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Comment by 0xy | Hacker News Reader

I don't buy it, US tech salaries continue to skyrocket and we're nearly two years into pandemic conditions.

Just over the last 6-9 months, salaries have markedly jumped.

There's still a huge thirst for talent that isn't being quenched, and global pools don't help either.

Facebook, Google and others have satellite offices all over to soak up talent elsewhere, but they're still ultra competitive in the US.

They can pay a senior engineer $350k in the US, or an equivalent experience senior engineer $100k in Europe. There is no shift occurring though. They're still hiring like crazy everywhere.

There's no place like the US for tech workers. Nowhere even comes close, even on a CoL-adjusted basis. European developers get screwed. South American developers get screwed. Asian developers get screwed. US developers don't get screwed.

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Still, I find the quality of life in Spain preferable. We have a government health system paid through taxes, no guns on the streets, not much pollution, amazing public transport, 4 weeks holidays and good weather. I prefer having those things as a safety net instead of having to pay for them myself. I really love not needing a car here at all, I haven't driven in years.

I was recently offered a job in silicon valley but despite the fact that I would make several times my current wage and the language would be better for me (I'm not a native here), I wouldn't consider it. Money isn't everything (and silicon valley is crazy expensive, it wouldn't amount to that much). It's about quality of life for me.

I think you are really onto something truth is if you have 100K remote job in Spain you will hav better lifestyle than having 300K job in SV. If I only could convince my wife to move :(.

I'm nowhere near 100K in Spain but I wouldn't make 300K in that job in SV either :)

I think it would work out worse in SV though in terms of spending power. With the exception of tech toys which tend to be around the same price everywhere so relatively expensive in Spain.

But I'd give up a lot. Being half a world away from family and also the other drawbacks I mentioned. No, I'm fine here.

> I'm nowhere near 100K in Spain but I wouldn't make 300K in that job in SV either :)

I wouldn't discount yourself. A lot of people have this idea that becoming a senior engineer somewhere like Google must mean you're super elite, but as someone who's worked at Google for several years, I really don't think that's true. Google developers as a group are quite solid of course, but real 'rockstar' devs who just blow you away with their skill are a small minority even here.

I think with people getting more comfortable with remote teams getting a job for US entity from Spain should become easier.

It's possible, but there is the time difference thing, especially when it comes to the east coast. We have 6 hours to the east coast, 9 to the west coast. In Spain people like to start and finish late (having dinner at 9pm is normal!) but this difference is uncomfortably much. It's not really handy if you have to work US time, bring your kids to work, have a social life, etc. In my current job we're the "inbetweeners" between the India and US teams. We keep in touch with both because India and the US don't normally collaborate much due to an even worse timezone situation.

Also, why would they bother paying US salaries to employees stationed in Spain? When I moved here from Ireland (also EU) my salary actually went down a bit :) And they already scaled me up a lot within my salary class, if I had come in here 'off the street' I would have made even less. Multinationals already have this scenario a lot and they pay local wages.

People are willing to work here for local wages. And local conditions are mandatory here if you live here. Working for a US company and for US conditions while living here will not fly by EU law (the only exception is NGOs like the UN).

So I don't think it will change too much to be honest. If anything it will provide more downward pressure on US salaries than upward pressure on the ones here.

Where do you live? If you have kids in Madrid it is almost mandatory to have a car.

Imho the best place to live in Spain is in a 'capital de provicia': you have all the services the law mandates but it is not crowded.

I live in Barcelona city but I have no kids. I often see whole school classes on the metro though, going on school trips. I think the metro is just fine for them.

Also, walking everywhere is really feasible. I stopped using the metro for everything due to Corona. Though I picked it up again after getting the vaccine, I still retained the habit of walking. Barcelona is nice and compact, I can walk everywhere within an hour or so. Not sure about Madrid, I've only visited.

If I had a car I wouldn't even know where to leave it to be honest. In my area there's no parking available except some highly expensive garages.

Why do you think developers are getting screwed in those places?

I've worked with tons of developers in South America and they were very happy with their life, their benefits, their pay...

Confused on why they are getting "screwed".

Because they're not receiving the same CoL adjusted compensation as Americans. Your attitude sounds a little patronizing.

Sure they are, like I said their pay is perfectly fine and kinda blown away you think it isn't. I don't understand what the complaint is on pay as they are making great money. What is the specific complaint you have or that you see?

This is text based comments, inferring attitude is a huge black hole of impossibility :)

Why is it okay to be paid $100,000 for the exact same job as your equivalent counterparts in the US make 3.5x for?

