[lultimouomo]

Depending on where you live and on the company you can get paid more, though not much more.

In 2013 I was paid 27k€ as a junior developer (2 years experience) in Florence, before taxes and employee-paid social security (I think if you count company-paid social security it adds up to around 33k€), but I think I was a bit lucky. I think software engineers making more than 60k€ as employees of an Italian company are exceedingly rare.

You can make twice that as an independent contractor, as long as you charge by project (if you want to be paid hourly you get killed by the sticker price comparison). Being a contractor demands a different skill set though, as the programming is only half of it; how much you make will depend for the most part on how you can deal with the customer.