[eaenki]

In Zurich, Geneva, Oslo and Rejkavik, you can also get a job that pays that much at a software/financial company/startup (and healthcare it's much cheaper/included in taxes).

In the US, that kind of salary it's common only in the Silicon Valley and NY.

[arcanus]

> In the US, that kind of salary it's common only in the Silicon Valley and NY.

I don't agree with that statement. The title relates to six figure incomes, which are certainly quite common in all the tech hubs: Seattle, Austin, Denver, San Diego, etc.

You certainly have to be in a major city, and ideally one with large software companies.

[vanadium]

I know more than a couple of good front-end developers that work remotely from rural locales for big-city companies laying down 135k-140k USD salaries.

I also know directors in other companies in said big cities making only 10k more than that, on-site.

I'd say you can read a lot from the general trends, but there are plenty of cases in either position or negative direction.

[Bucephalus355]

I’m in Austin, Texas. I’m 26, graduated with a BA in Sociology, and make $140,000 as an AWS Engineer.

There’s tons of money in engineering in the United States, but I would say it has come with a cost. The only reason so much money has been able to be plowed into software and hardware was because of financial products developed by Wall Street since the 1970’s. Obviously we’ve seen great results in software and hardware, but all the recent financial busts have shown there is no free lunch...

[chrisco255]

Financial products? Fintech is but a small portion of the overall software industry. Neither Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, nor Amazon specialize in fintech, and the big 5 are as much a driver of high salaries as anything else. We get paid highly because, while software is expensive to build, it's basically free to distribute and so you have huge economies of scale where sometimes as few as 50 employees can make a multi-billion dollar product. And also, because software is hard to do well and there is so much platform explosion.

[Bucephalus355]

“Financial Products” as in online trading, convertible stock, debt securities, etc that made it easier for investors to invest in things like Google, Apple, etc.

Perhaps the biggest example is the 401k, which shifted huge funds towards Wall Street. It’s not fintech, but just an example of a new type of product.

I hope that explains better than my original post.

[victords]

Reykjavik, really?

How come a city in a country of 300,000 people pay as much as $100k USD for a SWE?

Do you have any data to back it up? I did a quick look at Glassdoor and it's far from that.

[bausshf]

According to data it's only $80k for a software engineer.

https://teleport.org/cities/reykjavik/salaries/

[passiveincomelg]

I was thinking the same. Oslo also seemed incredibly low when I did some research. In both cities you can easily spend $30 on one dish in a regular restaurant.

[kasey_junk]

Chicago has tons of jobs above that salary mark.

I’ve seen jobs listed above that routinely in Indianapolis, Minneapolis & Columbus. Talked to a recruiter the other day for a job in Nashville that paid above 100k.

These are all front line Midwest towns. Get into the sunbelt and you’ll see even more cities where those wages are common.

[vonseel]

How hard is it to do this if I only speak English?

I have family in Norway and attended part of a Master's program in Switzerland, but left because the job prospects in Zurich did not look good without German fluency. This was not in technology, though.

[mordaroso]

I live in Switzerland and was working as a SWE at a Swiss company only speaking English. It's actually quite common - especially in Zürich.