[burntoutfire]

I'm from Poland. Of course, everything depends on the conditions of the retirement that you're comfortable with. For me, it's 5000 PLN ($1300) a month till I'm 85 years old + paid-off house. The 5k PLN should be very comfortable assuming no children, which I don't want. Assuming ultra-safe investing to only protect the principal (i.e. no return above inflation) and wanting to retire at 40, you'd need around 2,500,000 PLN ($650,000) to achieve that + buy the house to retire in. Let's call in 3,000,000 PLN ($780k) in total.

If you look around a bit, as an in-demand (meaning - chasing the latest tech fads, maybe some tech lead experience as well) senior backend developer, you can get take home 250,000 PLN per year on a long-term (meaning usually multiple years) contract basis. Assuming 60,000 PLN of that goes to living expenses, it takes less than 16 years to save up the required 3m PLN to retire. And, if you're really hot in terms of CV, you can take home much more than 250k per year. Also, there are options to contract in Western Europe or get six figure remote US job (this one's harder than the other options) for more pay.

[zerr]

You're way underpaid, even by Polish standards. You can easily get a remote job e.g. at German company that pays 70K-90K+ EUR.

[burntoutfire]

I was giving net numbers. Assuming I pay 19% taxes in Poland on that remote job income, the range you've given translates to 240k-310k PLN net.

Also, I myself happen to make over 400k net PLN per year, but I didn't want to use myself as an example, as I only know a handful of people who make that much - so it's perhaps not something you 100% can count, whereas the 250k per year number is absolutely attainable by any senior dev with reasonable/modern CV and good negotiating/job hopping skills.

[fock]

would you mind naming the German companies paying 90K+€. I know quite a large number of people working in really big companies in Germany, which are considered very well-paying, and while 70-90K is certainly standard, anything else requires taking up management roles, which are not necessarily remote and not so many.