6 ms·

I can only speak for those in the web tech industry, but salaries go from 4-6k euros. Take-home pay would be in the region of 2.5-4.5k most likely. I've seen a

I can only speak for those in the web tech industry, but salaries go from 4-6k euros. Take-home pay would be in the region of 2.5-4.5k most likely. I've seen a lot of whining about the high taxes here, but honestly this is not a European way of thinking. You are safe here. You have a safety net if things don't go right in your work or health. Taxes are also super simple. You tell the tax office your predicted income, you get a percentage and give it to your employer. You don't have any other dealings with them unless you need to adjust it due to change in income, or you have some expenses to lower your tax percentage before the end of the tax year. It's highly efficient and works well.

Dig1t 6y ago
2.5k - 4.5k sucks :/
- howlgarnish 6y ago
  Yes, but if you're starting a family, essentially free child care and schooling up to and including university is pretty nice. Hell, if you're accepted for full-time studies at University, the government pays you to keep studying (opintoraha).
  - theshrike79 6y ago
    This is the correct answer. If you're a single software engineer, don't come to Helsinki. Go to SV or somewhere where they pay you mid six figures to work your ass off 16 hours a day. But if you're either too old to find that exciting or have children, Finland is a great place to live. Just the subsidised child care itself will make it worth it. No "college funds" either.
    - dharma1 6y ago
      I would add to this, if you are software engineer in SV and can work remotely with your current company (and keep making SV money or close) - Helsinki is absolutely worth thinking about if you think you would enjoy a Nordic lifestyle! Great startup/tech scene, close to nature, Finns are fun to hang out with. Best experienced during the summer, but the 90 day relocation "trial" with everything organised sounds pretty good now too.
      - theshrike79 6y ago
        Also if you're working remotely, there really isn't a point in moving from another country to Helsinki. It's way too expensive. For the price of a 1 bedroom flat in Helsinki you can get a hectare of land and a 100m2+ house a bit further up north. You'll still be practically next to Helsinki by American standards =)
        dharma1 6y ago
        That's true, if you want to live a bit more countryside (still within 1hr drive of Helsinki) you'll get a lot more for your money
    - bradlys 6y ago
      Once you get into the big companies, not all teams are work yourself to bone. Many people work 40 hour weeks (with an hour long lunch included in that time) and have very little to no responsibilities outside of core hours. Vacation time can be quite decent as well. (4+ weeks plus quite a few holidays) Even the unicorn startups don’t always work you to the bone. Honestly, I see it more like many people who /want/ to do that end up in that position because they want that stuff. It makes them feel like they’re doing something with their life (usually because they have an empty life outside of work). I mean, think about the effort it takes to get into some of these companies. You don’t do it because you’re just a regular person who wants a well paying job. You’re career oriented - your career dictates your life satisfaction. That’s why you’ll work yourself to the bone - because it’s what you wanna do. This area attracts that mentality massively.
      - howlgarnish 6y ago
        Well, there's also a large cohort that has been told that they should be going to the best schools and getting the best grades and the best internships and the best jobs at FAANG etc. Then they end up writing internal CRUD apps or tweaking ad models to eke out 0.01% more engagement, but they keep grinding because that's all they've ever known.
    - refurb 6y ago
      I'm not sure subsidized childcare covers it. If you're comparing 3k EUR takehome to a mid-level engineer in the bay area which is probably 15k USD (rolling in bonus + stock), that's 144k USD more per year take home. Even for 2 kids at $24k per year ($48k total), you can cover childcare and have another ~$100k USD left over.
      - theshrike79 6y ago
