[ajuc]

According to EU Commission's estimates whole EU needs ~600 000 more programmers, with Poland (where I'm from) needing 50 000. This seems conservative to me, everybody's hiring and salaries grow pretty quickly.

You'd be earning about 50 000 USD per year as a senior developer, but that's plenty enough to live a very good life here. Outside IT people earn about 10 000 USD per year, food and services are very cheap, and there's a comprehensive welfare state.

[chrisBob]

When people talk about EU salaries do they typically mean pre-tax or post-tax.

[ajuc]

In Poland you'd be usually talking post-tax per month but I converted for American standards, so pre-tax per year. You can get more, mind you, that was just the average.

[EricLeer]

pre-tax most of the time, but of course varies per country

[eastbound]

It’s usual to talk in “brut” in France, and it means mid-tax. 60k€ “brut” = 90k TCO = 45k€ in the pocket of the employee.

That’s already a good salary for a mature dev in France (Paris +20%), and going above requires being intrapreneur/team lead/low manager. Americans usually say it’s shit pay.

[distances]

Almost always pre-tax, only exception I know is Italy. They seem to talk post-tax

[aagha]

We're a small startup, and looking for full-time, full-stack senior devs. Any chance you may any that you'd be open to connecting me with? - Zabe

[ausudhz]

With the fact that you got the demand/offer law not in your favor, these salaries will definitely go down.

Impressed to hear that Poland pays well for developers compared to other jobs. 50k for a senior role would definitely be a good salary even in other EU countries

[PartiallyTyped]

When you take into consideration taxes and social security; you will be taxed at an effective taxrate of around 40% for a salary of 40k euro. To get around taxes, you need to work as a contractor, and use some copyright law on the time you spend coding (you create something) which cuts the taxrate for that time in half.

Low Cost of living is true if you find a cheap enough place to live, but due to Russia's invasion, housing just isn't that cheap unless you know where to look for and are from Poland. I called 20 people just to be able to check a single apartment out.

50k isn't good for a senior role either; new grad salary in Germany in 2020 was around 60k gross.

[ajuc]

> With the fact that you got the demand/offer law not in your favor, these salaries will definitely go down.

Doubt it. Everybody in my current team has several offers to change jobs with 5-15% increase in salary. Some from the same (American) company for which we work right now (but they don't know that cause we're hired through 2 subcontracting companies ;) ).

[ausudhz]

What is relevant now is not relevant tomorrow

[whatwherewhy]

I have colleagues from Prague making around $100k after taxes. They're contractors, though.

[Lionga]

Best thing is 100K in Prague is about the same as making 300 to 500K after taxes in Bay Area in COL/PPP adjustments

[vasco]

Not exactly, only the "living expenses" part of the salary can get this "equivalence multiple" applied. The rest of the salary should be counted 1:1 with the US because other purchases cost the same regardless of where you are (branded clothes, travelling, buying a laptop, buying a car, investing for retirement, stocks cost the same everywhere). So it's more like the first 20k are like getting paid 100k and the rest of the 80k will just be 80k, so more or less 200k equivalent.

It's very hard purely on cost of living to match a salary of 500k anywhere in the world, because at some point the extra items / investments all cost the same regardless of geography.

[Lionga]

But you will probably stay there for life so you have the benefit for life. "investing for retirement, stocks" are cheaper as you also need 3 to 5 times less.

With 100K in Prague you can retire/never needing to work for money after 3 to 10 years Depending on your habits. Not sure how many Bay Area employees can do that staying there.

I am somewhere close and earn 300K which is about 30 times of what you need per year. One year of works covers all my expenses living like a local for the rest of my life in capital returns even at a modest 3.5% SWR.

I take that over 500K Job (of which over 30% goes to US Gov, while i pay max 10%) any time, heck I take it over a 1000K Job in SF/NY etc.

