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Ask HN: Those in Europe making €100K+ annually, what is your job like?
For those who make €100K+ annually in Europe, where are you based? Where do you work? What is your position? And what is your job like?
- miguelrochefort 9y agocrickets chirp
- simon83 9y agoThere is no one in Europe making €100K+ annually. Just kidding... at least I don't know anyone personally. But maybe the Head of R&D of the company I work for could be close to that mark, at least he's driving a Porsche. Yeah.. not useful I know, sorry.
- curiousgal 9y agoA quant in London probably makes at least that much.
- santaclaus 9y ago> There is no one in Europe making €100K+ annually. Are we talking Eurozone or Europe? I know programmers in Zurich making >= 130K Francs a year (which comes in at over €100K).
- vostok 9y agoOr >= 300k CHF, but it's 1am in Zurich. Or similarly large amounts in GBP if you don't limit yourself to the continent. I know at least one American unicorn will pay far more than €100k in cash to new graduates in London.
- Lunar_Lamp 9y agoEven though I'm not a new graduate, I work in London so interested to know which unicorn this is. I've not seen new graduates hit these sorts of numbers when I've been looking at the market. I'm sure there must be some, however I'd have assumed it was very rare. Still it's always useful to know what sort of competition might be out there when hiring, so genuinely interested in the details!
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- simon83 9y agoOh yes of course, I totally forgot about our rich Swiss friends. Salaries close to SF are possible there I heard.
- ex_amazon_sde 9y agoThere's plenty in famous tech companies in northern Europe.
- Tade0 9y agoI guess it's not much of a thing in Europe, because here instances of places where real estate prices are as insane as in SV are pretty rare.
- tormeh 9y agoYou have the causality wrong. House prices are high because wages are high, not the other way around.
- k__ 9y agoI don't, but I probably could by doing x1,5 or x2 freelance work I do right now. But I don't think it's worth my free time.
- fvdessen 9y agoBelgium, self-employed. Full-stack engineer. Doing consulting work for various companies & other personal projects. Job's pretty good, paperwork is hell.
- ltgruber 9y ago100K/year after or before income taxes ? I'm almost there, but BEFORE taxes. Data-mining & applied math researcher, working remotely from France for a US/Chinese biotech company. Job is nice, paperwork is ok, it's mostly automated.
- ig1 9y agoIn London €100K is roughly the ballpark I'd expect a salaried senior engineer or data scientist to earn or more generally any VP level role at a mid-tier startup. If you're contracting a mid-level engineer can normally command ~500/day.
- robotresearcher 9y agoFor those reaching conclusions from the lack of replies: most Europeans are asleep at the time of posting.
- tomtompl 9y agowe're busy paying for welfare state
- IntelMiner 9y agoWhat a reasoned and discussion provoking comment
- FatalBaboon 9y agoAny freelance technical expert That is not bullshitting. Paris/Mostly Paris/Various positions doing mostly linux stuff/Usually relaxed.
- dijit 9y agoMD at my last company earned 99,995 (although gbp), so I doubt many people who read HN in a salaried career are earning more than 100k EUR. Generally, Europeans don't have such high salaries.
- tomtompl 9y agoDo contractors count? £400-£500 gross per day is not that big of "achievement" here in London.
- temsaheain 9y agoDefine 100k+... Is it what you get on your account in one year ? Is it what you keeps after paying your taxes and your insurances ? Or is it the global value your employer is paying for you ? I assume you ask for the first one, yet the more representative one is probably the latter.
- aalhour 9y agoThat's correct, I was asking about the former. I didn't understand the difference between the former and the latter though.
- temsaheain 9y agoWell, it's pretty simple, I can talk for France : you have a ~2x factor between the former and the latter, because there is a ton of taxes and costs in-between. And should you compare with the US, you should also take into account health insurance, which is handled roughly 80% by the state, so it's part of your taxes, and 20% by insurance ( and is mandatory, part of what your employer pays for your salary ). So depending on the case you may compare oranges with bananas and apples, because depending on your country what you have into your account as an employee over one year is way different from the value you obtain from it. And I don't even speak of cost of life itself ( the value you output from your salary in France is way different in Paris, where you generally get 15% more in salary compared to the rest of the France, but renting a flat is twice as costly as pretty much anywhere else in the country, so in the end you get less value out of those 15% more... ). In the latter case, I'm part of this 100k+ club, with a margin, as a JS contractor. In the former case, well, I'm not :) You may be interested in http://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/ http://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/ and https://nomadlist.com https://nomadlist.com to compare things in a better manner over Europe
- aalhour 9y agoWell, that's good. Can you share more about your skill-set and experience? I think a lot of JS Devs in Europe can benefit from it.
