Hacker News Reader

Comment by rdl | Hacker News Reader

Wow, these are some very badly selected buckets! Most US people with tech jobs are going to be in the 50-200 range.

Unless you have some other reason for caring about these specific buckets, I'd go with: 0-25k (stipend, student, unemployed) 25-50k (part time, early career, or founder) 50-80k (junior person or early employee, maybe founder) 80-110k (most early/mid career individual contributors, non-technical managers) 110-150k (senior individual contributor or management) 150k+ (specialist, management in larger company, or successful founder in later stages)

View on HN

0-25K, from a developing country like me, makes sense

The numbers I gave wouldn't necessarily even be valid in non-tech parts of the US, either.

Maybe we should ask in stuff. What can you buy for one year's income (after taxes) in your region: A new laptop, a used car, a new car, a 1-room flat, a 3-room flat, a little house, or a big house with a swimming pool?

Also, household income is easier. Without a wife I'd pay higher taxes.

I think laptops and cars would have roughly the same price everywhere..

The obnoxious irony is that in a lot of poor countries, a decent laptop actually costs more than it does in a rich country, due to inefficient distribution, tariffs, etc.

An addition to this obnoxious irony would be the fact that a luxury like a car (yes, in developing countries, it's a luxury) costs relatively less than it does in a rich country. [One can get a decent enough hatchback for 350K INR which is like 8K USD]

Heck; in my place, education loans come at 12% and car loans at 8%.

That's not really a fair comparison; the same car costs more in India (I believe) than in the US, if you are comparing say a 2011 BMW 335i Coupe. India does have much lower end cars available, so "a" car can be cheaper, but Indians pay a premium to buy imported cars. It's nowhere near as bad as in Singapore or Malaysia where cars are marked up 200-300% though.

There's some argument that a secured loan like a mortgage or car loan should be cheaper than an unsecured personal loan. Education loans in the US are often federally subsidized, but if they were treated as regular unsecured loans, they would be higher than car loans, and much higher than mortgages. There's a good argument for government subsidy to education, but it would have to be a subsidy to make it cheaper.

Correct. Cars are actually more expensive (often ridiculously more expensive).

And premium computers (cough Apple cough) are more expensive than the US counterpart.

You would be wrong. Here in Uruguay, cars are considered "luxury" items, so they carry more than 100% tax.

Example: Nissan Tiida - US price $9900, Uruguay Price $22000.

That makes even old clunkers very valuable. And there's a ban on importing used cars, or doing your own imports (I have campaigned against it, but I'm in the smallest political party in the country, Partido Independiente).

I can't agree with rdl more. You should re-stage your poll.

Is there a way for me to do this now that votes have already come in?

I wonder what percentage of responses come from the US?

In most of Western Europe, the buckets proposed by rdl hold as well. And in most other places, the numbers would be pretty meaningless because of the big difference in purchasing power. Most people in the developing world are in a low bucket, measured in USD, but relatively they might still earn a lot of money.

Really? I see the majority of people here are in the 100-250 range, but here in Italy I know nobody in that range for tech jobs, and I expect it's the same in western Europe.

Edit: I see that the ranges proposed are slightly different, but it's still true that the majority of employees here earn less than 50k

The average European gets (say) $50K plus retirement plus (in some countries) healthcare/unemployment insurance plus X more weeks of vacation plus lots of miscellaneous "welfare state" stuff.

Comparing raw salaries in Europe and the US might not work that well.

I assumed the figures were in USD. So the majority of the kind of employees that would be here on HN, such as software developers, earn less than 37k EUR in Italy?

True, the upper end of the range, 100k USD = 73k EUR would be pretty high. But in management or consulting, with a few years of experience, it wouldn't be unusual in Germany, for instance. The 250k, on the other hand, are far out of reach for virtually everyone, I agree.

I'm in Switzerland now, which is probably shifting my expectations. Salaries are pretty high here.

I think the norm is around 1400 euros, an upper salary may be 2000 euros or 3000 if you're very lucky. If you're self employed (like me) you also pay half in taxes.

Edit: as an example, I have difficulties charing more than 20-25 euros/hour here, but for the same jobs I charge 80-100 dollars/hour when I work for the USA.

Your numbers are apples, and the US numbers are oranges. The US numbers are gross - before taxes, whereas yours are monthly, after tax figures in euros. 37K works out to 3000 a month, roughly, before taxes. Given how high Italian taxes are, that would put you at something like 1500 to 2000, which actually isn't unreasonable for a developer here.

It's still not very good money though, compared to what you could get elsewhere. It might be if things were still cheap here, like 15 years ago, but prices went up a lot with the Euro.

I don't really know for sure, but I'd guess that in the UK salaries are a fair bit lower than rdl suggested.

And actually the categories aren't looking so bad now - the 100-250 has twice as many people as 75-100, I'd bet 100-150 has a lot of people, but none of the categories stand out as being empty (except maybe the >250k one).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com