[ChuckNorris89]

This blows my mind that in the US one can make such insane money in tech while still being a slacker and retire early with a dream house bought and paid for while in Europe devs are slaving away through SCRUM powered meat grinders burning themselves out for a 3% salary increase on a pitiful 40-80k/year, no stock options, without any hope of early retirement or owning a decent home without a 30 year loan or financial assistance from their parents.

You guys don't know how good you have it. The behavior of slacker Googlers described here would have gotten them instantly fired in any European company(yes, the "you can't fire people in Europe" is just a meme).

Reading OPs problem and some posts here where people are too bored of making ludicrous money left me with a bitter aftertaste that life really is unfair and success in life is more linked to the lottery of birth and opportunities available to you than any amount of hard work. Not hating, just saying.

Good luck to you guys and hope you find a calling for a fulfilling job or a hobby that gives you meaning or purpose in life.

[jedberg]

> This blows my mind that in the US one can make such insane money in tech while still being a slacker and retire early with a dream house bought and paid for

Don't feel too bad. As far as I know, only Google and Apple lets you get away with this kind of slacking. Facebook, Amazon, and Netflix certainly don't.

Also, SWE out of college definitely aren't making enough to buy much more than a condo.

That being said, you're still right. I go to a lot of international software conferences, and I when I talk to devs about their work, they are just as smart, passionate, and hard working as the people I've talked to here in the states, but they are getting paid a lot less.

I read a salary report in South Africa and they asked me what I thought, and my first thought was, "You guys need to get paid a lot more".

I hope that with the rise of remote work, this evens out.

[throwaway8291]

The max I negotiated in Europe was $125000, an ok start up salary was maybe $80000 and I am currently - with lots of non-money benefits at around $70000.

What makes me most sad is that fostering the web tracking industry - tech + marketing - is so lucrative. I have such a hard time understanding this world - it does not make much sense any more. This lying and scheming around collecting all your data and activity for the next VC funded ad playground.

And I'm kind of irritated, how people can spend their lives working for mostly investors, who benefit much more than every (even well paid) gear in the machine.

Aren't we as a society smart enough to start treating humans with a bit more respect and not just seeing them as wetware to extract value?

[chii]

> fostering the web tracking industry

because consumers don't want to pay for anything. It's easier to extract private data, and sell that to a corporation for a lot of money, than to extract a small premium from each user (which is like squeezing blood from stone).

[JohnBooty]

Yep. This battle was lost way, way back in the 90s when we collectively decided that everything on the Internet should be free.

I think it's one of the great lost opportunities in human history.

I don't know what the "correct" course of action would have been, instead of making everything ad-supported and mostly terrible. Some kind of very very seamless micropayments? Maybe there was no "correct choice." Maybe "free, but awful" always would have won no matter the alternative.

But man, this outcome sucks. The internet turned out to be just one more way to squirt advertisements into our eyeballs.

[gpvos]

Micropayments were tried, or at least planned, almost right from the beginning of the web, but no one found a way to make them catch on.

See error code 402 in the HTTP spec: https://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html#sec1...

[swyx]

marc andreesen refers to this as “the original sin of the internet” https://podcastnotes.org/2019/08/31/andreessen-crypto/

[dev-ns8]

I think you could argue that this very battle was lost far before the 90s... Advertisers and marketers have been exploiting and targeting the mediums in which most consumers paid their attention too long before the Internet was around. Inevitably the Internet was going to have ads seep in because it garnered the majority of consumer attention

[neuronic]

Watch VR when it (or rather if) it takes off. Then ads will truly be squeezed into our eyeballs in the most literal sense.

[JohnBooty]

It's never taking off on the scale of the internet itself.

It just doesn't pass any kind of common-sense test. People don't really want to spend large portions of their lives wearing goofy headsets, seeing things nobody else can see. Even if (when) we shrink the screens down to the size and weight of regular eyeglasses, I don't see it. It is not compatible with anything else... you have to completely cease all other activities and utterly devote yourself to your VR experience, sealing yourself off from the world.

VR definitely delivers a pretty awesome experience when done well, don't get me wrong. I think it will hang around and have its fans. But, game-changer? Never.

[sqrt17]

Brave Browser has micropayments for exactly this Ads-vs-Micropayments rationale

[badpun]

> The max I negotiated in Europe was $125000, an ok start up salary was maybe $80000 and I am currently - with lots of non-money benefits at around $70000.

I'm currently at $160k (as a contractor, assuming 5 weeks of per year). Could have had more, but I'm currently in low cost of living country (former soviet block), so any move would be offset by increase in taxes and costs of living.

You can make good money in Europe, it's probably just harder here than in the US.

[ZuckMuckerberg]

Datapoint: I'm currently making £145K a year in the British office of a FAANG company as an E4 engineer 2½ years after graduating college.

I'm able to work 10–18 most days, but I do have to have some results eventually. I know of people in this office who got dismissed for not having good enough impact.

[aynyc]

10-18 hours a week or 10AM - 6PM work schedule?

[ZuckMuckerberg]

10am–6pm work schedule. That's ~7 hours of work with ~1 hour of lunch.

[pete762]

Can I ask what you do (and where)? That's absolutely insane money for former soviet states, probably equivalent of >>1 mil in the bay area.

[badpun]

Poland, big data developer and architect for a multinational finance company, that's offshored some of its IT to Poland.

For them, $160k is for sure more than they've intended to pay when they opened offices here, but there are just no qualified people who would do that for less (as qualified people f off to London, Switzerland etc. and get paid even more), so in the end they hire me and people like me. We're still cheaper than equivalent talent in company's home country.

[snak]

Europe? Could you specify country?

[baby]

That's a huge salary for Europe, where probably the highest paychecks are in London. I'd say it's probably a large US company, and OP is probably very senior.

[throwaway8291]

Germany.

[joelbluminator]

You are looking at the elite of the elites. How many developers work for google in silicon valley? I am sure there are developers in Ohaio that get paid non stellar salaries, also have a mortgage and by the time they are 45 they worry about the future a lot. On Average yes the German developer makes less but probably has better job security , work life balance etc. You make it out as if American developers live a stress free life

[tommit]

I agree. Clearly, not every dev in the US works for Apple or Google. Plus, simply comparing the raw income is flawed as well. I agree with your assumption that overall, German developers have better job security and most definitely the work life balance aspect. I'm a developer myself and I don't know anyone around me who regularly does more than a 40h week. This is excluding those that have started their own company and the occasional deadline of course. Not to mention that our cost of living is definitely not as inflated as it is in SV.

[Bahamut]

Slacking in Apple? From what I've seen, Apple engineers probably amongst the hardest of the FAANG - probably less so than Amazon if I had to guess, but I know my Google, FB, and Netflix friends do not work nearly as hard.

[jedberg]

It probably depends on the team. I know some that work really hard, but I know others who really coast along, even more than at Google.

[djcapelis]

For the engineers who want to have an impact on stuff, if you’re skilled and your ideas are good and you can convince others about that, you can be given as much impact as you can eat. There’s a huge spectrum of how much impact people opt to go for. Apple is a good place to come if you want to change something about how a billion people use some technology. And generally Apple is cool with people shipping those ideas in as quick a product cycle as they can figure out how to get it done. I’ve seen multiple colleagues take something from idea to keynote (or shipping, keynote is just the most visible way in which that happens) in 12 months or less, within the first year or two of arriving. Some of my colleagues do this yearly. You probably don’t get to do that coasting, so it’s up to you.

If you want to coast, you generally don’t work on teams that ship new product. Apple’s a big place. There’s totally teams that are good fits for people who want to have less direct product impact and be off the critical path, but I wouldn’t say that’s the common case.

The best analogy I’ve heard is that working at Apple is a pie eating contest.

And the reward is—more pie.

Each person has different feelings about how much pie they want to eat.

[jedberg]

Right, to be clear what I'm not saying is that all Apple engineers are slackers -- far from it.

Just that from what I can tell talking to many FAANG workers (and working with a bunch of them who came from other FAANGS), Apple seems to be the easiest place to get away with slacking if you want to, Google also being an easy place to do it.

It's why most of the people I worked with left those places -- they got tired of the slackers.

I've never met anyone who talks about how ease it is to slack off at Facebook or Amazon. And I never saw anyone get away with slacking at Netflix.

[djcapelis]

Totally get you weren’t applying the same brush to everyone!

> Apple seems to be the easiest place to get away with slacking if you want to

You are the first person I’ve heard this one from! I’m almost pleased to see some balance? I worry we have the reputation of being too grindy too often!

I think this can be very org dependent. I wonder if most of the people you know are clustered in a specific part.

> I've never met anyone who talks about how ease it is to slack off at Facebook or Amazon.

Weird. I have. We seem to have very different experiences.

Also whenever I’ve talked to people who work inside Facebook I just. I just couldn’t. I’m certain I’d go stark raving depressed so quickly there. The froyo on campus is nice though.

[daniel_reetz]

I worked at Apple. I saw all kinds of things, but never slacking. Quite the opposite.

[thedaemon]

https://www.faang.org/

Acronyms really need to be phased out, as I highly doubt you mean Functional Annotation of Animal Genomes. I'm guessing it's the 2nd result?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook,_Apple,_Amazon,_Netfl...

