[datascienced]

This is what rest of the world looks like USA people! Developers are generally paid enough to get by but not crazy salaries. There are exceptions but required you to get through tough interviews. No $200k TC interns out here.

It means picking up a trade or just doing a scrum master job or traffic duties become viable alternatives.

Developers are caught in stagflation. Buying a property in Sydney metro area (within 90m commute) for example would be challenging for most devs.

Prices have tripled and over the frame of 15y while dev salaries or contract rates have not increased.

[piltdownman]

Truck (Lorry) Driving in the UK paying what it does is an economic aberration caused by Brexit and Covid 19 - e.g. 16,000 fewer EU nationals working as HGV drivers in the year ending March 2021.

In the end they had a shortage of nearly 100,000 drivers and had to massively incentivise new entrants to the industry. It's a complete outlier as far as blue collar vs white collar jobs in the UK/EU for the most part.

https://www.bbc.com/news/57810729

That said, overall the EU is paying somewhere around €80-120k for Senior Developers in the HCOL areas and as low as €45k in places like Spain. Overall, individual Contributor salaries outstripping even minor middle management is rare below architect or principal outside of FAANG.

This leads to the situation the commenter above identifies - that fairly vacuous softer-skill based IT Roles like Scrum Master or ART or Release Manager out-earn the median Engineer and are seen as a viable alternative for motivated people.

[gadders]

IR35 rules were a big factor as well, making it less lucrative for people to be self-employed truck drivers. It also paid better to be a delivery driver for Amazon than a truck driver.

[psunavy03]

Those "vacuous" roles exist to ensure that the dev team isn't lighting company money on fire working on the wrong thing, or crippled by inefficient bureaucracy which is also lighting money on fire. Which isn't "vacuous;" there is value in saving the company money.

[brailsafe]

If that's what they do

[psunavy03]

Some strong "junior developer" vibes here . . . nontechnical roles are not automatically fluff, and meetings are not automatically wastes of time.

[brailsafe]

> Some strong "junior developer" vibes here

How defensive. It seems to me like it would take someone with a rather fragile ego and low level of maturity to infer and write such a thing. I didn't call you or anyone else a bootlicker, so maybe save the personal attacks for your next sprint review or Reddit.

> nontechnical roles are not automatically fluff, and meetings are not automatically wastes of time.

If this had been your interpretation of my comment, then you'd have been right, but it's a choice to hold back and interpret a comment maliciously or charitably, and it's a choice to put people down. Non-technical roles do have value, as long as they aren't themselves an embodiment of their crippled inefficient bureaucracy.

[devjab]

While what you say is sort of true, developers are paid better than what you made it sound like for me. The difference is perhaps that professions like truck drivers and a lot of tradeskills are compensated very well because there is a general lack of people in those professions. We also have very strong unions (and legislation because of it) in those areas, so it’s not easy to “displace” (is this the right English word?) truck drivers with cheap foreign labour in a lot of EU countries.

Unlike professions like plumbers, however, IT personal is becoming increasingly easy to come by. And since they never really formed unions, the so called golden days are over for a lot of IT professionals. Maybe excluding hardcore IT operations, networking and at least for now developers.

I wouldn’t be able to earn what I do as a truck driver though. Maybe half with more hours? Interestingly enough I didn’t get there by being rewarded for any work. I got there by switching jobs.

[Tade0]

In outsourcing destination regions like South America, the European eastern block(my location), India and SEA, software engineers still make multiples of the average wage for the region.

It's the geopolitical west that's largely stuck in this situation, but IIRC that has been the case for a while now - when I was considering emigration around eight years ago I noticed that the salary differences are not as huge as I thought and in some places (like Germany) it's just a job like any other.

[Log_out_]

Mysterious why Germany has no software mega Corp, ever so mysterious, it's almost like everything software is linear in Germany meanwhile it's exponential somewhere else. I propose the theory that there is a massive object beneath cal to blame.

[sangnoir]

> Mysterious why Germany has no software mega Corp,

I hear SAP is kind of a big deal.

[Log_out_]

Got to make me a rock made of physics to tie me down to the real.

[oooyay]

> This is what rest of the world looks like USA people!

This statement really depends on whatever part of the USA you're in and what kind of work you do.

> No $200k TC interns out here.

I haven't seen that yet, but I think an SF-based intern (if they were paid for the whole year) would make roughly $120k. There are plenty of people living in the Bay who haven't lived there 10 years who comparatively take home very little.

