Ask HN: How come YC startups offering <80k$/year? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How come YC startups offering <80k$/year?

93 pointstrianx195 comments

I am seeing YC startups hiring for supposedly in-demand roles (e.g. Senior TypeScript, Senior ML) and offering 50-80k$/year.

This sounds very low to me, even if those are fully remote positions. As far as I know, this salary wouldn't attract strong talent even in medium cost-of-living countries (like Portugal/Spain).

Anyone has more insights around this decision? For example: - Are they targeting extremely low-cost of living countries? Have they seen more success with that strategy? - Will globalisation finally equalize developer salaries across the globe? - Do they offer something else which is unusually attractive?

Intrigued to learn more.

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> this salary wouldn't attract strong talent even in medium cost-of-living countries (like portugal/spain).

median salary for a developer in Spain is $30,000 a year[1], so 50-80k would easily place them in the upper 10% of the scale.

I think americans need to really reflect on how inflated american dev salaries are.

[1] https://www.payscale.com/research/ES/Job=Software_Developer/...

Those figures are wrong to be honest. Most senior folks in Spain don't work for Spanish companies in general; they work for EU companies that pay more. Plenty of senior folks in Spain making $100k+. In Barcelona, you can make north of $70K easy; even for non-senior devs.

I agree with OP. The salary is way too low for a senior European developer to consider because taking a US job means that there are no employment protections that you'd usually get; employment is at will for contractors.

Source: I live in the EU.

> Those figures are wrong to be honest. Most senior folks in Spain don't work for Spanish companies in general; they work for EU companies that pay more.

Does that contradict those figures though? Are you talking about the upper 10% discussed?

From PayScale, the upper is at $50K. You wouldn't even get an average developer for that salary in Barcelona for example.

North of $70K is still a ways away from $100K+ and I'd love to see which companies we're talking about here because that's not the news that reaches me from Spain. Rather the opposite.

Once you accept the fact that single income families don't afford real estate ownership, 70k is easily sufficient for a comfortable life. Again, assuming it is a double income household. It is so for the high price region in Southern Germany around Munich.

70k in Europe is totally comparable to 100k in US though and is a pretty comfortable salary in Europe.

Even if life is a little more expensive in Europe, you don’t need as much emergency savings as in the US.

Tax system in Europe is also a lot more complicated with many loopholes.

In Belgium, almost every white collar job has a company car included, since it's much much cheaper than for an individual to buy one.

I'm not sold on that over the long term. Many western European countries have rough economic outlooks due to their terrible demographics.

> 70k in Europe is totally comparable to 100k in US

Where in the US? It's a massive country with a huge regional variation in cost of living.

The EU is also vast with huge variations. I think it’s a general, average comparison.

That can't be good for Spain's own IT industry e.g. national companies, or even government agencies wanting to employ senior IT personnel.

It isn't. It has pretty much decimated their industry to the point where there are no decent tech companies in Spain, and the few that exist do not pay those local rates (typeform for example).

Yeah Spain salaries aren't great for devs even by the UK's standards, but GP's numbers seem way too low.

About 4 years back I didn't bother proceeding with a couple of (well, two) mid-level engineering positions based out of Barcelona because they paid too low (about €55,000) compared to what I could get in the UK for an equivalent role. One of them was for King, who was still raking it in then, and I can't remember the other organisation.

Still less than what my expectations had been calibrated for, but way more than what GP is implying!

Today a dev in Barcelona makes as much as a dev in London or slightly less. Considering the cost of living and the quality of life, the dev in Barcelona gets much much more.

Among my friends and acquaintances, I’m currently witnessing an exodus from the UK, with people moving to Spain, France, the Netherlands and Germany.

Agreed on all points you make btw. If I had to contend with the rental market, and didn't already have much of a senior-ish network here in London which is currently keeping my pay well above what I can get anyplace else in the world (except the US), I'd be upping sticks as well.

> European developer to consider because taking a US job

Nitpicking, but this is technically not possible. The US company has to have a EU presence or the developer needs to be self employed and invoice the US company

There are numerous talent management companies like Deel that handle this for you. Of course technically EU person would be working for EU company in this case.

Also no one stoping person living in EU from registering LLC in US and working through that. Corp2corp with own LLC is actually how majority of people from outside the US work with US companies.

> Most senior folks in Spain don't work for Spanish companies in general; they work for EU companies that pay more.

I doubt that statement. As a German living in Spain since the pandemic, I dealt with this and my social bubble is full of tech expats dealing with this, too. Living in one EU country and working remotely as an employee for another one, is almost legally impossible, and full of unnecessary hurdles for both employer and employee. Everyone of top-talent grade I know who does this, is basically either self-employed (as I am) or operates a "legal construct" such as having empty "mailbox flats" in the country they work for (breaking all sorts of laws by doing so).

The EU itself has never harmonized income tax laws; actually all of the EUs political system always tries not to touch the tax subject at all. As a result, each EU state has an individual double-tax treaty with all other members states. Yes, do the math - there are hundreds tax treaties between EU member states. Non of them are based on some EU guidance or blueprint, and oftentimes older than the EU itself (german-spain treaty dates back mostly to the 1960s with some minor additions in the early 2000s). Finding legal advice alone is almost impossible (i.e. a lawyer that speaks either of your languages and both legal systems recently well). And if you do, good luck, your fellow civil cervant at your tax offices will screw up your fringe case anyways.

