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Comment by rfrey | Hacker News Reader

I devour indiehacker's interviews and I love the transparency - thanks to both sides of the table.

According to the numbers here, 42% of the 17,000 monthly revenues are spent on 6 people. That's $1190 per person per month if everyone is paid equally.

Is everyone in Romania, and is that a living wage there? If not, how are your employees making ends meet?

Edit: that last sentence sounds accusatory - I don't mean it to. I just mean: do you have a strategy of part-timers who have other income streams, do you take side contracts, etc.

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Glad that you like it! In Romania, the minimum monthly wage is 250$, then programmers start with 400$/month. Depending on experience and what they do inside a company they can grow to 2-3k/month in a couple of years. We are growing the salaries according to the experience and the position inside the company too. 100% of our employees started with 0 experience because it was their first job. Everything was learned inside our company.

Totally was not expecting the answer to be "yes".

Some countries in Europe is very low wage. There is an article about Italy millennia generation the 1000 Euro generation because that's how much many of them make per month. That isn't to say it's a living wage, but it's what a lot get. Tech isn't paid much compared to Bay Area either, look at London or Spain, dramatic wage differences (London especially since cost of living isn't different from Bay Area).

$1k Euro/month is decent living in Eastern Europe, Romania, Hungary, almost any place closer to Russia.

That stood out to me too. Not great at this stage but if they can continue to grow it, I suppose the pay will increase too. They started 2 years ago though. 17k in 2 years for 6 people is pretty low imo unless they are very part time.

Romanian here, living in the UK though.

Romania is a lot cheaper than any much any other place in the Western world. Granted, $1.2k a month wouldn't be enough to go on shopping sprees every weekend, but it's enough for quite a good life.

You can also take a look here to get an idea: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...

I think a good senior software engineer makes around $2.5k per month, but I think that's sort of on the higher end unless you're really a hot shot, and for Romania, that's an awesome salary, way above the average.

It's probably worth noting to the US audience that salaries in Europe are almost always quoted as net, with (usually) no further taxes due.

So if someone's getting $2.5K per month it's not the same as an American getting 12x that in annual salary, because it's (presumably) the after-tax number in Romania while it'd be the pre-tax number in the US.

Still, I get that tech talent is a great value in Romania. I wonder if there's a problem finding good people because so many would go to the West to make more money. But it seems the OP solves that problem by hiring beginners, which is probably what I'd do.

Yeah, generally salaries in Romania (any maybe other Eastern European countries) are quoted as net, per month. In the USA/UK it's almost always yearly-based, with hourly rates for contractors. In Romania people mainly talk about how much they take home from their salary every month.

With regards to the tech talent, I definitely think there is some truth to that. I'm no expert, but I'd say it might have something to do with the education system, or maybe even culture, which is quite heavily focused on maths and physics. With that said, we always rank quite low on most international education indices and the like. I think it might be some sort of educational inequality where children in the cities get quite good education and are pushed by their parents to study, while the ones in rural areas get the short end of the stick.

Also, something that really pisses me off is how many Romanians overstate our IT prowess. "Romanian is the second language spoken at Microsoft" is now part of folk wisdom, despite being proved to be false and just a media hoax in the '00s. We have many big companies with offices in Bucharest (and other cities), but they aren't really flocking to get all of this "enormous talent" just laying around. Don't get me wrong, we do have many reputable engineers and university professors, but nothing that would warrant this common perception about how incredibly skilled Romanians are in IT.

There did seem to be a little bit of PR about it... Cluj positioning itself as a very startup-friendly city, a documentary about all he evil hackers in Râmnicu Vâlcea IIRC, though it does seem a bit random.

Any idea how it compares to neighboring Hungary?

In Budapest there's anecdotally a lot of software talent and a fairly visible coworking/hipster-hacking/startup scene, but I still see Tata bringing people in from India to work.

And in Berlin there are people from all over the world toiling in the Salt Mines of Samwer, I would assume a lot of them from the former Eastern Bloc.