[MiroF]

you must be new here

[thedaemon]

I'm just horrible with acronyms because I work in IT and the health industry, previous the security industry. They all have acronyms and the same acronyms. So they all mean different things to different people. Acronyms are a lazy person writing and you have to be "in the know" to know what they stand for. 100 years from now, no one will be able to understand them.

[MiroF]

"communicate so that everything you say can be understood 100 years from now" seems like a terrible standard to hold conversation to.

What is "IT", by the way?

[ajcodez]

Facebook hires tons of zero passion 10am-4pm engineers. It might not be deliberate slacking but it’s definitely not hard working.

[madhadron]

"Zero passion 10am-4pm" doesn't necessarily describe not working hard. You can only do three to five hours of sustainable deep work a day unless you're a freak of nature. Usually anyone saying they do more just pads it out with breaks on Hacker News or Facebook, or has failed to automate the repetitive work in their job. A focused, organized engineer can pretty well exhaust their sustainable capacity plus do their overhead in 10am-4pm. As for zero passion, why do you need passion? And what does it have to do with not slacking?

Facebook makes you demonstrate your impact to the company twice a year. You would be hard pressed to be a slacker long term there.

The work does appear different because at that scale you spend a lot of time tracing out what's there, figuring out context, and trying to figure out how to make a change without bringing down everything else. If you're used to a small company or a small codebase where you spend most of your time writing new code it seems less productive, but it's mostly just different.

[ajcodez]

Slacking means doing the minimum required to get by. It doesn’t mean doing nothing and getting fired. I was replying to the parent comment idea that engineers at Facebook work hard because in my experience they do not. Which is fine. Slacking in many ways is optimal.

[ineedasername]

Yes, passion and slacking are not mutually exclusive. I am very passionate about the industry I'm in and the importance of the type of work I do, but....

[throwaway8291]

I met two FB engineers a few years back. They seemed average, at most. But one quality stuck out (we spent half a day together at an event): They seemed to be excellent at following company rules.

[bitL]

That's what top schools teach you - conform 100% to the assignment requirements or there is no A/A+ for you. Also, most companies "get what they measure", so figuring out which metrics are visible and preferred is the way to go in large corps.

[eric_cc]

What does 10-4 have to do with anything? If you don't have significant equity, putting in more hours on a daily basis just makes you a tool in my opinion. There is more to life..

[ThrowAwayZuck99]

I'm not sure which team you are talking about because many people here in Ads are working 9-9-6.

[madhadron]

And many people in ads are certainly not working that schedule, and discourage those around them from doing so since it slows everything down long term.

[52-6F-62]

“The best minds of my generation...”

[lame88]

...are probably working in a particle acceleration lab or something. I know the quote.

[bdowling]

> I know the quote.

The quote is from “Howl” by Allen Ginsburg, a poem about burnout (among other things). That’s applicable to a report of people working a 9-9-6 schedule, a recipe for burnout.

[Infinitesimus]

Is it the performance review cycle pressure promoting such hours? That's firmly in the burnout territory even with high (500k+) comp...

[schwabacher]

Are you? If so, why?

[nfRfqX5n]

what if they're hard working + highly efficient?

[narrator]

Be like a friend of mine in Argentina who works remote on U.S jobs. He's from the U.S and moved there, so he speaks perfect English, and Spanish but he make enough in a month to live for the whole year. He bought a house, has a nice smart girlfriend much younger than him. He's doing very well.

[OOPMan]

Yeah...as someone who recently relocated from a third-world country (South Africa) to a first-world country (Canada) I'm just going to go ahead and tell you that while the costs of living and property in third-world countries sound great there are a lot of negatives that don't make up for it.

[keiferski]

Argentina is not a third world country.

[dx034]

Neither is South Africa. Their standard of living (in the right areas) is probably comparable.

[stickfigure]

Hmmmm. The murder rate in Argentina is 5.1/1000, lower than the United States. South Africa's is 35.9/1000, making it the 9th highest in the world.

"I'd love to retire to South Africa but I'm allergic to something in the air - bullets."

[Galanwe]

> in Europe devs are slaving away through SCRUM powered meat grinders burning themselves out for a 3% salary increase on a pitiful 40-80k/year

There is so much wrong in this sentence.

First, there is no more “meat grinders” in the US than in Europe. I worked at Microsoft and Criteo in Europe, and the slacking there seems to be on par with what OP describes.

You mention 40/80k per year being pitiful? This kind of remuneration puts you in the top 10%/5% of France population easily. If your partner manages the same level of salary, you should be even better in the top.

> no stock options, without any hope of early retirement

You are dreaming. The kind of stock options you get in big tech companies is not what you think. You can expect some hundreds/thousands dollars per year, that need 3/5 year to vest until you can have them in full. European companies would traditionally prefer to give a bit of extra money rather than stock options.

> early retirement

....

> owning a decent home without a 30 year loan

What are you talking about... you earn 40/80k per year. The mortgage rates in France at the moment are amongst the best in the world. You should be able to get a loan at 1% for ~500k for 15 or 30 years without any problem.

Also, please, bear in mind that you cannot directly compare US and EU salaries. Your 80k€ gross in e.g. France should be the equivalent of $150k for a US worker; if you account for the same level of medical care and retirement savings. Not much of a difference after you realise this.

[rayiner]

> Also, please, bear in mind that you cannot directly compare US and EU salaries. Your 80k€ gross in e.g. France should be the equivalent of $150k for a US worker; if you account for the same level of medical care and retirement savings. Not much of a difference after you realise this.

What makes you think that? As to retirement savings, American retirement payments replace 70% of working income on average, versus 60% in France: https://www.etk.fi/wp-content/uploads/PaG2017EN.jpg. The US retirement system is one of the better ones in the OECD. Like the U.K., Germany, Netherlands, and Sweden, the U.S. has a two-pillar system, with a public pillar and a defined contribution (i.e. 401k) pillar. The public system alone pays out about as much in absolute terms as in France. (60% of French pre-retirement income ~= 40% of US per-retirement income.) Adding in the tax-advantaged defined-contribution component (but excluding other private investment income) makes the total income replacement one of the highest in the OECD.

Of course, at the end of the day, a programmer is going to be a “net contributor” to the retirement system in both countries. The French person will pay (percentage wise) much higher social insurance tax to get a bigger (percentage wise) public pension check, while the American person will make a 401k contribution plus a lower social insurance tax. At the end of the day, that doesn’t have any effect on the comparison of 80k euros being less than $150k, because retirement savings will come out of both numbers.

As to healthcare, programmers are going to be among the 65% of American workers who get healthcare through their employer. That means that, on top of their salary, they get additional compensation in the form of employer-paid healthcare premiums. Meanwhile, the French person will pay for healthcare in the form of higher taxes out of that 80k euros. Although Americans spend twice as much on healthcare as French, that isn’t relevant to this comparison, because for the American the additional part is paid by the employer on top of the $150k. It’s not something you subtract out. (Put differently, the 80k euros versus 150k comparison understates the difference, because the American salary includes $10-15k in additional health benefits.)

Finally, cost of living is about the same in France as in the US.

[Galanwe]

You are completely missing the point here. Not only are you trying to argue against things that I did not say, but you are also comparing things that cannot. What Europeans call "gross" salary is NOT what Americans call "gross" salary. And you are mixing them together, which is exactly what my comment was trying to prevent.

> the comparison of 80k euros being less than $150k, because retirement savings will come out of both numbers.

No, the 80k remuneration is AFTER half the retirement contribution.

> the French person will pay for healthcare in the form of higher taxes out of that 80k euros

No, most of the healthcare is actually in the employer part, which is already removed from these 80k.

In Europe, what people call "gross" is the employee part of the income. This part already had the employer part removed, which contains a part of medical care and retirement. In US, especially with 401k, the employer part is pretty much non existent until the employee triggers a contribution.

What it means is that on the 80k that a European will call his "gross" salary, he will in fact have been paid around 140k, with 60k going to his mandatory retirement/medical care for the employer contribution. The taxes left on the 80k are only the employee part.

People in Europe usually don't add up the employer contribution part into account in what they call their "gross" salary because it's a mandatory part and often not displayed on the payslips.

This is not how it works in the US. The $150k that employees refer to as their "gross" income did not had the employer contribution deducted yet.

I am not _at all_ trying to compare the retirement system of US versus EU, or saying that one is better or not or whatever. All I'm saying is EU gross is not comparable to US gross, as these numbers do NOT contain the same deductions.

In your post, you are _consistently_ mixing the two gross numbers together, which is very wrong.

[rayiner]

In both countries, there is an employer contribution and an employee contribution. In both countries, “gross” income excludes the employer contribution. In the US, it also excludes employer-paid health insurance premiums. In France, it excludes the employer-paid health insurance tax.

As to the precise mix, I don’t think it’s accurate to say that more will be paid by the employer in Europe. In both countries, medical is paid mostly by the employer, and deducted before the $150k/80k euro number. Both countries have a similar employee-paid social security rate (6-7%). As explained above, the base Social Security payment will return as much in absolute terms as the French retirement system. Any 401k you contribute to will return a lot more in retirement than what you would receive in France.

