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Ask HN: A US programmer makes 3 times that of a EU programmer. Why?

• killtimeatwork 5y ago
  The software engineers at the top segment in the Netherland are not working full-time jobs, but are instead pulling €800 per day (or more) via long-term contracts. Assuming you're working 48 weeks per year, this amounts to €192k per year.
  • ctenb 5y ago
    What are the practical differences between long-term contracts and permanent contracts? Just the duration?
  • brtkdotse 5y ago
    Yeah, this strikes me as bizarre because it goes to show that the money to pay these salaries exists but companies would rather hire contractors than employees. Fine by me, I went solo 4 years ago and never looked back.
    • tgv 5y ago
      It's completely true that companies prefer that. It looks better on the balance sheet, or so they and the representatives of their shareholders think. Contract salaries can be put in another column, and they keep telling themselves that they can get rid of this expense whenever they want. Any day now. Right?
    • em500 5y ago
      It's more difficult in Europe to fire people with a permanent contract. That can make companies more reluctant to hire. As the say of another profession, "I don't pay them to come over, I pey them to go away afterwards".
  • whiddershins 5y ago
    How many contractors work 48 weeks a year? And what do you think US software contractors make?
    • killtimeatwork 5y ago
      > How many contractors work 48 weeks a year? Everyone I've known (and I've known dozens of contractors across many companies). In Europe, contracting practices truly are a normalized pathology. I don't know the US contracting market, and if the pathology is as normalized as in Europe (i.e. if you can reasonably expect to treat it as a full-time job).
• moooo99 5y ago
  I think that is due to a variety of factors, most importantly a massively screwed comparison. Not every software engineer in the U.S. works at FAANG or even in the bay area or other hotspots. If you'd exclude venture capital backed companies and limit the statistic only to companies with a sustainable business model that will stick around for longer than they can raise new capital, then your average will certainly be a lot lower (and it will still include extremely high salaries by FAANG companies). But venture capital brings me to the first key aspect. Venture capital barely exists in the EU. There are some VC funds and there are some European startups that managed to raise a decent amount of money, but they don't reach anywhere near the valuations of even early stage US based startups. With more money being in the game, it's obvious that those companies will pay impressive salaries to attract the top talent available. The have the means to do it and having a company with many FAANG devs onboard is almost a guarantee for a successful next capital raising round. The next thing is the difference in how software is approached. For most European companies software is a cost center, not a profit center. The biggest EU based companies have a few digital products at best, most of them only being complimentary to the products they actually sell and make money off. That is a stark contrast to the US (especially certain areas) where a strong focus on digital products exist. And if you don't make money off your digital products its obvious that you want to keep costs down. Next I want to go back to my initial reference to the SV area. The reason why salaries are continuing to rise is the extremely high cost of living around those companies. Is a $10,000/month really that high if you have to spend 3,500€/mo on rent alone (I have absolutely no clue about rental prices in the U.S.)? There is no doubt, software engineers in the bay area are far from poor, but especially with salaries that are so far above what you'd find anywhere else, its important to consider the actual cost of living for the area where those kinds of salaries are actually paid. As soon as the cost of living decreases, the salary decreases as well, even within the U.S. And the discussion about FAANG companies wanting to cut salaries for people who are full on WFH just shows that the costs of living are an important reason for the high salaries. The costs of living also include things like education (incl. higher ed), childcare, elderly care, health insurance, etc. All of those things are largely taken care of by the government in most EU states, unlike in the US. Another reason for lower salaries is the actual cost of having employees (this is limited to my experience in Germany; can differ from other EU countries). Here in Germany taxes, public health insurance and public pension premium is deducted from your salary. But the cost of the employment goes far beyond the salary since your employer also has to contribute roughly the same amount to public health insurance and pension as you have to from your salary. So take the salary of a employee, multiply it by 1.2 and you get the true cost of the employees salary (excluding benefits like vacation time, bonuses or the 13th salary). Additionally, most EU countries actually have employee protection. Not being at risk of loosing your job from one day to another is a pretty nice thing if you'd ask me, but it also reduces the employers flexibility. To summarize: American software engineers probably really make more money, even if you'd adjust to all the factors I mentioned above. However, the difference is nowhere near as dramatic as the numbers mentioned by OP make it seem.