[Firmwarrior]

It's good to look at the whole picture like that. A lot of "cost of living calculators" tend to implicitly assume you're spending every take-home dollar on eggs or gasoline, which isn't true for highly-paid software engineers.

I'd propose that you should also calculate how many years of 300k in the Bay Area it'd take to retire in Prague vs years making 100k in Prague.

I ran these numbers a couple years ago, and it was costing me about ~$8000/month to live in the Bay Area. I estimated we could live in Tokyo or much of the USA at a similar quality of life for $4000/month. With $310k/year (taking home $190k) that meant I was able to save about $90k a year. In Tokyo, I could only get companies to offer about $140k at the time, and it was about the same for remote work in the USA. That meant I could save about $50k/year.

You can make a strong argument that saving $50k and living in one location is better than saving $90k in another, but it's good to have all the data at hand to make the best decision for yourself.

[acchow]

> But you will probably stay there for life so you have the benefit for life.

Hard to know this 30 years ahead of time. Maybe after 30 years in the Bay Area you retire to Hawaii? Or lower COL like Portland? Or even a town in Japan? You have tons of choice if you’ve been saving at 500k. If you’ve been saving at Eastern Europe salaries, your options narrow

[jupp0r]

There are also benefits in not earning 5x as much as all your friends.

[ajuc]

Traveling is cheaper in EU simply because more interesting stuff is very close, flights are crazy cheap (usually you can find flights under 100 USD both-ways inside EU), and you can do it a lot while being paid (20-30 days of paid vacations per year in most countries).

Retirement/healthcare and education is paid by taxes already in most countries so there's less things to save for. Also cars are optional and distances are smaller.

I agree about the rest (but I wouldn't want to live in US anyway, no amount of money can buy you a walkable city or safety for your kids).

[throwaway1777]

Sounds like system is working then as most engineers at meta make 300-500k

[AdrianB1]

Not quite; an iPhone costs more in Prague, a Tesla much more, a laptop can be double the price. You don't purchase lots of iPhones, but the global goods generally have higher prices in Europe than EU, partly due to VAT, partly due to market conditions. Energy and gas are much more expensive in Prague.

[ausudhz]

Working as a contractor yes could bring as much but highly specialized one get 1k Euro a day. You're basically on the top 1 or less %

[Cwizard]

Not really most contractors I know are just regular programmers, average in skill. Their rate is around 800eu/day, they all work in big bureaucratic enterprises. Hiring contractors is basically the only way a lot of those companies can get access to somewhat decent talent.

And it is not as expensive as it seems. If you live in a country with strong social safety nets hiring someone is crazy expensive.

The few contractors I know that work normal software jobs have lower rates, but they still make good money.

[ausudhz]

I don't know where you live, but 800 euro/day is not a standard rate for avg programmers in many parts of Europe. Is most probably half or sometimes less than that.

[whatwherewhy]

These are React guys. What kind of specialization are you thinking of?

[ausudhz]

React guys don't get 1k a day as a contractor come on.

https://www.reed.co.uk/jobs/react-jobs?contract=True

In the UK the rate is between 400 and 600 (450/650 euro) and is one of the market that pays the most in Europe. Many other countries are offer half that amount for a "react" guy

[whatwherewhy]

I am asking who gets 1k/day, not saying it's React.

[quickthrower2]

That logic would apply to any job that anyone can study or train to do. For example a doctor.

[soared]

Poland has had economic growth comparable to countries like South Korea, since 1980!

[ajuc]

Well in early 80s the whole country went on a strike and there was a martial law for 2 years. Low base effect.

[ausudhz]

Nobody denies it. Again is the offer and demand law. Probably high delocalization brought new jobs which ended up and saturating the market and growing salaries to fight for the very same talent pool.

Something similar happened in Ukraine. I had friends in Europe that were running companies in there till when the wages became comparable to the original country. They still kept the Ukrainian office but eventually reduced the growth in favour of other locations