All that to say, I don't think we need to dice up and turn the developer market against itself. We've all been affected by wage stagnation, the rising cost of metros, and the threat that we must live in them or else. Labor movements are good for all laborers, etc etc etc

[datascienced]

I hope from the comments people seek higher wages for their worth - if everyone did this it would create a force pushing up dev salaries. The tech profits can more than handle this and smaller shops would have to stop doing inefficient stuff. I think cheaper devs allows laziness in thinking. Just throw a bigger team at it, see if it sticks.

[datascienced]

Edit: stagflation is the wrong word I think as that means high unemployment. I wouldn’t say that is the case, just suppressed wages.

[jayphen]

Average senior engineer salary in Sydney is around AUD180k. There is no trade you can pick up that would get close to that.

It’s true that living anywhere near the Sydney metro is unaffordable though, even on a 180k salary.

[Shocka1]

200k TC for an intern is a nice cherry pick in SF or Silicon Valley maybe, but definitely at the extreme top end of the spectrum. Coastal money definitely doesn't speak for the rest of the US - there is a huge amount of space between California and NYC with developers making just enough to get by.

Interviews have always been tough for development positions in the US, whether it's a 60k out of college position in the Midwest or more senior position for a coastal company making the big bucks. It is possible to get lucky and not have to be whiteboarded, but much of the time an applicant is getting grilled.

Although it's obviously objective, I completely agree when comparing to a country like India. However, I'm not so sure it's as huge of a difference as what you are implying when comparing Western countries to non-coastal US developers. I've long since graduated, but if I were still in school and not too far into a CS degree I would probably drop out and be an electrician or plumber, freelancing application development on the side if I still had the energy.

[BoorishBears]

But I was promised free healthcare and more vacation time makes it all even!

(I've always loved that narrative for its optimism. In reality if you have a modicum of self-restraint you can save more money on a US salary than most people are making on a European salary, and tech tends to have excellent healthcare.)

[niemandhier]

It does, I did the math when I was offered a 100k+ position in the US.

After computing what I would have to pay for: - Piano lessons for the kids - child care - sports clubs - golfing - private tutors - rent / mortgage

I concluded that my quality of life would decrease. Europe is crazy cheep for families. The UK is particular, brexit did not do them any good.

[pedrosorio]

> It does, I did the math when I was offered a 100k+ position in the US.

100k+ has been close to the floor for entry level for a while now. Did you do the math on how much you'd earn over 10 years?

[yoyohello13]

100k is the floor? Where do you live? I swear most devs on HN have had their brains addled by inflated salaries.

[titanomachy]

It would be unusual for a new college grad at any well-known tech company in Seattle to make less than $150k right now. Large companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google dominate the market here. If you were starting a software company in Seattle, $100k would probably be enough to interest only the most inexperienced and unqualified candidates.

New York City and San Francisco Bay Area are similar or higher. I don't have much experience with the rest of the US.

[fooker]

Not just Seattle, I am seeing tech salaries in Denver, SLC, Austin, etc starting from 120-30k nowadays (and growing VERY fast if you stick around for a few years because the smaller cities have trouble keeping experienced engineers from taking a 700k offer from some FAANG company.)

[lannisterstark]

>I swear most devs on HN have had their brains addled by inflated salaries.

Are you sure it's not just a coping mechanism (I can't find the right word, sorry), for those who didn't get those salaries to say this line?

Even in PHX my company offers 95k as starting base for junior devs.

[hirvi74]

I am seriously getting shafted then. That is more than I make currently as a developer, and I have almost 8 years of experience (I also live in the US).

[pedrosorio]

"had their brains addled"... no need to be mean

https://tomazweiss.github.io/blog/so_2023_compensation/

[Manuel_D]

Entry level for my job in the Bay Area was 110K salary an about a other 70K in RSUs. This was 2015. Granted this was probably above average, as it was a medium sized but highly regarded company.

[sethammons]

In socal, the dev interns I was managing a couple years ago were paid $50/hr. That is a bit over $100k/yr

[A4ET8a8uTh0]

Eh, I would have agreed maybe a decade ago, but the past years have seriously eroded USD buying power[1]. For example, for that 100k in 2014 to be equivalent in 2024, you would need 133k or that your adjusted for inflation dollars are 76K ( and that is BLS ).

100k is the floor, because 100k used to actually mean real money. I no longer think it is. I earn more than that and I believe we are struggling. I don't know how other people manage.

[1]https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=100%2C000.00&y...