[Galanwe]

You are mistaken, because you do not take into account the whole contributions that are deducted between gross and super-gross. Medical care is just one of them and it adds up to WAY more than 8%.

Here is a break down of what that would look like for a French employee:

(1) Starting with a super gross of 130k EUR / year ($145k):

- Deduct retirement contribution

- Deduct health care contribution

- Deduct family contribution

- Deduct public housing contribution

- Deduct unemployment contribution

- Deduct professional disease contribution

- Deduct employee formation contribution

- Deduct elderly contribution

- Some other contributions

(2) You end up with a gross salary of ~80k EUR / year ($90k):

- Deduct employee contribution to all the above

(3) You end up with a net salary of ~50k / year ($55k).

You can do the computation yourself from the calculator on the french government website:

https://www.economie.gouv.fr/entreprises/simulateur-cout-emb...

[rayiner]

The same thing is true of the United States as well. The $150k salary is going to be after:

1) Retirement contribution 2) Medicare/health insurance contribution 3) Unemployment insurance contribution

At the $150k salary level, the following will also be provided as benefits before the $150k:

4) Short and long term disability insurance 5) Family leave

A gross salary of $150k is going to be more like $175k including those taxes and costs.

In California, on a salary of $150k, the net paycheck will be like $90-95k, or $80-85k if you max out your 401k contribution. (If you do that, your retirement benefits will be much more than you would receive in France.)

[pingyong]

Hmm, this is certainly interesting, but if I do the calculation for Germany for example, 80,000€ "gross" income comes out to a cost of about 96,600€.

https://www.nettolohn.de/rechner/gehaltsrechner-fuer-arbeitg...

Certainly relevant, but there's still a decent gap between 96,600€ ($108,165) and $150,000.

[Galanwe]

I admit I did the computation 80kE ~= $150k from the top of my head, it’s not super accurate and will depend on countries and the status of the employee (different status imply different employer deductions).

In France for instance, people will insist on having the “cadre” status, which require more employer contribution and also has implications on how their liabilities toward the company are judged. This should raise the bar to $150k.

Edit:

I did the computation for France and end up with 130k EUR super gross for a 80k EUR gross. So that would be an equivalent of $145k. Not far from my guess.

I used the french government calculator to compute the exact values: https://www.economie.gouv.fr/entreprises/simulateur-cout-emb...

[mkohlmyr]

I don't know anyone who calls take-home (net) pay gross salary in Europe. I have lived and worked in multiple countries.

And the actual gross is definitely displayed on the payslips.

[jhrmnn]

Let me try to reformulate OP's comment. In many European countries, there are three deduction levels: (1) the net salary, after all taxes and health and social care deductions, (2) the gross salary, after all mandatory employer contributions to the health and social care systems (3) the total cost of an employee to the employer (the English equivalent of the term used in Czechia would be "super-gross" salary). OP's point was that first, in the EU, there is often a big difference between (2) and (3), whereas they are very close or equal in the US, and second, gross salary usually refers to (2) in the EU and to (3) in the US.

That said, I don't think that the difference between (2) and (3) is as big as suggested by the OP even in the EU, at least in the countries that I'm familiar with.

[dragonwriter]

Gross salary usually refers to #2 in the US, to, and, contrary to the upthread suggestion, just as in Europe, there is an “employer portion” (which in the US includes some of retirement and retirement healthcare, but not current healthcare—that is, specifically, federally half of the tax for Social Security and Medicare,—plus, a portion of the cost of federal and state unemployment insurance) which is not included in gross salary because it is paid out of employer taxes rather than employee taxes. There are also sometimes employer-provided benefits that while part of total compensation are not part of gross salary , and may or may not be part of taxable income; some portion of employer-provided healthcare cost is frequently part of this, and, though this is almost entirely a public-sector concern now, some portion of employer pension costs also frequently would be part of this, where a pension exists at all (adding these employer taxes and benefits to gross salary isn't the total cost to the employer of the employee either, as there is overhead and other employer costs for employment that that still excludes.)

It is true that the spread between #2 and #3 (when limited only to the required taxes and any benefits not part of salary, which seems to be the intention) is typically greater in Europe than the US, as the supported social services are greater.

[Galanwe]

> I don't know anyone who calls take-home (net) pay gross salary in Europe. I have lived and worked in multiple countries.

That is not what I am saying...

There are basically 3 stages of income in Europe: employer gross -> employee gross -> employee net.

Most Europeans refer to employee gross as simply “gross”. There are still the employee contribution part to be deducted before the net, but the whole employer contribution has completely been removed already.

Payslips as well as employment contracts usually display the employee gross. That is why the real total compensation including the employer contribution is rarely displayed anywhere in Europe and people forget about it, thus creating the incompréhension of this whole comment thread, where people compare incomparable incomes.

[mkohlmyr]

Yeah fair enough then, that's true - misunderstood your comment.

[genS3]

I totally agree. Having lived through both systems and countries with similar salaries than the one you mention. France is a scam. Europe is a scam. Companie are not entitled to anything they make you either enter some traditional companies with very little benefits (definitly no 401k, discounted movie tickets at best) or they make you enter startup world giving you shitting fictional "stocks" that definitely won't make you a millionaire even if the company hits a multi-billion dollar valuation. You know what else? people managing, doing PM, all the soft skills jobs are better paid in france than dev jobs and better viewed overall. unlike in USA where people pay for the technical skills, engineers compensations in europe are low. somehow we still an old country dominated by old money and the rule that only the elites can get chunks of the companies even tho they are not the one slaving. There are a few exceptions to this but those companies moved their HQ and their core in USA to get away from all this BS. such as Datadog or even Docker. oh and regarding price of accomodation paris is much more expensive than NYC. new york not being only manhattan and brooklyn for people who like to compare even modern apartments in LIC sell for half of what a 200year old apartment would sell in paris.

[grugagag]

It's curious that you say that, I searched for comparisons between New York and Paris[0],[1] and NY comes on top. Are this inaccurate? I'm genuinely curious

[0]:https://www.expatica.com/fr/housing/buying/buying-property-i... [1]:https://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/comparison/paris/n...

[genS3]

Have a look I picked similar sized appartments 44sqm: LIC (10min ride from midtown) for 600k$ a : https://streeteasy.com/building/5th-street-lofts-5sl/6d

PARIS 15 (family neighboorhood - the furthest one from the city center - 20min) for 600k$: https://www.seloger.com/annonces/achat/appartement/paris-15e...

and I can find much much cheaper in Queens if I move 10min further in something older.

[pedrosorio]

> The kind of stock options you get in big tech companies is not what you think. You can expect some hundreds/thousands dollars per year, that need 3/5 year to vest until you can have them in full.

Did you mean tens/hundreds of thousands per year? Vesting monthly or quarterly? Because that's what "big tech companies" pay just in stocks in the Bay Area.

https://www.levels.fyi/

[christophilus]

> Your 80k€ gross in e.g. France should be the equivalent of $150k for a US worker

I hear this a lot, but if you're earning $150K in the US, you almost certainly have 100% medical coverage. At least, I do, and everyone I know does. The US medical system is broken, but it's OK for high-income earners. It's the low-to-middle income folks who are really hurt by it.

> retirement savings

Again, if you're earning $150K in the US, you probably have a nice 401K and stock options. If you're smart with your money, you can probably retire in 10 years. Again, anecdotal, but I know many who've done just that.

[tstrimple]

> I hear this a lot, but if you're earning $150K in the US, you almost certainly have 100% medical coverage.

I'm not sure how true this is anymore. I made a bit more than this at Microsoft, and my medical benefits were "100% covered" by Microsoft. But that still amounts to thousands of dollars in deductibles and copays per year out of pocket.

[christophilus]

I worked at Microsoft, and didn't have that experience. Maybe it changed? When were you there?

[tstrimple]

I was there from 2013 to 2019. I remember right after I joined in 2013 they stopped offering their PPO plan and moved everyone into an HDHP.

[christophilus]

Ah. Yeah. I left right around then. :) That explains it. Still, everywhere I've worked since MS has given me 100% coverage, albeit sometimes indirectly (e.g. via a company funded HSA plan, etc).

[Galanwe]

Just to be clear, I don't want to enter any kind of comparison between EU and US pension/medical systems here!

All I'm saying, is that contribution to e.g. a 401k will be done after the $150k (even though the employer will contribute with e.g. 1:1 ratio).

Whereas in EU the retirement contribution is already done before the 80k euro. Actually, MANY other contributions will happen before that 80k EUR.

Thus, you cannot compare _directly_ EU and US salaries, you need to adjust for a rough estimate of everything that was already deducted from the EU 80k!

This is why I mention that it is more _fair_ to compare EU super-gross against US gross, because both are expressed before the heavy medical/unemployment/retirement contributions.

[xyzzyz]

Whereas in EU the retirement contribution is already done before the 80k euro. Actually, MANY other contributions will happen before that 80k EUR.