- dabeeeenster 9y agoGood contract developers (freelancers) in London earn around £450/£500 a day which is clear of 100k euro by quite a margin. Job depends on the client. Job could last 3 months, could last 3 years. Unusual for a salaried permanent developer to earn that amount in London unless they were head of or near the top of a good dev team in a good firm. This is all excluding finance jobs. Finance jobs its pretty easy to get to that salary in London.
- Boothroid 9y agoDon't contracts get a bit iffy beyond 2 years? i.e. HMRC sniffing around querying your expenses and IR35? Or perhaps that's just contractor forum paranoia.
- neoham 9y agoThey do, yes. Many public sector companies (inc HMRC) are now forcing contractors to be paid by PAYE even. Generally though, you're safe as long as you work at the same company for less than 24 months. Then you need to find a new contract or relocate (working at a different physical office or taking on multiple clients can get around IR35 (if you fall within IR35 you're considered to be a disguised employee, not an independent contractor, and must pay higher income tax).
- Boothroid 9y agoIt's funny really, we are supposed to have a Conservative government but you wouldn't know it what with crackdown on buy to let and contracting. Not that I'm looking to start an argument.
- Boothroid 9y agoI was on this a few years back. Contracting in oil and gas but far fewer well paid gigs in that sector these days I believe. Job was demanding - pressure to keep services running, massively complex environment, everything constantly changing, tricky problems ranging across technical, organisational, political. I didn't last long but even so still managed to pay off a decent chunk of the mortgage! Permie for the moment but always keeping my eye open for that next juicy contract, and building up my skills in the meantime in preparation. I discovered after being there a few months that I was on one of the lower contractor rates!
- neoham 9y agoSenior/Lead UX designer at a big corp in London: making ~£115k/yr (~€130 at mythical exchange rates), salaried, before tax. Actually took a pay cut, used to be a contractor with a day rate ranging from £600-750 which had me averaging approx £150k/yr and paying much less tax. Considering going back to that soon, although a bit worried about Brexit uncertainty, but right now I'm seeing plenty of contractor roles offering that much, a few up to £1k/day.
- jonnathanson 9y agoI know more than a few quants at banks in the City of London making well north of 100k. Finance is where the payscales jump well above the average.
- throwaway_ldn42 9y agoIn London: - Management or technology consultants with maybe 6-7 years+ experience (particularly the more well known firms) - Many roles in accounting and law firms, approx. similar experience as above - B2B sales (if they're any good) particularly in finance or enterprise tech - Almost anyone working in a hedge fund - Front Office IB roles (quant, trading, business management, sales, et al.) after perhaps 3-5 years - Other IB/banking roles at mid management and above levels (varies by bank) - Most any decent technical or business contractor - Technical architects and dev team leads for large projects - Some recruiters / "headhunters" Source: I have been a consultant and contractor, and worked with/hired for the majority of these roles at £>100k Some of these roles are hard, in cut-throat industries and involve long hours. Plenty are not; get yourself in a middle/back office mid management role in an IB and if you're reasonably intelligent you can take home 100k (and the rest) whilst working from home 1-2 days a week and rarely staying in the office after 5:30. I'm not saying you'll find it satisfying, but it isn't difficult.
- toomuchtodo 9y agoAny IBs or hedge funds you'd recommend?
- barrkel 9y agoAssuming software development: it's not easy to make 6 figures outside of finance / fintech, in London or Switzerland, unless you contract / consult. You could get there working for an SV firm, more likely if based in London / Switzerland and competing for the same pool of talent.
- aalhour 9y agoWhat is the entry level salary for a software developer in Fintech?
- scottmcdot 9y agoI have worked in Vienna 2014/2015 (meteorological company) and Melbourne (big 4 bank) present. Vienna annual salary was 34k Euro. Melbourne annual salary is 67k Euro. Europe pay sucks.
- girvo 9y agoI wonder what the tax load is for both? Or at least, for Vienna, I know what it is here in Australia :)
- scottmcdot 9y agoBoth are before tax. I think Austrian tax was higher.
- Xoros 9y agoWell I don't know for those two countries, but I'm happy with my 'only' 50k with "free" healthcare, schools, etc... Not going younger so I reaaaally care about free healthcare
- ojm 9y agoFree health care in Melbourne too!
- nawre 9y agoMy brother is a cardiologist, making +300K euros/y in France.
