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by atmosx 3219 days ago
I am European and live in Europe but I've always been paid in USD and my salary is negotiated in USD, so I am not sure what parent means or why does currency matter.
1 comments

Well currency matters if you want to compare all answers.

Also, the question specifically says "in €, otherwise specify" (edit: ok, I see it was added later).

It's weird that you are paid in USD in Europe, isn't it? How comes?

A lot of US companies tend to pay in USD regardless of locale when hiring remote.
That would suck so much, taking a 30% paycut just in the past 7 months due to this.
According the ECB[1] data on 24 Jan 2017 the exchange rate was 1 EUR = 1.0514 USD and today is 1 EUR = 1.1806 USD so we have:

    (1.1806-1.0748)/1.0748 = 0.0984 => 0.0984 * 100 = 9.84% 
How exactly did you manage to lose 30%?

[1] https://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/policy_and_exchange_rates/eu...

Then take another time span, but the currency fluctuations are so large that it becomes the largest factor to how much you actually take home.

I definitely wouldn't want that.

(I misremembered which currency fell 30% against the Euro, it was the pound instead)

It would also suck for the company to have payroll costs increase 30% because one of their remote devs happens to live in another country :)
The company can always re-negotiate, but a 30% paycut might mean you can’t afford your rent or mortgage anymore.
WWCD for UK people though, huge payrise in GBP if you're paid in USD
First clients were based in the US. So it started from there.

Then I wanted to use a reserve currency[1] and I happen to have strong opinions on currencies, policies (FED, ECB, etc.), so I opted for the safest bet in the long run.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_currency#Global_curren...