When you say the compensation was very close to the current market rate, I assume you mean the market rate in Poland, correct? No fancy Silicon Valley salaries for devs in Poland, that is.
Your bog-standard senior role clocks in at $65k, but that's something you can get around here without going through many hoops. From a company with such an infamously convoluted hiring process I would expect no less than $90k - apparently that's not the case here.
Fancy Silicon Valley salaries are naturally out of the question. Highest number to date in my social circle was $150k/yr - a brief, beautiful moment for one senior front-end developer working remotely as a contractor.
I'm contracting remotely out of Poland and $150k-$170k is definitely doable, especially if you're willing to work for an US company (and adjust to their timezone a bit).
Yeah, I have a few friends who reached this level of compensation working remotely. It's a nice life - I can't say I'm not envious. I had to travel to Switzerland and deal with the costs of living there to have such a rate and the project was timeboxed.
Interestingly nowadays you don't need to work for a US client. Switzerland, Norway and Ireland(out of all places) offer similar salaries without the zombifying difference in time zones.
> Interestingly nowadays you don't need to work for a US client. Switzerland, Norway and Ireland(out of all places) offer similar salaries without the zombifying difference in time zones.
Yep, that's my experience as well. I've quit the $170k US West Coast job (because of time zone differences, plus it sucked in other ways) in favor of slighly less paying German job (it used to pay the same, but EUR has shit the bed and now the money is way less when expressed in USD). I'm way happier now - they money in my accounts still keeps accumulating at a great rate, but now I'm not angry and tired every day.
I have 15+ years of experience, some in recognizable Tier 2 tech company, some in tech lead and architect position. I'm also working with a niche and hot tech stack that companies have troubles hiring for. This translates into good jobs, good money and good working conditions, even in a tech backwater such as Poland. Took a lot of time and effort to get here though.
If you don't mind me asking, what's your legal setup and way of landing US contracts? Most I've seen require a US-based legal entity (which is the tricky bit I can't figure out, as to the best of my knowledge there's no way to set one up without having existing ties/citizenship in the US).
I just have a company in Poland, sign a contract with US company and send them invoices every month (which, to my knowledge, they don't really always even need?). I don't know how it's set up on their end. No one yet has asked for a US-based entity.
As to finding them, I've found some here on HN in Who's Hiring thread. One of them (I'm a notorious job hopper, so there were many) found me on LinkedIn.
The "employee" creates a single-person company in Poland (or any other EU country, I guess) and sends invoices monthly. Honestly, it's trivial to set up. I'd say it's even easier than the standard employment process in the EU.
I've contracted remotely for 10 years with US companies while living in different countries. I've never had a US based legal entity and it hasn't been a problem. It does make things slightly more complicated for them though and I'm sure that I lost some potential contracts due to this. In some cases (HK company while living in Asia), not having a US legal entity is a huge plus tax-wise.
To my knowledge you pay for invoices, you are not actually hiring. It's quite similar to buying other goods from abroad (like cheese, or printer ink). There are plenty US companies 'hiring' in Poland, where in reality they don't really hire- they come to agreement to buy your time with no tights.
Yeah can’t comment for local employees of local companies. Just have knowledge of UK & US companies hiring/outsourcing to Poland. It was cheap, not so much anymore.
If PLN depreciates against USD (as it has this year) and the contract is USD denominated (which is simpler for Google so likely the case) then you'll have actually received a gradual payrise!
I left G in Ireland about 4 months ago for a fully remote position at a startup. Up until then, G's Polish salaries were low even by Western European standards (which is ~ >= 1/2 of SV pay).
If you're struggling to find talent anywhere, why not hire in Poland?
As a Polish engineer, we all know that companies are struggling to hire anyone. If you think you can hire a local instead of me for the same money, good luck. From my perspective, if I'm delivering the same value as someone from another country I should not be paid less. My cost of living is my own business, whether it's the lease on a car, the number of kids I have or, in this case, the country I choose to live in.
Part of the hiring in cheaper countries is the possibility to exploit the wealth disparity and cut costs, sure. But in case of remote IT jobs, IME it's more of a fact that companies can't find anyone so they'll hire from anywhere, including cheaper countries. Doesn't mean that the employees should let themselves be played though, it's a seller's market after all (for now).
I’ve worked with a Polish dev team (in Wrocław). They were really great. However, for the same price I’d much rather work with local people. The Polish people we worked with came to California for months at a time. Being in the same time zone and room was really helpful.
Their English was generally good, and what they lacked in spoken English was usually made up for in good written documentation. But the time zone means remote work not as valuable (same goes for our English colleagues).
I'm no expert and try to judge based on what I personally experienced, and I get your point. But I also know this is not how businesses operate. Having seen it from the inside, hearing those conversations, I know business decision makers would rather hire somebody locally than from abroad (from different jurisdiction) - if overal cost of hire was the same. But if you can get the same work done and pay less, then this is objectively worthy thing to be done. I have seen huge corporation pivoting towards outsourcing everything to India (software development, accounting, customer support, everything) because it was way cheaper than run those centers locally. This is becoming less and less fruitful since India had seen their wages going up in the past years, so at some point this trend may reverse.
I bet there are others who have different and maybe more grounded opinions, I only share what I experienced myself.
Oh, I absolutely agree – there is an overhead to hiring remotely (especially if you need to operate another business there, like Google does in Warsaw), so if you have to pay someone the same and cover that overhead then it's a bad business decision to do this at all. Timezone/cultural issues also come into this.
So yeah, I'm not surprised that businesses (try to) do this – but in the current situation it's worthwhile (and possible) for the hires (especially contractors) to try to go against that and argue for higher pay. Even if the actual SV salary is not within reach, you can at least try to stay within the same order of magnitude – and more often than not, especially at the end of the interview process, it'd be cheaper for the company to hire you anyway than to start over with someone else.
That's all in my narrow experience of working with smaller companies – in megacorps with strict levels/salary rules like Google it's probably another story. And that's also why Google is not (any longer?) the holy grail for Polish workers.
Lol. No they dont for l6-l7 ull get 200k TC a bit more if u negotiate well. For ny Ill get 500k. Trust me nyc is not twice as expensive as dublin paris or london. Also in usa they will give me 401k and free healthcare. In france or dublin ull get almost 50% tax and u will put money into a public pension that you will likely never see and that is shit
Your bog-standard senior role clocks in at $65k, but that's something you can get around here without going through many hoops. From a company with such an infamously convoluted hiring process I would expect no less than $90k - apparently that's not the case here.
Fancy Silicon Valley salaries are naturally out of the question. Highest number to date in my social circle was $150k/yr - a brief, beautiful moment for one senior front-end developer working remotely as a contractor.