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It's a well known problem for Europe No, it’s a meta-problem. The real problem is the structural underpaying of STEM workers in Europe. I mean we can go down t

by gaius 8y ago

It's a well known problem for Europe No, it’s a meta-problem. The real problem is the structural underpaying of STEM workers in Europe. I mean we can go down the path of “sacrifice your own interests for the good of your country” but no one, particularly Germany wants that. So pay is the only lever. And every business manager actually knows this.

titanix2 8y ago
It’s not only the pay by the way. I study and worked a bit abroad and the difference with my country’s labs are noticeable: there is way less battleling with accounting do get things done abroad. In France you need ton of papers to get your money back for professional spending and if you got it at all it comes months after the fact. I did some work for a professor there and it take a year to get the money in my pocket. I also worked for someone in Japan and I had my money two weeks after and in one case on the spot. So it makes a huge difference when working on any project that need a bit of money. Imagine having to wait a year to get a domain paid by the university or having to send a student take a whiteboard marker from another room at the beginning of each class because there are not enough for every room. That’s how shitty it is working in public research in France.
afsina 8y ago
So it is not really a "problem" for workers after all.
- icebraining 8y ago
  It is. Having to choose between a competitive salary or leaving your country sucks.
  - toomanybeersies 8y ago
    Are wages in Germany not competitive? Are software engineers in Germany going hungry because they don't get paid enough? If people want to be greedy and run to the country where they get paid the most that's their prerogative, but they aren't starving back home. I left my home country in search of riches, but that was a choice. It's not like I wasn't living a comfortable life back in the motherland. I don't think that (employed) software engineers anywhere in the world are going hungry.
    - zxcmx 8y ago
      I didn’t go hungry but I didn’t feel like I was getting ahead. I felt like assets and capital were getting returns, like my cost of living was going up but my wages weren’t. I left (not Germany and not to the U.S). People already well off were fine but people who had to work for a living were not being rewarded. There are many reasons not to leave a place (family and security paramount) but if multinational companies are perfectly happy to move jobs around I think workers should feel equally free to vote with their feet in the much more limited way we are able.
    - icebraining 8y ago
      Yes, obviously they aren't competitive. And the word "problem" had no requirement for starving last I checked.
    - gaius 8y ago
      If people want to be greedy Why are engineers “greedy” for wanting a fair wage but European managers not “greedy” for underpaying Workers and keeping the value produced for themselves?
      - icebraining 8y ago
        In my limited experience, European managers don't keep the value to themselves, they are just worse at obtaining it in the first place (lower revenue per employee).
        ahartmetz 8y ago
        I have heard stories... Large company X has hundreds of people working on software that could be done by a team 1/20th the size in 1/2 of the time. Lower / middle managers want to expand their influence by having more people working for them, so they try to impede efficiency as much as possible(!!!). So, upper management wants to increase the size of the money bag (mostly a good incentive), lower / middle management only wants to take as much as possible out of that bag. Upper management doesn't know enough about software to reign in middle management. Because if you are going to tell people how to do their work, you better know very well what you are talking about.
- skgoa 8y ago
  It's only not a problem, if you are willing to move to Silly Valley. I am not, so I do "suffer" from my compensation being lower than international market rate.
toomanybeersies 8y ago
Is it a structural underpayment of tech workers in Europe, or a structural overpayment in the USA? Software engineers in the USA are paid an abnormally high amount compared to similarly qualified professionals in different fields. The median wage for a software engineer in the USA is about $20k higher than that of a mechanical engineer, despite having the same level of qualification and a similar qualification (in my opinion, mechanical engineering actually is a lot harder than software). If you're a software engineer in Western or Northern Europe, it's not like you're hard done by and struggle to make ends meet. You make a perfectly acceptable wage, similar to any other professional. You also get the benefit of superior social services, more time off, and job security, which are certainly not to be sniffed at. One of my friends was offered a year of salary to leave her job (not in tech) because they couldn't make her redundant. I know of plenty of Europeans who have been able to take anywhere from 6 to 18 months off work for a sabbatical/backpacking trip around the world, knowing that their job will be waiting for them when they come back. Income disparity is just a lot lower in Europe than in the USA. German mechanical engineers make similar wages to software engineers. German software engineers make roughly twice the median income, compared to 3 times the median for the USA. In Australia, software engineers only make roughly 1.5x the median income, as Australia is a high wage economy.
- baybal2 8y ago
  I totally agree with you. I myself made my entry into "big tech" with a web dev gig at $84k. At the time I was just another jQuery monkey whose only sellable skill was making mind bending (and CPU melting) javascript animations which were proudly called "web 2.0" At the same time, I had an alternative "entry level" embedded developer gig at $50k and $65k after 1 year. Thank god I went for a hipsterized web dev position. It was like gliding in butter for a year. Only later, I finally managed to get things straight and come into engineering consulting on my own terms.
- adventured 8y ago
  The reason software engineers are so valuable in the US, is because the homogenous US market enables a massive, rapid catapult scaling into the rest of the global economy. Europe has nothing even remotely like that to offer. It's why the US has over 100 tech companies worth $10b+, and Europe has so few. The US market alone would be more than considerable, it's far easier to scale into/across that one $20.5 trillion market (~$22.3t with Canada), than it is to scale across all of Europe in a comparable fashion. US software engineers are worth so much, because of that concept. They're underpaid if anything.

