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Software engineer pay heatmap for Europe
- pipes 2y agoCan anyone get this to work, it shows everything as the same colour
- Insanity 2y agoWorks for me on FF. As a EU citizen who no longer lives there, in part because of the poor salaries, I can't say I'm surprised by the EU 'brain drain'. The EU published a paper on this in 2024, about how they are leaking talent because the high-talented individuals by and large don't stick around. Not just salaries, the other issue is regulation and moving slowly. EDIT, the doc I referred to: https://commission.europa.eu/document/download/97e481fd-2dc3-412d-be4c-f152a8232961_en https://commission.europa.eu/document/download/97e481fd-2dc3...
- geodel 2y agoWhere are these EU people going to?
- f1shy 2y agoIs a whole circle, people from IT and SP go to DE, from DE to CH, from CH to USA, or Australia.
- raverbashing 2y agoAustralia is really not that attractive software wise Seems to attract mostly the British and the Irish with an interest for sunnier but English speaking places
- Insanity 2y agoUS is a big one, CA maybe secondary.
- f1shy 2y agoTo add to the not-so-great salaries, there are high taxes and social fees + VAT of round 20%… OTOH, the typical/mean competence in SW seems relatively low if compared with high salaries countries. For example, as I was hiring last year, it was just impossible to get a candidate that have even heard about functional programming, or anything outside Python and C. A friend of mine was hiring EEs, and the best one he found (hold to your seat!) said an inductor is to resistors in series. There are exceptional good people, but they seem to bot be free in the market.
- adrianN 2y agoI work in Germany and my colleagues are all competent. Maybe the difference is that competent people are hired very early (before they become very competent?) and then tend to stick to the company that trained them?
- f1shy 2y agoThat is what I said. I know very competent people. But if you search for new people, is HARD to get good ones.
- ta1243 2y agoAccording to https://smartasset.com/taxes/california-tax-calculator# https://smartasset.com/taxes/california-tax-calculator# and https://listentotaxman.com/?ingr=100000 https://listentotaxman.com/?ingr=100000 Someone on £100k a year in the UK will keep £68,561 Someone on £100k a year in California will keep £69,291.73 That doesn't feel a massive difference.
- Insanity 2y agoBut earning 'only' £100k would be on the lower end in Cali.
- ta1243 2y ago"The median salary for full-time workers in California is $66,986" -- https://www.incomebyzipcode.com/california https://www.incomebyzipcode.com/california Salary difference isn't because of tax (employer NI contributions in the UK are high - £12,500 for £100k, but employer healthcare is high in the US) The assertion was that employee taxes were high in europe. Now they may be in mainland, but in the UK that's not particularly true, not at 100k range anyway. On the California median salary of $67k, in the US you keep $51,915, in the UK you keep $51,741, practically the same. At $500k, in California you'd keep $287k, in the UK $279k, so 3% difference there at the 8-times median CA wage, I'll admit that. At that salary though the employer contribution to tax in the UK is significantly higher than healthcare contribution in the US, so sure, probably around 10% difference in total. There's basically no difference in income taxes between the UK and US, that doesn't explain the massive salary difference.
- Hamuko 2y agoI'd love to make more money, but if it requires moving to the US, I am instantly much less interested. Not that I consider myself particularly high-talented.
- gspencley 2y agoIt worked for me (Brave). Shows Switzerland as the highest paying (if I had to guess it's due to the financial sector there) with the UK following close behind. Was happy to see Iceland relatively up there, I've heard there's a strong tech sector in Reykjavik and my wife and I are in love with the country and have entertained hypothetical discussions about relocating there (from Canada), even if temporary.
- tobltobs 2y agoI don't think it is only because the financial sector pays more than average. They don't reach the pay level of FAANG companies having their R&D in Switzerland. Also be assured that this level is only reached in Zurich.
- f1shy 2y agoAnd there, after rent and utilities, I do not think is much difference.
- gunnihinn 2y agoI think the Icelandic data is a bit skewed upwards. It’s showing senior and principal level salaries in large companies, most “normal” devs earn maybe 70% of that.
- f1shy 2y agoSwitzerland has high salaries because of the high cost of living. I would like to see aap adjusted by cost of living.
- fsckboy 2y agoyes, definitely needs to be adjusted for COE. >high salaries because of the high cost of living high salaries will cause high cost of living more than high cost of living will require high salaries (because those jobs could just move away (except for those jobs that can't move away because they are needed to support industries with high pay))
- f1shy 2y agoWorks for me in safari.
- Cumpiler69 2y agoTake care, if some numbers seem a bit high, it's because the median pay here is only based on those who submitted their data to levels.fyi which tends to be mostly FAANGs and big-tech it seems therefore skewing some numbers really high, not based on national statistics for SW jobs of each country which would also include all of of mom and pop shops, bringing the numbers down to realistic levels.
- vinni2 2y agoThat’s what I thought these are pretty high numbers.
