Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

blog.pragmaticengineer.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 309 posts

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

#181

Post by tomcam »

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

Agreed. But one thing I learned working at a FAANG is that being a brilliant developer doesn’t necessarily make you an entrepreneurial risk taker. there may even be an inverse relationship, from what I experienced. One reason could be that they just want to code, and don’t want the distractions necessary to running a company.

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

#182

Post by kortilla »

FrenchDevRemote wrote: post #142
jokethrowaway wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Usage of sick days seems to follow a bimodal pattern. There are people that use them up like vacation days for all kinds of reasons and people who very rarely use them (This was true through my entire career and even back in high school. I think usage of sick days is likely to follow a learned behavior from parents/siblings growing up.

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

#183

Post by tomcam »

sidlls wrote: post #149
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 t…

Another thing I noticed at these top-tier companies is an alarming propensity for hiring people simply so they will not be hired by another company. They end up on these awesome little make-work projects that never see the light of day

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

#184

Post by kortilla »

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…

> They should work on

They work on what society rewards them to work on. Attach massive guaranteed funding to companies that solve this problems and it will attract smart people competing for it.

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

#185

Post by Lazare »

Slightly different reasons, but I'm seeing something similar in New Zealand.

Domestic companies benchmark against each other, and pay lower salaries. Meanwhile Australian companies have mostly come to terms with remote work after the lockdowns, which makes NZ as a valuable recruitment market. (If an engineer can be productive a 30m drive from their Sydney office, they can probably be productive a 3h flight too, especially if they're in a country with very similar laws, culture, educational system, etc.)

And since they benchmark against each other and because NZ is so small, close, and similar, Australian firms mostly don't adjust their salary bands from (higher) Australian norms, so they pay 25-30% more for comparable roles than a domestic NZ company would. Meanwhile a few American companies are also starting to recruit, and again, most don't adjust their salary bands, and so generally pay 50-80% more than domestic NZ companies.

It's an odd situation; I recently jumped from a NZ company to an Australian one (mostly for non-monetary reasons), but got a more than 25% raise, and when I resigned, my manager was quite open that yes, management is aware that Australian companies are paying more than local companies but as long as other NZ companies aren't competing, they don't feel like they can afford to either.

I'll be fascinated to see how this works out.

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

#186

Post by perpetuummobile »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #134
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…

However, an IC @ Google outside the US still makes 2-3x what their local employment market will pay even without playing all careerist & promo games. Source: was IC @ Google. Frankly I've accumulated the cynical opinion that Google wants to asphyxiate the local job markets of talent. They need to do this to keep their lead in advertising, etc., and they can afford to do it because of their lead. Paying 2x what local…

Nobody in 2022 is going to create an ad tech startup that can compete with Google. Apple destroyed the ecosystem.

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

#187

Post by bobkazamakis »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #177
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.

The speed of technological advancement isn't nearly as important as short term quarterly gains.

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

#188

Post by granshaw »

dubswithus wrote: post #154
jokethrowaway wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You mean consulting?

Yes

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

#189

Post by sonofaragorn »

ficklepickle wrote: post #146
fnbr wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

And frigid winters. Why am I here again?

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

#190

Post by bogomipz »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #134
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…

However, an IC @ Google outside the US still makes 2-3x what their local employment market will pay even without playing all careerist & promo games. Source: was IC @ Google. Frankly I've accumulated the cynical opinion that Google wants to asphyxiate the local job markets of talent. They need to do this to keep their lead in advertising, etc., and they can afford to do it because of their lead. Paying 2x what local…

Out of curiosity, was this Zurich? I'd be curious to hear why you left.
Post reply on HN