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Comment by gonehome | Hacker News Reader

In addition to the US having lower taxes and fewer services I think there’s some sort of status thing going on in Europe/the UK with engineer salaries being lower than they’d be otherwise.

Engineers there seem to be viewed as the lower rung on the status ladder compared to management/sales/finance and are paid less on that metric alone. I think the US (particularly Silicon Valley) is better about respecting engineer talent.

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One of my biggest surprises when moving to Europe was that engineers earn less (and are IMO less respected) than all types of managers, including but not limited to PMs.

That shouldn't be surprising. You will find this much with little research. Engineers are treated as blue collar workers in majority of world. There are couple of exceptions such as notably Silicon Valley and most big metro areas in US (New York for example), perhaps London in Europe. But these are just anomalies, prevailing consensus around the world is that engineering is blue collar work, just instead of shovel you use keyboard.

Well, I guess I’m glad we proved that “consensus” wrong.

I suppose this goes to show that just because the majority of the world has consensus on something non-scientific, does not make it the best decision or mindset.

Thankfully science is mostly immune to political and social biases when done correctly.

> That shouldn't be surprising. You will find this much with little research.

Elementary. Quite, Quite elementary. I yawn in unison with you old chap.

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