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

blog.pragmaticengineer.com

201–210 of 309 posts

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

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What top tier countries? The US is the wealthiest country in the world by miles. It's had the highest GDP every single year for over 100 years continuously. That amount of capital is phenomenal, and part of why Americans enjoy salaries 3-4x higher than even Western Europe in most professional work - Tech, Medicine, Law, truck driving, etc. And that money allows you to work your way up, and buy your own property, etc.…

> The US is the wealthiest country in the world by miles. True, but the point is that most of that wealth is highly concentrated. Hence why the US is not the beacon of happiness and progress.

Balderdash.

The median net worth in the US is $125,000 for a household. It's €50,000 in the Netherlands.

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

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No one goes from zero to billions but the market could use another advertising channel and if it converts better and has the inventory it's an easy sale. Getting the inventory is the bigger problem.. you cannot compete with the inventory of youtube, search and adsense with a better ad tech alone unless you create something where inventory isn't an issue.

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

#203
post #183
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…

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

I don't think it's just to keep them from other companies, it's that the returns on the projects that do see the light of day are so huge, that it makes sense for tech companies to have 10 of those and discard 9.

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

#204
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

No, because as the first comment pointed out, the multiplier is more valuable is the market size is larger. A developer starting their own company is multiplying a small amount, if anything. They would be better served working for a large company that can benefit more from the multiplying. Even if you only receive a fraction of the benefit you bring, you will still earn more than you would on your own.

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

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canada has the lovely combo of low salaries and high rent

And frigid winters. Why am I here again?

The climate will be perfect in another 50 years.

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

#206

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.

[deleted]

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

#207

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…

This has always been case long before Google. Interestingly, this has never prevented new startups to born and compete. When Google was shaping up, they didn’t went after hiring people in established companies. They went after people who no one knew but they can tell that they were phenomenal talent. This hidden talent, the underdogs, are always floating around and wasting away. All successful startups builds off of them. Before Google, Jeff Dean and Sanjay Gemawat were two nobody working in D.E.C. Labs, not some highly paid Principal Engineer at Yahoo or Microsoft.

The single most important skill of a startup founder is to identify these underdogs and convince them to basically work for free. There is always tantalizing similarity between how one person raised small but highly talented armies in ancient time and went onto defeat large established kingdoms.

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

#208

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…

While Google and Facebook's fundamental business model is ads, they don't invest their R&D percentage wise as how much they make from ads.

Google at least does pursue a lot of moonshots, and is by all accounts the closest to true self driving cars.

Both tried to bring internet access to parts of the world that never had it.

Apple changed the world with the iPhone and is trying to do it again with AR/VR devices.

Amazon leads the pack in cloud computing, which itself is a massive force multiplier for other tech innovation AND a sustainable energy use bonanza (Cloud platform are massively more efficient with energy usage than individually operated bespoke data center solutions).

While I agree with you in a lot of specific situations (especially everything with crypto), I do think a lot of big tech companies ARE trying to make a meaningful dent in big societal problems

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

#209
post #46
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at Google, Apple, Amazon, etc's balance sheets they're quite solid, not really at this point propped up by monetary policy any more.

Fed's balance sheet has barely started contracting. This contraction cycle has a while to play out.

Is there a place we can see a east to understand chart about this?

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

#210
post #203
post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I don't think it's just to keep them from other companies, it's that the returns on the projects that do see the light of day are so huge, that it makes sense for tech companies to have 10 of those and discard 9.

I get your perspective, but… I saw tons of guys in “research“, “fellowship“, and “architect“ positions who were achieving nothing useful for years at a time.
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