Programmer salary in mainland Europe?

Care to elaborate please? (FIX engine?)

$3K is way above average in Moscow, and Moscow salaries are much bigger than anywhere else in Russia. To give a comparison, a salary of $1K per month is considered above average in most of the Russian cities, except for 2-4 largest ones.

I'm from Vienna, I would say it's quite average. To calculate taxes and to put it into perspective you can use this online-calculator of the federal ministry of finance: http://www.bmf.gv.at/service/anwend/steuerberech/bruttonetto...

Comparing salaries in europe is quite difficult, in Austria, for 45,000 €, your employer have to pay about 14,000 € taxes additionally which you don't see on your pay slip, so the employer is spending in your case about 60,000 €. And you have 25 holidays a year and lots of public holidays http://english.bmf.gv.at/Ministry/PublicHolidaysinAustria.ht... ;-)

Sorry to be inquisitive even further, I am not in Poland but my friend is thinking about moving there. Are you talking Warsaw here or a smaller town (Krakow, Wroclaw, Tricity area)?

In Geneva, Switzerland, earning more than CHF 100,000 / year (ca. USD 110,000) as a programmer is not an exception, by far. Wages are rather high here, compared to the rest of mainland Europe. The cost of living is high, but overall Geneva is a good place to live. It is full of wealthy institutions, which makes it a advantageous place to work as well.

This has a two drawbacks however. First, it's not such a good thing for us programmers to have too many cash cows in one place. Indeed, too many employers of software engineers here are service companies that tend to neglect the good "explorer" mind set, resting on a more lucrative "milker" working style, and sometimes even relying on "cowboy" techniques to catch new clients. This is very disenchanting for engineers that cross their paths.

Another issue here is that you have within the same narrow space institutions with huge cultural distances. It is well known that Geneva has a bunch of international organizations, as well as banks and financial institutions. It is less known that some of the biggest tobacco industries have chosen this area to monitor their business, and that some health organizations have to deal with this neighborhood. If you are a sensible worker with values, all this will put you in trouble sooner or later, and maybe in very unexpected ways. Pragmatic programmers, beware of the cynics in pragmatism clothing!

This leads to my suggestion: think twice before you leave your friends and beloved ones in the hope of a better salary. There are plenty of reasons to move to other places or to explore the world, but this should not be the first one. Instead, concentrate on the good you can do with your skills, and the fun they can bring you.