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Comment by themartorana | Hacker News Reader

2000-3000 Euro/month is incredibly low. Fresh devs around here go for $50k+ annually, and experience costs 6 figures easily (and I'm in Philadelphia, I'm not talking SF/NY numbers).

Edit (pressed submit early): some companies use remote workers to reduce costs, but I wouldn't expect to pay such a low $36k max in Europe. Remote, if managed well, is just as good as in-house. You're not worth significantly less.

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You have to consider that here in a lot of sud-west EU states 3000e/month allow you to live VERY GOOD even in the main cities. Cost of life here is extremly low compared to that of SV.

Forget Silicon Valley: It's gotten stupid expensive. The rest of the US, however, has not.

I lived in Spain, and moved to the middle of the US, to a city that is about the same size as Valencia: Here, A 4 bedroom house can be had for $200K. Groceries are often cheaper here. Cars are WAY cheaper here, barring a few EU luxury brands. My mother's electricity bill, in an apartment less than half the size of my house, is double mine, so the cost of living is in no way higher than in Spain.

The difference is that someone right out of school will make 60K. A completely average senior dev makes 100K. The last time I had local work I had a long term hourly contract, 40/week average, that paid $125 an hour, so 20K a month. Today I make more.

So in Spain you have a cost of living that is not really any better, far higher taxes, and pay that would be seen as pretty low for a recent college graduate. Every time I visit, and people ask me why I don't come back, I just go through the economics, and Spaniards quickly agree that I'd have to be insane to come back.

Why make €3,000 when you can easily make €6,000 or €8,000 doing the same work? Unlike a lawyer or a doctor, software engineering can easily be "exported" and done from anywhere in the world. You just need to be _good_.

I agree. I was just saying that, anyway, with 3000e/m you are not living a bad life, you are instead pretty """rich""" for the standars here. Indeed, if you can, better improve it.

I think that's very true, but it still seems a little crazy that you're doing the same work and getting paid 20-25% of a SV job.

It depends also on how many hours do you work. Here is pretty common you never go over 38hours week, and if you have to you are compensated very well (1.5~2.5 x normal hour rate).

For what I read (but probably there is a little bias in it) in SV there is a partially workcentered style of life when you have to work often >60h with a salaried contract (that, btw, here in EU they do not exist... you are paid with an explicit amount of hours per week in your contract). For example reading the book of Elon Musk it seems he asks constantly for 80/90h/w working also on the weekend. Consider also that.

Oh and also you have not to pay anything for healtcare.

Basically, as other have already said, if you manage to live in Italy-France-Spain-Portugal-Germany and you are capable to get a remote work for a company in US you will have a incredibly high level of life here.

It is not quite bad as it may seen in SV. Most people work 8am to 5pm as gauged by the traffic peak periods. Some start earlier or later but most work around 40 hours. Rarely do you see much traffic or people at work on the weekends. There are certainly places where people work like long hours but one doesn't have to work in those places. There are plenty of other options.

Where in Spain you rarely go over 38hr/week or will get decently paid those extra? Man, things must have changed for good in the last 5 years.

Be mindful that these are pre tax numbers. Add in income tax and social security, and you may chop 50% of that salary off.

I don't know how it works in Spain, but in Italy the cost of an employee is probably much more than his/her salary.

The employer gives you a salary, then they have to pay on top of it ~30% of INAIL, INPS etc. (pension, health "insurance" including sick days and so on) and ~10% of TFR (fund you get back at the end of your career.) In the U.S. those are costs you have to remove from your salary.

So, 3000 euros a month would be 6000 euros before taxes and if you add the other employer costs, it's about 10000. Now convert it to dollars and you have a 130000 dollars a year.

When hiring contractors the company doesn't have to pay any of these things (it's on the contractor). I'm currently contracting for a company in Italy and getting much more than 3k/mo.

You are speaking about gross salary I guess. I don't really believe that in Italy you can get much more of 3k€ net as a developer. And contracting market in Italy is really fucked up, when I was there on average contractors were paid less than permies.

Makes sense, I was describing my experience as employee and just trying to explain why comparing gross salaries doesn't make much sense.

So I guess you do like most freelancers: you don't have insurances nor build any pension? So if you get hit by a car, you have nothing.

Don't know about Italy, but at least in some EU countries, freelancers do build pension.

In my country, pension payments is mandatory. As well as insurance for maternity/paternity leave. I've full medical insurance. Well, as full as regular workers. The only difference is I don't have paid sick days and can't claim unemployment benefits. Which kinda makes sense when freelancing.

