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Cities with High Salary to Cost of Living Ratios for Software Developers

tgeonetta.com

1–10 of 267 posts

Re: Cities with High Salary to Cost of Living Ratios for Software Developers

#2
I'm curious if the salaries include stocks and other compensation - my stocks are a large portion of my compensation package, and I work for a major company, not a startup. It makes me wonder if this might skew more in favor of west coast, where (I think?) those compensation schemes are more common - as where I'm at, those numbers all seem really low compared to what most people I know make.

Re: Cities with High Salary to Cost of Living Ratios for Software Developers

#5

I'm curious if the salaries include stocks and other compensation - my stocks are a large portion of my compensation package, and I work for a major company, not a startup. It makes me wonder if this might skew more in favor of west coast, where (I think?) those compensation schemes are more common - as where I'm at, those numbers all seem really low compared to what most people I know make.

Based on the sources I used, they would probably not includes those extras (unless they self-reported them at glassdoor.com I guess).

Re: Cities with High Salary to Cost of Living Ratios for Software Developers

#8
I think averaged adjustments for cost of living are senseless as this is quite individual.

Let's take me as an example: I manage to live modestly but well on around 1000 CHF (1050 USD) in Zurich while making around 6400 CHF (6700 USD) in net-salary. I am a junior software engineer hacking on Python in a SMB.

(Full disclosure: My company is hiring; feel free to reach out to me at iwang{at}fastmail.net. Also, my experiences working in Switzerland can be found here: "Eight reasons why I moved to Switzerland to work in IT" http://goo.gl/EIX4UX)

Re: Cities with High Salary to Cost of Living Ratios for Software Developers

#9
post #8

I think averaged adjustments for cost of living are senseless as this is quite individual. Let's take me as an example: I manage to live modestly but well on around 1000 CHF (1050 USD) in Zurich while making around 6400 CHF (6700 USD) in net-salary. I am a junior software engineer hacking on Python in a SMB. (Full disclosure: My company is hiring; feel free to reach out to me at iwang{at}fastmail.net. Also, my experi…

Very true. Different individuals have their own spending amount. I tried to use a reasonable average when adjusting the salaries but if you are far away from average, then your own calculations will be different.

Re: Cities with High Salary to Cost of Living Ratios for Software Developers

#10

I'm curious if the salaries include stocks and other compensation - my stocks are a large portion of my compensation package, and I work for a major company, not a startup. It makes me wonder if this might skew more in favor of west coast, where (I think?) those compensation schemes are more common - as where I'm at, those numbers all seem really low compared to what most people I know make.

There is a lot of selection bias in the type of people that post on those sites. The salaries are almost always deflated. Software engineers making $200k+ aren't posting on indeed.com.
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