• fleddr 5y ago
  I think differences in cost of living and social benefits do not fully explain it, popular as that line of reasoning may be. A few exceptions aside, Europe just doesn't have VC capital. VC capital translates in Dutch as "risk capital". We have neither the capital nor the risk taking. A fitting example of this shortcoming is Blendle. Once called the "iTunes for news", this app would let you read articles across news publications and magazines. Imagine the convenience of that, and the massive total addressable market. I would expect that a US entrepreneur would easily put a few hundred million (if not billions) into the idea, trying to aggressively seize this new market. To try and replicate what Jobs did for music, but this time for news publishers and magazines. The Dutch/European way is starvation. A peak of 50 employees and a payout to publishers of a few million. Next, the founders barely hanging on by raising another 1 million at best, which is an amount a SC startup may burn in a day or week or so. The big capital just isn't there. And you need big capital to pay for large amounts of 150K engineers. A second factor, not sure if true across Europe but definitely in the Netherlands, is that people doing actual work are underappreciated. Trade-based as this countries' legacy is, the "real" business is the finance, sales and purchasing departments. The rest are just "hands", replaceable units. The idea of an ordinary worker earning 100-200K is quite alien to Dutch society.
  • TMWNN 5y ago
    >I think differences in cost of living and social benefits do not fully explain it, popular as that line of reasoning may be. They don't, period. At $45,284 the US has the highest household net disposable income per capita in the OECD (<http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/united-states/ http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/united-states/>), where "disposable income" (<http://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=46 http://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=46>) accounts for healthcare and government benefits.
    • admissionsguy 5y ago
      Not to mention that most goods cost 20-30% more in Europe. The USA is a significantly wealthier country than even the "rich" Western European ones.
  • 5y ago
• bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  Well I think it also depends on where you are in the EU. I make slightly over $145000 a year (consulting though) in Denmark, but of course most of that disappears in taxes. I suppose the big attraction of the U.S is being able to keep the money you make and pay less for a lot of things, but for the people talking about attractions of the U.S I don't think I know a lot of people willing to go unless earning a lot more (or if leading companies and have to be in SV for a bit)
• fleddr 5y ago
  I do have a cheat code for making money in Europe. Freelance as a SAP consultant. The learning curve may be a few years, and its soul crushingly boring. But once you're qualified and competent at it, you just put on a suit and take your trolley from one large business to the other, whilst charging 200€+ per hour. You don't have to actually implement anything, only advise. It's like the modern COBOL. Every sizable business runs on SAP, and it's complicated. The demand for high-end consultants in this space has been there for 20 years and won't go away. As old man I will express caution that money isn't everything. Personally, I'd prefer digging holes into the ground in the streaming rain as a job over anything SAP.
  • dagw 5y ago
    You don't have to actually implement anything, only advise. I'm sure those people exist, but every successful SAP consultant I know in Europe also spends a lot of time coding and implementing.
  • jacknews 5y ago
    LOL, Office Space.
  • nocubicles 5y ago
    As a former SAP consultant now Microsoft ERP consultant Id argue on the point "You don't have to actually implement anything, only advise." I remember installing SAP on Linux servers, writing ABAP and Javascript, holding workshops to discuss business processes and then implement these business processes in SAP. To be honest I haven't seen any SAP or ERP consultant who only advises and doesn't implement or write code and I have been doing this for 10+ years. I think its very interesting job because you will get access and understanding to the most granual levels of very different businesses. I mean you work with from general ledger entries to manufacturing to e-commerce while also understanding all the business context.
  • jareklupinski 5y ago
    when I was interviewing a long time, the SAP recruiter's pitch was "if you join, you'll never have to worry about making money anywhere in the world" spent 5 great years there :) inbox is never empty, but yes I would need to wear a suit again
• naveen99 5y ago
  There is some self selection. Some of the Europeans who want to make more maybe moving to the us. Same with india being 5-10x lower salaries. Tangentially I offered to double an engineers salary in india to quit his job and work for me remotely. And he (an hn user) turned me down, saying he wasn’t ready… now, I don’t know if he had severe impostor syndrome or I am the impostor. it’s like when x-bezos calls someone to offer them y million dollars and they hang up on her.
• jleyank 5y ago
  Keep in mind that in the States health insurance is a function of full-time, reasonably well-paid work. When this ceases, you have, I think, 18 months of COBRA which lets you pay 100% rather than 20% of your previous health insurance while you look for work. This number can grow rather large as one's age and/or family increases. This also acts as a problem-to-surmount when retiring before 65. Housing costs might/will be higher in parts of the States than elsewhere, and one pays in life quality to get the cash at times. It depends on what you're interested in doing I guess.
