[FirmwareBurner]

>I would insist something is wrong here. 3k a month for an SWE seems on the lower end, really.

3K NETTO(post-tax) is the norm for mid positions in Austria for SW devs, not on the lower end. Where do you live if this is too low?

> 5k should be possible for senior positions.

5k NETTO is the norm?! In this market? WHERE? Survivorship bias maybe?

>From this perspective, things might be working as expected in a society with too many SWEs and too few bus drivers.

There's no "too few bus drivers", there's the unions of bus drivers (and other jobs) who can push their salary and cost increases into the prices of the general public, as they please (kind of like government workers) since they have a monopoly on public transit and that's what people need to get to work so they don't need to compete on the free market. You're comparing free market labor with a union monopoly.

Maybe a good strategy if you want to have a country where everyone is a government worker and you have no private sector innovation. Would you still be SW devs for the same wages?

[benterix]

I guess it depends on the type of contract. I checked the job offers on https://germantechjobs.de/en and it seems 80k/year is in the middle for many for these (I ignored job offers where they start with 45k for a senior position, this is just ridiculous).

And it seems I was wrong, because according to this page https://salaryaftertax.com/de/salary-calculator 80k actually gives you only 4k/month, not 5k, because of almost 40% tax. Sorry for that (on the other hand, I learned something new...).