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Tech compensation in 2021

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Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#51

Post by ricardobeat »

cryptoz wrote: post #43
HenryKissinger wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all of that. European tech companies are smaller than US tech companies, have lower gross revenue per employee, make less profit per employee. Taxes are higher in Europe, which disincentivizes risk taking and ambitious individuals. Labor productivity is also lower in Europe. Finally, Europe still has a culture where software engineers, cloud architects/products/managers/etc. are viewed as code monkeys and the pe…

> Taxes are higher in Europe, which disincentivizes risk taking and ambitious individuals. This seems backwards to me. A society with higher taxes typically has better social safety nets, better infrastructure, less corruption, etc. Higher-tax societies incentivize risk-taking, not the other way around, especially for "ambitious individuals". When there is more structure and support around, more people are able to ta…

There’s probably a big difference in the kind of risk taken. The safety net might lead to starting a coffee roastery vs a VC-backed tech company that will create a thousand jobs and massive advertising revenue.

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#52

Post by websap »

m_ke wrote: post #44
websap wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on your definition of Startup, late stage companies like Stripe and Databricks are definitely matching/beating these offers. Mid-stage companies like Convoy are also going very high, but there is an upside with those companies. Don't know much about early stage, but a few of my acquaintances are moving from FAANG companies to early stage companies to play the lottery.

I'm a founder taking a significant pay cut and worked at early stage startups before that. Had a few hot new ML startups try to recruit me and their offers are nowhere near what my friends at FAANG are making. Last time I was looking for work 8 years ago the gap was nowhere near this large.

Not sure about founders, but if you're looking to hire top talent you need to pay them, give them the promise of meaningful equity. Software engineering is one of those professions where you don't work a 9 - 5 job. I'm constantly thinking about problems at work, while i do mundane tasks like cleaning my apartment, or doing the dishes.

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#53

Post by Fordec »

m_ke wrote: post #24
VRay wrote: post #15

Man, every time I think I’ve finally caught up to the market rate, I find out I’m behind again I’m a senior FAANG coder making 350k TC, and it looks like I should be able to net 400-600k at this level if I go to Apple or Google. Hoo boy, looks like it’s leetcode time again…

Yeah I know a lot of FAANG people getting 500-600K packages. Makes it hard to even think about startups.

Yeah that's not a "competitive" difference any more, that's approaching levels of annual compensation nearly a full seed round for a whole startup.

I used to buy into the whole risk vs reward of startups, but the numbers are far too biased towards founders and big tech salaries now for any individual contributor actually paying attention to the market to think about a startup job.

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#54

Post by mikem170 »

cryptoz wrote: post #43
HenryKissinger wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all of that. European tech companies are smaller than US tech companies, have lower gross revenue per employee, make less profit per employee. Taxes are higher in Europe, which disincentivizes risk taking and ambitious individuals. Labor productivity is also lower in Europe. Finally, Europe still has a culture where software engineers, cloud architects/products/managers/etc. are viewed as code monkeys and the pe…

> Taxes are higher in Europe, which disincentivizes risk taking and ambitious individuals. This seems backwards to me. A society with higher taxes typically has better social safety nets, better infrastructure, less corruption, etc. Higher-tax societies incentivize risk-taking, not the other way around, especially for "ambitious individuals". When there is more structure and support around, more people are able to ta…

What you said may be true for an individual, but not necessarily a small company. Because of socialist regulations and taxes a small company may have higher startup costs and it may be difficult to lay off employees, which makes hiring someone more risky, along with expanding the business.