• sceptical 5y ago
  I think it is competition for local talent. I worked for a US tech company in a remote office in a smaller Scandinavian city and at senior levels we got comparable salary/stock compensation. There was a slight adjustment for COL, ~10%. There are other US based tech companies in the city which helped drive up the compensation. And at senior levels (staff+) employees are much much harder to replace.
• giantg2 5y ago
  What about the median and other characteristics of the distribution? Looking at tails seems to me to be more prone fluctions based on outliers or other characteristics. The median might be a better comparison, and would likely be less than 2x. Employer costs/benefits/taxes would also need to looked at, and then compare total comp vs salary.
• Shadonototra 5y ago
  because that is not true how much of that data is flawed because of inflated prices in California? 75k a year in NY https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/new-york-city-computer-programmer-salary-SRCH_IL.0,13_IM615_KO14,33.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/new-york-city-computer-pr...
• syrgian 5y ago
  I would like to add that I know some engineers getting paid 75-90k € (some even with some unlikely stock options added) in Barcelona, Spain. These are individual contributors with 10 years of experience. These same engineers were getting paid 50k 3 years ago, but the current job market (and I guess, competition from remote work) increased wages that much. Adjusting for cost of living, I would say that very close to SF.
• dusted 5y ago
  The US programmer probably owes some money for their education that they need to pay back, while also having to deal with higher price of housing. This EU programmer got his education for free, and despite owning two houses, has never had a loan.
• sershe 5y ago
  Interesting question I thought of reading about "safety net/services" comments from the people who worked in both the EU and the USA, i.e. those that have moved at least once. Let's say you are from the EU. Why wouldn't you work for a while in the US, accumulate wealth with low taxes and no social safety net (but good insurance, etc.), then when you don't want to work, move back to Europe and retire (or work much less) with the social safety net and your American wealth? ;) Moreover, if you are not from the EU, but have an in-demand skillset, why wouldn't you make the money, and then get a gig in Europe for however long it takes to get PR (looks like it's only 4 years in Germany), to get the benefits? :)
• kilotaras 5y ago
  US has competition between FAANGs driving salaries upward. Europe with the exception of, maybe, London - mostly doesn't. It would be interesting to see how shift to remote plays out here. Fun historical fact: Apple, Google, Intel and others didn't like salaries growing so entered into illegal anti-poaching agreement. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
• VirusNewbie 5y ago
  Why isn't anyone pointing out it's likely the median US engineer is far above the median EU engineer skill wise and talent wise? Let's look at it this way, if the top 5% of EU engineers can make literal millions in a few years working in the US, at least some percentage of them will end up in the US. Then let's consider that money influences what careers people pick. If very high IQ people who are ALSO ambitious see that they can choose between going the MD route, or finance, or SWE, or big law, and all of them are somewhat equally lucrative, some large % of those ambitious high IQ people are going to go into SWE. In the EU if the only way to big bucks is finance or consulting, and SWE is a normal peasant like life stlye, aren't ambitious high IQ folks going to be more likely to choose finance or consulting instead of SWE? Isn't it likely the median US programmer, because of incentives, is going to be higher than the median EU programmer? This isn't to say there aren't brilliant EU programmers or that the US on average is smarter than the EU, it's just a combination of brain drain and what smart people end up doing.
• jamisteven 5y ago
  Answer: 1. Because European programmers havent rallied together to demand more 2. Because if larger companies can offshore to places like Poland and save 20-50% in a long term labor play then they will and when 4-5 large companies employ 95% of the engineers in that city, they can define salary bands and keep them where they want 3. In the US, there is a bit of a disconnect on which jobs pay what, for example a social worker in the us makes like 35k USD per year, if you have a masters maybe 50k, compare that to Switzerland where they make like 75k without a masters. Or a hair stylist, lieklynot making very much money in Switzerland but in the US you can make a ton and they typically charge more in the big cities in the US than they do in European ones. At the end of the day its all supply and demand and what value the culture puts on things. 4. Basic supply and demand - lot more tech types in EU than in the US from what I have seen, larger labor pool drives salaries down As an American engineer working in Switzerland I see this far too often, people wanting to come here from Germany, Poland, Czech Republic etc as the salaries there are crap, and really cant blame them. Germany for example, highest tax bracket is reached at like 50k and things arent that cheap relatively speaking. If it were me and I lived in any of those countries, I would be starting my own company or moving to a higher paying country immediately and working the majority of my career there, then retire somewhere cheap.
