4 ms·

People in Europe can be envy of salaries in US. Even in London which is not cheap either it's common for dev to get around $60k annually before tax (and taxes a

by pzo 9y ago

People in Europe can be envy of salaries in US. Even in London which is not cheap either it's common for dev to get around $60k annually before tax (and taxes are high). This beg to ask a question : why employeers are so reluctant to hire remote devs even within similar timezone?

user5994461 9y ago
The salaries in London are often much underestimated. Just like people underestimate salaries in the FANG in the valley.
- joshvm 9y ago
  Do you have any evidence for this? Or at least how much this underestimation is? Salaries in London are certainly higher than the rest of the country (by a comfortable margin), but anywhere from £40-80k seems to be the norm. £80k being at the high end of senior. Six figures is possible, but fairly unlikely outside of finance or senior positions at the megacorps. If you don't live in London (or the South East), £40k alone would be considered a very comfortable salary. This is corroborated by Glassdoor, various sites which claim to have surveyed salaries and actual job adverts (e.g. via StackOverflow Jobs or recruiters).
  - user5994461 9y ago
    The norm for senior is certainly 6 figures. It is ill advised to ignore finance, big companies, and contracting.
    - twic 9y ago
      That doesn't contradict what joshvm said, though. Outside finance and the tech giants, my observation has been that seniors make 60-90k. Hedge funds pay 100-130k base, with cushty bonuses, but there really aren't that many jobs like that to go around. Contracting, though, yeah. 500 a day for a competent but unexceptional Java developer? 800 for Scala? More if you happen to know whatever's hot right now? A contractor friend once told me to plan around billing 220 days a year, which would see the Java grunt on 110k, and the Scala astronaut on 176k.
      - wikibob 9y ago
        London is a weird market. Don't believe the incredibly low salaries you see on Glassdoor. There seems to be a handful of places that have reasonable salaries. I don't fully understand why contract pays so much higher. One interesting thing in London is many (most?) permanent roles have a two or even three month contractual "notice period". So if you hand in your notice, you're stuck working for another three months. This causes friction in the labor market which certainly has a depressive effect on wages.
        twic 9y ago
        I've only ever served out one-month notice periods. If i'd been a bit more senior at my last job, it might have been two. Where i am now is four and a half months or something insane like that.
        wikibob 9y ago
        Curious why did you take it? Did you try negotiating it down to something reasonable? (two weeks to a month)
        twic 9y ago
        Getting a copy of the actual contract, with the notice period in, was fairly late in the process, after i'd already informally accepted the offer. I didn't think i had a lot of leverage to get it changed. I could have tried, but by BATNA [1] was taking another job i wanted less, whilst their BATNA was to keep looking for candidates they liked just as much. Perhaps i underestimated the strength of my hand. I'm also not all that bothered about it. I've never decided to quit a job and needed to be out one month later - i am not the sort of person who bumps into someone founding a hot new startup and decides to jump on board. Four and a half months sounds like about the amount of time it would take me to find a new job anyway! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_alternative_to_a_negotiated_agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_alternative_to_a_negotiat...
        9y ago
loftyal 9y ago
Most decent devs go contracting to make decent money in London
jandrewrogers 9y ago
When comparing European and USian salaries, it is important to remember that companies primarily care about what it costs to employ you, which is different than the number on your paycheck. Generally speaking, the cost to employ software engineers in the EU is much higher than in the US, so even though the differences in salaries seem large the cost to the companies are often similar. The proportion of that cost that goes to salary is simply much higher in the US. Places like Silicon Valley and Seattle are still outliers but if you looked at "typical" software engineering salaries in the US the differences in salaries are explainable almost entirely by differences in payroll costs (various taxes, regulations, etc) that the employee never sees.
- ykler 9y ago
  Do you have evidence of this? This web page suggests that the extra costs in the UK are not that high: https://www.crunch.co.uk/knowledge/employment/how-much-does-it-cost-to-hire-an-employee/ https://www.crunch.co.uk/knowledge/employment/how-much-does-... In some European countries it is hard to fire workers, which could be a serious issue, but in general it is hard to believe that hiring in Western Europe is not cheaper than in the US, usually.
  - jandrewrogers 9y ago
    I work at a global (nominally European) company with some of its largest offices in Europe. When I have floated the idea of hiring in Europe instead of Seattle, because of wage costs, I have been informed that it doesn’t save much money despite the wage difference. The employee overhead in the EU is (to my USian mind) astonishingly high. The UK is not as bad as the continent, but I floated that too and was informed it all washes out the same. In short, the apparent arbitrage opportunity doesn’t actually exist. As you would expect in any semi-liquid, semi-efficient market.
    - ykler 9y ago
      What are the principal sources of excess overhead?
- 9y ago

by pzo 9y ago

user5994461 9y ago

The salaries in London are often much underestimated. Just like people underestimate salaries in the FANG in the valley.