Worker-protection laws apply by country of residence, but the employer is bound by their national ones too. If you live in Spain and work remotely for a german company, legally you are bound by spanish worker laws. That is, you get spanish bank holidays off, minimum wage laws of Spain (and Germany!) and so forth. Even when figuring out all legal subtleties, it is simply not manageable for any companies HR department to deal with all country specific regulations and changes, let alone in different languages. I run a company myself and could not employ a person from another EU country within reasonable effort; the only way to go is hire them as contractors or through payrolling agencies. Both will not make them your employees, which has a lot of other legal consequences (holidays, employee patent/inventions laws, but also stuff like you can't really enforce any policy on them without going through the intermediaries).

> Americans need to really reflect on how inflated American dev salaries are.

More specifcally: SV needs to reflect on how inflated SV salaries are. Possibly with a few outliers elsehwere, such as New York and maybe a few pockets in London. But overall the area where software developers as a rule make > $120K per year is probably less than a few hundred square kilometers and the world is much, much larger than that.

>I think americans need to really reflect on how inflated american dev salaries are.

Or maybe people everywhere else need to really reflect on how underpaid they are. It’s not like the revenue of tech companies is lower outside of the US, so why isn’t more of it ending up in developers’ pockets, where it should go?

> It’s not like the revenue of tech companies is lower outside of the US

It actually is much lower.

That doesn't mean that developers aren't underpaid, but there definitely is a huge difference between a company serving the US market from inside the United States and one in Europe. In general the fraction of revenue that goes towards salaries is a fairly substantial chunk of the books of a typical company, but for a scalable proposition that is entirely virtual there is an advantage if your home market is unified in language and currency. And it also is an advantage if you have easy access to large amounts of capital.

Success breeds success and creaming off some of the $ of that success is what causes developer salaries to be what they are where they are: it's based on competition for talent mostly. And that's precisely why some of these large companies were trying to collude to depress the salaries as much as they could.

The vast majority of countries are neoliberal/capitalist so that’s simply not how it works. Your pay is a function of the market price for your talents, not of how much your boss is making.

So, ironically, in that regard, the US tech labor market is far more socialist than its European counterpart.

Not really. They are both neoliberal, just with different market conditions.

Workers getting a large share of a company’s revenue, much of which is in the form of fractional ownership of the company sure sounds quasi-socialist to me! It doesn’t matter that market conditions led to this compensation scheme (as opposed to direct political intervention); what matters is the end result.

That's not what the terms socialism and capitalism mean. They describe the process, not end result.

You can have full blown worker coops in the capitalist system, the question is if they are state mandated or not.

The definition of socialism isn't any sytem with a good outcome for workers.

So are you saying that socialism can only exist if it's imposed and maintained by the state? (i.e. no democratic society can be socialist by definition?)

All states impose things on their citizens, including democratic ones. That’s what law is.

>So are you saying that socialism can only exist if it's imposed and maintained by the state?

I 'm not sure I understand the question? Socialism is a political philosophy on how the state should operate and what it should permit. It IS a description of the states behavior.

Democracy has nothing to do with it. You can have a socialist country with a king, or with direct democracy and no leader.

You can't have a socialist state without socialist laws and rules.

I think some of the confusion is from how the word is used now.

People refer to systems which apply socialist thinking as socialism, even if the governance is not a state government.

For example, let's say a theoretical union takes guidance from the political philosophy of socialism, and requires union members to contribute the highest percentage of their salary as union dues, that they can legally get away with. Let's say workers are paying 90% of their salaries in union dues.

The union can then use those dues to support the union members in various ways.

This isn't a state government, but it behaves like a socialist system and people would probably call it an example of socialism.

The wikipedia page on [religious socialism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_socialism) even has some examples of this in religious communities.

You also have socialist anarchy, which supports stateless socialism

> Let's say workers are paying 90% of their salaries in union dues. The union can then use those dues to support the union members in various ways.

Realistically that seems to be more or less completely unsustainable without some use of force. e.g. if individuals who contribute more than they pay in are allowed to opt-out the system quickly collapses. That's how universal healthcare, state pension/social systems work etc. so it's not necessarily a bad thing. However in general socialist "corporations" are generally incapable of competing in a "free" market so they can only exist when they are supported by the state or private/capitalist enterprises are banned or strongly restricted in one way or another.

> if individuals who contribute more than they pay in are allowed to opt-out the system quickly collapses

Sure, that's why I said this was theoretical. I wasn't using it as a demonstration of how socialism can be sustainable without a state, I was using it to demonstrate a system that might be described as socialist even though it's stateless.

Well by Democracy I implicitly meant freedom of speech, independent judiciary, protection of private property and individual civil rights etc. most of those things are not really compatible with state imposed socialism.

Democracy doesn't imply or require any of those things. A majority can democratically vote to suspend every single one.

You can have a democracy with 51% ruling and 49% in chattel slavery and poverty (but having a right to vote

I would agree that socialism isn't compatible with private property and civil rights as we commonly understand them today (in the US).

This is the correct answer.

If you really want to make it big in nearly whatever profession, you have to go america. All other countries are severely underpaid. (I don't care about Switzerland/similarities because it's just 3M people).

8.7M people to be precise :-)

I think many Europeans can't imagine moving to the US (higher work load, less social safety, higher violence) and employers well know it and can keep salaries depressed.

More like people just don't want to leave their life behind... Those listed things are like the bottom of the reasons

On the other hand, I know dozens of people that left their life and higher salaries in the US behind to come to the EU for those stated reasons.

Dozens even!

From my observation, the ratio of American Engineers coming to Europe vs Europeans Engineers coming to America is at least 1:10, if not more.

And most of the expats I know who did it seemed to be working for SV companies. So they didn't leave the higher salary behind.

Yes, it's definitely more than 1:10 overall. But those reasons to leave the US (unhealthy work load, less social safety, higher violence) are at the top of many people's minds when they move to Europe.

