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> spartan nature of Dutch lunch I just ran some numbers. The average salary of Dutch Software Engineer is €42,993[1]. 1.2% of €42,993 = €516. There are 261 we

> spartan nature of Dutch lunch I just ran some numbers. The average salary of Dutch Software Engineer is €42,993[1]. 1.2% of €42,993 = €516. There are 261 weekdays in a year; subtract 30 holiday/vacation days from that, you get 221 working days. €516 / 221 = €2.23 Can lunch be a mere €2.23 (US$2.50) in the Netherlands? My employer delivers free lunch to all its employees everyday as well ( via a service called https://www.servedbystadium.com/ https://www.servedbystadium.com/ ), but the cost of this is typically around $15-$20 per meal. (I estimate my employer has allocated about $4000/year per employee for the free lunch. That's around 2% to 3% of the salary of most of our software engineers, but salaries on average are about 3 times[2] in the U.S. compared to the Netherlands.) [1] https://www.payscale.com/research/NL/Job=Software_Engineer/Salary https://www.payscale.com/research/NL/Job=Software_Engineer/S... [2] https://triplebyte.com/software-engineer-salary https://triplebyte.com/software-engineer-salary

superice 7y ago
I think €2.23 is a little on the light side, but not unrealistic, considering that a Dutch lunch mostly consists of cheap sliced bread with some form of stuff spread out on it, mostly Gouda cheese, or any of the sweet stuff like the traditional chocolaty sprinkles: hagelslag. I talked to the guy that buys the lunch at our office, and his estimate is anywhere between €2.50 and €3.50 per person a day, but he did not have hard numbers. For Dutch standards, our lunch is considered quite luxurious. Then again, I'm not exactly sure what part of that is just lower prices in supermarkets. As a student I routinely could cook dinner for under €2.50 per person, although nowadays I'm averaging more like €4 pp, with rising prices and me cooking for a smaller group.

superice 7y ago

I think €2.23 is a little on the light side, but not unrealistic, considering that a Dutch lunch mostly consists of cheap sliced bread with some form of stuff spread out on it, mostly Gouda cheese, or any of the sweet stuff like the traditional chocolaty sprinkles: hagelslag. I talked to the guy that buys the lunch at our office, and his estimate is anywhere between €2.50 and €3.50 per person a day, but he did not have hard numbers. For Dutch standards, our lunch is considered quite luxurious. Then again, I'm not exactly sure what part of that is just lower prices in supermarkets. As a student I routinely could cook dinner for under €2.50 per person, although nowadays I'm averaging more like €4 pp, with rising prices and me cooking for a smaller group.