Exactly same thing is true in the US. 401k is on top of Social Security retirement benefits. Employees pay 6.2% of their salary (up to $127,000 cap) into Social Security, and the employers pay matching 6.2% on top of the gross salary. The 401k is in addition to Social Security benefits, and the Social Security benefits are already higher than the French retirement benefits.

[ChuckNorris89]

>there is no more “meat grinders” in the US than in Europe. I worked at Microsoft and Criteo in Europe, and the slacking there seems to be on par with what OP describes.

That's very specifically anecdotal. Not everyone in Europe works or has the opportunity to work at big wealthy corps like the ones you mentioned. Europe is not as clustered as SV so the quality and pay of jobs varies immensely on your location. I can assure that outside such monopolies like Microsoft where the money comes in regardless if people work or not, the meat grinders are real.

[sailingparrot]

> Not everyone in Europe works or has the opportunity to work at big wealthy corps like the ones you mentioned.

Because you think 90% of people in the US works in 'big wealthy corps'?

You probably have a skewed opinion based on what you see on hacker news. For the overwhelming majority, the condition are pretty similar to what you describe: A SCRUM point driven job, where you just implement whatever boring BS you are asked for a product you most likely don't care about, with a mediocre pay, and no job security.

[mattmanser]

Oh come on, there are good companies and bad companies in every industry.

If you've managed to end up at a bad one you've only yourself to blame.

[rco8786]

> You can expect some hundreds/thousands dollars per year

This is not correct. A senior (meaning L5-L6+, nothing crazy) engineer at a big public tech co will get 6 figures yearly in stock compensation in addition to their salary.

[Galanwe]

Sorry, but this is urban legend to me. No saying it does not happen, but that is definitely a very special case.

I manage a team of quantitative developers in a Hedge Fund and do between 50 and 100 interviews per year, at senior level. I have head hunter compensation report on the candidates. I see regularly candidates from Google, Amazon, and finance industry. I very rarely see 6 digit bonus for big techs. My experience is that they have a high fixed salary and low 5 digit bonus.

[thatsenough]

> head hunter compensation report

You should ask for a refund. Senior engineers at FANG in the Bay Area will typically make over $100k/year in stock. Total compensation of $300k-$400k is pretty normal, and includes salary, stock, and bonus. Netflix is an exception; compensation is mostly or all in cash.

The flip side is that, even with $350k/year income, you probably still can't comfortably afford a nice 3-bedroom house in a good neighborhood to raise a family (unless you've already been working in the Bay for a while and saved up a big nest egg, or your spouse makes a similar amount and continues to work full time while you raise a family).

Since I moved to the Bay Area, I've realized the high salaries aren't worth it to me. If I were still in my twenties, I could make it work, but as it is, I'd end up paying a truly absurd amount of money for a small, over-priced house, and my entire paycheck would go towards paying the mortgage for the foreseeable future. So I'm looking to transfer to a non-Bay Area office ASAP, even if it means a pay cut.

[WWLink]

;_;

You know what sucks? I have to pay ridiculous rent for a house in an LA suburb and I make only a fraction of that lol.

Dang!

[thatsenough]

If it's any consolation, most engineers here are not senior/staff engineers and they make less. Rent here is very steep (~$3500/month is the median price for an old 1-bedroom in San Francisco), but the home prices are really insane.

Also, there are many companies and start-ups up here that pay much less. Lots of people scrape by, and lots of people move away.

I personally really like LA (which is not something I can openly admit up here) and hope to transfer there or to San Diego.

[asdfasgasdgasdg]

We don't get six digit bonuses. I'm in the high end of the range the parent posted, and I've never seen a six digit bonus. However, I do get a high five digit (cash) bonus, and around 250k of stock comp on top of my 250k base salary. I don't think of the stock as a bonus. It's just part of my compensation.

Honestly even the bonuses are not bonuses the way bank people normally think of them. I have family that worked in corporate finance and they described not uncommon situations where a bonus would be more than all the rest of the compensation for a year. And it was highly variable. Meanwhile both my bonus and stock comp have been steadily increasing, but not in a variable way. It's a pretty consistent 5-15% per year.

[rco8786]

I didn’t say anything about a bonus. These are stock packages.

[baby]

You're probably not from the bay, check levels.fyi

[nkohari]

The parent post was referring to stock-based compensation (ie. RSUs), not bonus. This site might be interesting: https://levels.fyi/

[wpietri]

Yes, I can confirm that stock-based compensation at brand-name Bay Area tech companies is significant. Those numbers definitely match what I see anecdotally.

[jaynetics]

> You mention 40/80k per year being pitiful? This kind of remuneration puts you in the top 10%/5% of France population easily.

These numbers are surely off. Must be more like 40%/10%. And I'd bet that a double-digit percentage of devs earn less than 40k and only very few earn 80k. Factor in that this is a job that is concentrated in big cities with a high cost of living, and these numbers don't look that great.

[wazoox]

Average net salary in France hovers at 2300€/month, median net salary is ~1800€/month. At ~3200€/month you're straight in the high 10% from official statistics.

[jaynetics]

Anything I found suggested slightly higher values, but maybe official stats can only be found by googling in French?

Either way, I think all the GPs were talking about gross values. So if 1800 net is, say, 2800 gross, that is 35k/yr. In that case 40k is fairly close to the median and probably not in the top 25%.

[wazoox]

Indeed. :)

[redisman]

This guy (parent) took two data-points and extrapolated like he had just figured out how two continents work.

[m0zg]

>> You mention 40/80k per year being pitiful? This kind of remuneration puts you in the top 10%/5% of France population easily.

That just means the rest of the population is poor, not that you should accept less. This is called a fallacy of relative privation. So what if you have to subsist on ramen and can't afford a place to live with less than an hour and a half of commute. Think of all those starving children in Uganda instead. That's how the ruling class shits in your head with propaganda.

As a professional you should be able to accomplish the minimum of: raising a couple of kids, buying a residence, putting quality food on the table, and sock away enough to not be poor when it's time to retire. You should aim to make more than enough money to do all of the above while maintaining a first world lifestyle.

If you're not able to do that in your profession, that fancy college degree is materially worse than a plumbing or electrical trade school certification.

[kungtotte]

I make $42K in Sweden (not in IT), and it's comfortably high middle class. My wife doesn't even work full time and it's still enough for us to live comfortably within our means (own a house, two cars, one kid, etc.)

If I'd been making $60K my wife could stop working. At $80K she wouldn't have to work and we'd still be moving into "new BMW every three years" kind of money.

$80K goes a lot further in Europe than it does in the US.

[m0zg]

Are you able to buy real estate in a decent location? Because if you can't, you're not "high middle class". Housing is not a luxury.

[kungtotte]

Yes, we are able to buy real estate in a decent location. We live not far outside Stockholm where prices are really high compared to the rest of the country, and we had no problems buying our house.

My salary is ~twice the median income for this area, and by any measure we're at the upper end of middle class by Swedish standards.

[hycaria]

Not far outside is a very lax definition. A 500K Mortgage (affordable with aforementioned salaries) gets you a 2 bedroom in good neighborhoods in Paris, 3 in lesser ones. Sure, if you're ready to go 20 km away you can get a rather nice house at that price (say 100-150m2 with a garden of variable size), but at the cost of commuting 30min-1hr everyday.

Anyways, I wouldn't consider someone establishing outside of an european city (esp when working there) "high middle class". If you can't afford central housing of your choice, you dont qualify.

[m0zg]

On 42K/yr pre (crazy) tax? Tell me more about how that works.

[theodric]

American who has spent 16 years in Europe (Ireland, Netherlands, Switzerland).

> $80K goes a lot further in Europe than it does in the US.

I would like to see evidence supporting this assertion. Luxury meats are about the only thing I can think of that are more expensive stateside.

[kungtotte]

We pay $100 per month for daycare which is open 6:30 to 18:30 if we need it for that long.

School costs us nothing out of pocket.

Our grand total out of pocket medical costs for our kid thus far (turns 4 in March) is around $500. Including any medication we've ever bought for him. Half of that $500 went to spending Monday through Friday at the hospital when he was born, in a hotel style room with three meals a day included for the both of us.

We didn't need private health insurance for that, nor have it provided by either employer.

We also received 480 paid parental leave days to be split between us (90 reserved for her, 90 for me, the remaining 300 at our discretion).

That's some evidence right there. I have no numbers from the countries you mentioned though. The difference there could be smaller.

[genS3]

yeah surely your family has good dental for paying only 500$ medical costs.

[exdsq]

Depends where in Europe you are.

$80k in London as a single 20-something is great and you might be able to save a little while living central, while for a family of 4 it'd be much tighter and you'd live further out of the city.

$80k in Manchester and you'll have a comfortable life as a family of 4.

$80k in Poland and you'll be laughing in a luxury flat somewhere with no financial worries.

Europe is a large place and for the majority of countries and cities that is enough money to live extremely comfortably.

As for evidence, the average median salary in Europe is 16943€ or $18,947. The average salary in the US is three times this amount so sure - it goes 'a lot further in Europe'.

[badpun]

$80k a year in the US (assuming you live outside of a few of very high cost of living locations) will easily net you a new BMW every three years, esp. given that they're much cheaper than in Sweden.