In my experience the social safety net doesn’t really matter for highly skilled workers making hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. In terms of violence you’re statistically unlikely to be the victim of violent crime in the US as an upper class white collar worker.

It doesn't matter until it ends up mattering. Contracting an illness that prevents you from working and needs medical supervision can be life-ruining if your social security, etc. is tied to your employment.

Most corps carry long term disability insurance- I’d make more on that than an equivalent Euro paying job.

Now add in vacation and sick days, as well as the worker protections for things such as layoffs.

It's unfair, but I'm of the opinion US healthcare is much better if you have the means to pay for it.

Look at all the top surgeons and hospitals in the world for everything from neurosurgery to cancer treatment. They're all in the United States. The median level of care might be much better in Europe but they are behind when it comes to cutting edge treatments, rare diseases, and so on.

I'm an American living in the UK, and I've had to do medical tourism to the US. What I needed wasn't available outside the US at any price.

Yes. American health "care" is the best. Problem is with the "administration" that for basic stuff, there is crazy price gouging and no free market competition. It is ridiculous that you have to involve insurance in every visit to a doctor AND it's tied to your employer being able to provide something.

I got a bill from a lab last year that was for about $1200, and when insurance denied it as out-of-network (it wasn't, the lab and the insurance company had some billing procedure issues) it was less than $100 somehow.

Out of stubbornness, I fought with the lab for months to bill it correctly, and eventually got them to write it off by emailing the CEO.

Sums up our healthcare "administration" well. Unfortunately, I have done this a few times myself and what a colossal waste of time.

I would move to the USA if I could. As a European is that possible - e.g. don't you need a green card?

AFAIK the easiest way is to start working in EU for a company that has offices in US. Then you can transfer.

I can’t just move to the US. I’ve applied around 100 times and only brilliant.org replied and gave me an interview. All the other companies stated that Europeans don’t have permission to work in the US (and it wasn’t stated anywhere)

> It’s not like the revenue of tech companies is lower outside of the US, so why isn’t more of it ending up in developers’ pockets, where it should go?

What you're forgetting is that taxes differ quite a lot from country to country. That, and cost of living is a factor too. If food and housing costs half as much, then even though you're paid less, you're not really poorer for it.

I think many American developers are kind of blind to how absurdly expensive California housing is.

From what I read on the internets, housing is also absurdly expensive in London, Lisbon, NYC, Toronto, Vancouver, Shanghai etc. Adjusting for the local level of salaries of course. So not sure what your point is?

Absurd compared to the local living wages, not compared to SF

Comparable to SF, but unsupported by the easy money.

> by the easy money.

A lot of this completely self-imposed (and very much by design) to prop-up real estate because there's no other industry to support the economy.

Vancouver is a prime example: it's extremely easy (compared to the US) for foreigners to purchase assets (even with questionable sources of incomes that wouldn't pass the higher scrutiny of USCIS) and for owners to collude into restricting the supply. They are happy since their investment appears to grow in value (they can get out of the game and cash-in if another foreigner decides to park his money into these assets) and the government is happy since a lot of people's retirements are tied to their home value and it gives the impression the economy is growing.

I don't think anyone is blind to how expensive SF real estate is?? I mean at least every single person I know who lives there talks about it!

I think most Americans are kind of blind to how absurdly expensive American housing, and the entire American lifestyle, is. It's not just housing, it's everything: healthcare, restaurant food, car culture, heating/cooling/lawn care for the enormous houses, I could go on and on.

I would also add the strength of the dollar. If the dollar appreciates to the value of the local country's currency, then the revenue earned from there using the local currency for pricing and transacting begins to be worth less.

If it was true, wouldn't we expect Japanese developers to be paid 0.7% as much as American developers?

> Or maybe people everywhere else need to really reflect on how underpaid they are.

You must consider currency exchange rates too. In my country, at the current rates, 80k US$/year puts one above many top executives, doctors and other prestigious jobs. Not bad at all for a remote position in software development.

> 80k US$/year puts one above many top executives, doctors and other prestigious jobs. Not bad at all for a remote position in software development.

The real question is: Who is creating the most value here? The top executive at a local company? The local doctor or the software engineer shipping products in markets around the world?

It's unclear whether or not the local doctor's qualifications would even be recognized in the US, yet the remote software engineer's work is making money there and countless other high-value markets as we speak.

I think it is not as simple as that. There is cost of living and demand supply levers as well.

There is a huge salary gap between usa and Canada as well.

> There is a huge salary gap between usa and Canada as well.

Not in my experience. At least not for SV-Caliber talent.

Something you have to keep in mind is that there are two parallel markets over there: SV caliber developers and the rest. The former won't have any issue getting a job in the US (takes maybe a week for a talented engineer to get one). Therefore, comp has to be priced appropriately. The later can't -and likely won't ever be able to- secure a US visa, mostly due to skills. A lot of them are immigrants to Canada themselves (there's a reason they immigrated to Canada, it's way easier and the quotas are close to 10x per capita compared to the US). Some companies leverage this and have floors of international devs they park in Canada for a fraction of their US counterpart through a subsidiary.

Most of what comes as "SV caliber" is mediocre devs.

There are just (way) more of them in Bay Area than anywhere in the world and they know right buzzwords.

> Most of what comes as "SV caliber" is mediocre devs.

That's an interesting statement. I assume the whole tech ecosystem and market is completely irrational since it seems to price these developer so much higher than their real worth? Where would one need to go to find non-mediocre devs who know more than just "the buzzwords"?

> I assume the whole tech ecosystem and market is completely irrational since it seems to price these developer so much higher than their real worth?