That's millions if you save the majority for retirement. It could be the difference between nursing homes and an independent travel-filled retirement at a reasonable age.

Of course, I'm not here to make decisions for anyone. And people have personal reasons to not pursue immigration, that's fine. They're making a steep trade-off, though.

Yes I would be totally ok with that. Especially if that $100k include a real pension when I retire that I can depend on, no threat of my kids getting shot at school, health insurance that covers me when I get sick without having to go into bankruptcy, bike paths over the entire country, paternity for when I have a kid, subsidized child care for everyone so parents can be more sane, etc etc...

You think this is just about talent and it is not. It is combination of so many things such as taxes, social care, government ideology, culture in that country, retirement/pensions, cost of living in that location, minimum wage anchoring, how much it costs to dismiss someone, etc...

Also, barely anyone in the USA makes 350k, so this entire argument is kinda moot. Barely any developers make $350,000 so this comparison is just kinda crazy.

Even in the USA average salary is $177k for Senior executives: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#salary-comp-t...

In US public tech companies it's standard for half or more of the compensation to be made up by equity grants. Are you sure your average salary figures are not just looking at salary? A salary of $177k would be normal for someone making annual total comp of $350k at a FAANG -- you can see this on levels.fyi.

True, I am not sure their either how they factor that in. On the SO survey they say salary so not sure if this combined.

We talk a lot about FANGS here, but way more people work for normal companies.

> Why is it okay to be paid $100,000 for the exact same job as your equivalent counterparts in the US make 3.5x for?

I'm not going to say it's okay, but there are a few things to keep in mind. The most obvious is that salaries are not determined so much by how productive the employee is but by the relationship between supply and demand.

But that's not the really interesting part. The interesting part is that when you factor in taxes and CoL, you might be earning less gross but walking away with more money after paying taxes and living costs.

It's not that drastic anymore people getting 350 total comp in US would get 200K Euro total comp in say Dublin, Ireland

bollocks

check levels.fyi

levels.fyi proves otherwise.

Who in your imagination is making 350K in SV? In Dublin: Workday P4 180K EURO e.g. 207K USD Stripe L2 200K Euro e.g. 230K USD My mate just accepted Workday offer that had 200K signup bonus

> They can pay a senior engineer $350k in the US, or an equivalent experience senior engineer $100k in Europe.

Why can they do this?

They can do whatever they want. You accuse others of being patronizing but your sense of entitlement is polarizing. It would do you well to realize that the US pays a lot for software engineering as a result of the same societal structure, policies, and priorities that cause the problems Europeans love picking on (e.g. healthcare, paid time off, parental leave, etc).

This is mostly about FANGs and they can do it because they make $1m plus in revenue per employee.

These are senior positions so don't think this is normal. Average dev salaries are $60k to $150k in USA depending on a ton of factors.

The USA also has no social safety net so it's like comparing oranges to apples when you look at parts of Asia or Europe :)

But the FAANGS have offices in Europe and pay those employees less, unless I’m mistaken. In which case you can’t argue that US has FAANGS and others don’t.

Yes, but the job market is different there as are the cost structure... it is not an equal comparison.

For example, in the USA you are looking at about 22% for taxes on an employees salary that the company pays. In Europe that can be as high as 50%.

Just one example...

Because the rest of Europe pays 80k.

Very fair salary, especially when you take into account they have real health care, real social safty nets, etc.

Healthcare isn't really a great argument. Aside from the low hanging argument that healthcare is covered or subsidized by most tech companies in the US, the cost of healthcare pales in comparison to the difference between $100k and $350k.

The value of healthcare is not $250,000 per year per person. It's not even 1/10th of that.

As for safety nets, that depends on personal risk tolerance. As an experienced developer, it's not particularly difficult to find work. Even an average one.

We're talking about a massive difference in pay. That difference could amount to literally millions of dollars in retirement for your family.

My annual max out of pocket cost for healthcare is $5,000. Once I pay the $5k, everything else for free for the rest of the year. How is that worth a $100-200K salary difference?

It's not worth it. They also forget to mention that in most EU countries you pay ~30% of your income before taxes for healthcare (in addition to taxes). By my calculations, average software engineer pays 10x more for healthcare in EU than in the USA - in absolute numbers.

That's not exactly how health insurance works. The insurer can always say something the doctor did is not covered, or something the doctor says you need is not covered. Or that, while a procedure is covered under the policy, you aren't sick enough for the insurer to consider it medically necessary, even if the doctor thinks it is.

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