[OJFord]

> 100k is the floor, because 100k used to actually mean real money. I no longer think it is. I earn more than that and I believe we are struggling. I don't know how other people manage.

I don't think that can be anything but 'lifestyle inflation'? Even if that's one income, supporting spouse and children.

[Propelloni]

This sounds like starting up in the USA becomes less viable. And this begs the question why VC is still focused on the USA. 2-3 million dollars in seed money allow me to scale much faster in Europe (and much much faster elsewhere), if only for the fact that the same money I have to pay for an entry level developer in the USA will get me a very senior developer in Europe. Or two, maybe three, juniors.... what do you think?

[mobiuscog]

Employee 'rights' are often much stronger outside the USA and so whilst you potentially pay more, you can 'downscale' much quicker as well. Look where most of the tech layoffs happen.

[Klonoar]

A cynical take is that VCs still focus on the USA because the environment is far more lax and/or easy to take advantage of.

That’s not an easy scenario for other countries that care to counter.

[vundercind]

Floor’s around $70k-80k for a new grad in my 3rd-tier (but still a couple million population) non-coastal US city. A couple major tech firms you’ve surely heard of are based here, plus some other really big ones you definitely know of if you work in the industries they serve. Not just offices—headquarters.

The benefits will be decent, but nothing special, at a big place and dogshit anywhere smaller, so it’s not made up there. You’ll probably have 10 vacation days, maybe like 14 if they pool vacation and sick leave.

[rustcleaner]

$100 is floor?! Here I am at $36 in Socal! I'm in the wrong line of work...

[BoorishBears]

I'm 30, I can effortlessly save 100k a year after spending money on everything you listed.

If you're happier in the EU that's fine, but the math definitely doesn't check out for people focused on finances: even when you take soft benefits into account

[nasmorn]

I made 245k USD before taxes in the EU last year self employed. Most people I know cannot believe how much money I made. To make that money you don’t just need to be an average leet Code drone but negotiate great contracts on your projects and take on and manage a lot of risk.

What I am saying is: the math definitely doesn’t check out because apparently someone in my position would be doing 3x in the US

[fooker]

Would you mind sharing your math?

I had concluded the opposite if you compound over 5-ish years.

With two tech incomes, you'll make approximately 4-5 million in the US counting equity, versus about 1 mil everywhere else except maybe Zurich. US expenses over 5 years would be about 800k-1mil excluding a home which you are likely going to sell for far more than you pay for.

[saithound]

Let me share my math.

Let's just take one perk I get to enjoy right now: I can afford to live in a high density city block with a long-term average yearly homicide rate below 4 per 100000 inhabitants.

In the U.S. I could replicate this only by purchasing a city block sized campus for myself and then investing in very very good screening of tenants and a private security force.

Based on average salaries of police and municipal infrastructure workers, combined with real estate prices in major U.S. metros, even with a bit of optimization, I couldn't get the cost to go below $2,150,023,240 for the first year (including real estate purchases) and about $1b yearly afterwards. I could maybe go lower by building my own city block somewhere outside a major metro, but I think infrastructure costs would eat that up.

And that's just one perk I got to enjoy: others, such as living within walking distance to my workplace, would be even harder to replicate. Yet others, like the ability to visit a borthel without having to worry about losing my job or going to jail, are nigh impossible.

Sure, there's additional efficiency where one action can help achieve multiple such perks, so let's assume I could replicate the lifestyle I enjoyed for a measlt $1b pa. That's about 8000x the annual income I had when I retired. And US salaries are not even 10x higher than Australian ones, so as far as I can tell, the math is not even close to working out.

(Of course, not everybody cares about these specific perks, and for some the U.S. may be a better fit. They're welcome to emigrate: the ones who don't appear to care enough to vote and keep these policies in place every 3 years, so I doubt anybody's getting the short end of the stick. The point is that it's stupid to compare salary numbers, because a lot of the things people want are trivial conveniences here and still unaffordable for even the richest people in other places, and vice versa.)

[titanomachy]

> achieving a homicide rate below 4/100k would require building a secure compound and hiring live security

This is a little silly. There are many US cities that meet that standard. Seattle's rate is 6/100k which sounds reasonably safe to me. I've never known anyone (and none of my friends knows anyone) who has died by intentional homicide. It's simply not something that we worry about.

> living within walking distance to work is hard to replicate

Why would this be the case? Major cities have both large tech offices and dense housing. My office has many apartments, townhomes, and single-family homes within walking distance. The neighborhood it's located in is quite livable.

