Hacker News Reader

Comment by tlogan | Hacker News Reader

Here is what my fellow Eastern Europeans do not know (and I'm from there so I'm qualified):

> A good developer in Eastern Europe now costs $1000-$1500

> a month. I kid you not.

In Eastern Europe definition of a good developer is "hamburger flipper which knows a little of HTML". I kid you not. Also work ethics are horrendous.

In short it ends up much cheaper to hire somebody in mid-west than from Eastern Europe (even though I tried very very hard).

The really good developer in Eastern Europe is $6000/month - less than US mid-west but you have to adjust for time change, logistic, trust, etc. So you end up at same.

View on HN

This fits my experience too.

The saying "pay peanuts, get monkeys" applies everywhere. I am not sure where I heard it but I recall even great developers in India, born and bred, are on six figure US income. Just because you can pay someone $1,000 a month doesn't mean they are actually doing the same work as somone on $10,000 a month.

And if they are really a great developer I would go so far as to say that they are being played and taken advantage of.

Developers are pretty mobile so you should expect that wages will converge on a global basis.

The UK (outside of London) seems to be quite cheap.

Exactly - wages for software developers are pretty much the same all over the world. Of course, Bay Area is kinda crazy these days but that is just a temporary flux (I hope).

Bay area salaries are just disappearing into housing and transport costs. I don’t see salaries coming down, but a continued fleeing of development out of the area.

Looking from Norway (admittedly with a high average/median wage across all jobs, even if top-end compensation isn't all that high) advertised salaries from positions in the UK often appear surreal. Granted there's a difference in cost of living, but I often wonder what kind of people end up in these jobs in the UK. Especially government position seems to lag far behind in terms of compensation. I'm hoping my picture is slightly skewed by a sampling bias (eg: most positions sadly don't list a comp. range).

In sum, I agree with what you said, although maybe not what you meant: Developers in the UK appear cheap. Too cheap.

Yes I meant developers are cheap - the cost of living not so much.

It can be pretty cheap to hire a developer in London too, since the expectations for wages here are still a lot lower than in the Bay area, even though the houses prices are astronomical. There seems to still be an expectation that programming/development is a simple, somewhat near entry level job with entry level wages here.

How do people live on average wages and live in London?

Either:

1. They commute from cheaper accomodation outside of London. It's why the train services into stations like Fenchurch Street, Liverpool Street, Waterloo and Euston are so packed. Because it's cheaper to say, live in Southend and commute for an hour than to afford a place in the city centre.

2. They live with their parents, friends, other relatives or spouse, any of which either have better paying jobs or still own property from when it was cheaper to buy.

3. They share really cramped, sometimes illegal accomodation while sending a percentage of the money to their family abroad.

4. Their parents/family are rich and they're living on a trustfund of some kind.

None of those are reasonable ways to live in London on average wages, but they are likely the reasons that your average developer/programmer job here is offering around 30-50,000 pounds a year, often nearer the low end.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com