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Comment by demygale | Hacker News Reader

These numbers seem…high.

Don’t know where you live but comp in Silicon Valley/US has exploded the last ~5 years.

It does bring me a sense of despair. Living in Europe, earning six-figures just barely and it's a stretch, significantly higher taxes, significantly higher prices (VAT!!), significantly more red tape. Trying to bootstrap a company, how can one even compete in the global market with people for whom $50k is pocket change?

I'm in the US and have similar despair. I'll never earn "good money" by the standards on this site.

There are lots of good devs in Europe that will work for less than a US dev if it’s a good salary for their region. For example in Stockholm, I think pretty few developers earn more than €6500/month or so (before taxes). (And many of them earn less than that.)

Best of luck with your endeavour. You can do it!

Offer a lot of equity to employees and have a good idea to pitch.

A good work/life balance doesn’t hurt either!

Not that high. You can check levels.fyi

The average dev in the US makes about $100k. Even a lot of FAANG employees are not making $500k+. I would think $200k-350k would be more normal based on the limited research I've done.

Have you considered variation because of years of experience > 10 years? I won't be surprised they pulling $500k+ for big giants

There can be variation. I dont think years of experience is really a good indicator. The high performers are paid a lot. I remember a story about a startup trying to hire a google engineer who was a top expert in his tech for $1M, but he turned it down because google was paying him $3M per year. Stories like this are anecdotal and not indicative of the norm. According to Levels.fyi, less than 5% of bay area engineers are making over $450k.

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