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Comment by elindbe3 | Hacker News Reader

Software engineer for a large bank. Pays well enough, though not at Silicon Valley levels, but I have a house in a nice neighborhood and a Tesla and lots of retirement savings. We get 4 weeks of vacation, health insurance, 4 months parental leave, and other benefits. I don't work much overtime and don't feel stressed about deadlines. It seems like the team leads and directors above me might feel some pressure, but I'm not really looking to take on management duties myself since I already am happy where I'm at.

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I can second this. There’s of course some trade offs you have to make, but overall I feel much happier and relatively stress free.

It can be very frustrating too, I can’t even keep count of how many times our product launch has been delayed by the business because of some “urgent business requirements they pulled out of a hat. Our latest launch was scheduled for two weeks ago, a day before launch, business just cancelled it because they wanted to make some changes. Mind you that we have strict sign off processes that now all need to be redone. But that stress doesn’t fall on engineers.

Makes you wonder if half of what tech is doing that's turning incumbent industries upside down isn't software, but connecting people building things with business decisions.

Same here at a Fortune 20 in a low COL midwestern city. I've been doing the same job for 9 years, every day is different so it keeps me interested. Minimal off hours support, 40 hours a week is sometimes too much time. I made $120,000 this year to top it off. It's been a dream job for me, never thought I'd be here ever and I'm only 33... However I do stress often that I may be missing out on more money or that I may be falling behind on technology. I wish I could look far ahead to ensure I have what I need to keep job security.

What programming language(s) do you mostly use in your job?

What’s your experience and pay? I’m 5 years and $130k. Same deal.

About the same

Those conditions & pay for a software engineer with similar experience seem comparable (after currency conversion between USD & AUD) to working a large bank in one of australia's major cities

> We get 4 weeks of vacation, health insurance, 4 months parental leave, and other benefits

As any permanent full time employee in Australia working for any employer, you'd get a minimum of 2 weeks of public holidays (depends on state), 20 days of annual leave, 10 days of personal leave (carer's & sick leave), and 12 months parental leave. There's health insurance funded through the public system decoupled from employment.

Compared to US this probably seems relatively socialist, compared to europe things are relatively neoliberal.

So you’d get 130k USD? And what’s the tax rate? Pretty solid.

130k USD is currently about 170k AUD. That'd include base salary plus a mandatory employer contribution of 9.5% to a tax advantaged retirement fund (Australia's "superannuation" scheme).

Excluding retirement fund contribution, equivalent base salary would be around 155k AUD. That'd be subject to roughly 29% total income tax. There are no additional state level income taxes . So you'd end up with around 110k AUD cash. A single person who rents & shares a place can cover all baseline living expenses on a quarter of that.

Sounds like what I get at BOA. It’s not all sunshine and flowers. It depends on your team assignment and personality.

What programming language(s) do you mostly use in your job?

A Tesla but not SV level pay... do you live in a moderate or low COL location?

Moderate

Also Tesla’s are in the $40-$50k range now.

Tesla 3 loan payment is around $500. You can buy one even if you Uber (that is and you are very much into owning one).

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