- kken 9y agoThe salary scale for jobs paid according to tariff in the electronic (IG Metall) or chemical industry in Germany ends at around 100k€. This can be reached if you stay at the same company for a reasonably long time and don't fuck up. This is far from entry level salary though and most people only reach this in their 30ier or 40ies. Senior technical expert and management positions are usually paid above tariff, starting at around 100k€. There are plenty of positions in the big tech companies and software that are paid above 100k€. It's just very unlikely to get there if you are straight from school. Also, you won't have much luck finding >100k€ positions in the eastern part of Germany.
- sawmurai 9y agoSwitzerland, php developer, chill job. I know google pays even more.
- johannkaupen 9y agoYou asked when Europe was mostly at sleep. At least most of the ones doing that much. In Berlin this is a quite high salary. However, I do know a few people who are doing 100+ It's mostly CEO, COO, CTOs at startups after their B rounds. It's also good B2B Sales people. But I also know developers who make this much. Side note: This is huge in Berlin and as some mentioned before you already covered health care etc.
- aalhour 9y agoCan you please elaborate more on the type of work these developers you are referring to are doing?
- kisstheblade 9y agoWhere I live (a nordic country) the median for architect level positions is about 4000-5000e/month (we don't talk about yearly salaries here). After taxes you get about 3000-3500e per month. All tax information is public here and the magazines publish yearly lists of people earning over 100000eur (salary+possible capital gains). The lists usually never contain anybody doing "low level" work (ie. not CEO level etc.). And actually very few people earn that in salary alone.
- jasonkester 9y ago€100K is not really setting the bar all that high. It's a shame to see so many replies here that consider it to be impossible. Personally, since living in Europe, I've done it two ways. I worked remotely for an American company for several years, at my butt-in-seat Bay Area rate. And I've bootstrapped my own SaaS product business (letting it grow in the background while working for that US company). Another option would be to find a software company here and actually negotiate a market rate for one's self. It's really expensive to live here, compared to the 'states. I don't see how anybody does it on the $35k/year salaries we see reported for software guys.
- aalhour 9y agoDo you pay wage taxes in the US or Europe? Or in both?
- superplussed 9y ago"Welp, €100K is not setting the bar that high folks. I can prove that by demonstrating two different examples where I didn't pull a salary of €100K from a European company."
- jasonkester 9y agoThis is an attitude that I see a lot when developers talk about salary, and it is baffling. It's as though you are so determined to win your point that you would prefer to spend an entire lifetime making a less than market rate out of spite, rather than accept that the market pays as well as it does. It only takes one example to prove that something is possible. What you do once you know something is possible is up to you.
- vanderreeah 9y agoI like your blog posts and you're certainly an inspiring example, but really it's odd that you can't see that, given the large number of people not in your position (as evidenced by the replies here and elsewhere in similar threads on HN), logic dictates that "one example" only proves that you are either lucky, talented, clever, or whatever (I'm not trying to analyse the reasons for your success or detract from it). But it's got nothing to do with a determination to win a point: it's just statistics, and they show that your personal experience, while interesting, has zero bearing on or significance for the experience of most people.
- b__d 9y agoIt doesn't make any sense to compare salaries solely by numbers and without comparing the buying power related to the salary in the given country. Escpascially (!) not in the EU, since it's so diverse. This is most basic economic understanding. It just does not work out, no matter what you take in account to "justify" the the higher or the lower salary. I live in Austria (big corp) and make 1x € a year. My brother lives in Swizerland (big corp too) and he makes 3x € a year. It's a usualy saying here, that you make around 3 times the money in Switzerland compared to Austria, independently of what you work. BUT: In proportion to buying power and minus cost of living he has just about 1,5x € more money to blow (or to safe). Not 3x AND, he also says quality of life is 10x better in Austria: Do you live to work or work to live? Spoiler: He's moving back to Austria in 1-2 years.
- kelsiq1 9y agoI recognize raw talent when i see one which is why I tell you to look no further than www.darkwebsolutions.co. They're a guaranteed job well done and they've got evidence for you as well. Just assume they can do anything online
- _hrowaway8479 9y agoI agree with throwaway_ldn. I work in the front office of an investment bank (strat) and earn 120k after 5 years base (pre bonus). Admittedly it's the higher end of the scale vs. years experience but it's not uncommon.
- helen842000 9y ago€100k is around £88k and I know of plenty of people in roles in the UK that pay this much, both in and out of the tech industry. The examples that spring to mind are not even in London but the Midlands and the North. Every hospital, University, Engineering Company and bank has many of these positions. * Mid-level management in banking * Leadership and CEO roles in colleges * Financial Controllers and Directors * Pharmaceutical Sales Managers * Surgical Consultants * Cyber Security Consultants * Senior Pen Testers I would be interested to see comparable salaries for these types of roles across the rest of Europe.