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Comment by aaomidi | Hacker News Reader

The salaries aren't low because of equality though. You're just shifting the high earners from the people doing the work to the managers of the people doing the work.

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As far as my experience goes, managers make about the same, or less, as an engineer at a similar experience level. They may end up at a higher compensation level if far enough in the career ladder, but I don't think it's significant in the bigger picture. The average CEO earnings in the Netherlands, including bonuses, is only 5x-6x the average engineer salary.

So maybe the real answer to the question is that European tech companies are just not making a lot of money?

There are few growth stocks, so I'd expect compensation figures are not strongly skewed by stock bonuses, and are a function of market and fiscal environments much more than profit. When they are raking it in, it will be mostly going to US investors' pockets via buybacks.

Mind you, there are exceptions. The CEO of a certain hotel bookings company makes €17M/year. Technically an american company though.

Probably this I only know Finland tech scene but eg lot of Nokia engineers did FAANG like salaries in 2000s and there is now couple unicorns here where senior employees do very well.

Nokia valued managers, but not engineers. Good engineers became not so good managers to get a raise. We know how the story ended.

From world market leader to out of business in 7 years.

They don't by and large. Listing the top 50 tech companies in the world by revenue will show that the US dominates it.

The few that appear on the list pay FAANG-level salaries for the most part.

That’s mind blowing

The CEO only earning a few hundred thousand is mind blowing? Really?

That's the way it used to be in the US, too.

That’s the way it is still. Don’t assume because a handful of Fortune 500 companies pay tens of millions that’s a typical CEO salary in the US.

Yeah, the super high ceo pay is for the super large companies. Pick a super large company in europe and you can find high ceo pay too. Shells and volkswagens ceos for example made 10 million each.

Most of the really rich CEOs such as Bezos are making more as owners than as CEOs.

> The average CEO earnings in the Netherlands, including bonuses, is only 5x-6x the average engineer salary.

What do you mean by average CEO? That's about the same as a CEO of a mid-sized American company. Shell's CEO makes a lot more than that, even considering the terrible year for oil.

The ratio in the US is reported as 320:1.

No, the other way around. Inequality is low because the distribution of salaries across roles, across industries is tightly clustered. I suspect it's true of the managers too. The point is there aren't high earners.

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