Ask HN: Remote salary headroom? (non US based)

[throwaway000981]

Hey folks,

Curious to see what folks are earning if they are working remotely and not located in the US or Canada. Totally fine if you're working for a company located in either of those countries though as long as you don't reside there.

I'm asking because as an engineer in the EU I've been consistently hitting a limit of around $200k whilst working for US companies and haven't managed to break through that yet.

[giantg2]

$200k is a lot for most positions in the US. The median for a US dev is about $105k. I'm not surprised if you're not seeing positions higher than that.

[randomopining]

You think so? Do non-FAANG senior software engineers not get 200k+bonus?

Seems to be bimodal. Good senior devs get 180-200k and then FAANG get 300k+.

[giantg2]

I think that's highly location dependent. Your numbers might be right for a few locations like Silicon Valley, N. VA, NYC, etc. But the majority of locations seem much lower - basically half.

I don't see a national median from the BLS for seniors, but I see other numbers saying $115k-130k median for seniors (glassdoor, indeed, payscale, etc). This is consistent with what I see. Most of the senior dev positions in my area (Philly region) are between $100k and $150k, with $100k-120k being the most common. I even see some senior level jobs with a lower end of the range around $85k (my company has that as a senior dev minimum, with a max of $150k). I see a few for $200k-ish, but for principle/director/etc level dev. These are very uncommon in my area.

[randomopining]

What's a common/upper mid-level salary in the Philly area? Just curious, seems like you have a good beat on it.

[giantg2]

I'm a midlevel dev. I think my company range for the level is about $75k-110k. It seems to be consistent with others in the area. There could be higher ones, but I don't see many mid level postings, especially with salary info. The vast majority are senior postings. Glassdoor says $85k is pretty average/common for a mid level in my area with 5+ years experience and a masters.

[mysecretaccount]

There are a lot of high-paying jobs in Northern Virginia?

[giantg2]

It's all relative. It's a semi-high COL region. You have a lot of security, defense, intelligence, and other government contractor/ consulting jobs in the area. I see a lot of $100k+ jobs and even a fair number of $200k+ jobs. This is better than my area and appears to be as better than the national median of about $105k since I see way more jobs over that number than under it in that area.

[Sanguinaire]

£100k base, about £175k all-in. Developer-adjacent role. Realistically I can only think of 5 companies globally which would pay this much while also being interested in my niche skillset.

[throw28896423]

About 800 (eight hundred, not a typo) dollars / month. "Exec" at the company. Company charges around 1,800 dollars/day for my work to clients. Overseeing the company, the whole product lifecycle, hiring, sales, operations, architecture, copywriting.

No equity.

[inertiatic]

Working for a UK company here, although remotely from another country, making around $90k as a lead engineer in a somewhat specialized field.

Seeing as salaries are constantly rising due to WFH being so common, and with anecdotal data from this thread, I'm feeling I might be underpaid (closing in on 10 years of experience on top of CS diploma and an MSc).

So my side question is, how do you target high paying positions without having to go through a LC type interview in a FAANG company? Recruiters who reach out to me on Linkedin avoid the salary question usually.

[wikibob]

You hit leetcode until you can do mediums in 20 minutes.

[mettamage]

This. It’s less bad than you think.

learning styles:

- text

- videos

- tutor

- with random person from the web (eg pramp)

- with a buddy

(And all include practicing problems)

Pick the learning style you like most. It isn’t so bad.

[inertiatic]

I can realistically do most mediums quite quickly, missing an edge case here and there without a test-fix loop like LC provides. On LC and in Python I find most of the medium problems trivial. This is not my problem.

My problem is I find these interviews dehumanizing, and they reflect on how the work is afterwards. I like my work, and I like working with people who like their work and are there because they're good at doing what the work is, not because they could do what most second year undergrads could easily do. I've been historically targeting positions related to certain field, and I'd want to be hired because of what knowledge and experience I've built up.

Still, my feeling is worsened by how long these interview processes take (multiple sessions of the same thing basically), and how you can fail arbitrarily because of slight mistakes. Which means, even if you know you'll pass 80% (quite good) of your LC medium focused interviews, if you take 5 of them in a row, you have a 32% of not failing one. It's a numbers game, obviously, but that doesn't mean the human playing it doesn't experience feelings of stress and frustration.

[wikibob]

Sometimes to reach a goal we want in life, we have to do things we find unpleasant.

It is what it is. There’s a time to change the world, and a time to just put in the work.

Software interviews are a pretty low on the list of impactful things to take personally.

30 years ago to reach the equivalent level of compensation required being born into a family that got you into the right prep school, taught you to aim for Law or Medicine, carefully controlling your grades for 18 years, getting through 4+3 years for law and getting into a top 10 school to be able to get into a white shoe firm, or 4+4+5 years for Medicine.

Now, for us nerds who like computering, quite literally a few months of leetcode can catapult you into $500,000 per year at a top 5 in the world company.

Those who want it enough find a way to get it done.

[helltoheaven]

I work at US based company and I earn $900k. Remote work has been a boon to me.

[jstx1]

Oh look, someone who makes more than 10 times what I make. All the talk about 10x developers turns out to be true after all.

[whycombinatore]

That's your perspective. From my vantage point they are a 50x developer :)

[atatatat]

They probably have 4-7 different roles with 3-6 different companies.

[sbacic]

Out of curiosity, what do you do? Which tech stack? What does your employer do?

[aynyc]

Two remote positions in two different time zones.

[kervansaray]

Do they know this? Are you a service provider?

[romanhn]

For the folks incredulous at this number, senior staff level (IC7) and higher at top tier tech companies can get there, especially with stock appreciation. Stock/RSUs would comprise the majority of the compensation.

[throwaway000981]

Those ranges exist but as far as I know they are unheard of unless physically located in the US and if remote, likely having worked in their offices prior.

[giantg2]

Can you shed some light on how you got to that level of compensation?

[throwaway000981]

Where do you reside?

[48cfu]

Can someone suggested how I can find remote opportunity for a robotics+software engineer position with a salary of at least $150k while being based in Europe?

[ddorian43]

In all the normal channels. Filter by USA and be prepared to work EST hours for a bigger list of comapnies.

[blaydator]

What is profile ? What do you do / specialize in ? For how long ?

[throwaway000981]

Just under 15 years experience, mixture of senior/lead IC work and the last 5 years in management too.