[hnlmorg]

It’s not that simple.

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”

[ZephyrBlu]

Dude, go on https://levels.fyi for 5min and compare US and UK salaries.

US ($339k): https://www.levels.fyi/companies/facebook/salaries/software-...

UK ($200k): https://www.levels.fyi/companies/facebook/salaries/software-...

Lower COL does not make up for $139k USD.

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.

[hnlmorg]

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.

Cost of living can vary dramatically in Europe.

[ZephyrBlu]

According to the US government, the average software developer in the US earns $120k/yr: https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151252.htm.

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.

[hnlmorg]

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.

[ZephyrBlu]

It seems like you are disputing raw numbers.

Most of the US has lower COL than London: https://www.mylifeelsewhere.com/cost-of-living/united-states....

According to BLS and this data, the average US developer (Who has lower COL) makes about the same as a senior developer in London (120k vs 126k).

Therefore, even taking COL into account, an average US developer makes more than a above average, senior London developer (This dataset is skewed towards tech companies).

It's simple mathematics.

PS: house prices in most of the US are also highly likely to be lower than in London.

PPS: I'm not american, nor do I live in the US.

[hnlmorg]

> It seems like you are disputing raw numbers.

Numbers do not lie, but people’s interpretations of them can still be wrong.

I don’t dispute the numbers but I do dispute how they’re being used to represent some biases without any consideration for the accuracy of how they’re compared and collated.

> Most of the US has lower COL than London: https://www.mylifeelsewhere.com/cost-of-living/united-states....

Yeah London is expensive. No one would dispute that. But cost of living can vary significantly in the U.K. alone (let alone in the wider Europe). So treat London as a solitary data point (like you would with SV when looking at the cost of living in American).

> Therefore, even taking COL into account, an average US developer makes the same as above average, senior London developer (This dataset is skewed towards tech companies).

That’s a better analysis than your first attempts but it’s still flawed because London is one city and and America is an entire country. So you’ve got rural parts of America pushing down the cost of living and the top percentiles in SV pushing the salary averages up.

A better comparison would be comparing tech hubs individually.

Also please bear in mind that I wasn’t arguing that Europeans have more disposable income generally. Just that the cost of living does level out the playing field somewhat.

I honestly have no idea of Americans or Europeans are more well off. I just disagree that any analysis can be made with looking at averages salaries alone.

> house prices in most of the US are also highly likely to be lower than in London.

In most parts they absolutely will be. Just like in most places in the U.K. house prices will be cheaper (I already made that point earlier by the way).

But if you were to compare the largest tech hub in America to the largest tech hub in England, you might find London comes out cheaper.

> I'm not american, nor do I live in the US.

Sorry for making that assumption. Though I hope you can appreciate why I had when literally every datapoint you referenced was specifically about America in a conversation about European wages and cost of living. :)