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Comment by amelius | Hacker News Reader

Main developer gets a monthly salary of $4705, is that normal in Europe? (Assuming Europe because they pay French taxes).

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Maybe a bit low for someone this experienced, but actually its just above the median salary for a developer in Paris.

Developer salaries in Europe are not the astronomic salaries you see in the US in the major cities. Probably the highest paying in Europe is London in the UK, and even then its still less than 50% of what developers in SF make at probably around 75k USD per year/6-7k USD per month in London.

worth baring in mind that there's a lot of extra paid by the employer on top of the "gross" salary someone gets in Europe (especially in France) that someone in the US would have to cover by himself (hence why i't typical to see double that amount for someone in the US).

I'm pretty sure once you cost out everything from taxes, health insurance, housing, etc.. whether business or personal costs an equivalent developer in say Paris will have much less disposable income and overall assets than one in SF.

I've posted this reply numerous times here but a junior dev in San Francisco on 120k, after paying taxes and rent has more left over than a mid level engineer in the UK makes in gross pay.

In quite a few European countries it's really not that much on top it. UK is the primary example of it.

Employers national insurance is basically 13.8% on top of salary in the Uk up top some limit.

See graph here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payroll_tax

Though rates probably depend on income so maybe the graph only gives a rough idea (e.g. top taxpayer rates probably higher in Europe and higher rates may kick in earlier in Europe.)

Really? Can't speak for France, but it's definity low, specially for a senior dev. USD 56 470,69 equals EUR 49 465,78 as of today. You still need to pay taxes and (compulsory) social insurance from that. IMHO this is low, in some (western) european countries that amount may is junior dev entry salary IMHO. But someone responsible for a project that big could easily start at EUR 90 000,- or more (~USD 100 000,-). At least this is my experience. Experienced senior devs in German speaking countries I know, which know what they are talking about, don't consider to work for less than EUR 80 000,- gross per year, for some this is the lowest base line. Just recently talked to a friend about that who works for a middle sized (~200 people), not very well known software company in Germany.

I can’t find anything in normal EU companies that would be over €80k for IC positions. Where do you find these magic opportunities?

Probably depends on the industry. If you're a wordpress programmer at an ad agency there's no way you are making €80k. But if you're a senior embedded engineer at a big company like Bosch or Siemens, €80k sounds plausible.

Ireland.

* https://ie.indeed.com/jobs?q=developer%20%E2%82%AC80%2C000&l...

Just the first three I found with a salary >= €80k attached to the job listing

yes, but France is cheaper/less well paid than Germany (my guesstimation would be 20-30% less). Most countries are, e.g. Spain, Italy, and of course eastern Europe. Actually, 80k€ is VERY good for developers in Germany, you are not paid these sums easily, but yes if you're good (and willing to change employers and good in interviews) you will get there, that's true.

Funny enough, I just posted a comment about this the other day, how basically every SF/NYC company that has gone full remote could cut their employee costs by nearly 2-3X by switching their dev team to a European time zone. And this is including all the extra taxes involved with having employees there.

And I'm not talking about having to hire in Romania or something (where you could save 4-8X or more). You could hire the top 5% of talent in expensive cities like London and still cut your payroll costs by 2-3X

You can't save that much by hiring in Romania. The differences between developer compensation in europe don't follow cost of living differences, an average software engineer in Poland is likely in a better position when compared to an average Pole than an average software engineer in France vs an average Frenchman.

Maybe 10 years ago I hung out with a Java developer from Hungary for a while, he worked on stuff for Lufthansa. Hopefully I'm not remembering this wrong, but I think he told me his salary was like 1000EUR / month after tax (maybe even less) and that he was still able to afford a large house for his wife & kids and everything he wanted.

There are many companies hiring Brazilians for the same reason, since 1 USD is 5,56 brazilian real and 1 eur is 6,30 brazilian real, it's dirty cheap to hire brazilians on these conditions!

Highest paying in Europe is probably Zurich, not London. Salaries are comparable to sub-million-population US cities, which considering Zurich is also sub-million seems like it's actually pretty competitive with the US.

Not really, you're competing against a ton of people from different countries if you want to work in Zurich. Switzerland has a ton of foreign people working there.