You somehow consider this less likely than the alternative where all less-than-leet-tier devs have decided to stay out of SV and therefore, the inflated salaries for everyone there are actually rational?

The OP was talking about startup roles. At that stage there is little revenue to speak of, and the salaries on offer are going to correspond to how much financing they were able to obtain.

VC funding of software startups in the US easily dwarves whatever is being offered in other parts of the world.

It should go to showing fewer ads

Western Europe has something called income equality, you should try it some time. Or well, more or it.

A cashier in Sweden earns a very liveable wage, quite close to the average wage, while a programmer earns maybe 75% more than that, if not twice as much. That's already a significant difference. I'm a student and get 1200€ a month (not only is university free, we also get paid to study). With this, I have my own apartment with my own kitchen and all and am still able to save 500 a month. When I start working and get an average salary (the starting salary for programmers is about the same as the average salary for the entire population), I will spend a bit more, but still probably have 1-1.5k€ left every month. That is a lot. Then after some years, that would increase by a thousand or so. Why should I expect more money than that? I don't deserve more than that.

Housing is expensive here too, but not nearly as bad as in the US, so we simply don't need as high salaries. In Sweden, things like preschools are also heavily subsidized and university completely free, which is beneficial if you have children.

Your salary don't depend on revenue, but on how much it would cost to replace you.

I don't know this website but for France it says 38k€/year on average. Which means they're not using the total salary but the post employer's taxes.

I'm using France for reference, and approximate number for the sake of explanation: for 100€ cost to the company, 40€ is employer's taxes, 20€ is employee's taxes. We call 20+40 = 60 the "gross" salary, and 40 the net salary, we never talk about the 100 when negotiating a salary. I don't have the time to check if that 38k is gross or net.

It is my understanding that if you have a 50k€ gross salary offer in Europe, you need to add ~40% to it to compare to compare to total cost for the employer as understood in the US.

I'm 90% sure their number are "wrong" for Spain in the same way.

In the US, the salaries that are typically listed show the "gross" salary, the way you defined it. It contains the 40 net salary and the taxes on top of it.

There is also a portion of taxes and other insurance that the employer must pay. These are generally not summed up in job offers. They include the employer's part of social security, insurance, 401k contribution, and other benefit plans which are often part of an offer for a salaries position.

On top of that come Europe's minimum vacation requirement of 4 weeks (although in practice, most are at anything from 24-30 days / 5-6 weeks), the unlimited sick days and numerous national holidays. Also, we have mandatory contributions for pension, social security, healthcare and (in Germany) workplace accident and elderly care insurance.

All of that needs some form of accounting on the employer's side that drives up the gross employment cost.

Or, to put it bluntly, us Europeans tend to see lower take-home amounts on our paystubs for the same gross cost the employer sees on their bank account, but a lot of stuff that you'd have to take care of on your own in the US is covered by that.

That’s also how it works in the US. The numbers are just bigger.

> but a lot of stuff that you'd have to take care of on your own in the US is covered by t

Not if you're a software engineer earning 150-200k+

> I think americans need to really reflect on how inflated american dev salaries are.

This statement makes no sense. We have a much higher cost of living here than in Europe.

SV vs. Berlin? Sure. Kentucky's hinterland vs. Paris? No, you don't.

Fun fact, FAANG salaries in Europe depend on the lovation you are hired at, with differences between, e.g., Munich and Berlin for the same job levels. It is funny, because companiesbreally understood how salaries and cost of living are connected, and still every discussion on HN regarding dev salaries ignores this simple favt and only compares absolute numbers. Heck, mostly there isn't even an agreemt on the measurement baseline (including US benefits, EU common health care, vacation days...).

Many individuals either don’t understand (or pretend to not understand) that most companies make an offer based on what it takes to get you to accept their offer, not based on the value they expect you to create. (It’s perhaps capped by that, but is otherwise not related.)

“What’s your best alternative?” is what underlies the companies’ positions on negotiating salaries.

It's called "cost of market" at my company. Cost of market doesn't necessarily equal cost of living.. for example I make about 20% less in the Midwest than I would in New York or SF, but still way more than if I worked in London. But my cost of living is waaay less than London and also way less than 80% of SF

>median salary for a developer in Spain is $30,000 a year

Whhhhaaaat? That doesn't sound right. I know a guy in Barcelona making $200k, although he works for a US company. Heck, even in Eastern Europe, with the right knowledge you can make $150k+.

That's correct. But those are the outliers, or at least at the very top of the range. The parent mentions median salary.

That's the median. It's like saying the median salary for software engineers in US is $120K/year (which is "true" if you Google it)... but then all the Silicon Valley engineers would say "whaaaat? Here the juniors can easily earn $200K/year their first year!"... So, yeah in Europe you can earn as little or as much as everywhere else (of course, Silicon Valley is still the place to earn top money)

That's the median on some random site with very few self-reported samples...

These sort of reports can be very misleading because they are often based surveying local companies competing for employees with other local companies. The salaries are very different when working for example for a local bank, vs. for an international tech company or well-funded international startup.

https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-sala...

> I think americans need to really reflect on how inflated american dev salaries are.

Considering the high costs of living in some of their regions, those salaries may be justified. But I believe they are definitely not in a good position when it comes to remote work + competing with English-speaking developers in poorer countries. Situation in Europe may be similar.

In Europe they can find African developers in the same timezone, while in North-America they have Latin-America. Given the lower costs of living + favorable exchange rates, the difference in terms of purchasing power ending in developers' pockets is huge in favor of the ones in the southern hemisphere.

Maybe those in the richer countries shouldn't be too vocal against return-to-office?

Crabs in a bucket mentality. House prices and medical expenses are astronomical compared to European countries.