        Child care here is around 250€/month with reduced cost for each kid beyond the first in daycare. Pre-school (Age 6->) is free as is school + school lunches. Compared to what, a few thousand a month PER CHILD in the US? Also birth and all pre-natal care etc. is practically free (tens of euros per visit max).
        refurb 6y ago
        Right, but the difference in take home pay in the US is almost 3x those costs. So you can pay for it all in the US and still come out ahead.
        theshrike79 6y ago
        Then we just need to add the amount of monthly insurance costs and it's about even again :)
- deanclatworthy 6y ago
  Let's say you take home around 3k, you keep it. You can get an apartment in the (actual) city center around 50m^2 for 900-1000 of that, food expenses I'd guess are around 500 (never tracked it) and that leaves you with 1500 to enjoy on life each month. I purchased my place after about 5 years which is 5mins by subway to the center, and I pay around the same for my mortgage as I did on rent, except I am investing in equity now. I'm also set to make a large profit when I sell this place. I'm very happy with my entry into the property market here. It's completely infeasible to do this in cities like London or any major metropolitan area in the US.
  - ivanche 6y ago
    How do you know real estate prices at indefinite moment in future???
- alkonaut 6y ago
  But take home pay in Helsinki is basically rent+food+beer money. ´ Take home pay in the US is college money, rainy day money, retirement money... Can't really compare take home pay in a welfare state with US take home pay. It's just not possible. Now: if you plan to retire in the US, obviously your equation would be slightly different. Paying for an education in the US, then moving to a place where salaries are set assuming people get good pensions and free education, then moving back to the US where you again need retirement money - that's the tricky equation.
  - woobar 6y ago
    Looking at the Finland pensions [1], I'd think you would like to save extra for retirement. Max government pension is less than SSA benefit in the USA (€1,368 vs $3,113) [1] https://www.etk.fi/en/finnish-pension-system/pension-security/national-pension/ https://www.etk.fi/en/finnish-pension-system/pension-securit...
    - alkonaut 6y ago
      You can easily have a €4K/mo pension in Finland without private savings. It depends on how much you earned. Calculator https://www.tyoelake.fi/sv/pensionsraknaren/ https://www.tyoelake.fi/sv/pensionsraknaren/
      - woobar 6y ago
        I've entered €6K/mo (the senior eng salary mentioned in this discussion, aka top 10% salary in Finland) and used €1414 accrued pension (* median value from the table for a person born in 1960) and got €1.9/mo for someone close to retirement. So far I am not sure how easy it is to get to 4K/mo. But my point was more about you mentioning retirement savings only for US workers. While median income earners will get very similar government pensions in both countries.
        alkonaut 6y ago
        Yes obvioiusly the pension you get in a country is related to how many years you worked in that country. If I moved to Finland I too would get a lower pension than others when I retire in 25 years, but on the other hand I’d be getting a pension from the first 20 years of my career in my home country too. Taken together they’d (unsurprisingly) add up to the €4K or so I expect to get. Similarly if you move there from a country with lower taxes/pensions such as the US you’d probably bring savings to compensate that you missed a number of years. After all, these pensions based on number of years worked is often just a form of mandated savings from employers payroll taxes.
meekrohprocess 6y ago
I am less concerned with the taxes, and more concerned that Amazon/Google/etc happily pay ten times that salary. It's literally an order of magnitude difference, and contracting hourly rates seems like a similar story. I would happily pay 3-5x the taxes for a similar salary to emigrate, but if you offer me 1/10 the pay? That's tough. It makes me feel like there isn't a big market for my services across the pond. It's a shame, because I love tech and I lean heavily left. But this has been the case for at least the past decade, and it shows no sign of stopping.
- outworlder 6y ago
  > I would happily pay 3-5x the taxes for a similar salary to emigrate, but if you offer me 1/10 the pay? Are you calculating the cost of living?
  - meekrohprocess 6y ago
