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Comment by chvid | Hacker News Reader

I can tell you it is the same for a software engineer in Copenhagen. Salaries peeked in 2000 and have yet to catch up in real terms.

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Certainly it isn't the same in absolute terms? You can get a two-bedroom apartment in Copenhagen for $300,000 or so. I haven't heard of any place in Europe where you can expect to make anything close to this for any normal software engineering role.

(I earn around, maybe less than half the average in this graph, in Norway).

Can you please confirm what the average salary is in Copenhagen for a senior developer ? Thanks

I can confirm around 100k (pounds) in London, unless you're going to the giants (FB, Google) that go above that.

Lol no. That’s delusional in London, unless you take into account day rate work

85-90k is the upper bound on senior dev salaries, but companies can and will go above that if you have specific skills they need and can't easily recruit for.

(I make 6 figures in London, and that's full time and at a software company.)

What would an average salary for a medium-level dev look like? I've seen 40k GBP a few times, but that seems quite low.

In 2012, I was looking for mid level work (Gaming, but not entirely dependent on it) and yeah that was exactly the figure I seen. In London 40k is like 20k outside London meaning you have a bunch of Mid Level developers picking up a street sweepers wage without a pension attached.

I just don't believe I somehow missed all the decent jobs during a lul either.

I've never thought game dev was a smart career move. Too many naive kids entering the market and too many sweatshops taking advantage of them.

40k, 50k, 60k possibly. Medium-level is pretty nebulous though. It could be a talented coder without much experience, or a journeyman with many years and without something extra like domain expertise. Smart money would pay more for the first, but people like a bargain too.

Head out of finance and tech (funded or profitable) and those numbers start to look more like senior salaries.

Don't forget about hedge funds. Judging from the messages I get from recruiters there are plenty of them.

Their offer total compensations significantly above 100k£

I thought he asked about Copenhagen?

Wow, in the last 4-5 years the economy has really picked up. I moved back to Scotland after working in Berlin and Amsterdam and work remotely today for a Paris based agency.

Until I read your comment, I had guaranteed myself never to work for a UK company. Will need to do some more research at some point.

I would think around 60.000 dkr. pr. month is a good salary for a senior developer in Copenhagen. Look at Prosa or Jobindex for statistics on this.

The wages in Copenhagen are lower than in Silicon Valley. I was talking about the general shape of the graph.

The thing about Copenhagen property (and I expect this is true for all the Nordic countries) is that is closed to foreign investors - you can only buy if you're a permanent resident, and even if you come from EU, you can get the status after 5 years of living there. So not an easy market to get into as a buyer, but it helps having sane prices for locals, which IMHO is the way to go.

In germany you can buy property as a foreigner.

Not true in Finland.

Any foreigner can buy in Denmark, they just need to show its their residence. They're thus limited to one property.

>> I haven't heard of any place in Europe where you can expect to make anything close to this for any normal software engineering role.

London, finance and banking related software roles. Mostly contract.

The work (AFAICT so far) is no different from other software roles, but the money is a lot better.

In Dublin, Ireland you would pay about 500k USD for a 2 bed apartment

This is not really true. See: http://www.daft.ie/dublin-city/apartments-for-sale/dublin-ci...

Note that none of the newspapers or media will talk about the low end of the market (which isn't actually very low), and focus on the houses/apartments that very few people can afford, which is odd.

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