joshvm 9y ago
Do you have any evidence for this? Or at least how much this underestimation is? Salaries in London are certainly higher than the rest of the country (by a comfortable margin), but anywhere from £40-80k seems to be the norm. £80k being at the high end of senior. Six figures is possible, but fairly unlikely outside of finance or senior positions at the megacorps. If you don't live in London (or the South East), £40k alone would be considered a very comfortable salary. This is corroborated by Glassdoor, various sites which claim to have surveyed salaries and actual job adverts (e.g. via StackOverflow Jobs or recruiters).
- user5994461 9y ago
  The norm for senior is certainly 6 figures. It is ill advised to ignore finance, big companies, and contracting.
  - twic 9y ago
    That doesn't contradict what joshvm said, though. Outside finance and the tech giants, my observation has been that seniors make 60-90k. Hedge funds pay 100-130k base, with cushty bonuses, but there really aren't that many jobs like that to go around. Contracting, though, yeah. 500 a day for a competent but unexceptional Java developer? 800 for Scala? More if you happen to know whatever's hot right now? A contractor friend once told me to plan around billing 220 days a year, which would see the Java grunt on 110k, and the Scala astronaut on 176k.
    - wikibob 9y ago
      London is a weird market. Don't believe the incredibly low salaries you see on Glassdoor. There seems to be a handful of places that have reasonable salaries. I don't fully understand why contract pays so much higher. One interesting thing in London is many (most?) permanent roles have a two or even three month contractual "notice period". So if you hand in your notice, you're stuck working for another three months. This causes friction in the labor market which certainly has a depressive effect on wages.
      - twic 9y ago
        I've only ever served out one-month notice periods. If i'd been a bit more senior at my last job, it might have been two. Where i am now is four and a half months or something insane like that.
        wikibob 9y ago
        Curious why did you take it? Did you try negotiating it down to something reasonable? (two weeks to a month)
        twic 9y ago
        Getting a copy of the actual contract, with the notice period in, was fairly late in the process, after i'd already informally accepted the offer. I didn't think i had a lot of leverage to get it changed. I could have tried, but by BATNA [1] was taking another job i wanted less, whilst their BATNA was to keep looking for candidates they liked just as much. Perhaps i underestimated the strength of my hand. I'm also not all that bothered about it. I've never decided to quit a job and needed to be out one month later - i am not the sort of person who bumps into someone founding a hot new startup and decides to jump on board. Four and a half months sounds like about the amount of time it would take me to find a new job anyway! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_alternative_to_a_negotiated_agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_alternative_to_a_negotiat...
        9y ago

loftyal 9y ago

Most decent devs go contracting to make decent money in London

jandrewrogers 9y ago

When comparing European and USian salaries, it is important to remember that companies primarily care about what it costs to employ you, which is different than the number on your paycheck. Generally speaking, the cost to employ software engineers in the EU is much higher than in the US, so even though the differences in salaries seem large the cost to the companies are often similar. The proportion of that cost that goes to salary is simply much higher in the US. Places like Silicon Valley and Seattle are still outliers but if you looked at "typical" software engineering salaries in the US the differences in salaries are explainable almost entirely by differences in payroll costs (various taxes, regulations, etc) that the employee never sees.

ykler 9y ago
Do you have evidence of this? This web page suggests that the extra costs in the UK are not that high: https://www.crunch.co.uk/knowledge/employment/how-much-does-it-cost-to-hire-an-employee/ https://www.crunch.co.uk/knowledge/employment/how-much-does-... In some European countries it is hard to fire workers, which could be a serious issue, but in general it is hard to believe that hiring in Western Europe is not cheaper than in the US, usually.
- jandrewrogers 9y ago
  I work at a global (nominally European) company with some of its largest offices in Europe. When I have floated the idea of hiring in Europe instead of Seattle, because of wage costs, I have been informed that it doesn’t save much money despite the wage difference. The employee overhead in the EU is (to my USian mind) astonishingly high. The UK is not as bad as the continent, but I floated that too and was informed it all washes out the same. In short, the apparent arbitrage opportunity doesn’t actually exist. As you would expect in any semi-liquid, semi-efficient market.
  - ykler 9y ago
    What are the principal sources of excess overhead?
9y ago