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Comment by blocked_again | Hacker News Reader

Wait what? If you are a senior software engineer at a good company in Banglore you can easily make 40k - 60k USD an year. After taxes and expenses it becames equalent or better than salaries in most places except for San Francisco(USA), London and Singapore. USA is super hard for an Indian software engineer to immigrate. London is doable but for most of them it's not worth all the travel and staying away from family. People immigrate only if they makes way too much salary abroad compared to India which is hardly the case. Nobody is going to immigrate if they will save a few hundred dollars more a month. So good software engineers mostly immigrate for reasons other than salary (Like living in Europe etc).

Edit: Looks like even London don't offer good enough salary for a good software engineer when compared to cost of living.

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London is fairly notorious for low SE salaries outside of high end consulting, I’m not sure why it would be listed with those other two cities.

The biggest problem with India is that talent migration doesn’t really work the other way (same with China), so you have to build companies solely with local talent. That works for lower end software services, but for higher end R&D generally requires some amount of draw from a world-wide labor pool.

I mentioned London because it had one of the highest salaries in Europe. I don't have personal experience myself apart from what I saw in Glassdoor.

Cost of living adjusted salaries are what matters, and London has SV level cost of living at way lower salaries.

In Europe, Switzerland is most similar to the Bay area: high salaries, high cost of living and low taxes.

Low taxes? California has high tax right?

Not compared to Europe I suppose?

Last time I checked take home pay was lower in NY than London for someone earning around 150k before tax. Not sure if that holds true in California...

According to this calculator: https://www.thesalarycalculator.co.uk/salary.php

120k £ (equivalent of $150k at current exchange rate) becomes net 71135 £ which is 61.8%

In the state of New York: https://smartasset.com/taxes/new-york-paycheck-calculator

$150k gets you a take home that is 68% of gross. NYC imposes an additional local tax between 3 and 3.8% so in the worst case you’re still taking home more than 64% of gross.

Maybe the last time you checked $150k was a lot less in £ and therefore taxed at lower rates in the UK?

Potentially- I think I added in property taxes (about 1-2k/year in the uk) and healthcare (free on the nhs or if you’re earning 150k you’re likely getting heavily subsidised private care from your employer).

Don't know many making $150k in London, though. Maybe the Facebooks, Google's

I'm curious what's the difference between India and China in that it seems like there have been world-class R&D that has been done in China using local talent for a number of years now (from Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent, etc), but haven't heard of many examples in India.

None of those companies can really escape China, so is it fair to call them world class? Even tencent’s most international operations are acquired rather than grown in China.

I think Texas market seems to offer the best of both world for software developers. Higher salary, slightly cheaper housing and cost of living. Also no state tax.

Yes, but: Texas weather. Unpleasant without constant A/C.

Indeed. Hell, I've known people from India to move back there in recent years because conditions have improved and whilst the salaries are lower the standard of living they can afford you can end up being a lot better.

The pollution in the big tech-centric cities though is still absolutely horrible, and this has to be a big factor for anyone with kids.

I wonder how many returnees were only able to improve their salaries by that foreign experience (warranted or not).

London salary to cost of living ratio is terrible. I made a better real income, and at a lower level, in Australia, which many people leave for better salaries in SV.

> Wait what? If you are a senior software engineer at a good company in Banglore you can easily make 40k - 60k USD an year. After taxes and expenses it becames equalent or better than salaries in most places except for San Francisco(USA), London and Singapore. USA is super hard for an Indian software engineer to immigrate. London is doable but for most of them it's not worth all the travel and staying away from family. People immigrate only if they makes way too much salary abroad compared to India which is hardly the case. Nobody is going to immigrate if they will save a few hundred dollars more a month. So good software engineers mostly immigrate for reasons other than salary (Like living in Europe etc).

That's not how salaries in a career path work -- you want to have the largest base to start. In a worst case scenario ( no job hopping for massive increases ) the salaries increase based on percentage of the salary, not a percentage of what is left.

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