloo in Canada. Base compensation was nothing special. Good for the immediate area, but not stellar. Yes, nice…

That was true for the longest bull run in history, which may or may not continue.
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