[ptr]

What’s your source on BMW prices? Afaik, cars are about the same price in Sweden and the US.

https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...

Check the VW Golf comparison. I also did a quick search for a BMW i8, the price in Sweden was ~10x in SEK than the price in USD (1 USD = 9.41 SEK), and I don’t know whether taxes were included in the US price, probably not.

[xyzzyz]

In the US, the MSRP for new VW Golf is around $22k, so you can probably get one for $20k or less if you shop around the dealerships. On top of that $20k, you'll pay sales tax, which is 10% in most expensive places, and usually something like 6-8%.

When comparing BMW prices, don't look at some weird cars that nobody buys like i8, look at popular BMWs. For example, 2020 BMW X5 here costs something around $70k, depending on the features.

[snak]

While I agree with you on some points, the cost of life in European countries is not the same as USA.

[m0zg]

The taxes are also much higher in Europe, especially on those compliant "upper middle class" techies we're talking about here. For anyone with basic understanding of arithmetics it's not even a question that EU techies are woefully underpaid, which is why all the good ones work in the US or for EU subsidiaries of US companies which actually respect the engineers.

[brulard]

I don't believe this is the case. In central Europe (Poland, Czech, Slovakia, Hungary) you can have < 20 - 25% effective taxes even including basic health insurance. In german speaking countries (Austria, Germany) you get twice the salary but that goes with higher taxes. AFAIK in US just the health insurance is very expensive.

EDIT: (using the most tax-effective form of employment, which most of the time is working as a contractor. Being a full-time employee comes with so much higher taxes in EU)

[rayiner]

> AFAIK in US just the health insurance is very expensive.

In the US, someone like a programmer would get their health insurance paid for by their employer as additional compensation on top of their already much higher salary. The vast majority of Americans either get health insurance through their employer or are retired and are eligible for Medicare. Employers on average pay 82% of premiums for a single person, leaving on average $1,200 paid by the worker. For someone like a programmer, it’s common for employees to pay the whole premium. When you look at US salaries, that additional compensation is on top of the reported salary. So although health insurance is very expensive, you’re mostly not paying it out of the reported salary.

[mtberatwork]

> AFAIK in US just the health insurance is very expensive.

Health care, housing, education, retirement are incredibly expensive in the US. Day-to-day life in the US is also quite expensive for most Americans. Most people in the US are in massive amounts of debt with little to no savings.

[m0zg]

> Poland, Czech, Slovakia, Hungary

The salaries that are considered "acceptable" in those countries would result in a _negative_ effective tax rate in the US. Tax rate alone is not everything. It's a combination of pretax pay and the effective tax rate that you need to be considering.

[iso1210]

In the UK, someone on £80k ($105k) will pay £25k ($33k) in tax. That includes healthcare

In the US, someone on that amount in Denver will pay $29k in tax.

That's not an extraordinary difference, even before you factor in health care costs.

[jbms]

It's an extraordinary difference when you look at what proportion of engineers (outside of London/Finance) earn £80k in the UK vs $105k in Denver.

[2rsf]

> arithmetics

true, but you should calculate everything- highly subsidized education, public transportation and medical, generous grants for students, more vacation days, long parental leave etc.

[romanovtexas]

Except plumbing or electrical trade school certification doesn't help you achieve that either

[m0zg]

At least you don't need to spend 4+ years on a degree that's not worth anything.

Don't know how accurate this list is, but I'm pretty sure an electrician in my area wouldn't even want to get out of bed in the morning for 40K euro per year.

https://www.buildingtalk.com/tradesmen-around-the-world-whic...

[halfjoking]

Most tech workers in the US aren't at Google or making Silicon Valley wages.

HN's description of what it's like to work in tech sounds likes a fantasy world to me.

Yes I make more than a European at $100k living in the US midwest... but I have to work hard every single day, in an open office, with my boss sitting in a desk right behind me. Most jobs are still a grind. This guy is probably a high-performer who wonders why everyone else is so incompetent because he doesn't try and still looks good. That's more winning the talent lottery than anything else.

[samplatt]

>everyone else is so incompetent because he doesn't try and still looks good

I'd argue against the "talent lottery" idea. Over the last 10 years as a software dev I'd argue that the 10x "rockstar" dev certainly exists, but it's almost always a case of situation/environment matching an already-moderately-talented employee extremely well.

I've seen a lot of slackers suddenly explode into a powerhouse when given the right conditions. "The grind" is very rarely the right conditions.

[JohnBooty]

Yeah I've been anywhere from like 0.5x to 10x in my career. Guess what changed? Sure wasn't my IQ or work ethic.

Generally, the "10x devs" are the ones who got to do the initial greenfield work. They are the ones who understand the system, including all the undocumented domain knowledge that has been embedded into it over the years.

Ironically this actually rewards incompetence at times. If you do that greenfield work, and make a perfect system that is easy to comprehend and maintain, you will not have an advantage and will not be a "10x" engineer. You have to make the system work, and make the bosses happy long enough to earn their trust... but don't make it too easy for anybody else to come onto your team and be productive.

Of course, this incompetence is also created by management sometimes. Let's say you are a very competent dev who has the desire and talent to make a nice greenfield system that is easy to scale and maintain. Well, management will surely make sure this does not happen 90% of the time because of changing requirements and unrealistic deadlines.

[csorrell]

>Generally, the "10x devs" are the ones who got to do the initial greenfield work. They are the ones who understand the system, including all the undocumented domain knowledge that has been embedded into it over the years.

I think this is exactly right. Especially when working on large projects with complex business logic.

[notJim]

I've seen one "10x" developer in my career. The way he worked was basically to leave a massive wake of data corruption, technical debt and bugs that other people would spend months fixing. Management will never notice, because everyone just accepts these things as part of doing business, and doesn't ask any questions about where it comes from or whether it was the right tradeoff. The tech debt itself doesn't bother me that much, but it always bothered me that he never took any responsibility for creating or fixing it.

However, the idea that there's a strong correlation between productivity and salary is totally a myth IMO. Getting a strong salary is all about being pretty competent, and being able to pass an interview. Once you're in to a high-paying company, mediocre competence (or slightly more) is all you really need. Me and the guy I mentioned had the same pay and the same job title, he was just having a bit more fun.

[JohnBooty]

    I've seen one "10x" developer in my career. The way he 
    worked was basically to leave a massive wake of data 
    corruption, technical debt and bugs that other people 
    would spend months fixing. 

Amen. I've known one real "10x" developer in several decades. He was truly something of a savant.

I also worked with another alleged 10x developer. He was quite good, but was also given the bulk of the greenfield work and left a massive trail of technical debt in his wake.

    Management will never notice, because everyone just accepts 
    these things as part of doing business, and doesn't ask any   
    questions about where it comes from or whether it was the right 
    tradeoff. The tech debt itself doesn't bother me that much

The tech debt absolutely bothers me. It is so destructive to productivity and morale.

We had mountains of technical debt in an overstuffed monolith app. Our test suite alone took close to an hour to run and was flaky.

Management was openly hostile and derisive about attempts to address this debt. They were not engineers so it was like a laughing matter to them. "You want to have a portion of the team focus on something other than SHIPPING? Are you mad?"

Idiots. Some of the smartest idiots in the world, but idiots.

[redisman]

I've also worked with only one truly "10x" developer and dozens of "10x through technical debt" ones. I've very often had to finalize the famous "last 20%" of their projects which is a fun place to be in. "I thought it was almost done?"

There was one guy who worked extremely hard and extremely thoughtfully who was a master at low-level and high-level languages. Kind of a John Carmack type. But these people are like unicorns who you meet once in a career.

[JohnBooty]

     I've very often had to finalize the famous "last 20%" 
     of their projects which is a fun place to be in. 
     "I thought it was almost done?"

Yeah, and then management thinks you are a mere 0.1x or 1x or 0.01x or whatever because you're moving so much more slowly than the "10x" person.

In a fair world (or a fair workplace) I wouldn't mind doing that kind of work. Ideally, I'd say "I'm willing to do whatever it takes to ship good code! Hell, I'll mop the floors or go fetch sandwiches if that's what the team needs at that moment!"

But at this point, I really try to avoid it. Unless your manager is attentive and technically savvy enough to recognize the hell you're wading through, it's basically just career suicide. The 10x person gets farther and farther ahead of you. At the end of the month he's got 100 commits and has shipped 5 features and 9 fixes. Meanwhile, you've done some fraction of that.

When I have junior devs tackle a mess like that, I make sure to put extra effort into recognizing the difficult work they are doing in cleaning up somebody else's mess. I make no claims of being a good senior dev or a good manager or anything like that. But I try to do that one thing right at least.

[Aeolun]

I think 10x engineers do not actually exist, but maybe 0.1x engineers do, and when a 1x engineer is in such an environment they may seem like 10x by comparison.

[apersona]

I think both 0.1x engineers and 10x engineers exist.

0.1x engineer: one of my friends works at a certain government contractor. One of her coworkers had difficulty understanding short circuiting in evaluating boolean statements, everything he writes she needs to fix, he thinks XML is a programming language, and it's just a huge mess amongst a huge list of other complaints.

