Comment by franciscop | Hacker News Reader

Comment by franciscop | Hacker News Reader

I'm from Valencia, Spain, and something very interesting to note is that most software developers I've spoken with in here don't believe these numbers. Like, if you tell them that a software engineer in SF can make $500k/year, they'd think that you are either joking (most common), naive for believing that yourself, you are trying to con them, or that okay it might happen to one that was very lucky but as a total anomaly[1] and you misunderstood, like on a lucky exit.

Luckily in recent years (thank God) they've started to learn that they are underpaid, and that SWE is an occupation that ought to be paid more (for scalability reasons) than many other professions, so salaries are rising. Specially thanks to international companies in Barcelona. But in my hometown Valencia, I'm pretty sure I'd still sound like crazy, or like I'm trying to con someone, if I was talking about those "crazy American salaries".

Note: things in Barcelona are prob better, this is just my experience in more "rural" Valencia

[1] I do know it's not common, but also it's not "an statistical fluke" so to speak

I don’t believe it either. I mean I know it’s a thing but it seems so isolated to a few engineers at very few companies in a very small area. I’m in Europe, have 15 years experience and an “architect” type role since 10. I make around $80k/yr (Europe caveats apply - I’d want at least 50% more in the US) I still think these FAANG salaries are just people from certain universities having bidding wars for alumni from the same schools while measuring quality with whiteboard coding.

I’d be very happy to work remotely as a $150k emgineer, but I doubt that’s possible. I can see around zero job ads e.g on StackOverflow careers that approach FAANG figures.

It's not hard to work remotely at €250k a year. I live in Amsterdam and did it last year via https://a.team for a Canadian company. It only took a few weeks to find a gig and I probably could have asked for me.

If you look at the last "Who's hiring" thread, there was even a company in Amsterdam offering €200k salaries. I know Uber offers more than that too.

And a friend of a friend just got an offer from Facebook in Germany for €400k.

Your first sentence is simply not true.

I mean for somebody like the GP with 10 years of experience in an architect role, assuming of course they have normal interviewing skills.

Dunno. I spent a year at a unicorn at ~100k€, and I hated the lack of meaningful work so much that I went for a contractor job in a public institution. It pays more, and I get to serve the citizens instead of serving mad corporate overlords.

Heh, I posted it. Check my history if you want to apply (non-remote, Amsterdam based). There are more positions than the one I linked

I live in the USA.

I do not live in one of the 20 largest metropolitan areas in the US. The closest top 20 metro area is 250 miles away (I suppose this meant more before Covid and WFH).

I do not have a college degree.

In terms of programming work, I have some part-time experience at very low pay at very small, pre-seed startups for a few years, and then two years of programming at a big company where I work full-time. At the time I was at these places I was also taking college courses and working another non-tech job.

My W2 last year was over $165k, all pay from my company. I have to check the numbers, but with 401k matching and stock discount, I think my real TC was actually more like $175k.

If I cared more about getting money in the near-term, and spent more time doing Leetcode I am sure I could make tens of thousands more in TC. Over $200k easily (easily be able to make it, spending weeks doing Leetcode is not easy for me to make time for currently).

At my company I know people just out of college for a year or two who are very good but who made <$100k. One left and is making more than me now, the other joined last year.

Levels.fyi used offer letters, W2s etc. The numbers look real to me, and everyone I talk to seems to agree. I do not work at a FAANG, I work at a traditional Fortune 500 company.

>I’m in Europe, have 15 years experience and an “architect” type role since 10. I make around $80k/yr

I am sure you can find something that pays quite a bit more if you look around. I am earning 75k eur (82k usd) a year with 4 years of experience, although as a somewhat niche-specialized engineer. This is in Germany.

Is that compensation pre-tax, if you don't mind me asking?

In Europe people normally discuss pre-tax, although your employer already pays some more taxes for you on top of that.

As the other commenter said, pre-tax. You can calculate what that'd be post tax in your situation in Germany here

https://www.brutto-netto-rechner.info/gehalt/gross_net_calcu...

I also didn't believe it until I met someone making that money and then I got hired for a similar amount, so now my whole perspective has changed from "$100-$200k jobs are a myth" to "oh now I make that so it's real, so now $500K+ jobs are a myth"!

But ofc I know better and I know that's a personal bias (specially when I see this same bias stronger in my friends with who I grew up with) so now my question is "if this is real how can I be one of those people making $500k+?", even if it's just a mental exercise -because I'm not willing to move to the US-.

Edit: ofc the best jobs are not in Stackoverflow, if you try to buy a new ferrari you don't go to ebay.com, so the best jobs are only found mouth-to-mouth, in company-specific pages (normally without price attached), or in more niche places like Ask HN as my fellow commenter suggested: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ or look at what Uber has to say: https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-sala...

Word of mouth. Mouth to mouth is cpr. ;)

Ah my Spanish brain slipped there, thanks for the correction!

Even in the UK $300k/yr would be nothing unusual. The jobs are there for people who aren’t too lazy to pursue them.

If you are talking about super experienced ( 10 to 15 years) C++ developers working in speed trading probably. Anything else I am very skeptical.

No? Keep in mind that 300k USD is only 230k GBP, which is really not unusual comp in London for any vaguely senior position.

Be careful how much of the compensation is Stocks/Shares as that is likely to collapse. For anybody based in Europe most tax laws are right down hostile to any granted stock options.

In the US in 2020: "Software Developers made a median salary of $110,140 in 2020. The best-paid 25 percent made $140,470 that year, while the lowest-paid 25 percent made $84,020."

https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/software-develope....

Keep in mind the completely different situation of medical insurance in the US. Remote is an option but then companies claim to pay according to where you are based.

Bay Area/San Francisco based 250k compensation does not impress, after you apply taxes, and you realize you will have to share a flat with four other colleagues...

> SWE is an occupation that ought to be paid more (for scalability reasons)

Scalability isn't a reason for salaries to be higher.

It doesn't matter if an employee generates $1M/year or $100M/year for the company; if somebody else would accept to do it for $100k/year that's what he's getting.

> if somebody else would accept to do it for $100k/year that's what he's getting.

Very true but they aren’t. That’s what makes it a hot market.

It is, maybe as a second order force but if Google, Facebook etc can pay Engineers those salaries, it's only because of their already well oiled scalability that those Engineers built; if they were selling anything with tiny margins, they could not have a large percentage of their employees have a huge salary. And this is what generates demand, which generates scarcity of talent, which makes both what you say and what I said true.

To understand that scalability (/margin per employee) is true, a good counter example would be: if there was a constrain of McDonnalds employees for some reason and that persisted, the company could not afford to pay them $100k salaries because it just doesn't make that much profit per employee (does not scale).

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