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When I got my first job as a Junior Malware Researcher, I was earning $422 per month. That times 7 is exactly the cost of the MacBook Pro I got (1TB SSD, 16GB R

by alin23 5y ago

When I got my first job as a Junior Malware Researcher, I was earning $422 per month. That times 7 is exactly the cost of the MacBook Pro I got (1TB SSD, 16GB RAM) Yes, I live in Romania, and salaries have been increasing a bit but they're still a joke for junior devs.

GekkePrutser 5y ago
I know, we moved all our European call center operations there in my last job. The low wages are a big attraction for companies. I felt bad that we were paying so little though the people working there didn't seem to mind. For most it was their first job. But it surprised me that wages are that low. Also, Romanians tend to have excellent language skills in most Latin languages and English so that helps a lot too. They're also really friendly in my experience. I would notice that when I walked around the office people talking among themselves would often switch to English when I was near them so I wouldn't feel left out. And they'd always ask me to join them if I went for lunch alone. And I'm not even a manager :) I was just there to do the technical side.
- BurningFrog 5y ago
  > the people working there didn't seem to mind It's good to remember that, for those people, this is the best job they could get!
  - cto_of_antifa 5y ago
    Which still isn’t a good argument for underpaying them. It just means you can get away with it in that market
frogpelt 5y ago
Off topic a bit: Your website is one of the nicest I've seen in a long time.
quicklime 5y ago
It always blows my mind when I compare the value of my company's MacBook Pros to the salaries of our offshore developers. Having said that, when I look at a fully spec'd out Mac Pro, it comes out to $54,000. Add in a fully spec'd out Pro Display XDR, which is another $7k, and that's $61k. According to levels.fyi, L3/E3/ICT2 SWEs at Google/Facebook/Apple get a salary of ~$130k, so just under 6 months of an American junior developer FAANG salary.
- grp000 5y ago
  I didn't actually believe you, until I saw that you can spec it with 1.5TB of memory. So yeah, that's where most of the cost comes in.
- visarga 5y ago
  With 60$K you can also get a Lambda box wiht 8GPUs, 16 CPU cores and 256Gb system memory (plus 8x48GB VRAM on the GPUs). You can't train GPT-3 with it but just about anything else.
birdyrooster 5y ago
Can you rent an apartment for like $100/mo or less there?
- mateioprea 5y ago
  I don’t know about Brasov, but in Bucharest and Cluj which are both big cities in Romania, one average bedroom apartment 54msq, starts from $400.
- alin23 5y ago
  Not really, rent has skyrocketed in major cities, especially around Computer Science universities. I had to split a 2 bedroom apartment far away from the city center with 2 other friends to get to $120/month.
megablast 5y ago
Are they a joke compared to a waiter??
- alin23 5y ago
  Obviously not. I have close friends who worked as waiters (and even worse, in the kitchen), and they were getting $300/month on 12h of work with the promise of tips. That practice really needs to stop. Recently I went to a restaurant in Cluj that had an app from which you could do everything: see menu, order, send notes to the chef, pay The experience needs to be polished a bit (low 4G signal and no wifi made this quite hard to use for me), but I feel that could empower waiters more. Maybe by getting paid the same for a lot less work, or by creating a completely different type of job.
  - Dah00n 5y ago
    Tips just need to die (as being counted a part of a salary). It's only a thing in countries with poor worker protection so here's hoping they get more of that. The only country I have seen it used in was the US. My wife worked as a waiter in Copenhagen and they got a good pay and few tips. They tips they did get all got put in a glass and shared between every single employee equally, the only way tips should be used IMO.

by alin23 5y ago

GekkePrutser 5y ago

I know, we moved all our European call center operations there in my last job. The low wages are a big attraction for companies. I felt bad that we were paying so little though the people working there didn't seem to mind. For most it was their first job. But it surprised me that wages are that low. Also, Romanians tend to have excellent language skills in most Latin languages and English so that helps a lot too. They're also really friendly in my experience. I would notice that when I walked around the office people talking among themselves would often switch to English when I was near them so I wouldn't feel left out. And they'd always ask me to join them if I went for lunch alone. And I'm not even a manager :) I was just there to do the technical side.

BurningFrog 5y ago
> the people working there didn't seem to mind It's good to remember that, for those people, this is the best job they could get!
- cto_of_antifa 5y ago
  Which still isn’t a good argument for underpaying them. It just means you can get away with it in that market

frogpelt 5y ago

Off topic a bit: Your website is one of the nicest I've seen in a long time.

quicklime 5y ago

It always blows my mind when I compare the value of my company's MacBook Pros to the salaries of our offshore developers. Having said that, when I look at a fully spec'd out Mac Pro, it comes out to $54,000. Add in a fully spec'd out Pro Display XDR, which is another $7k, and that's $61k. According to levels.fyi, L3/E3/ICT2 SWEs at Google/Facebook/Apple get a salary of ~$130k, so just under 6 months of an American junior developer FAANG salary.

grp000 5y ago
I didn't actually believe you, until I saw that you can spec it with 1.5TB of memory. So yeah, that's where most of the cost comes in.
visarga 5y ago
With 60$K you can also get a Lambda box wiht 8GPUs, 16 CPU cores and 256Gb system memory (plus 8x48GB VRAM on the GPUs). You can't train GPT-3 with it but just about anything else.

birdyrooster 5y ago

Can you rent an apartment for like $100/mo or less there?

mateioprea 5y ago
I don’t know about Brasov, but in Bucharest and Cluj which are both big cities in Romania, one average bedroom apartment 54msq, starts from $400.
alin23 5y ago
Not really, rent has skyrocketed in major cities, especially around Computer Science universities. I had to split a 2 bedroom apartment far away from the city center with 2 other friends to get to $120/month.

megablast 5y ago

Are they a joke compared to a waiter??

alin23 5y ago
Obviously not. I have close friends who worked as waiters (and even worse, in the kitchen), and they were getting $300/month on 12h of work with the promise of tips. That practice really needs to stop. Recently I went to a restaurant in Cluj that had an app from which you could do everything: see menu, order, send notes to the chef, pay The experience needs to be polished a bit (low 4G signal and no wifi made this quite hard to use for me), but I feel that could empower waiters more. Maybe by getting paid the same for a lot less work, or by creating a completely different type of job.
- Dah00n 5y ago
  Tips just need to die (as being counted a part of a salary). It's only a thing in countries with poor worker protection so here's hoping they get more of that. The only country I have seen it used in was the US. My wife worked as a waiter in Copenhagen and they got a good pay and few tips. They tips they did get all got put in a glass and shared between every single employee equally, the only way tips should be used IMO.