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by danwee 1388 days ago
It's quite difficult as a European SW developer living in Europe to work for US companies. It's either one of these options:

1. US company has an office in EU, so you can work as an employee. Chances are the company is not paying you the US wages, but European ones... at this point, what's the benefit of working for the American company?

2. US company doesn't have an office in Europe. So either you work as a contractor for them (and that's a lot of hassle for a lot of people who are used to work as an employee) or the US company uses a third-party company to hire you as an employee (and that's a hassle for the US company, so many don't offer this)

3. US company is willing to hire contractors living in Europe... but then you have to be a contractor (personally, I don't like it) and you have to adapt to their TZ (personally, I don't want that).

As many have said before, in Europe the salaries for software engineers come in different "tracks". You have the usual 25K-40K-60K EUR/year for junior-medior-seniors, but you also have the 50K-80K-100K EUR/year (becoming more common at least in western europe), and the not unheard of 90K-120K EUR/year for seniors in some companies.

1 comments

As someone in Western Europe working for a US company, the Timezone thing is the biggest issue for me. My company is actually really good with it, but I still often finish work at 7-8pm local time, sometimes with little notice. Everything else can be worked around, or smoothed out, but this is the biggest intractable pain.
Are you getting paid a US wage? OP salaries are very low in that last paragraph.

It would be great to get paid US equivalent salary and be able to be in EUrope.

I am an European and was making $170k at my latest remote US job. Still, the time zones difference made it not worth it. I don't want my work days to start at noon and end at 8 pm...
> Are you getting paid a US wage? OP salaries are very low in that last paragraph.

This is the goal: decrease salaries.

I agree in general, but what is the context of your comment?
Yes, though this is probably due to a unique situation rather than anything else.