- serpix 2y agoReally? Even if they're accurate I feel like I should be going to Switzerland asap.
- f1shy 2y agoAs I commented elsewhere: when you see how much the rent for a small apartment is, and prices in the supermarkets, you may change options.
- Temporary_31337 2y agoThe pay in Switzerland is because of cost of living, mostly food, apartments.
- wffurr 2y agoI'd like to see a version of this in PPP for that reason. Or adjusted by median rents.
- Leherenn 2y agoThey're from levels.fyi, and if you look at Switzerland, something like 20% of all salaries are from Google employees. 100-110k is probably a better number. I kinda disagree with other posters, even after CoL adjustments you're way ahead in Switzerland, especially given the usually low taxes. RE is totally unaffordable though, the rest is fine.
- newbie578 2y agoIt is so disheartening to see Europe's tech industry flounder so much. Living in Europe and then seeing how the salary gap with the USA is just increasing is flat out demoralising. However I do not see a way out until salaries start increasing.
- hk1337 2y agoFrom what I understand, a lot of the pay gap is the result of European workers getting more things taken care of that are not tied to their employer or employment. i.e. healthcare The salary is less than U.S. but their actual take home pay may be more.
- Kkoala 2y agoOf course, it depends on your situation, but even taking that into account the gap is usually still quite massive
- mantas 2y agoBoth pre-tax and take-home are lower in europe. Difference is lower than it looks at first sight. But it's still there. Eastern europe is doing pretty good though. Salaries are very close to western part, but cost of living is waaaay lower.
- syndicatedjelly 2y agoThe salary is less than U.S. but their actual take home pay may be more. Unless the social services in Europe are worth $50-100k/year more than in America there is just no way this is true. That’s around $4-8k/month. I’d expect transit and public attractions to be free across Europe at that price (they’re not). Healthcare is another matter…do Europeans feels like they get $50k+ of healthcare coverage a year on average? That would be about $4 million in a lifetime A comment earlier said that the average senior software engineer salary at a large UK firm was 62k pounds per year. Even adjusting for PPP that’s about half of what a senior swe in a MCOL city in America can expect to make. Also, contrary to popular belief, we have health insurance in America, with max deductibles. As in, after a certain amount (usually in the 4 digits), all healthcare costs are covered by insurance
- kolme 2y agoThe "zones" are way too big. For example working in west Germany is quite different to working in east Germany. The same goes for north and south Spain, north and south Italy, and so on.
- zuhayeer 2y agoWe plan to work on city / region granularity and additional zoom levels. We just released this to gauge interest before going further.
- thamer 2y agoIt's not just by region, but at the city level too. There are often significant differences between salaries in capital cities vs others, as one would expect. The cost of living is different, larger companies in major population centers have more capital, etc.
- thmsths 2y agoAm I missing a setting or is it just a per country map? When I read heatmap in the title I was expecting the data to be way more granular.
- davb 2y agoYeah, having the whole of the UK being one colour is pretty useless, given the huge disparity in wages and cost of living between central London and the rest of the UK.
- rantallion 2y agoThey didn't even manage to get the UK right. Apparently whoever made this map doesn't know that the UK is the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" and that Éire is only the bottom bit. I wonder how that skews the figures. Are folk in NI paid more in line with GB or with Éire? I'm sure currency comes into play too, what with Éire using the euro.
- ta1243 2y agoNI is poorly paid. the UK as a whole is poorly paid outside of London and maybe Oxford/Cambridge and a couple of other industry specific areas. I suspect Ireland also has the same problem, with the higher salaries being Dublin only.
- lucianbr 2y agoAre the numbers before taxes or after? Incredibly, I can not find this information on the site.
- zuhayeer 2y agoThe data is gross total compensation.
- hankchinaski 2y agoItaly where I am from is so fucked
- b212 2y agoOne of my fav countries in the world. I visit it multiple times a year and I can confirm. Nothing has changed in Italy since 2008. At least not for the better. And with one of the oldest populations… It will only get worse.
- rich_sasha 2y agoI'm surprised to see Poland ahead of so many richer countries, like France, Italy, Spain and Portugal. CoL is also almost certainly lower in Poland. Polish SEs are very good, that's not my point! Rather, I am surprised Polish salaries caught up and exceeded many Western European economies on a national basis, and more so adjusted for CoL.
- gpderetta 2y agoI know of Italian SEs moving to Poland for better salaries.
- b212 2y agoItaly? Portugal? You must be new to tech, eh? Policemen in Italy make many times more than software engineers. DocPlanner has opened an office in Barcelona over 10 years ago to save on dev salaries, people got paid more in Warsaw even back then. Portugal is kinda dead as a country. What I found more fascinating is that Poland surpassed Sweden, not a tech powerhouse for sure but it’s Scandinavia, super freaking expensive.
- me_me_me 2y agoPressure, with a remote work as a threat to supply the wages in this sector must be competitive, though there are known bad companies that keep the wages down preying on the loyal employee trope and brand name