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Ask HN: How to increase SWE salaries in Europe?

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Re: Ask HN: How to increase SWE salaries in Europe?

#531

Post by gfxgirl »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #378
adrianN wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Home ownership is strongly influenced by culture. Germans are just happier to rent. Buying often doesn't make a lot of sense financially either. It's not much cheaper to buy than to rent and you lose a lot of flexibility. I could afford to buy a house, but I don't want to. That would just tie up a large fraction of my wealth into one fairly risky investment and make it much harder to move when my life changes.

What’s risky about the investment? I’m of the impression that real estate is one of the more stable investments, subprime mortgage scandals notwithstanding.

Doesn't that really depend on where and culture? If you bought a house in Detroit in 1965 you aren't likely doing well today. If you bought in San Francisco in 2019 you're probably under today (though that may fix itself). If you bought in Japan almost anywhere you now have a used house which like a used car only goes down in value. If you're lucky the land goes up but condos/apartments you don't usually own the land and even then only in prime locations. Most locations land is likely losing value as the population declines. Land in Ginza (the most expensive land in Japan) only recently passed its late 1980s price per square meter.

Re: Ask HN: How to increase SWE salaries in Europe?

#532

Post by erdo »

jtwaleson wrote: post #410
dnpp123 wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's really low, even for poorer European countries He said net salary. I know a lot of engineers from C schools in mid-size towns in France who are paid less than 2k euro net.

France is really terrible in terms of SWE compensation. I think I know why. I've had some traineeship / internship requests from French students and their mentality seems so much more like "engineering" career trajectory than "hacker". Engineer: "yes, of course it is normal to be a trainee for 2 years, then a junior for 5, then a medior for 5 and of I'm really good I'll be a senior. I would be really thankful if you…

Well... just because a developer claims to be a senior engineer (with only 2 years experience) it doesn't actually make them a senior engineer, it makes them a bullsh*ter :D

Re: Ask HN: How to increase SWE salaries in Europe?

#533

Post by eloisant »

alkonaut wrote: post #55

I got my higher education for free. I expect to save nothing for my children or their education. I expect to have to put aside very little for retirement. The thing is, I just can’t find an argument why I should be able to get very rich doing my job. It’s a comfortable job. It pays a good salary. I got here by taking no risk at all. I wouldn’t want to switch jobs just to drive up my pay even if I could. I have other…

I get it, and I would completely agree if the salary gap was the same for managers, HR, etc.

So the question is: why are managers, HR, etc. paid so much more than SWE in Europe? They bring less value to the company.

Re: Ask HN: How to increase SWE salaries in Europe?

#534

Post by beagle3 »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #404
terwey wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Denmark and the Netherlands have the highest income tax bracket at 52/53%. Germany is 43%. However they are stacked taxes. In Germany (where I reside), the first €9744 (2021) is untaxed, then 14% until a certain amount (can't find it atm) and max 43%. However, if you do your tax returns your effective tax rate will drop significantly. I'd wager that most pay around 25% in total income taxes, excluding things like the…

I was laid off recently due to the pandemic. Because I work in tech, it took me two weeks to find a new job and it ended up being a promotion and a 20% raise. I would make 40% less in Europe, even in a big city, and unless I lived in a small European town my cost of living would be quite a lot higher. Even factoring healthcare (contrary to what Europeans perceive, the healthcare system works very well for the upper m…

> contrary to what Europeans perceive, the healthcare system works very well for the upper middle class)

... until you get a really expensive chronic disease. And then it fails miserably.

I know upper middle class parents whose kids got a disease which need ~$5000/month meds for a few years (and nontrivial infusion center costs on top).

It worked ok for some, many had been informed that the insurance company decided not to pay - requiring lawsuits (some settled, some ongoing).

No European, Canadian or Israeli parent that I know of kid with the same disease ever had to fight or pay out of pocket - it was all covered by the single payer with no hassles.

Re: Ask HN: How to increase SWE salaries in Europe?

#535

Post by Kappe »

It is changing slightly;

Like right now in Munich, there is a boom: Google and SAP are building in Munich right now; Apple isincreasing its workforce, Amazon rented new bigger offices and is also already at 2,5k employees and they have a warehouse in munich as well.

This will pull alot of talent away from the small companies and increase the general salary numbers.

Re: Ask HN: How to increase SWE salaries in Europe?