>median salary for a developer in Spain is $30,000 a year[1], so 50-80k would easily place them in the upper 10% of the scale.

You wrongly assume normal distribution of pay.

> median salary for a developer in Spain is $30,000 a year[1], so 50-80k would easily place them in the upper 10% of the scale.

That's right and wrong and the same time. If we are talking about non-junior positions: Developers in Spain who earn <= $30K/year are not going to apply for positions in American (and non Spanish) companies because they probably don't know they can do so. They are not in the "global" market, they do not read HN, they work either for consultancy companies or agencies (hence the low salaries). They usually don't work for product companies. They may not even speak enough English.

On the other hand, non-junior Spanish Developers who earn more than $30K/year do so because they know their value. They speak good enough English. They work for product companies (either unknown or globally well-known ones) and hence their salaries are higher than the median salary advertised in the link you provided. These developers can earn $80K/year in Spain (either for an Spanish company or remotely for an EU company), so if they decide to work for an American company (and this means usually a) weird working hours because of timezone differences, b) perhaps working as a contractor instead of as an employee), they definitely know that $50K-$80K/year is very low.

So, yeah, for the Spanish developers that American companies can hire, that salary is low.

I'm a spanish dev working for a YC company and earning above that, any Spanish dev I know who has the level to be working for a YC company earns well above 50-80k.

> I think americans need to really reflect on how inflated american dev salaries are.

What will the enlightened Spaniards pay you to kick a ball for Real Madrid?

> median salary for a developer in Spain is $30,000 a year[1], so 50-80k would easily place them in the upper 10% of the scale.

that's global market already. If apple, google, msft be confident they can hire thousands of high quality engineers in Spain for $30k/y, they would sure open dev offices there and cut jobs in California.

I'm an Irish dev living in Spain getting paid Spanish wages. I'd easily be on double in Ireland.

It is what it is.

The only thing holding back Spanish devs is a relatively low level of English by other European standards.

They do open offices and they do pay little compared to the US, but still relatively good for the market.

> 30,000 per year

I have friends in India who work as senior engineers for Indian companies that make more than that today. Nice to see that a European holiday is well within the purchasing power of Indian tech workers.

> I think americans need to really reflect on how inflated american dev salaries are

What is there to reflect on? The reasons for this are well-documented. OP was just stating a fact, but got the ranges a bit off.

> I think americans need to really reflect on how inflated american dev salaries are.

Shhh, don't tell nobody.

It is a very compound issue, that people look at as just a simple X vs Y.

You have to consider:

Benefits, taxes (both yours and the companies), cost of living, exchange rate fluctuations, and hours worked per year.

Oh, wow, poor underpaid Spain developers. Suck for them for doing perhaps 90% of the same work .

I think this website's numbers are way too low for Spain and other EU countries, similarly to how their 76k $ average software developer salary for the US seems too low: https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Developer/...

They likely have a different definition for software developer than myself.

An example from today was a YC company and they had an ad on the front page.

https://deep-ivy-ltd.breezy.hr/p/055a500d0e8701-ml-research-...

45-60k

● Very strong Python skills, with deep expertise in PyTorch, TensorFlow or JAX

● Very strong skills in recursive programming. Check out the Ivy Container class

45-60k would be a Wordpress developer in my opinion, I'd imagine deep expertise in ML cost a lot more.

As they none-too-delicately state in the same blurb: "We are hiring worldwide."

So clearly that's what they're aiming for.

But they are not hiring worldwide. Their openings clearly state: UK (and remote, within UK). So, I don't understand how they are hiring in the UK with such low salary ranges

Ah, didn't see that. Tech companies contradict themselves (or otherwise say patent nonsense) in job postings all the time, unfortunately.

By default these job boards seem to often be clusterfuck operations, with everyone shoving random detail into the reqs and no one there to curate the resulting message.

40-60k British pounds puts you near a max of $80,372.82 USD. still underperforming but not insane for junior devs not in California

So these employees are giving them 100k-400k of venture capital in the form of discounted labor.

But they get nowhere near the respect an investor of that amount would get. Asking to sign onerous ndas. Doing fizz buzz on a whiteboard. Etc.

One time I refused to sign an nda for an interview and the founder basically blew a gasket. Spent half the interview talking about how bad it was I wouldn’t sign it.

You dodged a bullet. I think my only response to that would be "thank you for your time; I've learned everything I need to in this interview".

Why didn’t you just leave lol

Always funny to see SV people not understanding SV, thinking the rest of the world is underpaid.

SV is an planetary anomaly. Hundreds of billions (if not more) of capital free to invest in highly risky undertakings. That's why you earn 200K or more. An enormous surplus of capital with a high tolerance for failure.

That type of capital simply does not exist anywhere else in the world. And this only strengthens the SV effect, like a gravitational force.

Trust me, it's not because Europeans have more holidays. Companies simply cannot afford to pay these salaries anywhere in the world except in SV. Because they quite simply don't have these types of budgets.

To put things in perspective, if you'd travel around the world and call out the number 200-300K/year, people everywhere will assume you own a factory or are some other huge deal. They most certainly will not think of a microservice developer.

That is ridiculous. What SWEs get paid is not dissimilar to what pilots and engineers get paid (with experience) in the US. People get paid what it costs to replace them. You're just trying to justify SV "enterpreneur" greed with that logic. If you can pay someone 10k/yr in the US you probably would even with a $20M valuation and 10 person head count. The insane SV valuations are also unheard of and all these marvelous tech companies are also not being born in London or Vietnam or some other place, they are in the US and they also pay that much just to starve the competition of talent.