I wrote a blog post back in 2013 regarding how much I should make in more expensive cities of the world (London, SF, NY, etc) in order to have the same standard of living as in Romania for 1700 eur/month: http://programming.tudorconstantin.com/2013/10/why-ill-never...

>Is everyone in Romania, and is that a living wage there?

It's a very good living wage for Romania but low for what other IT people are earning, ~$2k monthly.

> It's a very good living wage

It's a very good wage for _surviving_.

After taking care of rent/utility bills there's not much left to go around for actually living.

>After taking care of rent/bills there's not much left to go around for actually living.

Are you implying rent/bills in Romania are $1k/mo?

The rent in UK (not London), Germany, France (not Paris), Italy, Spain, Portugal, etc... are under $1k a month.

Romania is eastern Europe. It should be way cheaper than that.

Rent most likely ~200, food ~100-200, misc ~100. You can get by with 300-500/month in eastern Europe, but you will have to monitor your expenses really closely. 300 if you live with friends/parents, cook at home and don't really do much else other than eat, sleep and work.

Get a decent apartment, have some fun in your free time and 1000 does turn into a "barely getting by"-wage. 1.5k-2k is comfortable wage, but median is around 500-600 in most of eastern Europe afaik.

How much for a decent high-speed Internet connection?

In Romania? $5 for 1Gbps, I'd wager. That is really not the problem there.

9$. VAT, 24%, included.

Around 7 to 8 dollar/month

https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/in/Bucharest?displayCu...

It seems that your 1000 may be rather comfortable, compared to the major tech cities. Different places have different standards for "barely getting by".

>1000 does turn into a "barely getting by"-wage

That's a very privileged view of "barely getting by". All you've described is someone spending everything they make on luxuries (nicer apartment, "having fun" - whatever that implies). By that token, someone could easily be "barely getting by" in San Francisco on an income of $400k by getting a nice 2 bedroom apartment to themselves in a hot location.

$1k/mo is the budget for an employee. Based on an salary app I've found online, an employee will receive around 680$/month after all taxes. It's a bit under-average for entry level devs in Romania but it's enough to live decent (the average national wage is around 460$ per month after taxes).

One could say the same for Bay Area salary of $150k.

Why don't Romanians just get remote jobs?

Do you believe it to be that easy to get a remote job, such that all Romanians can simply just "get" one?

Jobs grow on trees after all /s

It's not easy, but you can do it. Source: I'm Romanian and I work remotely. I found the job here in the monthly Who's Hiring thread.

My point was not "Romanians can't get remote jobs," but rather "It's not so easy to get remote jobs that all Romanians can simply get a remote job."

It's as easy or as difficult as getting any other programming job. The more you know your stuff and good English, the better the job you'll find.

I've noticed many of the dev marketplaces (even the more expensive ones) are dominated by international developers. It's definitely a popular path.

They come to Western Europe :) Last year I hired two Romanian developers here in The Netherlands, both were very good.

There's a lot of friction for both buying remote work and selling.

It has to be really worth the other party's time.

Not everyone can be a freelancer, that's one of the points behind the theory of the firm.

Technological advances can and have shifted the % of freelancers, but I doubt it will ever be near 100%.

I say that as both having been a freelancer, currently working semi-remote, and hiring freelancers (both locally and from India and Pakistan).

While this is Romania and one of the poorest in EU, one thing Americans tend to forget is that all the good things you like about EU like healthcare etc. come with a cost. It's not like only super rich put the money in :) The Silicon Valley wages are here utopia, even in the most expensive cities. Ask a Swiss about the salary your dev makes in Valley and he or she will have an heart attack.

from the article it seems like they are a consulting company and that this is a side project for them almost. So im sure they make money from their clients on top of the money from this

Thank you for reading it. We used to be a consulting agency, then when our side project (creative-tim) started to generate enough to pay our office and salaries for 3 persons we switched to it and then it was growing so we could get more people onboard.

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