  • HellDunkel 5y ago
    ad 1) Have US developers ever rallied together? ad 2) can US not outsource just as easily? ad 3)/4) disconnect or supply and demand? Your theory does not appear very convincing.
• birtoise 5y ago
  Cos US does useful tech while europe does nothing
• rsj_hn 5y ago
  You haven't stated your source, so can you clarify whether these are both pre-tax or post-tax or whether one is pre-tax (US) and the other is post-tax? thx
• austincheney 5y ago
  Market economy. In the US there is a perception of shortage and so wages are artificially increased (as compared to other industries of equivalent skills/experience/challenge) to account for that perception. The reason that perception exists is a misalignment between how developers are produced, the skills required by industry, and the things employers are willing to do to compensate for that supposed gap.
  • WalterGR 5y ago
    Citations?
    • austincheney 5y ago
      https://duckduckgo.com/?q=software+developer+shortage&t=fpas&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=software+developer+shortage&t=fpas...
      • WalterGR 5y ago
        Making things up. Got it.
        • austincheney 5y ago
          It's an opinion so I am not sure what you are hoping for. If you are actually interested in the subject, as in doing more than trolling, perhaps you could find citations of your own and post them here.
• codingclaws 5y ago
  The US pioneered programming and has had a lot of success because of it and therefore they value it. The rest of the world, not so much.
• herbst 5y ago
  It's not so simple. The places you can earn these wages in the US have incredible high cost of living usually. Something that is way less extreme over here. Then health care, social security and pension costs. That could easily half your US income to get to the same standards. Also taxes, NL or DE has very high taxes comparingly however NL also has a amazing public infrastructure you get for that. You won't need a car for example. Best of both worlds is Switzerland. Wages are more or less in between your examples, taxes are low, standard is super high.
  • BrS96bVxXBLzf5B 5y ago
    Americans love to bring this up but half of a six figure US income still leaves abundantly more than £32k at 6 years experience leaves outside of London. Without a car, dependents, and with private healthcare costs (because the NHS is far more flawed than propaganda would have you believe), I'm not the only one living alone in a mould-infested flat that isn't even suitable to keep a pet, unable to move because of trying to cling on to the lower-but-still-too-high rent price ridden through the recent massive increases, putting no savings away, in a country where recent delivery shortages make your fresh food shop a roll of the dice. I'm glad to have the shelter, warmth, and relative security that many others don't, but living as a software engineer in this country is nowhere near comparable to other 'similar' countries, whether the US, Canada, or European neighbours.
• brtkdotse 5y ago
  There are a lot of hidden perks and benefits that us Europeans never see (even though we pay for them) such as healthcare, childcare, higher education and elderly care. Just as an example a former colleague moved to the US and his spouse stopped working because the cost of daycare was basically one full salary.
  • cr1895 5y ago
    I’ve heard of that happening in Netherlands too, where it doesn’t make much sense for one spouse to keep working due to the cost of child care. That’s not universally cheap in Europe.
• andyxor 5y ago
  we are just worth more
  • meheleventyone 5y ago
    Not really, the same person is worth more for the same work if they're doing it in SF versus London.
• drstewart 5y ago
  A lot of the Europeans in this thread will jump on things like health care or other social benefits without realizing that high paid workers in the US are well taken care of in this regard. The truth is the pay is higher in the US and is not particularly close. It's funny trying to see Europeans argue places like London, Zurich, or Amsterdam are "low cost" compared to US cities to try justify the difference
  • goos 5y ago
    Having worked in both Stockholm and San Francisco, living in the latter is definitely _far_ more expensive. My apartment in Stockholm was _much_ nicer than the one I had in San Francisco, despite having a much lower salary. And that's Stockholm, which has experienced a housing bubble of its own over the past decade, so it's pretty expensive by European standards. Now, you can get a lot more for your money outside of San Francisco while staying in the US, but that applies to European cities as well. Don't get me wrong – US pay still outweighs these lower costs as a young engineer without children. If you're planning on starting a family, things get a little muddier. Having a child is free in Sweden, whereas it ranges from thousands to tens of thousands in San Francisco. Childcare in Sweden is progressively prized and never goes above ~$100/month, while it ranges from thousands of dollars a month in San Francisco, to hundreds in other parts of the US. School? Yup, that one's free too – college and the works. Got elderly parents? Elderly care is also subsidized to ~$300 a month (although private alternatives do exist). However, there's no such thing as a free lunch, and these things do need to be paid for. This is done by many different taxes. Working as a contractor, you become painfully aware of a few of these – I've contracted for an American company while based in Sweden, at American rates, and I still end up with way less than I did working in the US. First off you have your payroll tax at ~31%. Normally this cost is quietly absorbed by the employer, so from the get-go almost a third of your salary is gone without you knowing it. After that point, you have a progressive income tax that can go as high as 60% – which is what employees see on their pay stubs. So they're just different models. The European model largely optimizes for a high common denominator, whereas the US model seems to optimize for extremes.