This is why even as an SWE making $300k you should think seriously about forming a nation wide union and this is also why they're copying each other with layoffs because their profit and what they pay employees is increasing at a similar rate.

"Well 200k is a lot of money by comparison but multiple 10M+ rounds for 5+ years with no profit is totally normal" lol.

You all should also fight agressively for laws that prevent companies from outsourcing talent, unless you haven't learned from the 2000s.

To all of you founders and execs, go to countries with cheaper salaries and bigger taxes, nobody is stopping you.

The nerve on these rich people, it's not enough they evade taxes and pay less than small businesses but they also have to nickle and dime their own employees!

You're making so many incoherent disconnected points that I'm not sure what you're actually trying to say.

Alright, then let me rephrase it simply: SWE should be getting paid as much as they can collectively negotiate and companies who already get the best tax deals should tuck their tails between their legs and be happy about it. I don't care what people get paid in random places, it has absolutley no relevance other than govs should not allow a company to profit in their country if it is not offering competitive salaries and instead outsources. The only beneficiaries can't be the super rich company owners and shareholders.

Pay tax or pay really good wages.

To @pokepim whom I can't reply to because the comment is dead: nah, I am not even a developer and your skills are irrelevant, your replacabilith in the market is all that matters. These companies raise insane capital, get insane tax benefits and cuts and the lowest taxes and most lax employment laws in the developed world and also want to bitch about 200k salaries in places where median house costs are in the millions. If vietnam devs are so good, I am sure vietnam (or any country) will have amazing companies that raise crazy valuations and pay them good enough to afford a house to live in?! Right? Tell mee when I can save 50% of 20k/yr in the US and buy a house in the US? In cali I would have to save for like 100 years lol. I am all for outsourcing if it means houses and other CoL in the US will have the same prices as the places outsourcers live at.

As someone who lives in a low-cost-of-living place, and who occasionally contracts to US companies, let me phrase it this way.

I'm very happy with $x. I don't really care what a SV person gets. Thats irrelevant to me and makes zero impact on my standard if living. If $x is smaller than a US salary then the employer is happy too.

Once employers figure out your job can be done remotely (something the WFH cohort are bending over backwards to do) they'll discover the global labour pool is huge. And astonishingly smart. And speak good English. And are prepared to work US time zones.

Salaries are willing buyer, willing seller. If your salary offer of $60k puts me easily in the top 1% of salaries in my country, then I'll take it, and be happy.

I completley understand and support your position. That's why companies can't easily do global remote, outsourcing is not exactly a new concept in tech. These companies are playing capitalism but the people buying their shit aren't. Companies exist to benefit people, people don't exist to benefit companies, that's why every country has labor laws to protect its people from greedy companies, but if a greedy company benefits you for the time being, enjoy! But keep in mind, the salary they pay offshore is funded by taxes and income onshore. The problem really is US empoloyment law here.

"Senior" means different things to different people.

I've interviewed "senior" engineers who I wouldn't hire into an internship, and I've interviewed regular (non-senior) engineers who are exceptional.

It also means different things to different companies. At a startup, a "staff engineer" might just be the best engineer on a team of 5-10, but at a big tech company it means a completely different thing. I've also worked with senior engineers at big tech companies who would be less productive than a new graduate in a 3 person startup.

Apply to a job description, not a job title.

> At a startup, a "staff engineer" might just be

They're clearly wizards that hold a staff.

> I've also worked with senior engineers at big tech companies who would be less productive than a new graduate in a 3 person startup.

That doesn't sound like the engineers' fault? In reverse would the new graduate be productive in big tech?

> "Senior" means different things to different people.

It usually just means old.

> > I've also worked with senior engineers at big tech companies who would be less productive than a new graduate in a 3 person startup.

> That doesn't sound like the engineers' fault? In reverse would the new graduate be productive in big tech?

It's no one's fault, it's that different companies need different things and can utilise productivity in different ways.

Yea, a lot (not most) of seniors at Big Tech spend 50+% of their time writing docs that never result in anything or otherwise really did _not_ need a doc, or "generating ideas" and "fielding questions" from someone 3 teams away from them.

The mid-levels engineers are doing a lot more of the grunt work of writing code. At a small company, new ideas are great, but you really need someone that can just sit down and pump out code. Move fast, bias for action.

Source: I've worked at various sized companies from 5 person seed, to 300 person high growth, to Big Tech.

One take I haven't seen..

It's sort of like when otherwise successful "name brand" organizations offer unpaid internships (let's not get in to whether that's legal or not.)

This selects for the type of people that can afford an arrangement like that.

Put another way, already wealthy founders, supported by wealthy investors, also want wealthy employees, or at least the demographic that fits already wealthy people.

There is not a single name brand engineering organization that does not pay its interns extremely well.

They're not paying $80k, they're paying $80k plus an equity lottery ticket that hopefully has a chance of being worth millions.

I almost never come across a startup I’d actually want a lottery ticket in.

The business models just seem naive or sometimes absurd.

Indeed, and guess this works as a secondary filter. They don't want people who don't truly believe in the company to apply. At an early stage start-up you want people that are passionate/naive/delusional enough to want to work lots of unpaid overtime.

The value of the startup lottery ticket is based on how fast you can hire, how much hype you can build and how many users you can acquire. Most startups are a money pit, their only value is in acquiring their customer base.

what is the proportion of YC startups that have had successful exits where the _employees_ received millions from their equity grants?

Not enough to justify an $80k salary.

Not in SV, for sure. If you're in KY it's pretty good. Can get a decent house for $190k, and as much land as you want. Gotta live in Kentucky tho.

