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Comment by jongjong | Hacker News Reader

Yes this is normal for UK. It's high compared to other parts of EU where senior dev jobs earn like 50K EUR per year. I don't know why people even bother to become developers over there... And yes, there are really talented developers there; often more talented than in the US or other places based on my experience. You can probably earn more money and have better career prospects by being a janitor in the EU.

Surprise! There is no free market. We live in a global crony-communist system which decides how much money people get paid from the top down starting with US shareholders and executives at the top of the social pyramid. All based on military coercion, wars and foreign debt traps. You can thank your military-industrial complex.

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Senior devs can do a lot better than 50k in Europe (I'm at 150k myself). But you have to push harder, and it helps if you're in Norway or Switzerland.

Ah yes Switzerland salaries are much higher... But costs of living are too. I remember everything in grocery stores cost almost twice as much as they did in Germany.

It's actually quite typical, when you move to places where costs of living are higher, salaries are higher too. You may still struggle to save anything. What you do manage to save can represent a lot of value, but only if you end up selling everything and relocating to a different, cheaper country/city later. I wish I had seen the global scheme sooner.

Same here. I would've stayed in northern California and emigrated _after_ saving a good chunk of change, especially since I grew up there. Oh well.

I live in Denmark, an entry level wage for a junior developer averages around 65K-75K EUR per year here depending on which part of the country you are in.

Cost of living is crazy high in Denmark though right? How does that €65-75k compare with the actual cost of living out of curiosity? ( Eg. rent, groceries, leisure activities etc..)

From my own experience being single with that wage range I would say it was enough that i didn't have to think about how much money I used on everyday activities while still having something left over to add to my savings. Not enough to like travel all the time or buying crazy luxury items, but enough that money wasn't something I had to think about.

It's obviously difficult to try to compare actual numbers, but I think I had 5-10K DKK (670-1340 EUR) in surplus at the end of every month at that time. Obviously things are different when you have a partner and/or kids - or you might just get less lucky with how cheap you can rent or buy an apartment.

That's only in elite circles for certain connected individuals. You can also make that or higher in London in finance sector but you need special credentials (IR35) to get that and it's very hard to get for certain people.

In the real market, in the local job boards, it's hard to find anything above $50K USD. There is a dual class system in EU. The upper class get certain salaries and everybody else (which includes immigrants and unconnected individuals) get totally different salaries for the exact same work.

What a load of BS. My numbers are from the wage statistics my union (IDA) publishes. This isn't some elite circle, these are real numbers collected from their 10's of thousands of members. For example (note numbers are monthly wage in DKK): https://imgur.com/a/7obnU8p

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