  • nickd2001 5y ago
    Regarding healthcare, sure a US worker may be well taken care of while employed at that company, but what happens later? A US friend, his father, after decades of well-to-do middle class lifestyle, unfortunately got cancer while between jobs and not properly covered by health insurance. I believe that as result the family were worried about having to sell their home, at a time when the real estate market was falling. This could happen to anyone in the US, today's high-flying Google engineer could later have some kind of health problem (especially given some of the lack of food standards or pollution controls in the US - not that I'm saying Europe is perfect either...) then they lose their job and their insurance. As result, if you intend to live the rest of your life in the USA, it seems to me you need to amass some "danger money" to deal with health problems, for yourself or loved ones. Therefore a decent chunk of your salary needs to be used for this, and invested properly to keep pace with inflation which can be a pain/hassle/time sink . That then doesn't make those super high US salaries look so superior. And 1 more thing, price of basic fresh fruit etc, non-junk food in the US seems very high to me compared to other countries
• dagw 5y ago
  One explanation is there is simply more money sloshing around in the US tech sector. Creating a startup and raising a few million dollars in VC is just a lot easier in the US than in NL, so a lot more companies are simply able to pay those salaries. At the other end of the scale, the largest US companies are simply more efficient than NL companies. Just compare the revenue pr employee for the 10 largest NL companies to the revenue pr employee for the 10 largest US companies and you'll see a stark difference. More revenue pr employee means more money to pay salaries (very simply).
• reacharavindh 5y ago
  My take is that there is just a lot of money in the tech sector in the US. The larger “English-speaking” market makes it easier for businesses to make it there. Whereas in Europe, your addressable market is much smaller, and if you venture into other countries, you’d have to deal with another language/culture/bureaucracies/laws etc. However, current day tech companies that can potentially address a global market from wherever(Europe for argument) are in a spot where they need to compete against US labour. I for one get paid significantly higher than what you posted in NL. It’s just that the average includes local markets and lower pay(or really pay online with other local jobs) in Europe. There are always exceptions- San Francisco salary should not be compared to Amsterdam for example - cost and style of living is very different. I pay €3 for a cappuccino and not $8 :-) I pay €600 for my kids day care whereas in SF it is definitely substantially more. I can buy a family home for €700K here, whereas in SF I can probably get a garage for that… you get the point. If one is single, and many of these perks don’t apply, US is the best place to be and make a shit ton of money and all the connections. Once the perks start to make sense, Europe it is.
• shetill 5y ago
  Only way to make comparable money in Europe is by contracting. For some reason full-time employees are massively underpaid compared to US and don't tell me about living cost comparison. Life in London for example is just as expensive if not more than San Francisco/New York. We pay for our national health insurance too and probably comparable to what Americans pay for their private. People can barely afford an average house/flat as a full-time senior software engineer in UK and are not paid too different than any other office based role. And no it's not because there is more money in US for tech, because a lot of people in UK work for American companies and I guarantee you they get paid less than their US devs. American companies outsource their tech to Europe for the sole purpose if being cheap especially to eastern EU countries.
  • zelos 5y ago
    57,000EUR is low for the 'top segment' in London though, isn't it?
    • grigarav 5y ago
      Depends who you ask, it's considered quite low in Finance (Goldman Sachs is paying +£100k total. comp for front-office graduates now), but generally, outside of finance & fintech the salaries are quite low.
    • shetill 5y ago
      only OP said this number for Netherlands but it's not too far off for average companies in London
  • mtberatwork 5y ago
    > We pay for our national health insurance too and probably comparable to what Americans pay for their private. That's not saying much since the NHS covers far more than what private insurance does in the US. Furthermore, in the US we have to deal with the absurdities of deductibles, co-insurance and "out of pocket" maxes (private insurance in the US does not kick in 100% until all of these are met). So on top of high monthly premiums, you still wind up with large bills and even larger if you go to a facility that is "out of network". Also dental/eye care are most often separate insurance policies with different companies. I'd take the NHS any day over the asinine system we have here in the US.
