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Comment by Raed667 | Hacker News Reader

34k € is a bad salary in Germany? Because I think it is an average 1st salary in France (or the companies I've been talking to are also planning to get me paid abysmally)

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For a developer I'd say yes. For comparison the yearly salary for an entry level academic (masters->university) is about 44k € gross/year (which more or less automatically goes up to about 49k after one year). I'd expect a decent entry level developer to make at least that.

Social contributions are a much bigger part of your gross salary in Germany. 34k would be ~28k in France.

My company hires new grads around 50k and I guess decent startups who make people relocate across continents should pay at least 45k.

Damn. That's more than I got when I started in London. Should have picked Berlin instead.

When it comes to software development, London (and the UK) certainly seem to have a low pay culture.

Can you make 6 figures in Berlin? (In London, it's doable)

I hope you're not saying "low pay" because you compare to the USA. The Europe and the USA are not in the same league, they shouldnt be compared.

There is a difference between "acheivable" and "culture". I should also probably add I'm thinking of London-Non-Finance which is admittedly smaller than London.

100k+ is definitely possible in Germany but hard in Berlin itself, even for a principal engineer.

I'd say you need be be at least Manager/Director/VP of engineering, depending on the size of the company.

34k ain't bad, but average salaries for Experienced Java devs with 5+ years of experience are in the range of 50-55k.

Also by paying less than blue card limit, the devs are basically tied to VisualMeta. Most of the devs don't know German system well and thus are being taken advantage of.

34k will be very good salary for an experienced java dev in Italy..

34kE for a new master's graduate is rather low in Paris. It's rather high for the rest of the country.

See here for discussion about French salaries.

http://www.developpez.net/forums/f597/emploi-etudes-informat...

That's the main french forum for professional developers tips & tricks & career advice & salaries.

Thanks, and do you have an idea about Nice / Sophia Antipolis ?

I am not familiar with the area.

Feel free to open a topic in the aforementioned forum, they'll know better .

Fresh graduate salaries in Sophia are ~€33k-€40k. Negotiate hard, as getting a raise later is tough.

Depends on where you live. If you're near a larger city or not. There's a huge discrepancy in salaries Due to geography (and also massively depends on your skill set, obviously).

To give you a frame of reference, I was pretty well paid in Perpignan after a few years in a company (a bit north of 40k€). The junior devs I hired got south of 24k€.

As another said, it is heavily dependent on location.

For a dev job around Paris, it is very low.

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