Now that you mention it, what % of YC Startups even "succeed"? Would be fascinating to know. They're public about the companies that get accepted and you could have a few different criteria about what constitutes as success (getting funding? Existing 5 years later? etc)

I would expect that the first engineering employee of any of YC's "Top Companies" would have equity >$1M at time of exit.

There are currently ~350 Top Companies out of ~4000 all-time investments https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/yc-top-companies-feb-2023

So conservatively, 9%.

Statistically I think you have a better chance by taking a market rate job and then spending the difference on actual lottery tickets.

> Do they offer something else which is unusually attractive?

You can literally read the job description.

Answer:no.

Source: I've read the descriptions.

> Intrigued to learn more.

They are just companies. They either don't have money, or have money and want to lowball (it's good time to lowball).

> it's good time to lowball

There's lowballing, and then there's insulting.

Why would that be an insult?

If they can find someone good enough at that rate, then why would they pay more?

And if they can't, then they'll just need to discover the market floor by experience.

When you're scraping the market floor, there are much higher chances of hiring someone who will bring negative value.

I agree, but it seems to me that it's still the employers choice whether or not to take that gamble.

So I'm still not understand the basis for feeling insulted my an employer testing the market in this manner.

If you’ve just been laid off from big tech and have been applying for three months in the current climate you might want to take the insult and hope the startup succeeds in a way that brings you the rewards later. I don’t like it either but that’s where some of my friends are at right now.

Insulting is relative and depends on where you live.

There’s senior engineers all over the world willing to work for a stable wage of $50k USD.

- Brazil

- Ukraine

- Pakistan

- India

- Mexico

Is the dignity of work worth nothing to you? Think of the poor job creators.

99% of programming jobs outside of America must be insulting to you.

> this salary wouldn't attract strong talent even in medium cost-of-living countries (like Portugal/Spain).

lol, you have no idea what you’re talking about

Is it wrong? Assuming he refers to top talent, $50-80k isn’t enough to get anyone. You’d hardly be able to hire a top developer in Southeast Asia for this kind of money

No one is taking about average employees

Yes it’s wrong.

Also there’s no definition of top talents.

Yes, it is!

Here in Brazil $80k turns in 400k BRL or 33k per month. This make you go to the top 1% salary by a very large margin.

I don't know about Portugsl or Spain, but $50k would put uou into "wildest dreams" category in a Lot of countries.

And you'd be surprised at how much exceptional talent is out there. Apparently with 8 billion people to choose from the supply pool gets a lot bigger than those who live in very expensive cities.

Luckily wfh means companies are much more likely to hire remote workers now. Well lucky for folks like me anyway...

I'm in France, we have a slightly higher income than Portugal and Spain (less now than in the past I think but still), and even there 50k€ is a very good salary. 80k€ puts you in the top 3% in France (2023, for salaries).

> As far as I know, this salary wouldn't attract strong talent even in medium cost-of-living countries (like Portugal/Spain).

That’s a very typical salary range for developers in most parts of Europe. If your definition of “strong talent” means competing with top of market pay (FAANG etc) you’re right though.

80k$ salary in any European country is way more than 80k if you add the 10-30% of taxes paid by the company which are shown on the payslip and all the other benefits. In total that should be paid way more than being the 80k you'd get working as a contractor for an US startup with no employment protection and/or severance pay.

I am not so sure. 80K$ a year would be considered high here (even for a senior) and I live in a medium size city in the Netherlands.

If it's anything like Sweden, working as a permanent employee for a company in the Netherlands with that salary also gets you relatively high job security, pension contributions, 6-8 weeks off a year, unlimited sick leave, sometimes a collective agreement with guaranteed pay bumps or bonuses, often additional wellness allowances, etc.

Some companies employ through a local entity which gets you some or all of those same benefits. Often that's not the case. Which is not a bad thing at all imo. It just means that $80k would probably not be high enough to be equivalent with what you'd get locally when it comes to total comp.

Side question: Do people typically get to use all those weeks off? I get 5 weeks off, but it's incredibly difficult to still hit my deadlines if I take any days off.

Not sure about Sweden, but in the Netherlands it's very normal to use the full 5 weeks. I think Sweden is the same.

That's not your problem, unless you are coming up with those deadlines yourself.

In my experience almost everybody uses their vacation days in NL.

It took me a while to get into the habit when I first moved to Sweden, but after a couple of years I did start using all my weeks. Having a really long (4-5 week) summer vacation really really helps with recharge and coming back more fresh and productive. Some people do end up with days rolled over into next year, but there's a limit to that accumulation after a few years, so if that's happening eventually managers and leads strongly encourage you to use more of those days.

As for deadlines, that's up to the company and project management to plan for. When I first joined a Swedish company and sat in a technical planning meeting I wondered why July was completely grayed out on our shared calendar, and was promptly told that almost nobody would be here because that's the most popular summer vacation time.

In Euros maybe, it's 6k/month with 13th month, it's at higher edge but definitely not top 5%, the 50k would be below senior no matter how you look at 'senior'. In Dollars less than reasonable, especially since you do not want to be payed in foreign money if working remote. It also depends a lot on what kind of experience/education you prefer. If you want highly educated seniors with 'senior' level of experience (as in multiple years to a decade) the higher end matters a lot, NL is famous for underpaying engineers and overpaying managers and the better engineers have noticed.

Though without knowing all secondary stuff it's a wild guess anyway. What you describe in NL usually also benefits pay for pension (usually not included in gross salary specification), some form of mobility or at-home budget, and all other perks considered in-kind pay, maybe a lease-car at a larger company. Maybe that's included here, maybe it's not and that can make up several dozens of percents of pay.

Though "senior" means so little it's hard to judge what is meant by that though it looks like OP is specifying task-specific roles which lower the need for a jack-of-all trades, highly educated, years of experience a bit.