• poulpy123 5y ago
  First you have to compare with social benefits, then you have to add the fact that European countries are usually more egalitarian than the US
• marginalia_nu 5y ago
  I earn less money, but I work 32 hours a week, have 6 weeks paid vacation, and a 5 minute commute. It's also really hard to "translate" money via exchange rates. Cost of living matters a lot. If food and housing is cheap, then the money goes a lot longer. That's also the sort of goods that the arbitrage pressure of international trade struggles to even out. Maybe if WFH becomes a big international thing, but I don't think we're quite there yet.
  • Fire-Dragon-DoL 5y ago
    Not a fair comparison, it depends on the company. You can get plenty of vacation time, good salary and full remote in the US too. (I do, although I'm located in Canada and work for US company)
  • flatiron 5y ago
    I’m 100% wfh in the US and it’s a double edged sword. I brought my daughter to the dentist yesterday at 2pm which would not have worked if I was at the office. But if I take a day and I have some calls I always get the “can you make those work on your day off?” guilt trips. I only get 15 days and probably 3-5 I get away with 0 work. Rest of them is 1-4 hours. Again it’s not terrible but it just makes it impossible to unplug (I’m looking at your slack!)
    • ctenb 5y ago
      Are you actually living in the US or in EU and working for an EU company?
      • flatiron 5y ago
        Live in US and work for US company.
• mmmmmbop 5y ago
  It all comes down to U.S. tech companies being much more successful, mainly because of the scale of the U.S. market. Any U.S. startup can immediately address a market of $21T (GDP) without any regulatory overhead or language considerations. This causes engineers to be insanely productive in terms of economic productivity. In comparison, Germany, the largest country in the EU, has a GDP of only $3.8T. It's much harder to scale across the entire EU, and even then, the entire EU market is still smaller at $15T. The second question is, why do international companies like FAANG underpay their European employees compared to their American peers? The reason for that is the prevailing market wage. Any company will pay as little they can while still getting the caliber of talent they need. Given the lower economic productivity of engineers working in local tech companies, the prevailing market wages are lower, so FAANG don't need to pay as much to get the top talent.
  • latte 5y ago
    The argument that US companies have a larger addressable market is valid, but it doesn’t seem particularly convincing. Israel’s domestic market is tiny, and most Israeli start-ups go global from day 1. Probably partly because of that, Israel’s tech salaries are generally above those in the UK, being second only to US salaries. I don’t see anything that prevents, say, a French tech company from going global from day one and unlocking the same value per engineer as Israeli companies do. Many companies based in Cyprus, Estonia or Belarus plan to go global from day one too. Also, the global market forces (i. e. the demand for engineers from US companies and the overall increased impact per engineer thanks to globalisation) are driving the salaries upwards globally. However, this effect seems to be less pronounced in the EU than it is in other countries. As an example, in Russia in the last several years engineering salaries (while remaining modest in absolute terms compared to UK / US) have become a multiple of those of other white-collar workers, making engineers quite a privileged class. However, in Western Europe, a senior engineer’s salary and a (for example) bank compliance officer’s salary are still within the same range.
    • HellDunkel 5y ago
      One reason might be that the so-called tech sector here in Europe often acts as a service provider to other, more traditional industries which in turn hinders them to build IP resulting in lower pay.
• baybal2 5y ago
  Proximity to Eastern Europe, with some Eastern European nations now being EU members.
  • rizn 5y ago
    Not sure where the stats come from, but €57k is not even that much in EE. Currently making slightly over €100k in Eastern EU state. Magic word "contracting".
    • baybal2 5y ago
      > Magic word "contracting". Contracting will make you even more money in US too
    • rl1987 5y ago
      Contracting or not, very few East European developers make six figure yearly amounts.
• ghoomketu 5y ago
  I remember when the salaries in India for a full-stack engg were in the range of $2000 / mo ($24K) and it was considered a "good" salary. We had to work on Saturdays and often Sundays. And I'm not talking of some local company, but the so-called tech leaders like Wipro. One time I was travelling with a french colleague and while I was given an economy class ticket my friend got a business class ticket on the same flight. We were doing the same work on the same project. There is so much disparity in this world :(
  • eldelshell 5y ago
    Some companies have a rule that if the extension of the business travel is longer than X you get business class. So if your French colleague came from France and then you went somewhere else together, they could've included a whole business pack for the same price as a tourist class. Not sure this is the case but FYI.
