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Comment by Kiro | Hacker News Reader

I have no idea why you think that. I can assure you that no developer in Sweden gets paid that little.

As a former tech recruiter in Stockholm I can assure you that they do. These devs, however, usually do not have a degree from university/college, and are either juniors and/or self taught. If you look at the university/college educated devs the story is different, but not by that much.

Entry level median salary for devs without higher education from the year I left recruitment (2013/2014) was 28000 USD per year. Add 3000 USD for entry level devs with university/college education.

YMMV but I don't think things have changed that much since then.

I would still be very surprised if any developer in Stockholm is paid $25k a year as OP says. That's less than 17k SEK a month. I also don't think your numbers are valid anymore. The demand on developers is completely crazy in Stockholm right now. Even with minimum prior experience you shouldn't settle for anything less than 25k a month.

While I think you are right in saying the salaries probably has gone up, I am very hesitant to believe that they are more than 25-30% higher. There were boatloads of devs coming out of these 12-14 week bootcamps or vocational 80 week programs (KY) with promises of work, and the market was flooded. This kept salaries down. I don't think it has become any better.

I had a look at some old notes and stats from 2012-2013. Knowledge in JS, Php, Java, Python or C/C++ were required for all of the positions.

14 recruits in the 18-20 yr, no edu bracket (high school dropouts/just graduated), mean salary 24451 USD (199200 SEK)

24 recruits in the 18-20 yr, bootcamp/vocational edu bracket (high school dropouts/just graduated), mean salary 27249 USD (222000 SEK)

17 recruits in the 20-22 yr, bootcamp/vocational edu bracket, mean salary 28869 USD (235200 SEK)

29 recruits in the 20-26 yr, higher edu bracket, mean salary 34467 USD (280800 SEK)

These were placed with employers, startups and established companies, in the tech sector. Mainly in central Stockholm and Kista (tech hub outside of Stockholm).

Make what you will of this, the amount of job seekers with bootcamp/vocational education hasn't gotten less than in 2012/2013. I believe this keeps the salaries in Stockholm down, and makes you settle for less if you want the job at all. Entry level salaries for devs in Stockholm are low.

BUT - as soon as you get some experience under your belt, you can rise quickly in salary by job hopping for a year or two.

Stockholm wages are much higher but you also pay more when you buy an apartment.

While I have seen people fresh out of high school making about those numbers as devs most college educated engineers start at around $3000-$3500 monthly. Bear in mind that this includes (nearly) free health care, free education and very low interest student loans, so you normally don't start of with several hundred thousand dollars worth of debt.

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