#536

Post by Cthulhu_ »

throwaway4good wrote: post #436

It is not only SWE jobs that have lower salaries in Europe. Broadly speaking all jobs in Europe have lower salaries; the living standard in Europe are considerably lower than in the US. The US has a GDP pr capita of 65.000 USD, whereas the number for EU is just 36.000 USD. So what can we do? My suggestion would be to do as the Americans: Expand our military ten-fold, enforce our currency as reserve currency onto the…

> the living standard in Europe are considerably lower than in the US.

Citation needed, unless you're being sarcastic throughout your post (can't tell, Poe's law?).

If I get the 'rona, I might die but at least I won't go bankrupt.

Anyway, GDP per capita in Europe is not the best measure, because there's still a massive economic disparity within Europe; the east is still feeling the effects of the Soviet Union (and Russia's influence), the south has been struggling financially for a long while now (Greece had to be bailed out). The West and North are doing all right for themselves; Germany has a GDP per capita of $46K, 10K higher than the number you cited. Netherlands is even higher at $52K, Switzerland does $82K, Ireland, the base of operations for a lot of US companies has $89K and Luxembourg, a tiny country, trounces the whole world at $114K per capita.

Re: Ask HN: How to increase SWE salaries in Europe?

#537

Post by comick »

Salaries in most European countries have "batteries included" by design of society.

Free/cheap education from zero to graduate, free/cheap health care, free pension plan, free job security, ..., you got the point. In turn you get a beautiful, diverse, stable an extremely well connected economic/social/natural context. Some countries (I can think of Italy or the Netherlands) also offer consistent tax discounts for qualified foreigner workers/entrepreneurs moving there.

Re: Ask HN: How to increase SWE salaries in Europe?

#538

Post by nathias »

alkonaut wrote: post #438
nathias wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a completely wrong perspective, and might be symptomatic. You are not paid according to some argument that you personally deserve to be rich, you should be paid according to the value you produce in your context. And the relevant context is more and more global.

I didn’t say deserve - but since switching jobs is a chore, I’d want to be compensated for it. I don’t think it’s a job that should necessarily make me very rich though. Taking risk should, but just creating value that someone else can produce? There is talent scarcity but not that much scarcity. Other people would do my job at my pay (which I guess ties into the topic!) With the highest salaries perhaps 20-40% highe…

I think there is a comparable amount of value created between you and someone in USA, its just that in Europe managers capture more % of the profit. Its not an issue of scarcity (that makes sens only for the whole playing ground) but of distribution after the scarcity is already priced in.

Re: Ask HN: How to increase SWE salaries in Europe?

#539

Post by marcus_holmes »

qafy wrote: post #272
ahupp wrote: post #222

Major US tech companies earn a profit-per-employee of $200-400k[0]. That's across every employee, so depending on how you attribute value the profit-per-SWE is much higher. That gives a lot of headroom to drive up salaries when competing for hires, and in part sets the market price. I suspect that low European software salaries are just a function of low profitability of European software companies. e.g, spotify is (…

I would love to see some research on the factors that contribute to this. Work culture? Leadership culture? Rigor in interviewing process? Education? There has to be a reason US tech employees are 5x-10x as "productive". What are we doing differently?

There was a discussion about this a couple weeks ago [0]. SV (and presumably by extension other US firms) give engineers authority to make their own decisions. UK/EU firms do not, preferring to manage everything with non-technical managers and give the engineers specific tasks.

[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25717390

Re: Ask HN: How to increase SWE salaries in Europe?

#540

Post by midasuni »

softwaredoug wrote: post #271
ahupp wrote: post #222

Major US tech companies earn a profit-per-employee of $200-400k[0]. That's across every employee, so depending on how you attribute value the profit-per-SWE is much higher. That gives a lot of headroom to drive up salaries when competing for hires, and in part sets the market price. I suspect that low European software salaries are just a function of low profitability of European software companies. e.g, spotify is (…

My sense is there's a larger US market than a pan-Europe market. If I go from German to France to Spain, I'm almost certainly not going to see the same grocery store chains. In the US, there are regional chains, but also a high proportion of homogeneity. In Europe you have strong national and cultural differences that lead to economies more isolated from the whole. In the US, there's regional differences, but I can o…

Language barriers - if all of Spain is talking about your product, that’s not going to seemlessly bleed into Italy and Germany as all the hype is in Spanish. Most people speak English as a second language, but they don’t speak German Italian Spanish French and English.

So many VC funded projects seem to be aimed at American cultural problems too, exporting the issues they are trying to solve and fighting non American wye to solve those issues.

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