    Yes, it's mostly about purchasing power. Rent/property tax/insurance is expensive, but everything else is cheap and there's no VAT. Some states don't even have income taxes. We have insanely painful income inequality, but as shameful as it is, you can usually clear the hurdle prices with a 6-figure income. I'm not an aristocrat and I oscillate between working hard and going off into nature for random periods of time, so I'd sure like to live somewhere with a stable safety net. But for now, the US seems cheaper even with its ridiculous baseline CoL expenses. I can buy vehicles on a whim and mess with them and bum around for years on 5-10hr/week gigs even after $Nk monthly expenses, which would be difficult in the EU. And if you can pay the exorbitant health insurance rates, the medical care is actually quite good. I do feel bad sometimes, but it's not exactly easy to change your citizenship, and the whole political situation sure isn't my fault.
    - barrenko 6y ago
      It's mostly an mentality / personality thing. To some the European way of "things" are a bit insulting, others like having the corall / safety net. I'm in your camp.
nextlevelwizard 6y ago
4-6k seems high even for Helsinki. For starting position you can expect 2-3k, then as you build towards seniority you can get to 4-5k range, but you can expect to work for 5-10 years before you get to that 5k/mo (before taxes). Now all kind of exceptions will come out the wood works telling me how they are "easily" making 10k/mo by doing something and working for someone who they won't admit. Yes even I know someone who is (or at least was) making 10k/mo, but he was very specialized expert, actual 10x developer. Most people are making far less. 3k/mo seems like the most common salary (again before taxes) for generic tech job.
- titanomachy 6y ago
  Interesting, these seem somewhat comparable to Canadian pay levels! Canadian taxes are similar, and public programs are good by global standards but not nearly as good as Finland (e.g. free healthcare, no free daycare, University education costs the equivalent of ~5k euros per year in Canada). As a beginning developer I made the equivalent of ~3k euro/month in Canada and worked my way up to 5k in 3 years. With a bit of experience and luck one can then move to the US to make ~15k euro/month and pay 30% lower tax rate, at the expense of basically all functioning public institutions :)
- doikor 6y ago
  Starting salary is actually pretty much exactly 3k in Helsinki. In most companies as a pure software engineer you can expect the salary to top out somewhere between 5 to 6k. If you are willing to take on management roles you can go higher easily (especially in older/more traditional companies that don't believe in paying engineers that much). If you are in a "high scaling" tech company expect the salaries to be higher as Helsinki basically competes with places like Stockholm, Amsterdam, Berlin, etc in salaries for the skilled people to build that stuff. Still no Silicon Valley but really good if you factor in the cost of living/"free" services. Another thing to add to the salary is that you are truly expected to only work 7.5h per day (8h minus a 30min lunch break). If you work more you will get paid for those hours. So if in SV in reality you end up working 60h work weeks you should be paid roughly 50% more when compared to the 37.5h work week here just from the hours alone. If you work on weekends then even more as those get extra multipliers in Finland. Also things like being on the 24/7 on call rotation that I see as being advertised as "part of the job" in a lot of job adverts are actually paid time here. So basically you end being paid for the hours outside normal work hours at 50% of your salary converted to hourly salary.
buzer 6y ago
> salaries go from 4-6k euros. Take-home pay would be in the region of 2.5-4.5k most likely With 6k salary, you would likely be taking home at most 4k. 6k translates to about 75000 yearly (lomaraha, i.e. holiday bonus, is about 50% of single month's pay). With standard deductions, your tax rate would be around 29% (that's with 19% municipal tax, it varies a bit depending where you live) & you need to add 8.40% to that for retirement & unemployment (those are required). 6000*(1-0.3745)=3753. Additional 156 if you add 1/12 of lomaraha to that. Some additional deductions can bring the value up a bit (transport, home office etc.).