> visiting a brothel without losing my job is impossible

This one is probably true. If regular brothel access is a priority, then the US is probably not a good choice. Nevada might be an exception.

[varjag]

The brothels bit is oddly specific, but it's worth mentioning consuming prostitution in many European countries (including some of those with top wages) is illegal.

[saithound]

> I've never known anyone (and none of my friends knows anyone) who has died by intentional homicide. It's simply not something that we worry about.

I do know people who were hit by a car while crossing residential streets.

I don't know any people who were hit by a car while crossing a highway.

This doesn't mean highways are safer to cross on foot than residential streets.

Similarly, the people who are not murder victims in US cities must change their natural behavior in thousands of costly and humiliating ways so as to not become victims, and all that effort still doesn't keep the murder rate lower than the 30-60s that US downtowns have. Do you mind your own business while a teenager walks out of the grocery store without paying? Congratulations, you won't show up in those homicide stats. But it's not merely the stats that were the problem: it's the amount of social disfunction that it indicates and you won't buy your way out of that by any realistic higher salary.

Similarly, I don't personally know anybody who died of lung cancer, but would also not be keen to wear a respirator so that I can safely eat in a restaurant where people smoke.

> There are many US cities that meet that standard.

Oh, I'm sure there are many such _cities_. But that's not the rate of my city, it's the rate of the high density business district I live in. The city itself has a still lower homicide rate, but it's not relevant. I can't find data about the homicide rate of high-density living downtown areas of Seattle, but I doubt it's lower than that of the city itself.

> living within walking distance to work is hard to replicate

Because then you have to make your city block purchase in the immediate vicinity of your employer's office, which will further increase costs since you won't be able to choose among the cheapest high density city blocks.

[fooker]

>I can afford to live in a high density city block with a long-term average yearly homicide rate below 4 per 100000 inhabitants.

It's great you gave a clear threshold instead of making it vague. Here are some US cities that would satisfy this criteria according to wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...) : San Diego, San Jose (yeah I'm surprised too..), NYC (also unexpected!), Portland, Seattle.

[saithound]

LOL. That's not the rate of my city, it's the rate of the high density business district I live in. The city itself has a much lower homicide rate, because there are large suburbs where people onpy sleep and nothing ever happens. The homicide rate of Downtown San Jose (the closest equivalent area) is a whopping 41/100k. So not a good look there.

[zelphirkalt]

But who is talking about 2 incomes and possibly living even with a partner in one household?

[ta1243]

Based on the OPs figures 1 income with the same expenses would be 1m profit, more than income alone in europe.

I don't believe those figures (and they're meaningless for europeans as you can't simply get a job in the US), but if you take them at face value finanically living in the US for a decade is the sensible approach.

Obviously you'd want to leave before your kids went to school

[fooker]

You don't have to believe me, look at the data points. The recipe you are looking for is: senior position at big tech, preferably doing something specialized.

For example: https://www.levels.fyi/companies/facebook/salaries/software-... https://www.levels.fyi/companies/nvidia/salaries/software-en...

>and they're meaningless for europeans as you can't simply get a job in the US

We have plenty of Europeans in big tech, though the usual path is either through attending university in the US or intra-company transfers. You can get a job directly if yoy are extraordinary, but I have not seen that happen very often.

> Obviously you'd want to leave before your kids went to school

We tried this, and the kid refused.

[readyman]

Your math is based on you and your partner making 400k-500k/yr lol.

[fooker]

Yes, that's what we make right now on average.

If you work in tech for a few years that's kind of average. We are having a new PhD grad join next month with a 400k TC offer.

If you have trouble believing me, check out levels.fyi for (Facebook:E5, Google:L5-6, Nvidia:IC5, Apple ICT5).

[readyman]

>Yes, that's what we make right now on average.

>If you work in tech for a few years that's kind of average.

You should probably learn what "average" means if you're getting paid that much to develop software.

[georgeburdell]

Ok so you’re in a hot sub-field. Your experience is not typical even at the companies you’ve named. And it’s definitely not typical “after a few years”, unless it’s a new PhD in hot field * top tier company * multiple good reviews. And you’re probably extrapolating the anomalously good stock performance that frankly you have no control over.

Your average Leetcode drone that makes it into those companies is making $300k after 5 years.

[yoyohello13]

Wtf? So if you and your partner get a top 1% tech job in the US you can out earn an average job in Europe. No shit!

[fooker]

The math is more like: top 10% of tech jobs in the US would make ~3-4x of top 10% of Europe. And there are so many tech jobs in the US that this top 10% is much larger in number than anywhere else. There's a reason people emigrate to the US from everywhere despite pretty harsh work environment and social security nets.

