[lhorie]

I would posit that the OP underestimates the impact of his second point: remote-first in a covid world opened up a large swath of opportunities to get very large total compensation bumps everywhere. I'm part of a slack group comprised of ex-employees of a company I used to work at and some folks there expressed that it is entirely feasible to land jobs today that pay a full 100-200k over their current or previous compensation, thanks to big tech companies expanding engineering operations outside of Silicon Valley.

Considering that each of these tech companies are trying to hire in the order of hundreds of engineers, and willing to accommodate remote work from locations that they previously did not consider, is it really a surprise that other companies with less competitive compensation packages are struggling to find talent?

[gdcbe]

As a Belgian those salaries look like rainbows and unicorns to me, I would love to earn it do not get me wrong but as a good earner in Belgium I earn like 35% of that or so, nowhere near getting close.

How realistic is it really to get such remote jobs for that salary. My skill set, attitude, passion, professionalism and devotion certainly isn't the issue. From what I remember from some job hunts in the past the issue seemed to be mostly that I needed the following conditions:

- Live in US and have permission to work there, OR have a US passport;

- And on top of that be in or around the same time zone as the company's location;

So how feasible is it really to live in Europe and still earn such salaries remotely? I do not mind do the work or hours, sign me up for it, but so far it mostly looks like dreams to me. At the moment my best best to earn that kind of money in the future is to become an indie consultant while also making some software of my own on the side, I haven't found any realistic way so far to earn such money in a stable full-time permanent employee job.

Anyone who can point to some real data on such opportunities rather than just the usual statement that they earn "easily" 200k+ in the bay area and around. I can only dream of it, and while money certainly isn't my main motivator, it would be nice if I could actually have a home and land of my own at some point...

[lhorie]

A good way to approach these opportunities is to understand the nature of the opportunity pool. Perhaps the most famous resource on this topic is a video about trimodal compensation distribution by Gergely Orosz[0] (a former Uber engineering manager), which talks about the different types of companies operating in Europe (i.e. local, european, global) and their compensation bands

A thing to note is that even though tech companies are now more open to hiring outside of SV, in the grand scheme of things they still represent only a minority of employers as you travel further out the globe. Which is to say: the opportunities do exist in Europe, but they're not going to come on a silver plate for everyone. As a software engineer, you'll need to put some work in a) finding these employers and b) preparing for their interview structure (which is often said to be difficult to pass)

It is true that these companies used to prefer relocation to US (which require a visa w/ bachelor degree requirements, in addition to the actual willingness to relocate), but now thanks to covid, companies are often willing to hire in Europe (and even as far as India) even despite the timezone challenges. This was brought up by a combination of market dynamics, internal pressure from employees looking to leverage LCOL areas to maximize personal gain, as well as a related shift in the job market overall based on the emergence of tech pockets like in the Netherlands (because real talent grows and eventually needs to grow teams to support their ongoing success). With this said, there are logistical challenges that prevent companies from being truly remote-from-anywhere (e.g. the need for tax entities in the countries where they hire) so there's still going to be some amount of magnetism towards specific tech-oriented locations (albeit better than Bay-Area-or-nothing).

As for real data: one of the most cited resources is the levels.fyi website. It's heavily skewed towards Bay Area, but you can also find information on other tech hubs, correlated to their respective gravitational pull for talent (e.g. Toronto, Canada has a pretty decent amount of data). Another thing to keep in mind is that job postings are often stale (sometimes by years) and they may be more open to remote than they seem.

Compensation is not equal everywhere, and a 200k bump isn't necessarily a given. It's more of a ballpark. The context is that a L5 role (roughly a 5-10 yr senior developer) pays a salary of USD ~150-200k/yr in the Bay Area. For comparison, a similar position for the same company in Bangalore might pay USD ~80k/yr, but Toronto might have very similar pay to the Bay Area pay range. Note that this is only the salary portion. A typical job offer from these companies usually also has an equity portion (i.e. stocks), and equity packages of 100-200k/yr are fairly normal in SV. Adding the salary and equity numbers plus a yearly bonus amount is typically referred to as "total compensation" (or TC) and is what these 300-400k numbers refer to.

In these conversations, typically we talk about L5 as the baseline because that's the level at which there are the most number of job openings for big tech, but there are also opportunities at L4 (junior level) as well as L6+ (staff level), with corresponding adjustments in pay. L6+ roles can in fact pay well north of 500k/yr TC, but needless to say, these are significantly harder to land roles, even in the Bay Area.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8Xpapy6I9E

[fy20]

In Europe it seems to have changed too. Salaries are still of course low compared to the US, but it seems the salaries are stabilising across the continent.

I've been speaking to recruiters recently and a lot more companies are open to fully remote, even across borders. 10 years ago if you wanted the best salary in Europe you would need to go live in London, now there are plenty of companies hiring remotely across Europe and paying salaries close to what you'd get in London.