Dig1t 6y ago

2.5k - 4.5k sucks :/

howlgarnish 6y ago
Yes, but if you're starting a family, essentially free child care and schooling up to and including university is pretty nice. Hell, if you're accepted for full-time studies at University, the government pays you to keep studying (opintoraha).
- theshrike79 6y ago
  This is the correct answer. If you're a single software engineer, don't come to Helsinki. Go to SV or somewhere where they pay you mid six figures to work your ass off 16 hours a day. But if you're either too old to find that exciting or have children, Finland is a great place to live. Just the subsidised child care itself will make it worth it. No "college funds" either.
  - dharma1 6y ago
    I would add to this, if you are software engineer in SV and can work remotely with your current company (and keep making SV money or close) - Helsinki is absolutely worth thinking about if you think you would enjoy a Nordic lifestyle! Great startup/tech scene, close to nature, Finns are fun to hang out with. Best experienced during the summer, but the 90 day relocation "trial" with everything organised sounds pretty good now too.
    - theshrike79 6y ago
      Also if you're working remotely, there really isn't a point in moving from another country to Helsinki. It's way too expensive. For the price of a 1 bedroom flat in Helsinki you can get a hectare of land and a 100m2+ house a bit further up north. You'll still be practically next to Helsinki by American standards =)
      - dharma1 6y ago
        That's true, if you want to live a bit more countryside (still within 1hr drive of Helsinki) you'll get a lot more for your money
  - bradlys 6y ago
    Once you get into the big companies, not all teams are work yourself to bone. Many people work 40 hour weeks (with an hour long lunch included in that time) and have very little to no responsibilities outside of core hours. Vacation time can be quite decent as well. (4+ weeks plus quite a few holidays) Even the unicorn startups don’t always work you to the bone. Honestly, I see it more like many people who /want/ to do that end up in that position because they want that stuff. It makes them feel like they’re doing something with their life (usually because they have an empty life outside of work). I mean, think about the effort it takes to get into some of these companies. You don’t do it because you’re just a regular person who wants a well paying job. You’re career oriented - your career dictates your life satisfaction. That’s why you’ll work yourself to the bone - because it’s what you wanna do. This area attracts that mentality massively.
    - howlgarnish 6y ago
      Well, there's also a large cohort that has been told that they should be going to the best schools and getting the best grades and the best internships and the best jobs at FAANG etc. Then they end up writing internal CRUD apps or tweaking ad models to eke out 0.01% more engagement, but they keep grinding because that's all they've ever known.
  - refurb 6y ago
    I'm not sure subsidized childcare covers it. If you're comparing 3k EUR takehome to a mid-level engineer in the bay area which is probably 15k USD (rolling in bonus + stock), that's 144k USD more per year take home. Even for 2 kids at $24k per year ($48k total), you can cover childcare and have another ~$100k USD left over.
    - theshrike79 6y ago
      Child care here is around 250€/month with reduced cost for each kid beyond the first in daycare. Pre-school (Age 6->) is free as is school + school lunches. Compared to what, a few thousand a month PER CHILD in the US? Also birth and all pre-natal care etc. is practically free (tens of euros per visit max).
      - refurb 6y ago
        Right, but the difference in take home pay in the US is almost 3x those costs. So you can pay for it all in the US and still come out ahead.
        theshrike79 6y ago
        Then we just need to add the amount of monthly insurance costs and it's about even again :)
deanclatworthy 6y ago
Let's say you take home around 3k, you keep it. You can get an apartment in the (actual) city center around 50m^2 for 900-1000 of that, food expenses I'd guess are around 500 (never tracked it) and that leaves you with 1500 to enjoy on life each month. I purchased my place after about 5 years which is 5mins by subway to the center, and I pay around the same for my mortgage as I did on rent, except I am investing in equity now. I'm also set to make a large profit when I sell this place. I'm very happy with my entry into the property market here. It's completely infeasible to do this in cities like London or any major metropolitan area in the US.
- ivanche 6y ago
  How do you know real estate prices at indefinite moment in future???
alkonaut 6y ago
But take home pay in Helsinki is basically rent+food+beer money. ´ Take home pay in the US is college money, rainy day money, retirement money... Can't really compare take home pay in a welfare state with US take home pay. It's just not possible. Now: if you plan to retire in the US, obviously your equation would be slightly different. Paying for an education in the US, then moving to a place where salaries are set assuming people get good pensions and free education, then moving back to the US where you again need retirement money - that's the tricky equation.
- woobar 6y ago
  Looking at the Finland pensions [1], I'd think you would like to save extra for retirement. Max government pension is less than SSA benefit in the USA (€1,368 vs $3,113) [1] https://www.etk.fi/en/finnish-pension-system/pension-security/national-pension/ https://www.etk.fi/en/finnish-pension-system/pension-securit...
  - alkonaut 6y ago
    You can easily have a €4K/mo pension in Finland without private savings. It depends on how much you earned. Calculator https://www.tyoelake.fi/sv/pensionsraknaren/ https://www.tyoelake.fi/sv/pensionsraknaren/
    - woobar 6y ago
      I've entered €6K/mo (the senior eng salary mentioned in this discussion, aka top 10% salary in Finland) and used €1414 accrued pension (* median value from the table for a person born in 1960) and got €1.9/mo for someone close to retirement. So far I am not sure how easy it is to get to 4K/mo. But my point was more about you mentioning retirement savings only for US workers. While median income earners will get very similar government pensions in both countries.
      - alkonaut 6y ago
        Yes obvioiusly the pension you get in a country is related to how many years you worked in that country. If I moved to Finland I too would get a lower pension than others when I retire in 25 years, but on the other hand I’d be getting a pension from the first 20 years of my career in my home country too. Taken together they’d (unsurprisingly) add up to the €4K or so I expect to get. Similarly if you move there from a country with lower taxes/pensions such as the US you’d probably bring savings to compensate that you missed a number of years. After all, these pensions based on number of years worked is often just a form of mandated savings from employers payroll taxes.