  • codegeek 5y ago
    $2000/month in India is a very good salary. Are you suggesting it is low?
    • maccolgan 5y ago
      Depending on where you are, it definitely is.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• mpfundstein 5y ago
  first of all, 57k in NL is definitly NOT top segment. thats mid level. top segment for seniors is more like 80k to 95k. thats a huge difference already! also mind that those online figures not necessarily include 8% vacation money, 13th month, 25-30 days pto and pension fund (up to 100%, usually 50%) source: i had this salary myself after 6 yrs and subsequently hired a lot of people in this segment for roughly that amount. contractors can demand even more. its not unlikely for React senior people to charge 100-120 p.h.
  • ctenb 5y ago
    That's not what I find when looking at various pay comparison websites. Do you have any references to support those numbers?
    • mpfundstein 5y ago
      pay comparision websites suck. never found them reliable. i dont have sources but as I said. i was hired for that cash and already hired multiple people for that amount myself during my tenure as Director at a boutique consultancy edit: check this: https://www.codeguild.nl/software-engineering-vacatures/?specialisaties_type=&focus_type=&technologies_type=&locaties_type=&niveaus_type=&challenge_type=&industries_type=&companies_type=&phases_type= https://www.codeguild.nl/software-engineering-vacatures/?spe... first result. java dev 93.5k second: 95k + 5% bonus
  • comprev 5y ago
    8% vacation money = 13th month. 57k in NL is low medior salary, with 80-95k being the average non-FAANG senior range, wih the exception of possibly Booking.
    • cr1895 5y ago
      > 8% vacation money = 13th month No, quite often it’s both. The holiday allowance is by law but an additional 13th month is also often paid out. Depends on the company.
• naruvimama 5y ago
  I can think of two reasons 1. Productivity - US is a large English speaking country, the mobility and productivity is great. Having a slight edge over others will make you very valuable, especially considering that many US companies are global. 2. Unionisation & socialism - At least in the Scandinavian countries my observation is that management/govt/unions holds a position that software developers should not be paid a lot more than other employees. And developers accept that, because "that is how it is down here". I pity the condition of highly qualified doctors, who after spending a decade in study/residency get only a small premium above average. And in contrast taxi drivers who started early in life own a lot more in assets.
  • axiosgunnar 5y ago
    That sounds dystopian
    • netjiro 5y ago
      > holds a position that software developers should not be paid a lot more than other employees I've seen this first hand. Was trying to help a Swedish company recruit for a new customer request. They would not budge their fixed mindset on salaries. Not even 10%. In the end they lost the contract, costing them on the order of SEK20M/y.
• fxtentacle 5y ago
  In my opinion, part-time work is much more common in the EU. Also, there is a cultural difference. If I can earn what I need to finance my lifestyle with 15 hours per week, why work more? The drive to become rich is a lot less strong in the EU because you can have health insurance and retirement money even when you're not extraordinarily wealthy. Also, living costs are quite low. 2000€ net per month is enough to feed a family and live within waking distance of supermarkets, schools, doctors. You don't need a pricey car. And lastly, most young people in the US have student loans to pay off. My university was free, so I started working with 0 debt.
  • pieno 5y ago
    I’d take this one step further: the whole system in Europe is designed to keep everyone at “average” wages across the board. Due to the (extremely steep) progressive tax system, there’s a lot of friction in (serious) pay raises. Why give someone a raise of €1,000/month when at the end of the day they will end up with less than half that? Or why would you keep working full-time if by working 4 days you only give up 10% of net pay? Your ‘hourly wage’ actually goes up. And it doesn’t stop with progressive taxation: a huge number of expenses are income-linked. So with your net pay increase of €500/month, you also start paying a lot more for child care or loose other benefits. Instead, you could start working 4 out of 5 days: 1 day less to pay for childcare, and the cost per day of the remaining 4 days also goes down because your pre-tax income went down by 20% (all while net income only reduced by 10%)). So in the end I don’t think people are getting paid less in Europe simply because taxes are higher or because there are more general benefits, but rather because there are actual systemic incentives to getting paid less. And I think this really affects typical upper-average income, where realistic incremental pay raises just aren’t really worth it for a lot of people. There’s a hurdle to reach a much higher level of income (let’s say top 10% bracket) where the increase in expenses and loss of benefits becomes insignificant (or you’ve already reached maximum levels of income-linked expenses) compared to the massively higher income level.
