Ask HN: Those in Europe making €100K+ annually, what is your job like?
For those who make €100K+ annually in Europe, where are you based? Where do you work? What is your position? And what is your job like?
Personally, since living in Europe, I've done it two ways. I worked remotely for an American company for several years, at my butt-in-seat Bay Area rate. And I've bootstrapped my own SaaS product business (letting it grow in the background while working for that US company).
Another option would be to find a software company here and actually negotiate a market rate for one's self.
It's really expensive to live here, compared to the 'states. I don't see how anybody does it on the $35k/year salaries we see reported for software guys.
It only takes one example to prove that something is possible. What you do once you know something is possible is up to you.
I live in Austria (big corp) and make 1x € a year.
My brother lives in Swizerland (big corp too) and he makes 3x € a year. It's a usualy saying here, that you make around 3 times the money in Switzerland compared to Austria, independently of what you work.
BUT:
In proportion to buying power and minus cost of living he has just about 1,5x € more money to blow (or to safe). Not 3x
AND,
he also says quality of life is 10x better in Austria: Do you live to work or work to live?
Spoiler: He's moving back to Austria in 1-2 years.
I discovered after being there a few months that I was on one of the lower contractor rates!
All tax information is public here and the magazines publish yearly lists of people earning over 100000eur (salary+possible capital gains). The lists usually never contain anybody doing "low level" work (ie. not CEO level etc.). And actually very few people earn that in salary alone.
Actually took a pay cut, used to be a contractor with a day rate ranging from £600-750 which had me averaging approx £150k/yr and paying much less tax. Considering going back to that soon, although a bit worried about Brexit uncertainty, but right now I'm seeing plenty of contractor roles offering that much, a few up to £1k/day.
- Management or technology consultants with maybe 6-7 years+ experience (particularly the more well known firms)
- Many roles in accounting and law firms, approx. similar experience as above
- B2B sales (if they're any good) particularly in finance or enterprise tech
- Almost anyone working in a hedge fund
- Front Office IB roles (quant, trading, business management, sales, et al.) after perhaps 3-5 years
- Other IB/banking roles at mid management and above levels (varies by bank)
- Most any decent technical or business contractor
- Technical architects and dev team leads for large projects
- Some recruiters / "headhunters"
Some of these roles are hard, in cut-throat industries and involve long hours. Plenty are not; get yourself in a middle/back office mid management role in an IB and if you're reasonably intelligent you can take home 100k (and the rest) whilst working from home 1-2 days a week and rarely staying in the office after 5:30. I'm not saying you'll find it satisfying, but it isn't difficult.
Senior technical expert and management positions are usually paid above tariff, starting at around 100k€.
There are plenty of positions in the big tech companies and software that are paid above 100k€. It's just very unlikely to get there if you are straight from school. Also, you won't have much luck finding >100k€ positions in the eastern part of Germany.
Is it what you get on your account in one year ? Is it what you keeps after paying your taxes and your insurances ? Or is it the global value your employer is paying for you ?
I assume you ask for the first one, yet the more representative one is probably the latter.
And should you compare with the US, you should also take into account health insurance, which is handled roughly 80% by the state, so it's part of your taxes, and 20% by insurance ( and is mandatory, part of what your employer pays for your salary ).
So depending on the case you may compare oranges with bananas and apples, because depending on your country what you have into your account as an employee over one year is way different from the value you obtain from it. And I don't even speak of cost of life itself ( the value you output from your salary in France is way different in Paris, where you generally get 15% more in salary compared to the rest of the France, but renting a flat is twice as costly as pretty much anywhere else in the country, so in the end you get less value out of those 15% more... ).
In the latter case, I'm part of this 100k+ club, with a margin, as a JS contractor. In the former case, well, I'm not :)
You may be interested in http://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/ and https://nomadlist.com to compare things in a better manner over Europe
Just kidding... at least I don't know anyone personally. But maybe the Head of R&D of the company I work for could be close to that mark, at least he's driving a Porsche.
Yeah.. not useful I know, sorry.
Are we talking Eurozone or Europe? I know programmers in Zurich making >= 130K Francs a year (which comes in at over €100K).
I know at least one American unicorn will pay far more than €100k in cash to new graduates in London.
I've not seen new graduates hit these sorts of numbers when I've been looking at the market. I'm sure there must be some, however I'd have assumed it was very rare. Still it's always useful to know what sort of competition might be out there when hiring, so genuinely interested in the details!
* Mid-level management in banking
* Leadership and CEO roles in colleges
* Financial Controllers and Directors
* Pharmaceutical Sales Managers
* Surgical Consultants
* Cyber Security Consultants
* Senior Pen Testers
I would be interested to see comparable salaries for these types of roles across the rest of Europe.
Unusual for a salaried permanent developer to earn that amount in London unless they were head of or near the top of a good dev team in a good firm.
This is all excluding finance jobs. Finance jobs its pretty easy to get to that salary in London.
Generally though, you're safe as long as you work at the same company for less than 24 months. Then you need to find a new contract or relocate (working at a different physical office or taking on multiple clients can get around IR35 (if you fall within IR35 you're considered to be a disguised employee, not an independent contractor, and must pay higher income tax).
In Berlin this is a quite high salary. However, I do know a few people who are doing 100+
It's mostly CEO, COO, CTOs at startups after their B rounds. It's also good B2B Sales people. But I also know developers who make this much.
Side note: This is huge in Berlin and as some mentioned before you already covered health care etc.
If you're contracting a mid-level engineer can normally command ~500/day.
£400-£500 gross per day is not that big of "achievement" here in London.
I work in the front office of an investment bank (strat) and earn 120k after 5 years base (pre bonus).
Admittedly it's the higher end of the scale vs. years experience but it's not uncommon.
Generally, Europeans don't have such high salaries.
Paris/Mostly Paris/Various positions doing mostly linux stuff/Usually relaxed.
But I don't think it's worth my free time.