You realize that companies pay SV-like salaries outside of SV now, right? LCOL US salaries can easily be higher than HCOL EU salaries.
This is also exactly the same argument people in the US have tried to make about "SV" salaries vs "normal" salaries.
Ex: "making $100k in the Midwest is better than $300k in SV because COL"
It's plain wrong in almost all cases (Lower COL doesn't make up for lower salary) and SV vs elsewhere in the US is becoming less and less relevant with remote work.
Sometimes lower cost of living absolutely does make up for a lower salary. Ultimately it comes down to disposable income after your expenses are paid. If your cost of living is significantly lower despite your income decreasing, then your disposable income increases despite your salary decreasing.
It’s also why multinational services will often have regional pricing.
This phenomena might not be present in the US (I haven’t lived in enough American cities to make a generalisation here) but it’s absolutely true in Europe.
> SV vs elsewhere in the US is becoming less and less relevant with remote work.
Remote work will be what levels the playing field but we aren’t there yet. Most companies aren’t fully remote. Further more, as weird as it might sound to some on HN, some people do actually enjoy working with colleagues in an office.
So it’s very premature to handwave the cost of living with arguments like “because remote work”
I've seen this exact conversation happen on /r/cscareerquestions about US salaries an uncountable number of times. COL never makes up for the salary difference on the high end. Maybe for median and below salaries, but never for the top percentiles.
E: since you edited in stuff about remote work, I meant in the US. There are a lot of US companies that allow remote work within the US now. I was also talking about SV vs everywhere else in terms of salary difference, not COL. Even with a salary reduction, you're most likely making more than you 'should' in a LCOL area.
But this article IS an about median wages and not specifically about the top percentile!
> Lower COL does not make up for $139k USD
It can if property prices for those top percentiles are more than $139k cheaper.
My house is worth literally twice the price of my mother in laws house and she lives in a larger property. The only difference is she’s at the north end of England and I’m in the south.
In this data, which is focused on tech companies and the tech hubs in Europe (London, Berlin, Amsterdam, etc), the median salary for a senior developer is only $113k.
In other words, above average EU companies in HCOL cities still pay less than the average US developer (Any COL and experience!) earns.
E: editing in house prices is blatantly moving the goalposts.
Nobody is disputing the raw numbers. The point being made is those numbers are meaningless without taking more variables into account.
If you earn more but have less disposable income each month than someone doing the same job in London then who gives a shit if you have more zeros on your pay check?
That’s the crux of the matter here. Comparing salaries is meaningless if you don’t factor in who your disposable income is after expenses.
Or to put it another way, if you were a business then you cannot think of yourself as an angel invested unicorn start up. So you have to make a personal profit each month. If your outgoings are greater then you need to charge more. It’s simple mathematics.
> editing in house prices is blatantly moving the goalposts.
How is paying rent / mortgage not part of one’s cost of living?
This is the literal point everyone has been making to you from the start!
Edit: I’m going to throw in the towel now. Literally every European has explained why this article is worthless for any real comparison. But obviously you, as an American, know better than us, who work and live in Europe, about just how much money we take home each month from our jobs in Europe.
I know, I live in one that doesn’t. However no European county uses USD. So we are much more familiar with seeing Euros as a European benchmark than USD.
Also worth noting, EU is a subset of Europe. London isn’t in the EU but is in Europe.
It is but that isn’t the point. You wouldn’t show the wages in any other unrelated currency, like Dogecoin, and say “but the exchange rate is basically equal”.
If you’re measuring European financial assets then they should be represented in a European currency (and if you want to show USD then have that as an additional field or afterwards in brackets).
Everyone in Europe but not the Eurozone knows the rough exchange rate between their local currency and the Euro. We see prices in Euros on many foreign trips, and for some online purchases.
This is also exactly the same argument people in the US have tried to make about "SV" salaries vs "normal" salaries.
Ex: "making $100k in the Midwest is better than $300k in SV because COL"
It's plain wrong in almost all cases (Lower COL doesn't make up for lower salary) and SV vs elsewhere in the US is becoming less and less relevant with remote work.