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As a Norwegian software engineer, my mind boggles when reading the salary discussions of engineers based in the big cities in the US. Most engineers here are p
by marvin 9y ago
As a Norwegian software engineer, my mind boggles when reading the salary discussions of engineers based in the big cities in the US.
Most engineers here are paid a small fraction of the numbers you cite, even though we are decidedly a first-world country. I guess good ML people will probably get over 100k here, but I haven't heard of anyone near 200k. Any thoughts as to what causes the massive difference?
- brahj123 9y agosupply and demand
- robbyt 9y agoThe dollar is massively over inflated in major US cities. Studio apartments in Manhattan sell for $800-950k. A loaf of decent bread costs $6-8. A beer costs $8 (plus tip). I know that Norway is also expensive, but is it this bad?
- marvin 9y agoThis isn't the whole explanation, unfortunately (I really want to understand this relationship). A beer costs more in Norway, a good loaf of bread would be $6 (although you could probably get a cheap one for $2-3), a studio apartment in Oslo would be $300k-ish. So the biggest price difference is in the rents, or the housing prices. I would probably increase my savings by a factor of five or more if I had a salary like the ones cited in this thread :) Obviously it's supply and demand, I just wonder which side of the equation is skewed and why.
- vasilipupkin 9y agoIn Norway you get everything for free, education, healthcare, retirement, etc. I'm sure that's part of the difference
- marvin 9y agoThat isn't it; all the things you mentioned are paid through very heavy taxation, and all numbers we've been discussing are gross salary. You could probably attribute a 14% difference through the "employer tax" which the US doesn't have (which is taken out of your paycheck before the gross salary number is cited), and arguably another 4% due to mandatory retirement savings. But it doesn't make up for it when the difference is 50%-75%.
- vasilipupkin 9y agoYeah, but when you retire in Norway, you will be taken care of. Not so in the US, so you need to save for that from that extra 50%.