[user568439]

I think the recruiter meant 90€ as freelance and you asked 100k as permanent? In Europe de permanent contract includes a lot of benefits and a big risk for the company: holidays, unemployment coverage, sick coverage and normally other things like bonus, pension, phone and sometimes medical insurance and car (consultants).

For the rates I’ve seen first hand, 90€/hour of freelance corresponds to 70-80k hired salary

[Ekaros]

Also decent chunk of difference comes from how freelancers are responsible for their own employer taxes. So the costs that are essentially invisible to someone receiving a wage.

[radarsat1]

your numbers concur pretty well with what another poster replied, so thanks! I'll try to tailor my answers accordingly in the future, really helpful cheers. It just gets so confusing when people post their salaries like in the US and other places and I just don't know what is reasonable to ask for. Learning though, glad for the answers here.

[DeathArrow]

>when people post their salaries like in the US and other places and I just don't know what is reasonable to ask for.

When people are posting US salaries, they are usually quoting the gross amount. In Europe people are usually quoting the net amount because people care what they can spend, not some sum written on the paper.

[radarsat1]

Actually, so far in my experience, this advice has been very misleading. I have been told this before, and it had bad consequences. A while ago I got through multiple interviews for a job (in Europe) that had the salary range pre-posted, and somehow I kept forgetting to check whether the posted salary range was net or gross. I asked some advice from people, and was told that it is always net, so I went with that assumption, only to find out when the job offer was actually on the table that it was gross, and the interviewer made me feel a little stupid for not knowing that, saying "it always means gross salary". I didn't take the offer, as it turned out the salary was lower than I was looking for, but I felt rather guilty for wasting their time and getting their hopes up.

So, I find that net vs. gross is this weird thing where people become convinced that there is some default that is always implied, but different people think the default is different. Don't know how that happened, but in the future I will always be clarifying that as early as possible, otherwise it can be a major source of miscommunication.