For example, a Google IC5/6 in Paris would make between 150k-200k vs ~500-700k in the bay area.

[jorvi]

That’s 150-200k on the earning side. In most European countries this has a bunch of social security pay-in, pension pay-in, employer-side employee tax etc. already paid for via the employer. The “real” wage is often close to double, so 300k-400k vs 500k-700k, which doesn’t sound nearly as grim once you factor in the much better quality of life.

[skullone]

And the bay area apartment would cost $8k/MO for a 3br/2 bath to raise a single kid in.

[rsynnott]

> For example, a Google IC5/6 in Paris would make between 150k-200k vs ~500-700k in the bay area.

Having worked for Big Tech(TM) in Ireland, I'm a _little_ sceptical of those numbers. There's a big gap, but, at least in the mid levels, it is not _that_ big.

Levels.fyi seems to have paywalled most of their data, so I can't find what Google pay in Paris, but the lowest they show for total compensation for an L6 is $390k, highest $720k. Both of those are serious outliers; median is $550k. While I'm always a bit suspicious of levels.fyi data, I think you're seriously exaggerating how big the gap is, at least in big tech (it can be a lot bigger in small startups).

[bobthepanda]

are piano lessons, private tutors, and sports clubs regularly affordable in Europe? those hardly sound like government provided services

[tyfon]

Most of it is government provided here in Norway. My daughtes do (private) piano lessons and theatre and it's organized and paid by the muni. Sports clubs might have a small fee for equipment, but it's also heavily sponsored by the government, the national lottery etc.

For the things not free you can often have them paid for if you are in the low income brackets, and some places just give credit for those types of activity to all children.

The reasoning is that children of low income families shouldn't be excluded.

[fooker]

A lot of US public schools provide this, but the quality can be questionable in/around large metros.

[mokkol]

Here in Spain, I pay €35/month for weekly piano lessons for my daughter. She loves it and we are really happy with her teacher as well. All from the public music school.

[ta1243]

> The UK is particular, brexit did not do them any good.

No shit. That's why working people voted to remain. That's why young people voted to remain. That's why educated people voted to remain.

The majority of people in the UK today that voted, voted to remain. Far more leave voters have died in the last 8 years than remain voters.

[admissionsguy]

Few people realise that the EU countries and the US are no longer in the same wealth category. There is a 50% difference in GDP per capita between Germany and the USA, for example.

It's not a matter of offering benefits in kind instead of money, but rather a fundamental difference in resources available.

[leipert]

The GDP per capita in the US is (85k USD) and in Germany (54k USD) nominal. That’s about 57% higher. At PPP (purchase power parity) 85k US vs 67k Germany, which “only” is a 27% difference.

Denmark rates at 68k / 77k. So much closer. Norway is tricky to compare and Netherlands, Ireland and Switzerland are tax havens.

- Nominal: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(no...

- PPP: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PP...

[admissionsguy]

The population of Denmark is equal to that of Wisconsin. If we look at Denmark simply because it's among the richest EU countries, it might be more appropriate to compare it with the richest US states. Taking the top 5 state (California), we get $100k vs $68k (nominal), again ca 50%.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...

[varjag]

These estimates are really approximate and depend on the exchange rate. The lowest rate of NOK/USD on my memory was 5.6 and the highest nearly 12.

Developer salaries in Norway are decent as Europe goes but if you want to make money hand over fist there's no other place like America. Yes even with all the old world perks imaginable.

[mchaver]

Well, I also like that my neighbors and community also have access to no-pay-at-point-of-use healthcare, low cost education options and guaranteed time off. Makes for a relatively relaxed and content population!

If you don't invest in (or put up lots of barriers to) the health and education of the entire community, then you are going to have an unhealthy and uneducated community.

That's not to say we don't have many problems, but in my personal experience it's a lot less than the US in those regards.

[Nextgrid]

> have access to no-pay-at-point-of-use healthcare

This really depends on the country. In the UK you need to go private and pay if you want any kind of timely healthcare.

[lannisterstark]

>I've always loved that narrative for its optimism

Despite all the European love, most of Europe (and rather, most of the world) is pretty poor compared to US.

[datascienced]

Outsiders have the disadvantage of needing a visa but the advantage of a $2k excess (the cost of the return flight) for unlimited chronic condition management. Obviously ER is different as you can’t go home quickly.

Once you return home you might get to keep the job while in the hone country and rake it in.