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#55

Post by amelius »

cryptoz wrote: post #43
HenryKissinger wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all of that. European tech companies are smaller than US tech companies, have lower gross revenue per employee, make less profit per employee. Taxes are higher in Europe, which disincentivizes risk taking and ambitious individuals. Labor productivity is also lower in Europe. Finally, Europe still has a culture where software engineers, cloud architects/products/managers/etc. are viewed as code monkeys and the pe…

> Taxes are higher in Europe, which disincentivizes risk taking and ambitious individuals. This seems backwards to me. A society with higher taxes typically has better social safety nets, better infrastructure, less corruption, etc. Higher-tax societies incentivize risk-taking, not the other way around, especially for "ambitious individuals". When there is more structure and support around, more people are able to ta…

You can't take risk with money you already paid your taxes with.

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#56

Post by Aromasin »

beaconstudios wrote: post #17
Etheryte wrote: post #3

While I don't have doubts about this being a good way to find rough outlines for compensation, I'm yet to find a reliable source of data for Europe. Has anyone else had better luck?

in the UK, junior is £20-40k, mid-level is around £40-60k, lead can be around £60-100k. Very rough numbers, and adjust upwards slightly for London. The big money is in contracting in the UK, which would be our accessible FAANG-equivalent.

Either contracting, or alternatively, consulting. Companies like Cambridge Consulting and et al (please correct me if I'm wrong, I only know this through word of mouth) earn more in line with our US counterparts supposedly.

Additionally, our country is much more focused on financial services. You can make 2-3x the average engineer salary there. The rest of the market seem content paying far below, and also content having an eternal manpower shortage as a result it seems. The vast majority of engineers I graduated with have ended up in sales engineer roles to be honest, where they can earn commission more in line with the salary they deserve at the cost of doing something they don't necessarily enjoy.

It baffles me that companies are quite content to pay a half decent tech recruiter 70-80k, but continue to offer jobs to the engineers they are trying to hire at nearly half that.

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#57

Post by akvadrako »

spoonjim wrote: post #34
KronisLV wrote: post #14

As someone who works in an Eastern European country, i also did a writeup on how much i've made over the years and how that figure has changed, while working for a local company: https://blog.kronis.dev/articles/on-finances-and-savings In short, this year i'll probably make around 18k Euros, in total. I guess that just goes to show how different the situation is depending on where you live and where you're employed.

Wouldn’t you make more as a remote contractor? Even on Upwork?

I'm not sure about Upwork, but certainly on better contracting sites like A-Team, Moonlight and Toptal. It's not even necessary to have a network.

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#58

Post by paxys »

zz865 wrote: post #6

> Chris can expect to make $300k at a non-FAANG company, but nearly double that if they’re willing to compromise on that “no-FAANG” stance Is that really a good rule of thumb? FAANG pays double non-FAANG?

Not really. I'm sure Google is paying double the salary of some companies, but there's a huge number of companies in the middle of the two as well.

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#60

Post by Ginden »

cryptoz wrote: post #43
HenryKissinger wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all of that. European tech companies are smaller than US tech companies, have lower gross revenue per employee, make less profit per employee. Taxes are higher in Europe, which disincentivizes risk taking and ambitious individuals. Labor productivity is also lower in Europe. Finally, Europe still has a culture where software engineers, cloud architects/products/managers/etc. are viewed as code monkeys and the pe…

> Taxes are higher in Europe, which disincentivizes risk taking and ambitious individuals. This seems backwards to me. A society with higher taxes typically has better social safety nets, better infrastructure, less corruption, etc. Higher-tax societies incentivize risk-taking, not the other way around, especially for "ambitious individuals". When there is more structure and support around, more people are able to ta…

Safety nets provided by European countries are intended mainly for not ending homeless.

If you are running business, your loses are opportunity costs. Eg. you have already 100k EUR yearly salary and you decide to try running startup. If it fails after 5 years, so you didn't get any money from it (eg. you had to paid debts at the end), you probably lost 500k EUR in opportunity cost.

Progressive taxes incentivize risk taking in lower and lower-middle class, because you are protected from "total failure", but disincentivize risk taking for upper-middle and upper class, because expected rate of return is lower.

At the end of the day, there is no single "right way" to run a state. You have to make tradeoffs, decide what you value more and what you value less.

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