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by ca01an 1771 days ago
I'm curious, what sort of salary range would there be for engineers in your country?
3 comments

The rates in Poland have really risen as of recent (so has the inflation, but that's a different story).

There's a lot of offers in the 120-150 PLN/h (26-33 EUR or 31-38 USD) range; not long ago I had three offers from the top of this range to choose from, and I eventually stayed at my current place since they equalled this rate.

And yes this is wage per hour, because self-employment/B2B is highly popular in IT, for financial and fiscal reasons. After all the deductions, you'd pocket roughly 70% of it.

Once you factor the living cost in: eg. "you would need around 2,827.20€ in Warsaw to maintain the same standard of life that you can have with 5,670.18€ in London (assuming you rent in both cities)" (according to Numbeo), it becomes pretty clear how living and working in Poland can be an attractive deal.

That's a bit less dramatic than I would expect; $37.50 USD/hour is the wage I made as an intern in San Francisco 5 years ago.
It's a bit more dramatic if you look at cost of living again as GP did. Numbeo again:

> You would need around 3,309.51$ (12,912.27zł) in Warsaw to maintain the same standard of life that you can have with 8,500.00$ in San Francisco, CA (assuming you rent in both cities).

I mean from the employer's perspective. I wouldn't have expected a "cheap" foreign labor market to be anywhere in the range paid to US workers, but maybe like 20-30% of the cheapest US worker.
Gross salaries for juniors is usually in the range of 20k annually, in certain companies or software (slave) houses even less. For seniors it should be around 40k. For lead or principals, even managers, around 60k. Consider that net salaries might reach 60% of gross for certain amounts and above (e.g. 60 gross is 36 net). And of course, these are anecdotal data, probably covering 99% of local companies.

My current salary which is close to 6 figures for a tech lead job would be an instant disqualification in probably every local company. To be honest, a few years back it would be a dream for me, unless i had to relocate somewhere. But now and for the next few years, i really cannot see how i can work onsite again in my country.

Are the amounts in your post in Euros or some other currency?
Correct, i forgot the currency. It’s EUR.
For Czech republic, based on seniority and skill level I would say between ~$2.5k and ~$7k salary per month before tax. But you lose like a half to the various taxes.
That's why you're supposed to be a contractor at that pay level.
What's the difference with being a contractor? You still have to pay taxes, right?
You have to pay for two things: taxes and insurance. The taxes stay the same, but the difference in insurance is drastic.
Probably the contractor gets to pay lower taxes than an employee.
In lot of cases that is illegal. Of course does not mean people do not do it.
It’s illegal if the employer has a local entity and could hire you as an employee and they’re your only gig, but if it’s a foreign company with no way to employ you in your country, what else are you supposed to do? Decline the job because of that? I don’t think that situation would be illegal because there is no legal alternative.
There's still a pretty large tradeoff by not being protected with labor laws.