10x engineer: Actually, he's still in undergrad. I was his TA for a VR class and he made a pretty great clone of Beat Saber before it was released just from watching the trailer, and in under a week. He's never heard of Leetcode, yet is absolutely comfortable with interview questions (well, I decided he didn't need practice after asking a few questions...). He's had an internship at a FAANG and finished his project early and got bored. I introduced him to a few of my other friends in the industry and they are intimidated by him too. He's this rare combination where he has the theoretical knowledge of CS, but also excels at actual engineering work.

Both 0.1x engineers and 10x engineers just feel like they re on a "different level". I don't know how else to describe it .

As for whether or not looking for 10x engineers is practical, I don't think it is.

1) It took me way too long to confirm that feeling (i.e. I imagine interview questions alone aren't enough; you have to see the engineer working).

2) I imagine most companies don't even need a 10x engineer to build the product they need.

3) They're too rare. How do I know? Because (a) none of my friends have felt that before meeting him and (b)the whole industry is still debating on whether 10x engineers exist.

[redisman]

> 2) I imagine most companies don't even need a 10x engineer to build the product they need.

So true. 99% of businesses are CRUD and "complex-because-of-humans" business logic very rarely needs someone like Michael Abrash as a chief scientist to get the job done.

[streetcat1]

They do. However, they can do 10X work only in deep work env, I.e. private office, no email, no meeting, etc.

Once you put the 10X eng in regular work settings, he will quickly become 1X or 0.1X

[Bahamut]

There are different ways of making teams more productive than doing just technical work.

For my own anecdote, I often can fix a lot of bugs/feature requests that come by in < 10 minutes, and often will. As soon as it is revealed that another dev will start contributing who has no prior experience, I stop most of that work and let that person take on some of those tasks & do the leftover ones. Mentorship/growing developer capabilities expands capabilities long term, even if the dev ends up moving to another project.

I also spend the most time in meetings of any IC on my team - reducing how many ICs are in meetings frees up their time to learn and grow.

I often float ideas to people for approaches to problems and designing apps/systems/features - I’ll also let others do the same. However, I also often take a light touch and leave ultimate decision making to others so they can gain that experience even if I disagree. Letting others take ownership improves the team’s capabilities.

There are many ways to expand productivity of those around you that even those who aren’t as technically gifted can do. Leadership is a very underrated part of being an engineer IMO. I do all these things as a mid-level engineer in title, but gained massive respect from management & senior ICs where they come to me for advice/ideas. I don’t fall into the trap of jealousy that others are getting credit/hampering my ability to get promoted because my work speaks for itself & I celebrate when others do well - I have no reason to feel insecure, and so help unlock my team’s productivity by removing that ego in my actions.

[JohnBooty]

I'm a believer in everything you just said!

It takes a very healthy work environment (and attentive management) for this kind of work to be noticed and rewarded. Unfortunately it's not often the case.

I have tried to take this approach many times and a lot of companies/managers absolutely do not value it.

Broadly speaking, it only works if management is really involved in the day-to-day (more like hour to hour, really) process of what you're doing. Then it is easy for them to see that you are lifting up those around you and elevating the team as a whole. Without this involvement, a "mentor" and "leader" winds up looking simply like "a guy who doesn't ship enough" to management.

At my last job, management was very... absentee. There was a shortage of management and this was a bottleneck. They relied on metrics too heavily (stories shipped, etc) and didn't understand the actual processes... who was mentoring and elevating others, and who was "highly productive" but was also leaving an absolute trail of technical debt in their wake.

[modwest]

EXACTLY. Nailed exactly. Strong individual performance, ime, is a product of the right conditions allowing me to do my best.

[Nasrudith]

Slacking is also a matter of motivation or the lack of it essentially, whether the "slacking" is a conscious act or not.

A "universal" 10x developer would be fairly rare to mythic even if restricted to a single complete subdomain like say Backend or Embedded development.

Well unless you had a massive skill discrepancy like say a team of a class of middle schoolers and a 10 year veteran software engineer but that would be a pedantic edge case like comparing the foot speed of a centarian and Usain Bolt. Technically a valid measurement of range but not generally useful.

[aledalgrande]

> I've seen a lot of slackers suddenly explode into a powerhouse when given the right conditions

They must have had a powerhouse manager

[fearface]

No, that’s not generally true in Europe. It depends solely on the company. During the first 12 weeks of fatherhood, I worked two days instead of five and my perceived productivity stayed the same. As an expert slacker and procrastinator, you can slack in many places.

Salaries in IT are generally very good in all European countries and if you manage your salary well, you’ll buy a house when you’re in the mid-thirties.

But there are many companies and developers that do extreme low-balling when it comes to money. I saw people paid 40% less than me, delivering much more value. But at the same time, they were so loyal with their employer, they didn’t even ask for a pay rise.

Myself, I’m the opposite, my Cv looks great and if a company wants to hire me, I manage to push the first salary offer usually by 20-30%. Instead of a promotion, I stay for 2-3 years and then just apply until a company gives me another 20-30% more.

My salary tripled since 2003.

[3fe9a03ccd14ca5]

Also, let’s not forget about the extreme cost of living difference between the Bay Area and europe. SWE from google aren’t easily buying homes here, especially if they want to live near their work.

[bitcoinmoney]

Do you mind talking specifics? So 50k/year to 150k? Or 120k to 360k/year?

[ChuckNorris89]

Which country and domain are you in?

[fearface]

Finance IT with a history in multiple German-speaking regions.

[ChuckNorris89]

I don't disagree with you but that's probably some survivor bias there in your original post as maybe the finance IT bubble in the region you're in pays well but that certainly that doesn't apply to most dev positions across Europe as you originally stated. To put it another way, you're probably the exception, not the rule. :) But I agree with everything else you said, thanks for sharing.

[cryptica]

I worked as a software developer for companies all over the world: Brisbane, Sydney, San Francisco (working remotely from Moscow), The Hague (Netherlands), London then Berlin. The markets are very different in each country.

Moscow is the worst for developers but at least cost of living is low. I feel that Australia is similar to the US in terms of income but it's a less liquid market; low supply, low demand. But the low liquidity of market meant that if you were patient and negotiated well, you could score AUD $900 per day contracts (about $620 USD per day). The cost of living in Sydney is much lower than San Francisco though so I had a really good lifestyle and was still saving money.

In The Netherlands, it was difficult to find contracts above EUR 450 per day (about 500 USD). On the plus side, the government offered big tax cuts to foreigners so you ended up paying less tax than the locals. It felt like I had more disposable income.

London market was tough, it was difficult to find good contracts. I did see adverts for 600 GBP per day in software finance sector but it seemed like I needed personal connections to accesss those. Recruiters were always trying hard to pull me away from the contract market to a lower paid full time opportunity and I felt that I had less negotiating power in spite of having more experience than when I was living in Australia and Netherlands.

Berlin for me was not that great but difficult to say. I moved there because I had already agreed with the company and it was a long term career move. I worked there for 2 years and quit recently. The job market is difficult because they don't usually show salaries or rates on the adverts... This means that companies have more negotiating power and don't care that much about attracting top software engineering talent.

From my experience, countries which pay software developers the most have the best software developers and you can see it in the final products - The experience of using online banking in different countries was interesting.

[loudlove]

In cybersecurity here in Australia you get 1,200 to 1,300 per day as a security architect.

I agree with the above, it is a “low demand, low supply” market as you always end up working for the same big companies.

I’m at Google Sydney now and my total compensation is 300k (AUD), while anywhere else in it’d be just under 200k

[ptr]

For Stockholm, ~750 USD/day outside finance is common and easy to get. Baffles me that the rest of Europe seems so much lower, and even London.

[badpun]

Regarding London, the 600+ GBP per day contracts are definitely not only for insiders. You probably didn't have the right experience in their eyes. Regarding finance specifically, the industry has its quirks so they like to get people who worked in finance before - otherwise, it can be a bit of a culture shock.

[cryptica]

>> Regarding finance specifically, the industry has its quirks so they like to get people who worked in finance before

I had almost 8 years of experience as a software developer at the time and I did have some experience in the finance sector (but a small startup). My resume looks pretty great, one of my open source projects is quite popular (over 5K stars on GitHub) yet I did not even get asked to an interview.

[badpun]

I haven't worked in finance startups, but big finance is extremely heavy on processes, bureaucracy and security (accomplished via processes and bureaucracy). That's why they like people who worked in big finance before and didn't quit soon after joining (as some do) - it proves that you can deal with this frustrating environment.

[ChuckNorris89]

Thanks for sharing. Although anecdotal, more posts like these would be very useful to gauge the markets.

[apohn]

This is just my experience, but that isn't true at all. I work in the US for a huge European based Multinational with an HQ is Western Europe, Dev offices in Western and Eastern Europe, US, and Asia. There are plenty of devs all over the world who are slackers, but who know how to play the visibility and politics game well enough that they are perceived as high value.

I've worked for two other Multinationals and with consulting and partner firms in Europe and Asia. Some people are amazing and work really hard, and some know how to make themselves look good and get fancy positions (e.g. senior architect) where they slack off and keep themselves busy selling themselves by attending meetings. At one place I worked there was constant frustration that our European colleagues had no sense of urgency or motivation at all.

