Ask HN: How much do developers earn in Europe?
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Your dev job pays your rent, food and savings. I assume that most dev jobs do this quite well.
Beyond this, the main goal of a job is to increase your future market value, your professional network and to have fun. So. basically it's about how much you are worth in your next job and that you enjoy your time.
A high salary doesn't help you if you do stuff which doesn't matter in a few years.
A high salary doesn't help you if you work at an unknown company which goes bankrupt in a few months and you cannot show a finished product or that you can stay at one job longer than 12 months.
A high salary doesn't help you if your coworkers are toxic or not the smartest guys or their English is on such a basic level that the communication and not the coding is your daily challenge.
A high salary doesn't help you if your CTO is a passive-aggressive, clueless guy who doesn't talk.
A high salary doesn't help you if you just work on some side projects nobody cares about, in a programming language you weren't hired for.
A high salary doesn't help you if you are not happy.
But after a couple years in the industry? A high salary goes really far. Note that "high" means different things to different people, but choosing a 300k/year job over a 200k/year job is often a good idea, even if it's to do stupid shit and not change the world. That doesn't mean you should choose misery over happiness for money, but it's rare that the choice is that stark.
Most tradeoffs are ill-defined and uncertain when you're choosing the job. Salary, on the other hand, is directly comparable, and it translates to something very real and concrete.
What would these 100k give me? Not much - I will comfortably retire when time comes. I would consider a 500k increase as it would change my life and probably help me to retire earlier.
I belive that what revenue brings in a set of plateaux. When you start every euro counts, then comes a plateau and you move up after a significant change of salary. Which brings some acceptable/bereable drawbacks.
I like to work in an office because it gives me two separate worlds (office and home) which is good for my sanity.
Finally, I live in France where the costs of life are quite high and I will not be able to easily find a similar job (there are just a few) so when I retire, this is for good.
I am considering a sabbatical, though.
If the only expenses you need to fund are rent and food, what are you doing in an industry this competitive and stressful?
[0] https://www.urbanlinker.com/le-webzine/etude-des-salaires-de...
Paris is still a great city to live in. We even managed to live there with child.
AFAIK London have the highest salary among european countries, usually handed out by Investment banks and other financial service companies.
In London a tier 1 bank's VP developer will typically get £90k-110k base, plus 15-40% bonus. If you work for a hedge fund, the base is typically 10% higher with 10-20% more bonus. To get a VP job in a bank you usually need 7 year+ experience after graduation.
In contrast the big tech companies in london pays about 10-20% less base salary than banks, far less cash bonus. But depends on which one you are working for, the RSU could be either similar to the states side or a bit less. The signon bonus is usually quite low as well.
Startups in London have very low pay, typically 50-60% of your market value in a bank.
So if you are a top developer with 15 years+ experience, works for a top hedge fund in London, you'll most likely take home < £200k, which is like $260, that's only about average wage for a google senior developer.
Because it usually comes with built-in social security and nationwide health insurance.
> AFAIK London have the highest salary among european countries,
Nope. Scandinavia.
That's not the case. Health insurance plays very little role in this. I can go to a private doctor for peanuts. Salaries are low, because companies are "broke" and don't have million dollar funding and you can have a great lifestyle with fifth/tenth of a SV salary.
> Nope. Scandinavia.
Nope, Switzerland.
The answer depends very much if you're looking at median salary or 'peak' salary. It also matters if you're talking before or after taxes. Median pre-tax dev. salaries are almost certainly higher in Scandinavia (or at least in Norway and Denmark), but you'll never earn what some of the top devs in finance in London earn.
I don't agree with that, at least not in Sweden. Sweden had one of the flattest wage distributions in the world. Developers make very little here when you compare to other countries and other professions.
In Stockholm there are some companies that pay more, e.g. Google, but not near London.
That doesn't make any sense. There's social security in the US as well and the company is paying for my health insurance.
edit:
Honestly, why the downvotes? What he was stated was inaccurate and doesn't account for any of the pay differences between the US and Europe.
1. Paid-for healthcare. In the US, I pay close to $2K/month premium for a high-deductible health insurance plan.
2. Subsidized child-care (kindergarten, etc.)
3. Paid-for higher education. That in itself is worth at least $250K/child.
4. Great public transport, which eliminates the need to have more than 1 car (as opposed to 3-4 per household in the US)
5. Decent infrastructure in general (airports, train stations, etc). The US looks like a third-world country.
Also, please keep in mind that while income taxes in the US are a bit lower, they are still significant:
- State tax (usually 5-7%)
- Real-estate taxes. It is not uncommon to pay $1000/month for a very average house in a Boston suburb with good schools.
- "Invisible" taxes, such as excise taxes (cars, oats, etc), alcohol, tobacco, gasoline taxes.
In what universe do companies offer a lower salary because the country offers a better social safety net?
In the US:
An employer pays salary + health costs for that employee.
In Europe:
Employer pays salary + health costs for both the employee AND the rest of society. Which means your European salary is subsidizing other people not even related to the company.
On top of that, the employee gets to pay tax rates approaching 50% in many cases.
The average take home pay after factoring out health costs and benefits is dramatically lower than an equivalent position in the US.
If you are a banker or a hedge fund PM working in London, your pay will be on par with or even more than your colleagues in New York.
Up North in the UK get £40K for a senior dev is pretty hard work but everything costs half as much so it is totally relative to where you are living in the UK. The South is crowded with no infrastructure to handle it (driving in a nightmare).