This doesn't mean dev salaries are lower. Swiss immigration rules are actually quite strict, and between Facebook/Google/Apple/MicrosoftReseach there is a heavy upwards pull on salaries.

I didn't mean that salaries are lower, I meant you need to put it a lot more effort to get them.

Zurich and Switzerland generally is also much more expensive. Accommodation is hard to find, rents are 50+% over somewhere like London, groceries 2x or more the price, especially beef, and is often low quality. Imported food is harder to find and restaurants are pretty dire.

Good wine is easy enough to find though, and the outdoor scenery is pretty.

I cannot wait until end of Covid and try and spend a large fraction of our weekends outside this place.

From what I've seen, rent is comparable to London when you take things like location and access to the city center into account.

Agreed that restaurants and food are expensive. Selection is smaller than somewhere like London, but with a population 10x lower that's to be expected. Size-wise Zurich is more like Birmingham. If you take local cuisine differences into account I don't think it's that different.

Crime, taxes and pollution are also much lower. It really depends on your priorities.

I rent a 4 bed house in Baden for about 2x the cost of the mortgage on my London house in Enfield (it's not sold yet). The distance to Zurich central is about the same (London is very large, Baden / Zug / Winterthur would be on the edges of Greater London if you overlayed it), but the train is faster for several reasons: geography (mountains) encourages locally dense living, but the overall density is lower, so my house and work offices are closer to stations at either end.

Rental yields are capped in Switzerland, and in practice Zurich rents are not at the market clearing level - renting is actually a beauty contest between applicants. Great apartments are restricted by availability instead of rent level, but even considering that, the rent levels are higher than London, excluding central London - but I lived in London for 14 years, and I'd never really consider living centrally.

I'll reserve judgement on restaurants until post-Covid permits more eating out. I've ordered deliveries from about 20 different places (mostly Zurich, some Baden) and eaten out in three different places. I have a number of preliminary conclusions (Swiss don't know how to make a good burger, Indian restaurant portions are too large and too expensive, there are far too many pizza places and the highest rated ones have been very mediocre, and the most reliably good food has had a high cheese content, whether it's fondue or cordon bleu) but I'll pass deeper judgement later.

Good wine is easy to find though, and my house has a wine cellar.

The restaurant scene has exploded in Zürich over the last 20 years, but this means it's a bit of work to sort between the wheat and the chafe.

It also sounds like you're still trying to eat the cuisine you were in London, and finding the (reliably) high quality food to be the local cuisine.

A few quick recommendations:

Pizza: Napulé (the sit down in Meilen, not the takeaway by Bellevue)

Indian: Kerala (real Indian food, not sweet British-style curry)

Hearty European: Wirtschaft zur Au

Eritrean: Mesob

American: Grain Bar & Restaurant

Turkish: Gül

European breakfast/brunch: Baboo's

Ice-cream: Gelati Tellhof

Enjoy!

The real issue with London is not much rent but the quality of housing. I think London is the last European city where people deal with pests (mice, bed bugs, etc…) in their houses.

$56k is €49k at the current moment.

Europe is not all one market price wise, with big differences internally. But you can certainly get a developer for €49k. You might have trouble retaining them, as based on salary surveys on the subreddit Irish developers it's like a 20th-30th percentile salary, and this developer has a track record of leading a successful customer facing web service, but not preposterous.

Yes that's probably near the median dev salary locally.

Some FAANGs understand this and have decided to hire more in Europe.

Depends where in Europe. In Norway or Switzerland that would be low. In Croatia or Italy that would be high.

I know some developers making that in Norway - but that would be after taxes, not before.

Starting income for developers in Norway are normally ~€55k. The average 33yo developer income is ~€75k.

It's somewhat low but they've probably made a concious choice to accept a lower salary to work for a project they are passionate about.

I don't know how much time he dedicates to running the service at this point but the salary seems light if it's full time work.

It's his hobby project that he turned into this, it runs completely by his philosophy, and it's decent money for the country he's in. I think he's won.

It is normal in Stockholm, Sweden, but the local FAANG offices pay much more along with some others. There is a wide distribution.

It’s high. You never get these insane american salaries in europe. I’m lucky if I’ll ever get 60K annually.

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