I interviewed for a similar senior role in London and Berlin companies this week, and was really surprised the German company was paying more. Even working for local companies in Eastern countries you can often get good enough salaries, so that relocating to traditional tech hubs in Western Europe isn't really worth it, once you take into account cost of living adjustments.

[tigershark]

Mmm.. I think it’s unlikely. London salaries at the top of the scale are not that far from the equivalent US. In Europe I don’t think it is the case, depending on your definition of close obviously.

[svilen_dobrev]

some rough numbers from last year... very senior tech role - fully remote :

* London : >100k pounds = ~120k E

* Berlin : >90k E

* Sofia : >50k E

but, when applying the taxes thereof:

* London : >120k E - 45% taxes -> 66k E

* Berlin : >90k E - 45% taxes -> 50k E

* Sofia : >50k E - 10-15% taxes -> 45k E

Which means.. it mostly depends where you (want to) live.. as differences in price/culture of life are much more than above differences.

[heavenlyblue]

Your calculation is way off, UK taxes are progressive but you don't just get a 45% once you reach the threshold - otherwise there would be salaries where it would be better to earn less than slightly more.

Here, the calculation: https://listentotaxman.com/?year=2021&taxregion=uk&married=f...

120K EUR is 79.7K E

PS: Also 120K EUR in the UK is NOT very senior.

[aix1]

I haven't checked the other two numbers, but your UK tax calculation is off. A more accurate after-tax number (applying correct income tax bands and national insurance) is €80K.

[ChuckNorris89]

>but, when applying the taxes thereof:

And once you apply the CoL adjustments, the numbers further skew in favor of Eastern Europe.

[richardfey]

100k-200k on top of let's say 100k? So they would be making 250k per year? How common is this?

[eyjafjallajokul]

100k is below starting salary in the Bay Area or Seattle. Most senior folks make 300-450k with Staff level engineers making 600-800k.

[exdsq]

I don’t know if that’s true. I live in Palo Alto and know a fair few people at a fair few companies. Outside of a handful of companies they’ll only be hitting those with illiquid highly-valued stocks - not with base & bonus.

[suifbwish]

Sounds like someone who invested in property in the Bay Area or Seattle and is trying to get its value to go up. I would need to see numbers on that.

[Wiseacre]

Most? As in over 50% of all senior folk in the Seattle industry make 300-450k?

[verst]

Definitely not. Total comp of senior engineers at Microsoft in Seattle is nowhere near this. (I am one of those at this point in time)

[lhorie]

The point that kinda got lost here is that outside of the big tech circles, equity packages are basically non-existent. So, whereas in, say, Google Canada, you might make CAD 150k salary + 100k equity, in CGI[0], you might only make a CAD 120k salary with no equity grant for a similar level of seniority.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CGI_Inc.

[dastbe]

It is an unfortunate truth that Microsoft's pay between entry level to somewhere around principal is not competitive with a substantial number of companies. That is not to say that Microsoft doesn't provide other benefits, but top tier compensation is not one of them.

[verst]

I don't mind. When I look at the vast majority of software engineering jobs out there even Microsoft compensation is good, and perfectly fine for Seattle.

I used to work at Google too (in Mountain View). Believe it or not I liked working at Google and I also like working at Microsoft.

I don't need to chase top tier compensation. I just do things I enjoy where I'm learning and my career can progress. Right now I'm mostly writing in Go working on an OSS project managed by the Cloud Native Compute Foundation.

As an aside, early retirement is not a goal of mine.

[lhorie]

Keep in mind that in conversations about big tech compensation, the baseline is typically Bay Area salaries. This is the area where you can find the most public info on (e.g. levels.fyi). In my specific case, I'm talking about Toronto, where a senior dev salary for a local shop is around CAD 120k/yr. For comparison, a L5 role in Bay Area job offer is around USD 150-200k/yr salary plus another 100-150k equity (plus a few more thousands in yearly bonus). For Toronto specifically, these number more or less translate 1:1 (i.e. you could expect a CAD 150-200k salary + CAD 100-150k equity, for a total compensation of CAD 250-350k). In Bangalore, the total compensation after currency conversion is going to be significantly less than Toronto's in terms of absolute dollar value, though it'd still be quite above the local average.

For a public big tech company, USD 250k total compensation for a L5 in Bay Area is pretty low ball. For a pre-IPO company, you might be looking at USD ~200k/yr cash, and if you're lucky to go through an IPO while holding RSUs, you'd see a huge income spike on the IPO year. Note that pre-IPO companies still count paper equity in their TC numbers, so a 300k total compensation number might actually just be 200k cash + 100k paper money.

[pjmlp]

It also opened the door to get more offshoring, why pay SV salaries when they can pay Infosys rates (pick your favourite offshoring company name).

[icebergonfire]

While this is true and there are some good contractors to be found in that bucket, I’d say we are bound to rediscover the lesson that you mostly get what you pay for… minus cultural and language barriers.