Gibraltar is probably the best place to go if you can get a Job in Europe. Spain is stupidly cheap. Wages are less than say London, I lived like an absolute king on £27,000.
(From an employee's perspective, Switzerland can be counted "as an EU country" since you can work here with an EU passport.)
I've looked at this and the benefits we get from staying in Germany outweigh the extra income earned.
That said, if you've got no dependents and you want to stay in mainland Europe, then it's probably a very good choice.
Last year my Junior Software Developer (with ETH Masters) balance sheet looked as follows :
Income:8650
Taxes :1640 (income, social etc. ) Food/Drink/Dates: 1560 HealthInsurrance : 346 Rent : 1640 (2 rooms 64sqm) downtown nice part of town Other : 400
So i end up saving 3k per month
But i don't have kids that would be >2.5k per kind for daycare.
You pay 2.5k only for a year or two, when the kids are 2-3 years old; after that it's free kindergarten again.
Also I would like to add that my friends who do not speak German are making all making less than 8333 (excluding those at google or a bank).
even if we include the health insurance, it's still only 2k in taxes out of an 8650 income (less than 25%)
a lot of countries in europe will tax you 40% for that income...
Ie: in NL you can deduct your entire mortgage rate interest from your gross income. This basically means you get a 40% discount on your mortgage. And there are numerous more.
I found Zurich difficult when not speaking the language.
I tried to get a job there about 8 months ago, and I could only convince 3 startups to interview me (after I failed to get a job at Google), and I didn't get an offer at any of them. I failed one for "cultural fit", one because I didn't do well enough in the technical phone screen, and with the third one I decided to stop the process because I had another offer and was tired of interviewing. It's fine to not accept people for cultural reasons, but if there are 4 startups that are hiring in Zurich, that kinda sucks for candidates.
Also, recently Google started paying new engineers in Zurich lower than in the US (same salary, far fewer RSUs). I guess the lack of competition in the European market is a good enough reason.
Do you know any companies in Zurich hiring developers that pay Bay Area salaries (100k junior, 200k senior) and hire >100 engineers a year?
The density of startups and tech firms, when accounted for the tiny size of Zurich, is still impressive, I think. I live here since three years and don't regeret it: "8 reasons why I moved to Switzerland to work in tech" https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons-why-i-moved-t...
At the end I plan to polish the results and publish them
Also, the question specifically says "in €, otherwise specify" (edit: ok, I see it was added later).
It's weird that you are paid in USD in Europe, isn't it? How comes?
(1.1806-1.0748)/1.0748 = 0.0984 => 0.0984 * 100 = 9.84%
[1] https://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/policy_and_exchange_rates/eu...
I definitely wouldn't want that.
(I misremembered which currency fell 30% against the Euro, it was the pound instead)
Then I wanted to use a reserve currency[1] and I happen to have strong opinions on currencies, policies (FED, ECB, etc.), so I opted for the safest bet in the long run.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_currency#Global_curren...
About stock options, I don't want to make a chart of the best companies (who offer more, etc..), I am interested in becoming more aware of the salary situation in Europe, to understand how this profession is seen.
I will publish polished results when will end data gathering
The former three through the EEA and the latter through a series of bilateral agreements.
Was this survey created by an American? ;)
Nice..
otherwise, interesting survey. I hope i'm not too much of an outlier here to mess with the result for uk.
Taxes are high and progressive, but you'll things like 4 weeks vacation, 3 weeks fully paid parental leave for dads (and partially paid for much longer), free education (incl. universities), free daycare, free healthcare, social security, etc. This is not without problems, of course, but has huge impact on stable, equal society and general safety.
(Free = some nominal fees may apply, great majority of costs paid by society.)
For those complaining about formatting issues ( me as well ). I think someone should fork and re-format the sheet later today and release it back to this thread.
https://affliction123.github.io/euDevDash/
please let me know how to improve and what info is interesting for You to present/focus.
Seems to be only targetting EU countries, not European countries.
What do you care about then? Exceptionalism?
That's irrelevant.
We're talking about continents, not political and cultural leanings.
> Does landmass outweighs their opinion for you
Yes. Continental boundaries are well defined.
If you want to stick to the continent though, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Belarus, Ukraine and Turkey should be there as well. Belarus and Ukraine in particular have IT/developer markets of same magnitude as Russia.
They can even call themselves Australian if they want to, but it doesn't change the fact that anything West of Urals is continental Europe. Moscow, most importantly, is a European city, regardless of how Russians feel about such description.
Russia does not identify with Europe by choice. On Russian TV there is nothing but mocking Europe and all it stands for; majority of Russians poll as actively hostile to Europe. Russians can't freely travel across Europe (nor can Europeans to Russia). Russia conducts military exercises simulating attacks on European capitals, and actively works to undermine and disintegrate European institutions.
Why do you people insist Russia has to be on the list is beyond me.
Whether or not Russians fantasize about attacking Berlin has absolutely nothing to do with conversations about tech salaries.
I'd say that in the context of conversations about European tech salaries, Western Russian cities should absolutely be included.
I will gladly watch what will happen to you if you say that in Vladivostok suburbs after 1:00 am ^_^
"DISCLAIMER: this is a joke and should not be take seriously"
Specially in a thread like this that is far from political matters.
And how can you talk in the name of all the Russians?
I know more than one that don't think like you say.
Pray tell, why?
Unless we jetted out into the atlantic the day after brexit we are definately still geographically and culturally European not to mention in the eu for two years and chances are we will negotiate some deal even after that.
Renting an apartment will set you back $500 per month.