The trimodal nature of software salaries in the Netherlands and Europe (2021) • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by jotm » Sat, Jul 02, 2022, 10:59 PM UTC

sytelus wrote: post #108

Within FAANG, there is again tri-modal distribution. There are people who are hanging in there in IC roles for 15 years and then they are new comers straight out of school with PhD in deep learning and multiple competing offers. Both groups make approximately same money. Then there is upper management layer who have gotten promoted well beyond their competence by jumping internally and externally and they make 5X of…

I've been an IC at a company providing IC services to small companies in the buildings next to FAANG HQs. I've worked as an IC designer, have been involved in a lot of IC (obviously) and I also have several years of experience in IC. So clearly, ic wot ppl mean when they type IC.

As an IC on various forums for over a decade, I've only started commonly seeing this abbreviation in the past 2 years.

Just don't.

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

#172

Post by K0SM0S » Sat, Jul 02, 2022, 11:21 PM UTC

mupuff1234 wrote: post #150

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are other ways to pay people, using stocks in a bull run is just good allocation of resources. Great companies always find a way to attract talent no matter the situation, even recessionary.

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

#173

Post by peyton » Sat, Jul 02, 2022, 11:24 PM UTC

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.…

> I have always tried to see bay area salaries as as risk compensation.

Nobody paying those salaries sees it as risk compensation, so I don’t see how that can be true. Also, can’t you move back, or is there some requirement you pay into your system?

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

#174

Post by novok » Sat, Jul 02, 2022, 11:30 PM UTC

hintymad wrote: post #159

I was wondering what makes companies be willing to pay Bay Area packages for engineers in only a few tech hubs. Supply and Demand? But then at least FANNGs have a hard time finding talents in European countries too, at least in Germany. And the number of engineers they hire is small compared to that in the US, so the companies could afford larger packages, right? If it were not supply and demand, then it's puzzling t…

There is an inertial mass of engineers still in the USA at the tech hubs, and top leadership at those companies still don't want them to be remote. They rather pay more and have them not remote than to have them remote.

And even if they don't want them in the USA anymore with US compensation, it can take a long time to build up staff and still not have a huge core of them in the US.

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

#175

Post by K0SM0S » Sat, Jul 02, 2022, 11:33 PM UTC

wasmitnetzen wrote: post #96

seibelj wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A common criticism is that “but you get so much more for your taxes in Europe”. I have a counterpoint - you get the choice of what you want to buy in the US. I’d rather keep more of my take-home pay and do without certain services, or better yet choose the provider (and quality / expense) of such services if I want them. Somehow the bureaucracy in the US is still massive, so I can only imagine what far higher tax rat…

There are things money can't buy. It's hard to list things without getting too political, which I don't think this is the right forum for, but there are fundamental differences in European politics vs American politics, and no salary, as high as it might be, can change that.

To me, freedom certainly is one of those things money can't ultimately buy (I'm talking about 99% of the population, not billionaires), and I'm saddened to see it's been going downhill on both sides of the pond for the last 20 odd years. There are differences, but both are unequivocally evolving towards more authoritarian, controlling regimes. And that's a shame, because everything else (health, education, labor, social, even happiness) suffers from that foundational loss.

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

#176

Post by sidlls » Sat, Jul 02, 2022, 11:36 PM UTC

kortilla wrote: post #165

sidlls wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

> with just a bit of a learning curve This downplays how bad many developers are. I have some web dev friends that know how to use exactly one framework, one language, one source control, and never touch the cli out of a few commands stackoverflow told them to run. Changing from GitHub to bitbucket would be a major undertaking for them and that’s not even abandoning git. They do well managing the small business apps…

The “webdev” kind of person you’re talking about likely doesn’t have the same education as even a relatively unskilled “enterprise Java dev.” I think you’re overselling the complexity of using the tooling at FAANG type companies. The tech is complex, but a tiny fraction of the company actually works on that stuff.

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

#177

Post by seanp2k2 » Sat, Jul 02, 2022, 11:40 PM UTC

splittingTimes wrote: post #158

Humanities supposedly most brilliant minds work on the next e-billing system, AI on how to sell more crap that nobody really needs, keep a glorified message board afloat or enable the cancer that is advertisment. They should work on how to address the climate catastrophe, the waste/recycling problem, food security, sustainable agriculture and land/water use, medical devices/health care or how to fix the broken partic…

Saving the world doesn’t pay as well as helping destroy it through rabid consumerism. Until we figure that out as a society, we’ll stay on a downward spiral with capitalism.

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

#178

Post by mmarq » Sat, Jul 02, 2022, 11:47 PM UTC

kayoone wrote: post #61

yrgulation wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably because you are at a senior level in that market. Few eu countries can compete with the uk in terms of pay and modern tech.

Working in Berlin tech, I found London salaries not that interesting considering the cost of living is easily 2x of Berlin.

If you have a family it’s probably 4x. 65-70K in Berlin are roughly equivalent to 200K in London.

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

#179

Post by toshk » Sat, Jul 02, 2022, 11:51 PM UTC

FredPret wrote: post #82

Dove wrote: post #66

I found this fascinatingly counterintuitive. I would normally expect that a broader market leads to lower prices for commodity goods. If I can only buy candy from the vendor at the movie theater, I expect to pay a higher price than if I can buy it from all the stores in the region, which I expect to be higher again than if I can import it from anywhere in the world. The reverse is true for developers? The companies w…

By this logic, the best deal for a good developer will almost always be to start a company

Depends on what you define as a "company".

For the last decade contracting/freelancing has been paying consistently the salary in the upper ranges discussed in the above article, from my experience living in the NL.

Taking a regular job, unless for big companies like booking etc. described in this articles, for most devs here would mean taking a pay cut up to 50% if not more compared to contracting.

So yeah even if you want to get a steady job with tax cuts you get being a freelancer you can work half a year in the NL and in the end easily make more then a full year being employed.

So in the end most of us have our own little lemon stands, because it just makes more sense.

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

#180

Post by cmrdporcupine » Sun, Jul 03, 2022, 12:19 AM UTC

jotm wrote: post #171

sytelus wrote: post #108

Within FAANG, there is again tri-modal distribution. There are people who are hanging in there in IC roles for 15 years and then they are new comers straight out of school with PhD in deep learning and multiple competing offers. Both groups make approximately same money. Then there is upper management layer who have gotten promoted well beyond their competence by jumping internally and externally and they make 5X of…

I've been an IC at a company providing IC services to small companies in the buildings next to FAANG HQs. I've worked as an IC designer, have been involved in a lot of IC (obviously) and I also have several years of experience in IC. So clearly, ic wot ppl mean when they type IC. As an IC on various forums for over a decade, I've only started commonly seeing this abbreviation in the past 2 years. Just don't.

It's an amusing term for sure and definitely an outcropping of the internals at FAANG (or maybe MS as well) culture. Like, it almost sounds denigrating. "I was just an individual contributor"; like, the people who do the real work, y'know, they're out there doing the difficult work of herding cats to tell them which protobufs to move from A to B, while the ICs are, y'know just ICing doing the actual protobuf shuffling :-)

It's just about promo culture @ Google, etc. and not in fact I think a reasonable principle of how good software gets built.