I think I'm eligible for disabled pension though. So if I got hit by car, I'd get free treatment. But no salary compensation. If I was rendered disabled, I may be eligible for disabled benefits based on my previous incomes. Or at least basic disabled benefits.

Cost of employee is always higher than salary. Bear in mind that employee have to pay (feed) himself, government, management, company revenue etc. It's simply not possible to create business value 10 000 € and get all of them into own pocket. At least not as standard employee.

True, but leaving health and pension in or out the gross salary makes a big difference if you want to compare gross salaries.

It depedns on definition of gross or super-gross salary. It may vary per country.

But...employee is always the only one who have to create value for customer who will give company his money. It doesnt matter who pay taxes (even health or social "insurance" are kind of taxes) value needs to be created and customer needs to be charged. Employer will not pay (long terrrm view) your bills and taxes from own pocket (dont consider early startup phases)

in spain is the same, the socialist fallacy.

your feeding corrupt governments in a mandatory way with out a way to get out of the system (i don't want a government pension or the so called "free" social/medical care)

in spain your pretty much putting your money in fund they may not be there by the time you retire.

so making 3k a month is peanuts there is no way you can save for retirement.

most specialist will tell you that you will need to save anything from 500k to 1M for retirement. if you have kids, 3k its probably a stretch specially if you want to give them a good education.

In Portugal you hardly get more than 1500€ after taxes, unless you are very very lucky.

€1500 a month is €18K a year, I believe Portugal has about 28% income tax for €7-20K income bracket (which seems very high), so it is roughly about €25K before taxes.

And you are saying this is a good as it gets for Software Engineers. I was looking up real estate prices in Lisbon and they seemed pretty high. Per my understanding a lot of people from EU (and some outside of EU) are buying real estate in Portugal and that drives prices up. How do local people buy real estate then?

What websites do local people in Portugal use for real estate sales and rentals?

I would advise anyone to stay away from Lisbon regarding housing as there's some kind of bubble over here because of all the tourism. The rest of the country has saner prices, so if you don't really need to live in Lisbon, stay away from it..

Regarding locals, we have a problem which is that when daily workers leave Lisbon, you can only find the tourists looking at each other..

We do lease for everything, TV, computer, car, house, vacation, you name it.

Before the crisis you could get full credits, with 0% entry on your side.

It is also quite common to live with the parents and only leave when you eventually marry, with one salary being used to pay the bank and other running costs.

Or you get to buy a little piece of land with an house that gets built with lot of shortcuts along the years.

Not sure what the best websites are, as I am living abroad, however many local agencies lack Internet presence. The best sources are ads on local newspapers or word of mouth.

Let me correct your numbers. For 1500€ monthly net your employer will pay about 3000€ (~20% income tax + ~30% social security). Multiply by 14 (Yes there are 14 salaries in a year. Don't ask.) and the yearly gross is 42000€.

Edit: https://casa.sapo.pt/ for a look at the real estate market. "para venda" is for sale, "para alugar/aluguer" is for rent.

In Portugal, Social Security taxation for a full-time employee is 11%.

42000€ per year gross salary lands you in the 28.5% income tax.

A yearly gross salary of 42000€ is about +/- 1800€ salary/month.

You're apparently unaware that not all tax appears on your salary receipt. Employers have to pay 20% to SS, on top of the 11% that the employee pays. (This amount doesn't count toward your gross income for IRS purposes though, which is relevant to your point)

The distinction is largely a technicality, all the more because both parts of the SS contribution are paid by the employer directly to the state, but it does have one effect: because the 20% don't show up in the salary receipt, most portuguese people are, like you, blissfully unaware of what the real tax rate on their salaries is.

If companies all of the sudden didn't have to paid those 20% would I see that reflected on my paycheck? I bet you I wouldn't nor anyone else.

I've heard that falacy time and time again: "Oh, if I didn't have to pay so much taxes for each worker I could pay higher salaries."

You're responding to a statement I didn't make. I just corrected the common misconception that the SS tax is 11%, it's not, it's 34.75% [0]

What would happen if those taxes were lowered is for economists to speculate, I'm not one (even then, as the joke goes, put a question to two economists, get three different opinions)

[0] This conversation made go check the exact values, you can find them here: http://www.economias.pt/contribuicoes-para-a-seguranca-socia...

Local people will hardly ever buy a property within Lisbon center. Advantageous tax and citizenship acquiring policies for foreigners drived prices extremely high. Suburbs are the only solution as soon as you get a family and renting a room is not an option anymore.

Even renting is way harder right now. Landlords prefer to rent central properties via AirBnb than to make cheaper long term contracts.

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