4 ms·
TL;DR: in Europe salaries are usually discussed after taxes, whereas that amount with all taxes (on both employee and employer) can raise that sum around 2 time
by trymas 11y ago
TL;DR: in Europe salaries are usually discussed after taxes, whereas that amount with all taxes (on both employee and employer) can raise that sum around 2 times or more.
Don't forget the huge system difference.
Are those salaries before taxes or after taxes? Europeans like to know their salary after taxes. Health benefits, PTO, parental leave? In US it's totally under your company's grace, where in Europe most of this is set by law.
All in all salaries are counted different, if employee in Europe has a salary (after taxes) of 30k €, then usually around 15-25k € went for taxes. Thus salary before taxation 45-55k €. Nevertheless employer must pay for that employee somewhere in between 5-15k € (at least in my country) of employer taxes (which are not part of employees salary, but employer is taxes according to it). So whole cost of one employee who is compensated 30k € after taxes is 50-70k €.
Of course it depends on the country and there are 'tax havens'.
- kayoone 11y agoAt least where i live (Germany) salaries are never compared after taxes because the tax situation is very individual and influenced hugely by a lot of things like marriage, kids and other income. Also health care payments are influenced by a lot of factors as well. So it makes little sense to compare net pay. And even then, a good salary for a software developer with good experience would be 60k-80k pre taxes here, usually no bonuses or stock grants, so 100-150k in the US for juniors is still a big difference and imo comes down to the fact of huge competition in the market more than anything.
- jjuel 11y agoWhere in the US are Juniors regularly getting 100k to 150k?I need to move if this is the case.
- egman_ekki 11y agoWhich country do you have in mind? I have lived in 3 EU countries and get offers from others and the discussion about salary has always been assumed to be on the pre-tax amount.
- tomp 11y agoAre you sure? In the UK, it's always gross, pre-(employee-paid)-tax yearly salary. In Slovenia, on the other hand, it's usually net, post-tax, monthly salary.
- marvin 11y agoNorwegian salaries are always quoted pre-tax, and are similar to those that GP mention, in Sweden. Most skilled Norwegian devs would double their salary if they moved to the US. Why this is the case would be a very interesting question to get answered.