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Comment by davedx | Hacker News Reader

In the Netherlands it is almost universal to discuss salaries in terms of monthly salary amount.

In Germany as well. That's why I believe that the ~20 German users who answered with an annual salary < 3000 USD did answer the questionnaire wrongfully. The minimum wage in Germany is 8.50€/h. Assuming you work for the minimum wage, that would be 3000USD/8.5(€/h)/52 weeks = 6.41 h/week which does not seem plausible.

For reference, the question from the questionnaire:

> BASE: professional developer (Q100 == 1) AND currently employed (Q135 <= 3) Q320. What is your current annual salary, in [currency from Q310]? Please enter a whole number in the box below, without any punctuation. If you prefer not to answer, please leave the box empty / blank.

Interesting. Months aren't all the same, especially if you get paid weekly/biweekly, which seems universal here in the US. I assume it's a weekly52/12 or biweekly26/12? That's what I use for my own personal budgeting, but I've never seen others refer to monthly pay before. I do find it convenient to think about pay this way, since so many expenses are on a monthly schedule (rent, utilities, credit cards, car loans, insurance).

EDIT: OK, another comment specified that it's common to receive monthly pay in parts of Europe, rather than weekly/biweekly.

Getting paid twice a month is common in the US too.

Eh, that is what your parent comment says.

As a Swede I find the concept strange. I get a monthly salary, and of course it is paid monthly (almost universally sometime between day 20 and 25 of the month).

> Eh, that is what your parent comment says.

No, what my parent comment says is that getting paid twice a month is very rare in the US. ("Months aren't all the same, especially if you get paid weekly/biweekly, which seems universal here in the US.")

My parent comment is mistaken.

They're saying that being paid either weekly or biweekly (i.e. roughly 2 or 4 times a month) is nearly universal in the U.S, and that being paid monthly sounds less sensible, since months are of different lengths.

...Unless you're talking about the difference between biweekly and semimonthly?

Considering the explicit distinction drawn between getting paid on a week basis, where "months aren't all the same", and getting paid on a month basis, where they are, of course that's what I'm talking about. If you get paid twice a month, your income is the same every month.

While they're technically different, they're "close enough for government work", and I don't know anyone who would make the distinction in casual conversation. IMO, there's no "of course" about it; a comparable situation would be interpreting "literally", "begs the question", "ironic", and such using their dictionary definitions, when it seems clear that the writing has a more colloquial tone.

In response to the comment "when you're paid biweekly, not all months are the same", then yes, it is blindingly obvious that the current context draws a distinction between being paid biweekly, such that not all months are the same, and being paid semimonthly, such that all months are in fact the same.

You're reading the comment differently than I am. That's all I can say.

Ah, thanks! I should have specified that I was speaking anecdotally. I've just never been paid semi-monthly or monthly in the US or heard of it from others. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised if it is more common that I would have thought. Perhaps it's more common in other regions or fields.

Same in Sweden, regardless of how your wages are structured (monthly salary, hourly wages, performance based) everybody responds with what they make per month when asked how much they make.

I think the common thread here is that leaving the pay period to be unknown / arbitrary certainly calls into question any validity of this effort.

Yes, using the yearly salary as the main reference seems to be either a US or an Anglophone-world thing. What is commonly done in the UK and Ireland?

In the UK, almost no-one talks about their salary ;-)

Spot on! On the rare occasion we do, it's discussed in terms of an annual amount.

Quoted annually, paid monthly, discussed never.

(In the US) I actually found it weird when I was talking to a loan officer and he asked how much I made. I told him, and he about jumped out of his seat. "PER MONTH?! WHAT DO YOU NEED A LOAN FOR?!"

I was flabbergasted. I'd never had someone ask me how much I make an expect me to say per month. I don't know how much I make per month. I know per year or per paycheck. If you want per month you'll have to get out the calculator, buddy.

In the parts of Europe that I know of, if you have a median job, your paycheck is per month. That is why everyone knows that number the best: it's the one you see most often, appearing every month on your bank account.

For me, and I suspect this is pretty status quo in the US, the number that shows up in my checking account biweekly is my annual salary divided by 24, minus taxes and automatic deductions for mortgage, 401k, stock purchase, health plan, etc., with the occasional bonus thrown in to mix things up. It's a very arbitrary number and it would be impossible to back-calculate my overall compensation from it.

It shows up in your checking account semi-monthly ;)

It's a slight difference, where the end result is a difference of 2 paychecks per year (24 for semi-monthly vs 26 for bi-weekly)

> the number that shows up in my checking account biweekly is my annual salary divided by 24

Either you're paid twice a month rather than every other week, or the biweekly number is your annual salary divided by _26_, or, I guess, you're subject to a strict requirement to take two weeks of unpaid vacation every year.

Good point. In that case I really don't really even understand how my beer money relates back to my salary.

Um, wow.

That's really something you should know and understand because you want to make sure you are getting paid correctly and catch any payroll errors. They are not uncommon, I've caught a couple myself, including an $1,800 mistake.

If you're paid biweekly (say, every other Friday) you have 26 pay periods. If you are paid semi monthly (say the first and the fifteenth) then you'll have 24 pay periods.

A lot of jobs in the US pay biweekly, which comes out to a nice, round 2.166 paychecks per average calendar month. Paperwork here generally either asks for annual income or asks both paycheck and length of pay period.

So its possible to have to wait more than a month for your first paycheck? i.e. start on the 1st and they pay on the 1st weekday of a new month for the past month?

I'd hate to be loaning the company money that long every month.

In Western Europe there doesn't seem to be a clear 'standard' of when ppl get paid. I know several people who are paid on the 10th each month, for example. (I happen to know this because they negotioted their rent payments to be on the 11th for properties they rent from me). Others are around 22-24; I used to get paid 28-30 in various jobs. There is probably a reason for this clustering, or maybe my sample size is too small and there is no clustering.

How often you're paid depends, often it's twice per month, but the agreed amount in the agreement (and everywhere else where you'd discuss it) would be listed as x eur/month.

> So its possible to have to wait more than a month for your first paycheck?

Yes, it's pretty typical.

> I'd hate to be loaning the company money that long every month

That doesn't make any sense.

In sweden, salaries are traditionally paid the 25:th.

An if you get paid per hour, your payment is usually for the previous month, so 56 days late.

In the Netherlands also the 25th. However, if you get paid per hour, it may also be that you are paid weekly or biweekly, but indeed usually a cycle later.

Yes, unless you're self-employed and bill people, you pretty much always get paid monthly.

Surely you've seen your paystub? Or the amount your employer deposits into your account every fortnight/month?

Yeah, my paystub is per paycheck. That's why I can say how much I make per paycheck off hand, but I'm going to need to do a little math to figure out how much that is per month.

Most billing cycles are by month (rent, water, internet, spotify, ect) so budgets tend to be by month. Obviously I don't know /exactly/ what I make per month, but I have a general idea. I expect this would be fairly similar throughout the US (though I have no evidence backing up that assertion).

Was this a car loan? They love to throw you off guard so they can sneak something past.

UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand all think of yearly income. Continental Europe all speak exclusively of monthly salary.

Also there is another flaw, the salary should have been multiplied by 14, because I believe that many European countries pay 2 extra salaries, one in summer and one in December.

Depends on the employer and, obviously, country. In the Netherlands, everyone gets "vacation money" somewhere in May/June. For me, it usually works out to a bit less than a month's salary. In December, many people get a "13th month", but many others like me don't.

> Continental Europe all speak exclusively of monthly salary

Not true at all.

In the UK we talk about annual salary.

Same in most of India.

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