Not sure which city and how much experience those developers have. But we pay 80-100k per year base salary + stock options + pension to medior developers in Amsterdam. Higher for more experienced roles.

"The average total compensation of a Software Engineer in Spain is €55,437."

"The average total compensation of a Software Engineer in Portugal is €39,094."

Dont thrust those numbers. 50k € is a very high salary in Spain for a software developer. The average is probably closer to 35k €

How much would 50k EUR be in Spain after taxes, more or less?

35k (bear in mind we have a public health system, the universities are like 3k a year and the rent is less than 1k, if you are fired you have up to 2 years of your salary, etc)

I don’t know of many tech startups that want to hire average developers for their core team.

The average is low, yes, but there are also well paid roles that the kind of person a startup in SV would want are probably already doing.

Anecdotally, I’ve been offered jobs paying 80-100k€ based off Barcelona as I’ve been dreaming of coming back to Spain (I didn’t, sadly, as even though they were good local salaries they were a lot lower than what I made)

0.0001%-chance-of-unicorning tax

Just to add my opinion, 60-80K is an expected decent/common salary for an experienced programmer across EU (UK salaries are higher). Programmer salaries above 100K are very uncommon outside a few companies and US/UK.

Above 100k is uncommon in Europe for most professions.

In UK there are very few companies that hire above $100K: mostly hft, gambling, fintech and subsidiaries of US companies. Almost all other UK tech companies hire senior developers for 65K-75K GBP.

At the same time both job security and work life balance will be very different experience.

> programmer salaries above 100K are very uncommon

if you work for local companies yes, salary above 100k is common in Europe once you start looking at companies that compete on global market

Keep in mind that you'd probably need to be contractor to work for the company (as it costs money to get employer of record, never mention employer contribution) so you should give that amount a hefty discount.

Chance to get equity instead?

Or a fancy title to pad your resume with. Or perhaps reasonably legitimate experience, actually, that can't be had in your current day job or ever could be.

A fully remote position will be filled by the qualified person willing to work for the lowest wages. You'll be competing with the hundreds of thousands of great developers in Spain, or the hundreds of great developers in Botswana, or perhaps the lone great developer working in Vanuatu. Welcome to the global economy

Yikes. Those are (central) European numbers, but we get free insulin, free dentistry and free brain & heart surgery, several mandatory weeks of paid time off and months of notice period.

I guess the 100k or even 200k, or 300k starting meme finally died at a time of record inflation no less.

At first, I thought you were referencing the absence of the sugary drink tax when you were talking about "free insulin."

Other than the months of notice period, American tech workers get all of those things.

Also between jobs / when unemployed / being laid off?

Pretty much, yea. You easily make enough money to pay for COBRA. Then if that runs out you can get (an admittedly bad) plan from the marketplace. But it all comes back to point (1) - the amount you make more than makes up for it.

"Pay for COBRA"

Yes but COBRA can cost upto 102% of the cost which was mostly covered by your employer before. Now that you are laid off, you have to pay the whole thing (sometimes employers are nice to still cover when they lay you off but mostly they don't). For a family of 4, it can easily be $2500/Month depending on the state you live in.

You missed this critical part “you easily make enough money to…”

If you are making >$250K year, an extra $2500/month is not a significant bump. Especially as it is temporary while you are between jobs. Temporary could even be a year or longer.

Factor that cost into your emergency savings and draw down when you need to. You still end up massively ahead of a developer outside the US.

I am not endorsing the US system - it is objectively garbage. But the point is that the pay difference more than makes up for the downsides in healthcare.

I don't know. I am a very idealistic person when it comes to spending money. I hate spending even $5 on what I think is extortion and bullying which is what the healthcare costs in US are. I am privileged enough to be able to afford it but still don't like it and would do anything to get rid of it.

Bulge-bracket tech workers might get those things, or enough cash to offset their absence.

Average-case tech workers certainly do not get several mandatory weeks of PTO. And the co-pays on their healthcare are also quite often "meh" (specifically, well short of 100 percent).

lol 100-300k is hardly a meme and is very much market rate still for great talent. It was a meme for juniors.

Start-ups in general don't have a lot of cash and burn rate is the death of most of them. The standard deal from YC is $500k. So if they pay $80k/yr after operating costs, insurance, etc. They can probably hire 3 people outside of themselves and only be able to do it for 1 year.

If they competed with companies who are paying at the 90th percentile they wouldn't even make it a year if they hired 1 person.

Anyone have historical data? If this is not what they paid last year and before, it's clearly offshoring.

If, as some speculate, it's just part of the comp and equity is. The other, then it would have been the same last year.

$80k USD is $122k AUD... that sounds awesome to me.

They don't prioritize hiring good people.

I'm not sure why I get this pay boost but I'm going to shut my mouth about it and keep my fingers crossed

"Paid? You kidding? You don't get paid. You work on commission, that's better than getting paid."

Because that salary is great in India which probably has at least 10x developers than Spain. And with that money you can really hire really good Indian developers who can speak English well enough, slog hard unlike the pampered Europeans and are hungrier to prove themselves in general.

I'm not sure why you are being down-voted but I have suspicions.

But you are not wrong. Sure there are lots of Indian labor shops that have tarnished the reputation of specifically-Indian outsourcing, but there are also plenty of -very- smart Indians (and others globally.)

I get that this out-sourcing harms workers in high-cost-of-living countries, but then again they're the ones who promote remote-work, while at the same time demanding salaries well above their country median.

When pretty much your expenses and taxes takes 85% That’s what I find it low

this is called market correction , even though soon this is going to change.

France : €30,000 a year

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