by gaius 8y ago

titanix2 8y ago

It’s not only the pay by the way. I study and worked a bit abroad and the difference with my country’s labs are noticeable: there is way less battleling with accounting do get things done abroad. In France you need ton of papers to get your money back for professional spending and if you got it at all it comes months after the fact. I did some work for a professor there and it take a year to get the money in my pocket. I also worked for someone in Japan and I had my money two weeks after and in one case on the spot. So it makes a huge difference when working on any project that need a bit of money. Imagine having to wait a year to get a domain paid by the university or having to send a student take a whiteboard marker from another room at the beginning of each class because there are not enough for every room. That’s how shitty it is working in public research in France.

afsina 8y ago

So it is not really a "problem" for workers after all.

icebraining 8y ago
It is. Having to choose between a competitive salary or leaving your country sucks.
- toomanybeersies 8y ago
  Are wages in Germany not competitive? Are software engineers in Germany going hungry because they don't get paid enough? If people want to be greedy and run to the country where they get paid the most that's their prerogative, but they aren't starving back home. I left my home country in search of riches, but that was a choice. It's not like I wasn't living a comfortable life back in the motherland. I don't think that (employed) software engineers anywhere in the world are going hungry.
  - zxcmx 8y ago
    I didn’t go hungry but I didn’t feel like I was getting ahead. I felt like assets and capital were getting returns, like my cost of living was going up but my wages weren’t. I left (not Germany and not to the U.S). People already well off were fine but people who had to work for a living were not being rewarded. There are many reasons not to leave a place (family and security paramount) but if multinational companies are perfectly happy to move jobs around I think workers should feel equally free to vote with their feet in the much more limited way we are able.
  - icebraining 8y ago
    Yes, obviously they aren't competitive. And the word "problem" had no requirement for starving last I checked.
  - gaius 8y ago
    If people want to be greedy Why are engineers “greedy” for wanting a fair wage but European managers not “greedy” for underpaying Workers and keeping the value produced for themselves?
    - icebraining 8y ago
      In my limited experience, European managers don't keep the value to themselves, they are just worse at obtaining it in the first place (lower revenue per employee).
      - ahartmetz 8y ago
        I have heard stories... Large company X has hundreds of people working on software that could be done by a team 1/20th the size in 1/2 of the time. Lower / middle managers want to expand their influence by having more people working for them, so they try to impede efficiency as much as possible(!!!). So, upper management wants to increase the size of the money bag (mostly a good incentive), lower / middle management only wants to take as much as possible out of that bag. Upper management doesn't know enough about software to reign in middle management. Because if you are going to tell people how to do their work, you better know very well what you are talking about.
skgoa 8y ago
It's only not a problem, if you are willing to move to Silly Valley. I am not, so I do "suffer" from my compensation being lower than international market rate.

toomanybeersies 8y ago

Is it a structural underpayment of tech workers in Europe, or a structural overpayment in the USA? Software engineers in the USA are paid an abnormally high amount compared to similarly qualified professionals in different fields. The median wage for a software engineer in the USA is about $20k higher than that of a mechanical engineer, despite having the same level of qualification and a similar qualification (in my opinion, mechanical engineering actually is a lot harder than software). If you're a software engineer in Western or Northern Europe, it's not like you're hard done by and struggle to make ends meet. You make a perfectly acceptable wage, similar to any other professional. You also get the benefit of superior social services, more time off, and job security, which are certainly not to be sniffed at. One of my friends was offered a year of salary to leave her job (not in tech) because they couldn't make her redundant. I know of plenty of Europeans who have been able to take anywhere from 6 to 18 months off work for a sabbatical/backpacking trip around the world, knowing that their job will be waiting for them when they come back. Income disparity is just a lot lower in Europe than in the USA. German mechanical engineers make similar wages to software engineers. German software engineers make roughly twice the median income, compared to 3 times the median for the USA. In Australia, software engineers only make roughly 1.5x the median income, as Australia is a high wage economy.

baybal2 8y ago
I totally agree with you. I myself made my entry into "big tech" with a web dev gig at $84k. At the time I was just another jQuery monkey whose only sellable skill was making mind bending (and CPU melting) javascript animations which were proudly called "web 2.0" At the same time, I had an alternative "entry level" embedded developer gig at $50k and $65k after 1 year. Thank god I went for a hipsterized web dev position. It was like gliding in butter for a year. Only later, I finally managed to get things straight and come into engineering consulting on my own terms.
adventured 8y ago
The reason software engineers are so valuable in the US, is because the homogenous US market enables a massive, rapid catapult scaling into the rest of the global economy. Europe has nothing even remotely like that to offer. It's why the US has over 100 tech companies worth $10b+, and Europe has so few. The US market alone would be more than considerable, it's far easier to scale into/across that one $20.5 trillion market (~$22.3t with Canada), than it is to scale across all of Europe in a comparable fashion. US software engineers are worth so much, because of that concept. They're underpaid if anything.