US is best place to be a software engineer, salary survey finds | Hacker News Reader

US is best place to be a software engineer, salary survey finds

theregister.com

21 pointsVicterius21 comments

I don't think engineering environments can be reduced to salary. Working culture is personally far more important to me. I don't want to work through ticket after ticket with respective optimized performance metrics. That can net a lot of cash but is a boring but still stressful job where your colleagues become your competitors like in a badly managed sales department per stereotype.

On the other hand the work in some supposedly benefit rich countries can be bad as well. You can grind your head against walls too big to tackle. People in general aren't very interested in technology or efficient solutions. The word software induces a panic where people just throw money at the first one to never utter the word again.

But more so than country, the respective company is probably more important. Smaller companies also have interesting problems and the work there is preferable with far more freedom. They pay is worse than their larger competitors though.

In my experience, the lower the job pays the higher the stress.

Well the lower the job pays, the more likely you're stuck in it.

High-paying jobs pay enough to walk out anytime you feel like it.

That removes a ton of potential stress right there.

It is true that those jobs tend to get more stressful. It was meant in a context of engineering salaries, where the lower ones still provide a fairly luxurious way of living. What many industries do to low wage workers is nothing else than abhorrent and the tech industry supports this with surveillance technology. The security department is especially guilty here.

Being able to leave a job at any time (due to savings) is a huge comfort.

This is anecdote, but the higher salary companies I've worked at have been much more competent, productive and happier in general.

Most of the stress I've encountered in software development has been due to complexity brought by inexperience. They were all lower paying companies.

Would have been nice if they did the leg work to pair this with cost of living

> The survey did not take into account the cost of living in the countries featured in the league table (comparing the cost of a house in San Francisco with one in Pune would provide more context)

On a country scale, the challenge is the wide range of prices in the US, even if the comparison is restricted to major metropolitan areas.

Whole article:

A survey has highlighted the disparity in engineer salaries around the world, with US developers pocketing far more than their British equivalents.

The report, from gamified programming outfit Codingame, was culled from its community of two million developers (along with tech recruiters) and showed that the US remained the top-paying country for software engineers, with an average annual salary of $95,879.

Furthermore, more than 40 percent of developers working in the US raked in over $100k a year and 5 percent pull in more than $200k per annum, according to the report.

Close behind was Switzerland, with a $90,462 average salary, Canada was at $71,193, while UK techies trailed in fourth, with an average salary of $68,664. Still nothing to be sneezed at, but quite some way behind the US.

It could be worse. Germany came in at sixth place with $61,390. France was down at ninth with $47,617, and Spain rounded out the top 10 with an average salary of $39,459 for software engineers.

Before anyone feels too hard done by, software engineers in India, Morocco, and Tunisia were at the bottom of the table, with averages of $19,553, $18,318, and $16,796 respectively.

The survey did not take into account the cost of living in the countries featured in the league table (comparing the cost of a house in San Francisco with one in Pune would provide more context), nor did it break down the numbers into what languages paid the best. It did, however, tell us that the average it cited was the mean rather than median.

A glance at the Stack Overflow survey for 2021 shows that Clojure is a high-paying language, DynamoDB engineers are making the big bucks, while AWS is just beating Azure on salary for cloud experts.

Still, while UK coders may not be the highest salaried in the world, the average salary has comfortably broken through the £50k ($66,300) barrier and remains higher than the national average. After Switzerland, Brits also pocket the most cash compared to their European equivalents.

Is that enough to stop techies in search of a better deal jumping through the hoops set by certain companies? Well, we are in the midst of the Great Resignation after all...

For reference, in Finland for masters of science who graduated 20 years ago the average salary is 6300 eur/month, or 75600 eur/year. But after taxes it is about 45k - 50k. The median is about 5400 eur/month.

I worked for a large multi-national in London some time ago, and the commonly held consensus was that New Yorkers doing the exact same job were being paid slightly less than double. Benefits were largely the same. I think with even the higher cost of living in NY, the US does come out ahead.

Us is not thd best if you also count vacation days/work life balance.

At least this study restricts itself to salary and is up front about it vs the "make a blanket generalization based on subjective prioritization of various factors" methodology that seems par for the course these days.

I don’t know, man. If your looking to coast, sure, Europe or SA might be a good place to be a dev. If your ambitious the US is better, imo. And this talk about work/life is always so overblown. If you a work for a good company they’ll treat you well. My benefits:

Dental Insurance / Free Breakfast / 5 days a week / Free food / Gym-Wellness Reimbursement / Gym Discount / Health Insurance / Health Savings Account (HSA) ($1000 per year contributed by employer) / Life Insurance / Maternity Leave 16 weeks / On-Site Fitness Classes / On-Site Mother's Room / PTO (Vacation / Personal Days) - Unlimited / Paternity Leave 120 days / Pet Insurance / Sick Time - Unlimited / Vision Insurance / Transport allowance / Phone Bill Reimbursement / 401k- 25% match on the first 1% of base salary / Employee Stock Purchase Program / Roth 401k / Tuition reimbursement /

And these benefits are not even anything special, just standard. I work for a tech company thats not even in the top 25.

Your telling me you would rather make 50k in Spain with higher taxes, than what I have above with 160k?

"25% match on the first 1% of base salary" - I'm assuming this is meant to be on up to 100% of base salary?

I rather make more salary and take 6 - 12 months off after 2 years.

The counter is, in the USA, FIRE is a possibility. Few, if any, Software Developers talk about FIRE in Europe.

Pensions in Europe will be under pressure. I doubt they will keep up with inflation. Particularly with stagnant productivity and aging populations.

History has shown its better to have your own savings than rely on public pension systems (this is a long discussion.)

The US simply values software more than anyone else.

I’d take quality of life and better return on taxes paid over more salary. Better return on taxes paid would offset a noticeable amount of salary.

Well, I disagree.

160k per year. I have money in a variety of investment vehicles. No family (wife, kids) atm. Moderate rent since I do hybrid work and can tolerate a longer commute 2 days a week. If I’m good with expenses I can retire at 38. I could go move to a more rural area of the US or some other country and never work again.

This stuff about ‘taxes’, and QOL…meh, I’ll take more cash now, please, especially when I’m younger and can afford to.

Blah blah blah, health insurance, services…I’m 28, not really worried about it. My QOL is higher than 99 percent of the world.

We’re both private school kids, I can tell. Glad you think you get your full dollar’s worth on military spending and infrastructure, especially rural infrastructure.

I’m very much aware there’s waste. Yes, it needs to be addressed. However, for myself , the feeling of building financial security is worth more to me (right now) than quality of services derived from taxes. Only reason I’ve ever lived in the city is due to work. If I didn’t need to manage a hybrid schedule I would move. My interest are wholly in the outdoors, so I really wouldn’t be missing much.

Depends on your circumstances.

I don't use the majority of the services where I live.

Rarely leave the house.

I'm convinced that the income tax is a repressive tax, designed to curb consumption and destroy the middle class.

The rich don't pay income taxes. If you want to redistribute wealth, you have to do it through a wealth tax. Not inflation and income taxes. None of this is sustainable.

I wonder how quickly this is changing with the shift to remote work. Historically the biggest companies paying the highest salaries were generally not remote-friendly, which kept salary ceilings fairly local. This has changed significantly and remote-work policies are still in flux, so it will be very interesting to see where it nets out once the dust fully settles from the pandemic.

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