  • tkiolp4 5y ago
    I used to think like you when I was on my 20s. Now on my 30s, the salary I make is more than enough to life a decent life but only if I keep working until I’m 65. I don’t want to work (for others) until I’m 65. I don’t want to be rich either (too much effort), but I do want to own a house I don’t need to pay anymore when I’m 45. I want to stop working for others when I’m 45. Now this decent salary of mine is simply not enough to own a decent house in a decent place in Western Europe. Just do the math; let’s take the 2K Euro you are talking about. That’s 24K in 1 year. 240K in 10. 480K in 20. Now, 480K euro is the price of decent house in Western Europe. Let’s say you are able to save 50% of such decent salary, that means you’ll need 40 years to pay the house (I’m keeping it simple for the sake of the example: no inflation, no taxes, etc.)
• throw0101a 5y ago
  Labour compensation per hour worked was roughly the same for US, UK, DE, NL for 2019: * https://data.oecd.org/lprdty/labour-compensation-per-hour-worked.htm https://data.oecd.org/lprdty/labour-compensation-per-hour-wo... The US jumped much higher in 2020, but they've been historically very close.
• rctec 5y ago
  This is a funny question. And it's telling that European vs American is clearly unfair while Indian salaries, got example, aren't considered. Economies are faith-based.
  • ryanlol 5y ago
    This only tells us that it’s primarily Europeans taking part in the conversation.
• eldelshell 5y ago
  The main difference is that, at least in my country, my salary represents a part of what my company pays for my employment. AFAIR if I earn X my company is paying X*1.5 that goes into taxes, social security, etc. While in the US the salary is mostly given to the employee and they have to pay for all of the above. In your example, that company in NL could be paying something closer to 80k-90k which depending on the exchange rate is close to US$100.000 OTOH, we all know how some salaries are crazy high in high COL areas like SF, which I'm sure don't represent the whole of the US. I work with devs in Florida and NC that don't get pass the 6 figures.
• wedn3sday 5y ago
  I'm a software engineer that recently moved from California to Dublin, so here's my take on answering the questions (and not the dick measuring contest of US-vs-EU): * Making $1 in the US != making $1 in the EU: There are all sorts of things built into the society here that simply don't exist in the US (or Cali anyway). For example, in Cali I was absolutely required to own a car, which means paying registration and insurance and fuel costs. Here in Dublin the public transit is good enough (amazing from my standard, but don't talk to a German about it) that I can get around perfectly fine without a car. So that's something like $10k/year that I don't have to pay. * School/University: This is a big one. When I graduated from a California State school (great education, fairly cheap), I had about $25k of student loans to pay off (way on the lower end of the spectrum). I was able to pay these all off in the first couple years of professionally writing code, but someone in the EU wouldn't even have to think about that. So there's around $10k/year for the average engineers salary that just literally doesn't exist (not taking into account the stress and economic inequality caused by having a system based on giant loans to teenagers). * Childcare: Although I dont have kids, plenty of my Bay Area co-workers did, and were paying on the order of $3k/month for childcare. This is absolutely bonkers nutszo crazyness, but it's a fact of life for many in the US. Doing a quick google search tells me (I have no practical knowledge here) that childcare here in Dublin is something on the order of $250/week which although expensive is still waaaaay cheaper then what you would be paying in California. So here's another $20k/year price difference between the US and EU. Adding it all up, cost of living here is something like $50k/year cheaper then in California (without even talking about house prices), so getting paid $50k here you're going to be seeing roughly the same value as someone making $100k in Cali and although it might shock some of the hackernews crowd, <i>not all US programmers make $100k/year!</i> I havent done an in depth analysis, but if you look longitudinally across all costs, I would bet that the average software engineer in the EU is being paid in more value (not $, but life value) then the average engineer in the US, especially since people here (on average) report having much higher levels of life satisfaction, and live longer. Exercise for the reader: I have a friend that recently took a huge pay bump to move to the Washington are and work for Microsoft. He just paid $1M for a 3 bedroom house. What does $1M get you in the EU? Is he actually making more value by taking that job, or is he effectively paying microsoft for the pleasure of living in Seattle?
  • 5y ago