plenty of regions in the US and other nations have many talented developers that are willing to work for far less and make a far better product than what you get for silicon valley wages
Yes there are other nations that have talented developers. But anywhere that has genuinely talented developers, the developers will still want a decent salary.
I'm not going to name names, but if you are thinking about the "outsourcing nations", then I don't know about you, but I think most of us here have experienced the poor quality coding output from those developers. The Quality Control simply is not there, normally because the company doing the outsourcing is too cheap to pay for proper supervision and quality control.
I hate this crap. Some of the absolute worst code I've seen in my career was written by US programmers working out of tech hubs, as is some of the best code.
> But anywhere that has genuinely talented developers, the developers will still want a decent salary.
You're assuming that all "genuinely talented developers" are motivated solely by money and will move away from home, friends and family for a "decent salary". A salary of £80k in the UK (ignoring london just for a moment), or $100k USD is reasonable for a senior level engineer in the UK, will give you a very comfortable standard of living, and is less than you'd pay a junior in many parts of the US.
> The Quality Control simply is not there
That's not because of an "outsourcing nation", it's because you paid for a shitty outsourcer. See healthcare.gov [0] for a textbook example. Similarly, I've worked with "outsourcing nations" via EPAM with contractors in Mexico, Belarus, California, Hyderabad Romania and Bangkok, and the quality of code has not been tied to the location, it's been tied to QC at the relationship level.
Sure, but code put out by US coders I’ve hired has been consistently better than code that has been outsourced outside of the US.
Obviously, there are “diamonds in the rough” occasionally, but skilled people tend to get snapped up by a recruiter willing to file an immigration form for them very quickly.
If You can't see that there is a middle ground between impoverished wages and what was quoted above that I can't help you
I can see a middle ground. Most people would probably name it as Europe. And you would have to go looking in Eastern Europe.
And I think you would find, if you are lucky, that a competent European junior-ish developer would not get out of bed for less than 60k Euros (65k USD), a more senior developer would demand more.
And you need more than one or two developers on your team if you're going to be competing against Adobe.
And then you need to pay taxes, pensions, accountants and lawyers.
And then you need to pay other business expenses.
And if you decide you need an office, then god help you ...
The numbers soon add up .... $235k will disappear within the year, probably within a single quarter.
Software development is capital intensive.
That's a very much extreme statement I think you confabulated. Take this developer median data from back in 2020 https://www.statista.com/statistics/1222324/developers-media... and reanalyze your statement.
And also compared to https://www.reinisfischer.com/average-monthly-salary-europea... where 60k euros a year tends to be above the average monthly salary in many EU countries. And if a junior doesn't get out of bed for less than that, well I have some bad news for them and their expectations.
You won't get qualified devs for much less than 60k around here. Especially since that is the amount of money people expect on their payslips before taxes.
On top of that employers have to pay additional stuff, that won't even make it on the payslip, like parts of the health insurance which are not considered to be parts of the compensation.
Quick Example from Austria:
* Cost to Employer 77k€
* Employee's Taxable Income: 60k€
* Income After Taxes: 40k€
* Childcare and University: 0€
I'm actually in Europe, and EU, but not Schengen (thank you Austria & Netherland governments for the veto vote).
> You won't get qualified devs for much less than 60k around here.
The ridiculous claim was about juniors that won't even approach the job for less than 60k, and I took that information that I found first with a Google search to illustrate that 60k euros is more than the average salary in most EU countries.
Of course you could share more precise numbers from one of your national institutions that reports this information, but on the website listed the monthly average gross salary stated for Austria is around 4540, which comes to 54480 a year.
I could count on one hand the number of junior developers I've encountered that I would call exceptional, and deserving an average salary right from the get-go.
And, stating the obvious: Software developers tend to earn above average salaries.
Affinity[1] is a good example, I believe that’s created in Europe and its very reasonably priced.
Pixelmator too — based in Lithuania?
You realize that 60k usd after tax is 240k PLN which is like 6.6 times minimal wage?
This is good cash, not top, but good.
Junior people earn 36-120k PLN, so half of that.
Let me tell you that you are far off the reality. I live in Paris and junior developers don't get near as much as €60k/year. The 35-40k range is more realistic for juniors, and senior ones can get what, 90k? That's alread considered really good for an engineer here.
Of course you can make six figures, but that implies working for a silicon valley company that hires remotely in europe. And those that have offices in europe adjust their compensation accordingly.
Just for demonstration I looked at Datadog on levels.fyi for the three they accept to show me:
- Paris, $77k-$94k (so €70k-€85k)
- New York $180k (for level 1 SE, senior is through the roof)
So $235k is 200k€ so one developer and one PM, because the dev alone has a brownian behavior concerning progress (unable to take initiative).
I've experienced "poor quality coding outputs" caused by outsourcing in general... regardless if it was abroad or not.
With properly hired employees, in my experience, what they output is actually quite impressive both qualitatively and quantitatively. And their average salary is a fraction of mine, which is in turn a fraction of a US one (I'm West European).
The hiring needs to be direct or else the "agency" will eat most of the money and give you 3000$/yr "senior" devs further perpetuating the stereotypes.
With 235k, you can make an incredible 5 people team + cloud costs for an year.
I am doubtful.
Yeah, that’s definitely not your standard coder.
Previous thread where he posts:
If that dev can't even put a dollar sign in the right place, then I'm not sure the quality is everything you claim.
Attention to detail matters. Especially in coding.
> Attention to detail matters. Especially in coding.
Let me guess, you're one of those people who think nitpicking on every small thing leads to "quality" code?
If a dev cannot be United States centric and condescending, I'm not sure of their worth as an engineer.
Can ask?
Can use?
Can what?
I suppose it does give away the cultural difference, but this is one where the Indians (and a lot of others) get it right.
"Five hundred...." is meaningless. "dollars five hundred..." is a useful preliminary approximation.
It would make for a fast mental shortcut in preparation. For example: you need to move an item. How much does it weigh?
Grams… ok, pocket
Kilograms… might need to put it in the trunk.