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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

#181

Post by the_only_law »

wayoutthere wrote: post #154
the_only_law wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s interesting how ever within the US, there seem to be worlds of difference. > grunt-level unsexy corporate IT technologists are also in short supply This describes my work experience, and I don’t think I could even get six figures, or would barely break that.

Yeah, the difference is that your average corporation is sitting on a 10% net margin and tech product companies are sitting on a 35% net margin. Product companies are bidding for the best talent among eachother. Corporate IT simply cannot afford to compete with them on salary because their margins don’t support it. I think we’re going to see a real bifurcation of the economy along these margin lines, where the “haves…

> I think we’re going to see a real bifurcation of the economy along these margin lines, where the “haves” and “have nots” are determined by the industry and company you work in.

More interesting to me is how difficult it seems to be to move between these, and I imagine it will only et worse.

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

#182

Post by atraac »

vasper wrote: post #151

It's really hard to compare both dev markets. In Europe, salaries varies a lot depending on the country. There is Switzerland where average dev can earn up to 120k CHF (~ $130k) [1], and on the other hand we have Germany with average of 60k EUR (~ $70k) [2]. The UK is rather similar: 60k GBP (~ $82k) [3]. To have a perspective, we can also add Poland to the list: 240 000 PLN (~ $61k) [4]. As you can see, it's not tha…

240k pln in Poland is a rather high-end senior pay. Also usually net on a b2b contract, so the actual salary would be around 170-180k(46k $) pln after taxes. Admittedly you can live a really decent life for this here.

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

#183

Post by bcoughlan »

tut-urut-utut wrote: post #3

Without reading the article (site is down) my expectation is that the data will show significantly lower salaries in Europe than in the USA. One of the explanations is that there are almost no genuine software development companies in Europe. Software jobs there are mostly internal (enterprise) software development or customization, and not software product or service development. Being a cost centre instead of a pro…

I'm from a small European city of around ~100k people. I think we produce a decent number of successful startups for our size despite having access to only a small fraction of the capital compared to Silicon Valley startups. However their fate is to be eaten by the big fish, so if you take a walk around industrial areas you'll see offices for IBM, Oracle, Cisco, Fidelity etc. not realising that they were formerly successful startups and think that there are no "genuine software development" companies in town.

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

#184

Post by nickthemagicman »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #174
nickthemagicman wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in this post pandemic world, now that companies have set themselves up for remote work.... why would they hire someone in the US when they could hire someone cheaper in another country?

The point of my comment was to sarcastically point out there there are very qualified people sitting in decision making positions with an incentive to lower labor costs. It is possible they are making a mistake and completely missing a great money saving opportunity, but I would not bet on it. There very well could be new opportunities for labor arbitrage that can be taken advantage of by many businesses, and if so,…

My point is that the same people are also averse to risk. So now that covid essentially forced these companies to outfit and train their teams for remote and build a culture around remote work.. and they found it successful... Pandora's box may have finally been opened on outsourcing.

We live in a different world than a few years ago.

I hope I'm wrong because I'm benefiting from geographical effects and I have no delusions that I'm smarter than almost 6 billion people.

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

#185

Post by nickthemagicman »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #126
nickthemagicman wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a macro scale this is happening in every field in America. Any knowledge worker job that doesn't need to be done in person can be outsourced to the billions of people in the rest of the world. Radiologist, Accounting, Law, Animation, etc. What is the value of a U.S. Hacker News moderator in the valley, for example, over a smart Croatian or Latin American person who will work for a fraction of the price? Many peopl…

> The ultimate result in my opinion, when no job is safe from outsourcing, is going to be the decline of wages and the middle class in America. This result has been evidenced already over the past 5 decades or so.

I think the Pandora's box was open though and it may be moving faster post pandemic.

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

#186

Post by lotsofpulp »

nickthemagicman wrote: post #184
lotsofpulp wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of my comment was to sarcastically point out there there are very qualified people sitting in decision making positions with an incentive to lower labor costs. It is possible they are making a mistake and completely missing a great money saving opportunity, but I would not bet on it. There very well could be new opportunities for labor arbitrage that can be taken advantage of by many businesses, and if so,…

My point is that the same people are also averse to risk. So now that covid essentially forced these companies to outfit and train their teams for remote and build a culture around remote work.. and they found it successful... Pandora's box may have finally been opened on outsourcing. We live in a different world than a few years ago. I hope I'm wrong because I'm benefiting from geographical effects and I have no del…

I can see that could be true, and communications technology and bandwidth has improved, so perhaps the situation has changed. I would expect it to take years to manifest though, maybe even a decade or more.

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

#187

Post by roenxi »

0xB31B1B wrote: post #86
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…

People have been saying this for 40 years and we have seen time and time again, as engineering gets “easier” by 1 click it makes each individual engineer 5x more effective, but it only expands the total pool of people available to do the work by 20%. The effect that dominates is that by making work more efficient/productive, there are many many more places where engineers can be a net value add to business metrics. I…

Jevons' paradox applies to efficiency, not massive increases in the amount of supply. There isn't really an argument that foreign workers are more efficient than local workers (unless they are being paid less!).

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

#188

Post by jokethrowaway »

wil421 wrote: post #76
ren_engineer wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Not sure about SF arrogance but the whole “Your job is going to get outsourced to India don’t get into IT/Software Dev” thing has been around since the 90s. It’s 20 years later and the job market is better than ever, salaries are better than ever, and a lot of companies who fully embraced the IT outsourcing trend are realizing it actually hurt them in the long run. Short term it helped but now they have lost their ma…

Outsourcing to India didn't work very well due to cultural differences.

Communication was very hard, even when language wasn't a problem.

People afraid to say they didn't understand something and trying to wing it with tragicomical results. People not raising issues until after something exploded not to offend you.

I think outsourcing to Russia has some good potential but the level of English is still nowhere close, even in the new generations. Eastern Europe is more promising but English is a bit hit or miss. I see plenty of outsourcing to Eastern Europe from the UK. Similarly, I see more and more outsourcing to Latin America from the states.

Europe is much closer to the States: if you outsource to the UK or Northern-mid Europe you get English speaking people who will act similarly to US employees. Sure you won't save 11/12 like in India but you will save a good half compared to SF, with the only hassle being the timezone.

I think we haven't seen the last of outsourcing.

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

#190

Post by nickthemagicman »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #186
nickthemagicman wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that the same people are also averse to risk. So now that covid essentially forced these companies to outfit and train their teams for remote and build a culture around remote work.. and they found it successful... Pandora's box may have finally been opened on outsourcing. We live in a different world than a few years ago. I hope I'm wrong because I'm benefiting from geographical effects and I have no del…

I can see that could be true, and communications technology and bandwidth has improved, so perhaps the situation has changed. I would expect it to take years to manifest though, maybe even a decade or more.

Crossing my fingers!
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