I think the point dhuyrv is making is that in many situations, you can take advantage of the fact that most people don't really know the difference between what you actually do and what you project to others. In many jobs (no matter where you are in the world), playing the game of selling yourself can do more for your career and salary than writing code.

All of the above is anecdotal of course.

[ChuckNorris89]

>but that isn't true at all. I work in the US for a huge European based Multinational

That's very specifically anecdotal. Not all cities in Europe are hot markets flooded with big corps like this one. Not that you're wrong, but your experience doesn't apply everywhere.

[apohn]

I was responding to your comment where you said "The behavior of slacker Googlers described here would have gotten them instantly fired in any European company."

There are a lot(!!) of European Multinationals, plenty of which are the typical slow moving bureaucratic mess where people who are good at meetings, presentations, and big talk end up moving up faster than people who just work hard.

In that sense, there are plenty of cities in the US where the software jobs are terrible, the pay is mediocre, and you work for employer who simply tries to squeeze as much from you as possible. That's one of the reasons there are so many people who migrate to parts of the US where they have more job options and better employers.

[ChuckNorris89]

Europe indeed has plenty of slow moving multinationals where one can slack off, the difference is they're slacking off on crap salaries while FAANGers slack off for high six figure salaries. :)

[Aeolun]

You can fire people in Europe if they are slackers.

Why is this considered a bad thing? I’d suggest that working with capable colleagues is a great joy.

I do agree on the pay though. For some reason the US has ludicrous salaries. Every time I go to a conference in the US I feel like a pauper by comparison.

Especially hurts when talking to a junior engineer you can basically dance circles around that’s paid more than twice as much. But meh, good for them, I think I still prefer universal healthcare, sane leadership, and the knowledge that my CEO is making at most 4 or 5 times as much as me.

[tuananh]

> and the knowledge that my CEO is making at most 4 or 5 times as much as me.

why do you prefer that? just curious

[burntoutfire]

The salaries of CEOs of European corporations are nowhere near as extravagant as in the US, but still they're closer to 25-50x salary of a senior dev (quick googling returned salaries for European CEOs in the $3-6m range)

[Aeolun]

Depends on the size of company you are working for. I know for certain that most I’ve worked for didn’t have the budget to pay millions in salary to the CEO.

Though I guess the same limit would have applied in the US, I think the way people look at it is different.

[ubertoop]

> life really is unfair and success in life is more linked to the lottery of birth and opportunities available to you

No offense but, you're just now realizing this?

That's literally life in a nutshell. Random chance. You of course have to rise to the opportunity, but that's often not difficult at all. It's getting the opportunity that is hard, but almost entirely a matter of dice roll. Accept it, and do your best in life.

[sytelus]

If it makes you feel better, op is not representative of developers in US. He is not even representative of people at Google or other big tech. Most people do work their ass off, some even on weekends and holidays. You are looking at a "lottery" winner and thinking life is unfair to you. In this case its not even lottery because such slacking off in your most productive young years severely limits your career choices when the party ends. Outside of top 10 big tech, comp is not too different from what you get in Europe.

[zerr]

Europe is big and very diverse place. Uber driver in midwest (US) makes more than a senior dev in Spain, Italy or Greece.

[JohnBooty]

An Uber driver in the midwest US can die from a simple treatable disease (or ruin himself financially) because he might not have health insurance.

   Europe is big and very diverse place. Uber driver in 
   midwest (US) makes more than a senior dev in Spain, 
   Italy or Greece.

You can't just do a simple currency conversion to compare them, because the costs of living are very different.

A senior dev in these countries will have a nice standard of living. Much better than an Uber driver in the midwest US. As an Uber driver you would be very lucky to even make money considered "middle class."

[zerr]

OK, broken US healthcare aside, even in above mentioned countries - uber/taxi drivers income is quite comparable to devs salaries.

[JohnBooty]

I don't think you are correct.

Uber drivers make only slightly more than what is considered a living wage in most cities. For example, an Uber driver makes around $20 per hour in NYC. So maybe $40,000 per year.

Source: https://gridwise.io/how-much-do-rideshare-drivers-make-in-20...

However, that is NOT a lot of money.

    Is $15 an hour enough to live on? Not in New York 
    City. MIT researchers’ estimates of a true living 
    wage in New York City range from $16.14 an hour 
    for a single adult, to $21.55 for two working parents 
    with two children, to $39.93 for a single parent with 
    two children.

Source: https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-fix-nycs-broken-...

Keep in mind that a one-bedroom apartment in NYC costs about $3,000 a month!!! An Uber driver would work 150 hours a month just to pay for that! He would still need to buy food, clothing, healthcare, etc. This person cannot remotely think of raising children as an Uber driver. Somebody making $40,000 per year in NYC would probably need to share housing with roommates or family.

Source: https://ny.curbed.com/2019/6/3/18650949/nyc-rent-prices-zump...

Are developers in other countries able to afford their own apartments? It looks like senior developers in Athens, Greece make about €36,500/yr.

Source: https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/athens-senior-software-en...

However, cost of living in Athens is so much lower, it is not even funny. It looks like a 1BR apartment costs more like €500-800. This seems easy to afford for a senior developer. At least, it is much easier than our poor Uber driver in NYC.

Of course, I just picked Athens as one example. But are you telling me there are places in Europe where senior developers can't even afford their own apartments?!

[mindentropy]

> life really is unfair and success in life is more linked to the lottery of birth and opportunities available to you than any amount of hard work.

Of course it is. My life is one example. Working in a third world country I was working like crazy and I had many of my customers in Europe and US F100 companies say that I am the hardest worker and I am way better than their employees. When they came to know how much I was paid they were in complete shock. My company too used to ignore the appreciations because if they do then they would have to pay me more! I worked in the company for 12 years. Moved to another smaller company and the cycle repeats there too and have moved out after 1.8 years in it.

It is a lottery alright. That is why you had gold rush and mass migration in search of better life. Lower migration barriers and majority in poverty motivated them. It is difficult to make this decision now as there is a feeling of OK pay and a bigger migration barrier.

[cm2012]

Workers working for FANG in the USA also have much better quality of life than Americans in general.

[esmi]

Do you think this is true in Google’s European sites too? I have a hunch this is more of a Google thing than a US thing. I can assure you that plenty of engineers in the US grind away too.

[ChuckNorris89]

I don't know but I think it could be a SV thing as it's probably a supply/demand issue. If FAANG corps in SV tolerate such behavior then it's because they can't find better people due to strong competition for talent. Google in Europe pretty much has no competition at its level and there are way more devs looking for quality work so it can afford to be way more selective with who they hire or keep. Supply and demand. Just my $0.02.

[longtimegoogler]

I think it depends on where you are in Google as in what team/org. I haven't seen much of what this original poster describes on the teams I have worked on. My limited anecdotal experience, however, is that people work less at the European offices than in the US.

[asdfasgasdgasdg]

Interesting. Ime, euro Googlers tend to be somewhat more productive. They may put in fewer hours but they seem to be more focused.

[longtimegoogler]

I would probably agree on that. My limited experience is that the European teams and engineers are very productive.

Maybe Europe gets better engineers there because of less options.

[JohnBooty]

> This blows my mind that in the US one can make such insane money in tech while still being a slacker and retire early with a dream house bought and paid for while in Europe devs are slaving away through SCRUM powered meat grinders burning themselves out for a 3% salary increase on a pitiful 40-80k/year,

I've been in this industry here in America for 20+ years and most software developers don't enjoy such a easy time.

Burnout is common. I personally feel like I have been in a "meat grinder" for about 22 years.

Working at Google is VERY different from working at most companies.

[iso1210]

> Reading OPs problem and some posts here where people are too bored of making ludicrous money left me with a bitter aftertaste that life really is unfair and success in life is more linked to the lottery of birth and opportunities available to you than any amount of hard work. Not hating, just saying.

This is of course true, which is why I much prefer European social democracy "loser wins some" to the US "winner takes all" approach.

But people born with luck don't tend to realise it

You were born in the west. You didn't starve as a child as the rains failed, meaning your brain didn't develop even if you did live to see your 5th birthday. You had access to clean drinking water. You went to school, you learnt to read and write. You didn't get drafted as a drugs mule age 8. You weren't forced to murder someone as an initiation rite age 15. You didn't have to risk your lives crossing rivers and seas to get to a safe country to work for $10 a day with no safety or rights because you were in the country illegally.

[adversaldoman]

For what it's worth, these jobs do exist in Europe as well (I'm slacking off at a 100k+ € swe job in central europe right now!). I had high paying offers from the US in the past, but in my opinion the higher overall living standards, smaller wage gaps, and better social/political structures more than outweigh potential earning benefits.

In any case: If you're willing to move, consider eg Zurich, where a lot of big, high paying companies (google, FB, ibm, Oracle, apple, ... ) are hiring. Very high standard of living, very low taxes. London is similarly plastered with high paying jobs. Berlin has tons of interesting startups. Paris is great and has good food. Last time I was job hunting, I got high paying offers in all of those cities, so it is definitely possible

[joelbluminator]

I do feel London is somewhat underrated in this discussion, for a senior Rails position I find quite a few startups willing to pay 80-85 GBP, that's not that far off from the U.S if you factor in cost of living. But yes - Belgium, France and Germany don't offer this type of money.

