The best thing is that you can get away with paying a good software developer only €2500 per month. You can get four French developers for the price of one American.
- Have developers that are actually not that good
- Have good developers that will realise that you are vastly underpaying them and will jump ship
Salaries in France are lower than in the US, but if you think good developers are settling for remunerations below the median salary of the country they live in, you will get a wake up call sooner or later.
Corollary: If you are a good developer in France, working for 2500 EUR / month & is looking for a raise, send me a message ;-)
This includes researches in CS and AI.
Researchers in companies, especially in AI fetch between 60% and 100% more.
No.
I've been making money from selling code since 1996 and a full time developer over a decade.
While my salary would be low in London (I'd be worth at least another 10-15K down there) in the North of England and particularly where I live that gives me an excellent standard of living, rent on a decent sized two bed is <25% of my salary alone (excluding my partners entirely) about 15% if we include hers.
US Salaries are way higher than UK salaries even in London and if you exclude London then the gap is hilariously bad.
Average software engineer in my region earns £25K.
I could move down south but frankly I don't want to, I like it up here, I have a good mostly low stress 9-5 job.
There is more to life than take home pay.
Additionally I have complex (therefore potentially very expensive) health issues that don't affect my ability to work but would affect my ability to get healthcare insurance in the US - if I adjust for that then things look much better from this side of the pond tbh.
As a contractor you can earn near 20k per month pre-tax (around 7k per month post-tax) and live in a big home that costs you 1k per month in mortgage. That leaves you a lot of money for your spare time, fun activities and early retirement. I'm planning to retire at 35.
A little calculation for your average senior developer in a corporate for-profit environment. On average you can do about 1850 billable hours a year, which means you are taking 7 weeks off for holiday, illness, courses, certifications. At an average rate of 90 euro per hour, that is €166,500 per year. With VAT added you can bill the customer €201,465 per year.
But other tech companies are also starting to give away company cars as part of the compensation package, to attract developers.
For the employee it is cheaper to have a company car than to buy one yourself if you want a brand new car. If you don’t care about driving an old car it could be cheaper to buy your own car and get the travel reimbursement of €800 pre-tax.
The big thing about company cars is that for most it’s a status symbol. Straight out of university and you will have a brand new car with all the bells and whistles. You don’t have to save money and it will not impact any credit scores.
And if the engine blows up or you drive into a lake, you will get a new car one hour later. At most it will cost you the €100 deductible if you were in neglect.
Also, golden cage. I know some developers that don’t want to switch to a better job without a company car because then they will have to spend a couple thousand on a “dirty old used car”.
I.e. "You submitted your mileage report to the payroll department and it said you drove 214km on company business since last pay period, so your paycheck will have an extra 214 * 0.29 = 62EUR in it."
Actually, in the US it need not even be that complicated. If you are using your car for work purposes, you can simply claim the mileage once a year when you do your taxes. Company cars are, as you mention, mainly a status symbol for high-level executives, possibly including a driver. Even then, I've only heard about it in movies and books. All the real executives I am aware of just get paid enough that they can definitely afford a BMW if they want one.
[I use EUR0.29/km here because it is the US Federal mileage rate (54.4 cents per mile), converted for currency and units. With gasoline prices much higher (not sure about insurance, maintenance, etc) in Europe, I would imagine the reimbursement rate would need to be higher.]
Also, who pays for the gas? Do you get a company credit card for fill-ups?
Or you can have the company just pay you the money. If you do 2000 kilometers per month of business travel, you can have 2000*0,19=€380 paid out tax free and you need to pay taxes over the remaining €800-€380 = €420. Worst case you are in the 52% bracket and you post-tax "mobility budget" is €600.
Also with a company car the company pays for everything, including parking and gas.
Does that mean that taxes are (20 - 7) / 20 * 100 = 65% in NL?
I knew that taxes in some EU countries (west, north) were high, but didn't know it was that high in NL. (I am aware that you get many benefits in return for the high taxes, but thought it was in the range of 40 to 50%, in some of those countries - per what I read.)
It’s a lot but life is good here. Wouldn’t trade it for anything else.
One of these days remote working will start to make a difference in this inequality.
Supply and demand, if I could earn 90% of a London salary in the North of England I'd be about 13500-20,000 better off.
http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-654846... round the corner from the street where where I grew up, it's a nice solidly middle class area with decent schools, parks.
200K for a detached 3 house with garage and a reasonable garden, In a good chunk of London the equivalent would be 2-4x more expensive and in the city proper more than 5x.
So suddenly £32K where I am starts too look pretty good compared to 55-60K in London.
Also it's not just the housing that is cheaper up here, almost everything is cheaper.
According to [2], 2500€ is top 85%, way higher than median!
(Numbers from 2013 and sources in french but I guess it is understandable for everyone. I expect salaries to have slightly increased in the last 5 years but not moving by +40%) [1]https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/1370897
[2]https://www.alternatives-economiques.fr/salaire-mensuel-net-...
30k a year is the salary of a junior developer after employee taxes, and it's the low end of the spectrum.
A company will at least pay 50 to 60k euros per year in total for a junior developer.
It depends on the company, as a junior I'm only getting 36k/year, before income taxes.
In the Paris area it's a standard salary for a junior developer fresh out of engineering school.
It can be higher if you are coming from a top school like Centrale or Supelec (~38/40k). It can also be higher if you work in banks/finance.
I'm not 100% sure, but 30K could be a medium salary for students fresh out of IUTs (2 years professional formation after high-school). But most of the time, the best students will continue for another 3 years in an engineering schools.
But keep in mind that 36k a year before YOUR income taxes ("salaire brut"). Before that, the employer has to pay his side of the taxes/social security ("charges patronales"). In the end, he has to pay around 4 for 5k per month if I recall correctly (sorry, I don't have the exact figures), which means roughly 50k to 60k a year. You can take a look at your payslips for the exact figures.
> But keep in mind that 36k a year before YOUR income taxes ("salaire brut"). Before that, the employer has to pay his side of the taxes/social security ("charges patronales"). In the end, he has to pay around 4 for 5k per month if I recall correctly (sorry, I don't have the exact figures), which means roughly 50k to 60k a year. You can take a look at your payslips for the exact figures.
I've recently checked and, for my salary of 36k, my employer has paid 54K.