meekrohprocess 6y ago

I am less concerned with the taxes, and more concerned that Amazon/Google/etc happily pay ten times that salary. It's literally an order of magnitude difference, and contracting hourly rates seems like a similar story. I would happily pay 3-5x the taxes for a similar salary to emigrate, but if you offer me 1/10 the pay? That's tough. It makes me feel like there isn't a big market for my services across the pond. It's a shame, because I love tech and I lean heavily left. But this has been the case for at least the past decade, and it shows no sign of stopping.

outworlder 6y ago
> I would happily pay 3-5x the taxes for a similar salary to emigrate, but if you offer me 1/10 the pay? Are you calculating the cost of living?
- meekrohprocess 6y ago
  Yes, it's mostly about purchasing power. Rent/property tax/insurance is expensive, but everything else is cheap and there's no VAT. Some states don't even have income taxes. We have insanely painful income inequality, but as shameful as it is, you can usually clear the hurdle prices with a 6-figure income. I'm not an aristocrat and I oscillate between working hard and going off into nature for random periods of time, so I'd sure like to live somewhere with a stable safety net. But for now, the US seems cheaper even with its ridiculous baseline CoL expenses. I can buy vehicles on a whim and mess with them and bum around for years on 5-10hr/week gigs even after $Nk monthly expenses, which would be difficult in the EU. And if you can pay the exorbitant health insurance rates, the medical care is actually quite good. I do feel bad sometimes, but it's not exactly easy to change your citizenship, and the whole political situation sure isn't my fault.
  - barrenko 6y ago
    It's mostly an mentality / personality thing. To some the European way of "things" are a bit insulting, others like having the corall / safety net. I'm in your camp.

nextlevelwizard 6y ago

4-6k seems high even for Helsinki. For starting position you can expect 2-3k, then as you build towards seniority you can get to 4-5k range, but you can expect to work for 5-10 years before you get to that 5k/mo (before taxes). Now all kind of exceptions will come out the wood works telling me how they are "easily" making 10k/mo by doing something and working for someone who they won't admit. Yes even I know someone who is (or at least was) making 10k/mo, but he was very specialized expert, actual 10x developer. Most people are making far less. 3k/mo seems like the most common salary (again before taxes) for generic tech job.

titanomachy 6y ago
Interesting, these seem somewhat comparable to Canadian pay levels! Canadian taxes are similar, and public programs are good by global standards but not nearly as good as Finland (e.g. free healthcare, no free daycare, University education costs the equivalent of ~5k euros per year in Canada). As a beginning developer I made the equivalent of ~3k euro/month in Canada and worked my way up to 5k in 3 years. With a bit of experience and luck one can then move to the US to make ~15k euro/month and pay 30% lower tax rate, at the expense of basically all functioning public institutions :)
doikor 6y ago
Starting salary is actually pretty much exactly 3k in Helsinki. In most companies as a pure software engineer you can expect the salary to top out somewhere between 5 to 6k. If you are willing to take on management roles you can go higher easily (especially in older/more traditional companies that don't believe in paying engineers that much). If you are in a "high scaling" tech company expect the salaries to be higher as Helsinki basically competes with places like Stockholm, Amsterdam, Berlin, etc in salaries for the skilled people to build that stuff. Still no Silicon Valley but really good if you factor in the cost of living/"free" services. Another thing to add to the salary is that you are truly expected to only work 7.5h per day (8h minus a 30min lunch break). If you work more you will get paid for those hours. So if in SV in reality you end up working 60h work weeks you should be paid roughly 50% more when compared to the 37.5h work week here just from the hours alone. If you work on weekends then even more as those get extra multipliers in Finland. Also things like being on the 24/7 on call rotation that I see as being advertised as "part of the job" in a lot of job adverts are actually paid time here. So basically you end being paid for the hours outside normal work hours at 50% of your salary converted to hourly salary.

buzer 6y ago

> salaries go from 4-6k euros. Take-home pay would be in the region of 2.5-4.5k most likely With 6k salary, you would likely be taking home at most 4k. 6k translates to about 75000 yearly (lomaraha, i.e. holiday bonus, is about 50% of single month's pay). With standard deductions, your tax rate would be around 29% (that's with 19% municipal tax, it varies a bit depending where you live) & you need to add 8.40% to that for retirement & unemployment (those are required). 6000*(1-0.3745)=3753. Additional 156 if you add 1/12 of lomaraha to that. Some additional deductions can bring the value up a bit (transport, home office etc.).