[longtimegoogler]

Well, if you look at the cost of living in SV the salaries aren't that insane. Buying a house is challenging on a Google salary in that area depending on level.

If you get in right out of college and live meagerly, than yes, you might be able to retire early if you leave that area.

If you actually want to build a life in the Bay Area and buy property, you will probably have to work at least 20 years to have enough for retirement or get promoted high enough where you really are making a lot of money.

[taneq]

> you will probably have to work at least 20 years to have enough for retirement

A whole 20 years? Cry me a river.

[longtimegoogler]

What I gave was a best case estimate if someone was really diligent, saving very aggressively, investing wisely, and contributing the maximum amount to retirement accounts.

As someone who has been working for over 20 years and the last 10 at Google, I am not close to retiring and I don't believe the compensation at Google is that much greater than other software jobs, as my previous compensation was comparable.

So what am I saying, yes, you might be able to retire early if you work at Google a long time and are very diligent, but you probably could do the same at most other software jobs in the region.

If you really want to make life changing money at a FAANG company you have to get promoted to a certain level, which isn't easy, IMO. Otherwise, your life isn't that different than any other software engineers.

[Infinitesimus]

> As someone who has been working for over 20 years and the last 10 at Google, I am not close to retiring and I don't believe the compensation at Google is that much greater than other software jobs, as my previous compensation was comparable.

You're probably well above the average comp at your level ( assuming L6+ ) given how much G stock has appreciated over the past decade though.

> So what am I saying, yes, you might be able to retire early if you work at Google a long time and are very diligent, but you probably could do the same at most other software jobs in the region.

The biggest advantage of these large companies is that the stock units + refreshers + stellar stock performance compounds wonderfully over time. Most other workers are chasing 5-10% raises every few years with poor 401k matching, no free food and no stocks so the gap widens over time.

[longtimegoogler]

I'm personally not L6+ and totally agree that if you can get to 6 then your compensation changes drastically.

At my previous company, I had stock options which had I held onto them would have been roughly comparable in value to my current stock grants.

But I agree that the biggest advantage over other companies are the stock grants, which have much less risk than supplemental compensation at other companies.

The moral of the story is that one really has to get to L6+ at Google to really earn money that one couldn't earn elsewhere.

IMO, that can be difficult depending on what projects you work on, your soft skills, and ability.

I routinely get solicited about jobs that have quite a bit higher compensation than Google's, particularly in finance.

[swat535]

I wish Toronto, Canada would pay such salaries.. Our COL is just as high, yet the median salary range for SWE is ~80k. Buying a house in TO proper is ~1.5M at the moment..

Honestly, folks in SV don't realize how good they have it.

[longtimegoogler]

In comparison, The median SWE salary is around ~123K in SV with a median home price in Mountain View of ~1.6m.

IMO, there are better options than SV. I would much rather be working in an area like Austin with a much more reasonable COL with a relatively small drop in median salary.

[Infinitesimus]

> The median SWE salary is around ~123K

A lot of the wealth is SV isn't from reported base salaries but from the issued company stocks (see levels.fyi for a subset )

[ivalm]

20 years out of school still puts you retiring in your 40s ...

[longtimegoogler]

See my comment above. Basically, this would be challenging to do even at Google depending on the level you get promoted to and requires total dedication to the above, i.e., saving aggressively.

I think the advantage of getting into Google right out of school is that you can start on that path right away.

I didn't get to Google until working for over 10 years at other companies and as such and I wasn't really planning for such a goal so, for me personally, I will be lucky if I can retire when I am 60.

[rorykoehler]

Most people are looking at never retiring at this stage. Retiring in your 40s puts you in a very exclusive bracket.

[longtimegoogler]

See my comment above. I think this might be rare even for most Googlers, but it is possibly doable depending on on the person.

[watwut]

These dudes exists in Europe too. Rendering whole meritocracy argument moot. I have come to believe that the real sexism in tech gap is in how low performing man can be without harming his reputation of performance - people give them seemingly infinite benefit of doubt. And how little can he know without damaging reputation of knowing a lot.

(Not that woman can't abuse this or that - but she can abuse different things. She can't make herself look 10x worker with so little.)

[eanzenberg]

EU salaries have more to do with their tax structure than anything else.

[ChuckNorris89]

Not really. US taxes aren't that much lower than Europe.

The reason is supply/demand. There's the lack of VC funding and also due to the market size, European tech companies don't generate nearly as much value as the US ones and the few ones that do don't have any meaningful competition so there's no need to pay high salaries.

Take the US defense sector alone. That's generating so many high paying tech and consultancy jobs that EU employees couldn't even dream of.

[badpun]

> The behavior of slacker Googlers described here would have gotten them instantly fired in any European company(yes, the "you can't fire people in Europe" is just a meme).

I've seen multiple people doing that or worse in London. Now that I think of it, it was in an American company though...

[jimbokun]

Seems like a trade off between the functioning health care system and affordable education and sane time off and and leave policies for you Europeans...and the significantly higher salaries here in the USA.

[datalus]

At least you weren't born like say during the Hundred Years War... :)

[Andrew_nenakhov]

That war was fought by slackers and procrastinators much worse than OP.

"- Men, we need to take that castle!

- Oh come on! It's already August, no way we can take it before fall! The roads will be muddy! Let's try next year!! Or next decade!!!"

[pedrosorio]

> Reading OPs problem and some posts here where people are too bored of making ludicrous money left me with a bitter aftertaste that life really is unfair and success in life is more linked to the lottery of birth and opportunities available to you than any amount of hard work. Not hating, just saying.

Just FYI, large US tech companies have offices in Europe and they also hire people from Europe to work in their US offices, so if you really want it, "lottery of birth" is not an insurmountable obstacle.

[kriro]

First of all,

That seems overly dramatic. I can only speak for Germany but I think 60-80k is more realistic. I think as a good university graduate in IT you should make >50k as that's the entry level pay for someone working in academics which is a decent middle-level salary to benchmark against I'd say.

If you account for vacation days, expected work hours and extra costs (medical etc.). I think European jobs aren't bad. If you really want a house, you also have to compare house prices in the Bay Area to wherever you make the 60-80k in Europe. My guess is that you'll find quite the dramatic price difference and in areas in Germany, where housing is expensive, the salaries are also higher (from talking to a friend, Bosch Munich pays I think 20% more than Bosch NRW iirc).

It's also not illegal to start your own business or do consulting where you can charge pretty nice prices depending on your field of expertise. Usually not as an entry level job but it's not unheard of.

Buying a house and paying it off also isn't impossible depending on where you live. 500k usually give you a decent option. 25 years @ 20k / year isn't really impossible (especially as you'd otherwise pay rent and given current interest rates). And quite frankly you can find good options in the 300k range a little outside metro areas.

[thrwaway69]

This is why we have religion ;)

Thou shall work hard, get equivalent reward in this life or next one.

I tried to become religious before but I am too stubborn to do it. We all want some purpose in life, distractions can work temporary or forever if you want them to with cracks appearing often needing to be filled.

Personal advice for myself:

- Live and compare relatively with lookout for opportunities.

- Focus on self than any 'societal' or 'familial' duty crap. You want to become the best you, it doesn't matter what happens to others. Make a list of people that you care about and forget the rest (includes HN posters).

- If I fail, then x is to blame. Diversion of blame but not autopsy. Live blameless or regretless.

- Don't think you owe anyone anything but everyone owes you.

- Focus on present with vague long term plans. No need to get upset over something you can't predict. Give yourself reward for completing any short term goals.

- Build a consistent favorable moral system. Once you are done, you don't need to question it. Follow it till the day you die or something breaks.

- Remember you have a choice to live or quit. (Sometimes it helps you gain control back to pull through things)

I am currently building a framework that incorporates above for me, I am going to make it favorable for me and then forget about how I got there. I will believe that it is rational as oppose to religion therefore enabling me to put trust into it and follow it blindly.

[dualogy]

"I will believe that it is rational as oppose to religion therefore enabling me to put trust into it and follow it blindly."

The irony..

[thrwaway69]

Actually, that post was meant to be sarcastic going towards the end but I see it is not as obvious now looking at it. :/

[dualogy]

Ah didn't even expect such anymore on HN as of recent years :D

[aaronmacy]

it’s worth pointing out that large US tech companies hire international applicants and sponsor work visas for these folks. i get that not everyone is willing/able to make the move for various reasons, of course.

edit: applications -> applicants

[nnd]

Except that work visas are virtually impossible to get these days.

[Aeolun]

The US would probably get a flood of extremely high quality applicants if they only fixed a few basic social services.

[austenallred]

It’s really just Google (and similar big cos), not a US/Europe divide

[tanilama]

Only in Google probably...Other companies aren't that kind.

And remember the tech haven't had a downturn like in a decade. Hard to tell if this kind of slacking will endure one TBH.

[talkinghead]

well said