Is 60k bad? Pretty sure it's the average salary in the entire Europe.
> [...] we would like to move forward in the process. As you may know, our salaries in the games industry do not compare well with overall IT industry salaries; however, we can offer one of the most prominent development studios in the world [...]
I don't have more information, but they seemed well aware their salaries were not competitive.
I work in telco and we pay our developers more than Ubisoft does.
Throwaway because my user name can be associated with said people.
Edit: I wonder if HN could have an option to post without your user name for cases like this... maybe allow 3 anonymous posts per month per account? Or one anonymous post for every 10 posts with your user name?
To add context, most juniors to mids make <50k in Malmö, which in annual USD would be closer to ~40k.
And IMO while the numbers are okayish, the difference between them is ridiculous. Given how promotions in EU are mostly dependent on tenure, +50% for seniority are mere 5-7% yearly increases.
It seems to make sense that there should be a pay disparity.
Yeah, but those countries are relatively few. The US is an outlier. In most of western EU SW wages are only slightly above average. Outside of big tech of course, but big-tech employment is far from average.
> let me guess you live in a 30 square meter hole
Living in a 30 square meter apartment was pretty normal, yes. Don't feel obliged to call it "hole", it was pretty OK when you're alone.
My rent was never more than a third of what I earned net. So generally less than 1K.
> any decent car would cost you 300 € a month
In Paris you don't need a car and most people I know don't have one. I still don't have a driver's license and most people I know from my generation don't have one either. So that's not an expense.
> telco bundle 100 €
For the whole Internet + mobile, you shouldn't pay more than 30 euros per month in France (which I guess is still pretty high? I'll have to look).
> that makes already 3000 euros a month of spending
I was (and still am I would guess, though it's a long time since I've calculated this), spending less than 2000 euros per month. And I'm not limiting myself: I often go out in a restaurant, go to the cinema every week, don't look at prices when I'm doing grocerie etc.
Yes I lived in Paris 15th arrondissement a little more than two years ago (for like 4 years?) with a less than 60k euros salary and felt personally that I lived comfortably.
> Yes by most normal countries
I know that 30 square meters was comfortable to me at the time and had no shame about it. I still find that I live in a "normal country" and don't really care that much what someone from another "normal country" would use as a diminishing adjective to qualify that apartment's superficy.
> is that a life frankly ?
First, it is, and I felt this part was kind of unnecessary. Founding a family is not the end goal of everyone, nor living in a mansion.
> So you take a shitty salary because you’re alone or do you take money to progress in your personal life and build something like a family ?
I did found someone (to also live with) in that time period, which roughly make the same salary than I, we both lived comfortably on our own before and our combined remunerations was thus much bigger when living together which means we could afford something bigger. We decided to move from Paris though, but I also understand people wanting to stay there.
And 60k is far from shitty, even in Paris. We even considered ourselves privileged as we had a usually better salary than our friends and a job we liked.
> but public transportation is a total disaster [...]
I am not that critical of Paris' public transportation, I thought it was good enough for going to work everyday or where I wanted to go most of the time.
> rent.it is around 1500 minimum
I was paying something like between 900 and 1k for 30-ish (don't remember) square meters. It's for the 13, 14, 15, 18, 19 and 20 arrondissements only I would guess, and [close] suburbs.
> waiting lines are in average 15 to 20 candidates per rentals
Yes that was an issue to me also. I had to send a lot of proposal everywhere to have a chance.
> Telco is 50 euros min without Netflix and football and Disney or Spotify
I just checked. I have different operators for phone and internet, and I'm at 20 for internet and 15 for mobile phone subscription. I'm also very bad at managing money so I'm sure I could spend less, if it mattered to me. No idea how much I spend for electricity, gas and so on, because I've never had any issue with money.
> people earning less than 4k net a month in the Paris region do look at the prices today
I did not and my girlfriend didn't two years ago look at prices when doing most day-to-day things, but maybe the situation evolved since then. Though to be honest we never lived an expensive life: we never had any TV for example nor Netflix and such subscriptions, and don't have expensive hobbies nor especially like expensive things.
At the end of the month, I have 1k left.
You clearly don't know Paris, don't know France and don't know Europe :)
You have high paying locations like Switzerland, Norway, UK, Ireland, Germany, etc, lowish locations like France, Italy, etc, and really low locations like Poland.
Technically you could calculate an overall average but that number would be useless.
Including non-EU countries as well makes the difference even more extreme (7000€ in Switzerland vs 450€ in Ukraine).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_b...
For anyone wondering how relevant is public transport, in Sydney I couldn't do anything without a car, in Vienna I can't find a good use for one.
I get way less than 60k gross in France, but apart from the house that I had to buy kinda small because it's close to a big city, it's nice. Many people around me have it worse, and I'm not sure if it would be a great idea to give everyone around the globe the purchasing power of an average American.
Heavily subsidized rent ?? Where do you live in a social housing project ? What an ambition for an engineer graduate from a so called good public school ! What has this country become frankly to be happy with heavily subsidized rents ? I guess it comes half of the time with drug dealers in the entrance hall, or am I wrong and you have an included gym and swimming pool in the building ? In that case I understand why you have zero debt for sure you don’t own the place where you live because at 15k per sq meter in Paris you can’t own anything decent for 60k salary. Social security ? Let me laugh, unless if you compare it to UK’s NHS or 3rd world system, I hope you will never experience the French hospitals Emergencies admissions. Just compare it to Spain and you’ll see how miserable things have become. And I’m not talking about medications shortages, +6months wait time to see a specialist, generalists that refuse new patients, etc. Subsidized child care ? I guess you have no clue about what a proper child care system works, ask your colleagues from Northern Europe and they’ll tell you. I guess you didn’t check the news about what’s going on inside those public creches. It’s as good as what’s happening in French retirement homes. But you’re probably cool because you were told it was cool.
Meanwhile the nurses who did a 3.5-year program (as opposed to our 4-year engineering program) at the same campus probably make less than half of what I make.
It's hard to live on 60K in Europe when a goddamn power cord costs 15 Euro