Hacker News Reader

>can't figure it out, why are software engineer salaries in Europe are so much lower than the US?

Because in the EU there are no visa restrictions for importing foreign workers like in the US.

EU companies can secure working visas to almost anyone outside the EU in a couple of months so instead of raising salaries to attract local talent they know it's a much better deal to pay a recruiter and wait to find an outsider desperate for a job or a sucker who doesn't know the market/living costs.

Do you think SV salaries would be as high as they are if the US would have unrestricted immigration and give working visas to anyone who fit the job description?

"plus more in stock options/RSUs (which despite the negative reaction to them here on HN, actually do often turn into real money at least at unicorns or public companies)"

I find that (the negative reaction to them here on HN) hilarious when it comes to RSUs of a publicly traded company such as Google and Facebook. They are absolutely unequivocally every bit as real as your salaries. Maybe it's just that people outside SV don't really understand the difference between options and RSUs. Before I came to SV I had never even heard of RSUs.

A hypothesis I've not tested: salaries are adjusted for risk. European countries have strong labour protections so hiring parties must take on hires at high risk if they don't perform (can't fire them easily). Initial evidence for hypothesis: contractors and freelancers working locally in these countries still have high incomes.

That must be it, the best salary offer I got in Austria was about 4000 euros a month.

My brother in law moved to Silicon Valley because he had a very low salary ceiling in Vienna.

In all honesty, skills could be another factor. Although we have many extremely competent people, the general job market in France for example doesn’t require very advanced technical skills. I compare to Sydney where, with 4 years experience in France and with credentials, I wasn’t up to the game. Sydney people, for example, are extremely skilled.

So we must not throw away the skills factor, the ability of employees to build an extremely successful company, their motivations, their awareness of new business practices, although it is very difficult to measure it. Perhaps France is ahead (after all, a lot of Linux is European, along with DailyMotion and others), perhaps it is not (...after all, DailyMotion only got the second seat and is now dwarfed by Youtube).

I can't speak for GitLab specifically, nor for the whole of Europe. I'm from the UK and living in Toronto (which seems vaguely comparable to SV in terms of income/cost of living). I generally keep a pretty close eye on the UK market and I can tell you that salaries for a senior developer job in the UK will compare, when accounting for the cost of living, to about a 75% pay cut against what I earn now. That's not to say there aren't outliers in the UK where you could earn a comparable standard of living. I'm taking the median/high income range for a senior developer in both places.

Don't look at salaries, look at day rates.

UK salaries are a joke, but you can make good money contracting and consulting.

With day rates you then have to start looking at VAT requirements though for inside and outside IR35 and given I haven't lived in the UK for 20 years, I'm not familiar with all the nuances this adds. I'd definitely need someone to coach me through that before I could speak with any authority on the subject.

Yeah you need to get an accountant (£100+ per month), insurance (£300-£500 per year) and be aware of the IR35 rules, which are all due to change in the next few months anyway, and who knows what happens with the whole Brexit thing.

It's definitely a more complicated way of working than being salaried, but it's rewarding, both monetarily and in the ability to set your own vacation allowances, take big gaps between contracts if you want to/can afford to etc etc.

> In other big metropolitan areas (Paris, London, etc.), the cost of living is at least a bit lower, but they're still major cities and not that cheap. And there salaries for engineers are even lower.

If you want decent pay in London you go contract, not perm, and head for the finance sector. You can make the equivalent of $150k-280k depending on how good you are at landing contracts and selling yourself.

AFAICT the situation is similar in western Europe (I get feelers out sometimes at lower but comparable rates for contract work in the Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, Austria and Belgium).

Perm workers here are being ripped off IMHO, massively. But then the technical standard of the average perm worker at the average mid sized company in the UK is terrible too. It's a vicious feedback cycle of low pay, low respect for the profession and poor results. Perm work in mainland Europe is paid peanuts AFAICT, which is probably why so many find their way to London.

Some of this difference is down to costs and rights associated with work in the EU, which are just missing in the US. And part of the reason contracting is so lucrative is that we effectively opt-out of those.

May I ask where did you find good rates in Austria?

I've never followed up on any of these because I'm not currently interested in leaving the UK. But a quick search of my inbox shows Graz is where most of the work is, and the latest rate I can find in any of the emails is €70 per hour.

If I were to take on this work through my Ltd company it would translate to a salary equivalent of around £101,000 or $130,000 US. What you actually get out of it probably depends on your exact tax situation I guess!

Most of the work in Austria that comes my way seems to be embedded systems or kernel work, though one or two are Java related.

Damn, I live in Graz and work in the embedded field and never get any contracting offers in my inbox.

Would you mind sharing some, maybe in private?

I've put my email address in my profile info, temporarily. Ping me and I'll happily forward you a few of the more recent ones.

Pinged successful. Thanks! :)