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Comment by alephnerd | Hacker News Reader

Tbf, SWE salaries are constant across much of Europe, so anyone who is working in CEE feels less of a pull to work in London as a line-level engineer for roughly the same salary as they'd get in Warsaw. Funnily enough, even Bangalore salaries [0] are catching up to Italy [1] and Romania [2].

As a founder, it's a different story though - London is hard to beat from an entrepreneurship and capital access standpoint aside from parts of the CEE with strong ties to to American VC due to diaspora ties.

Edit: can't reply

> dzonga

Completely agree. I've O-1'ed plenty of European and British founders. But London is better than the rest of Europe from a raising perspective, which shows how bad the situation is in the rest of the continent.

[0] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/greater...

[1] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/italy

[2] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/romania

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The taxation is not though. It may be better working from Warsaw or Prague due to tax rules. In Czechia it's a sort of fake, but tolerated consultancy and self employment and I have heard there is a similiar status in Poland.

The biggest drivers for tech employment in the CEE aren't those consultancies but American and non-European FDI.

Edit: can't reply

> Having 10-20% tax rate really helps though to have comparable or better pay rate to western europe with about 50% tax rate

At the employer end, if we offer enough FDI Western European governments do try to match support and subsidies that we could get in CEE.

Additionally, when investing in USD and used to American prices, it's a rounding error.

The drive to the CEE was partially government driven, but is now entirely due to the domestic ecosystem - you aren't going to find talent with the right attitude (business minded and independent) in Western Europe anymore.

Having 10-20% tax rate really helps though to have comparable or better pay rate to western europe with about 50% tax rate.

Yea. In Poland everyone is a contractor even if they are not in reality. This year Poland had started to indicate they will crack down on it though so a lot of companies are now turning their contractors into employees instead.

Wow, that sucks. Here in Czechia the politicians talk about cracking it down all the time, but in reality it is now more common than ever with no signs of stopping. Only higher execs at banks or in other regulated industries needs to have a normal employment contract.

Source?

A friend working in HR/Recruitment in Poland. Many tech companies are changing who can now be a contractor.

They have been indicating it constantly for last 12 years, regardless of who is in power...

Difference is now companies are taking it seriously. Have some insights into hiring in Polish market and more than one IT company are changing who can be a contractor now

but London VCs are poor quality compared to what you find in the States.

having had my run around with London VCs - poor terms, slow moving (btw this is at seed stage) - it's better to bootstrap unless you're in deep tech (which London VCs can help out)

bootstrap and either deal with US VCs once you have numbers to back you up - if you wanna redo & do the VC route.

For the ~500 million people of the EU, moving to Frankfurt means taking a train there, moving to London is a whole headache of visas, permits and permissions.

Founder visas are generally suffering from a chicken-and-egg problem, where only a successful company can sponsor anyone

Sure, but the entire VC and funding ecosystem that London has is nonexistent in much of the rest of Europe.

It's easier to raise rounds with better terms in London versus mainland Europe, aside from CEE where diaspora VCs in the US tend to step in to build the ecosystem.

But even then the entire ecosystem pales in comparison to the US.

At the same time though, out of 6 developers, my team in London has two Brits (including me), two Eastern Europeans (Hungarian and Romanian), and two South Asians (Indian and Pakistani).

My last team had two Poles and two Scandinavians (Swedish and Norwegian).

It's been a _very_ long time since I've had a team that didn't have significant Eastern Europeans representation on it.

> SWE salaries are constant across all of Europe

Sorry, but this is wrong. Cheaper labor is pretty much the only reason for nearshoring from more expensive European countries to places like Spain or Eastern Europe.

As I've mentioned before, I've had intimate experience hiring across Europe and at the 75th percentile and above, the salaries tend to be extremely close when comparing Western Europe and CEE. The difference becomes attitude.

A German SWE wants a 9-5. A Czech or Romanian SWE wants to build the next JetBrains or UIPath.

I don't want to hire the former - they're useless and a headache. I want to hire the latter.

Pretty sure salaries at large tech companies are way higher in places like London, Zurich or Amsterdam than in Warsaw or Prague for example. Berlin may be closer to the eastern countries.

It might help to discuss actual ranges instead of "intimate experience" so we can tell if your experience matches reality.

I think Zurich is in a slightly different league than London or Amsterdam in that regard but especially if you go down to the median and below (low taxes are helpful as well)

Zurich is probably in a league of its own. London next. But then it is quite similiar in Paris, Prague, Warsaw, Frankfurt, ...

I cannot confirm your experience with the attitude of the latter unfortunately (I can confirm the former though).

Edit: But as mentioned, the near-shoring resources also were quite substantially less expensive. So you could say we bought cheap and we got cheap.

> [0] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/greater...

> [1] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/italy

> [2] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/romania

Both Italy and Romania are at the lower end of salaries though.

Compare to say

Finland https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/finland (almost twice)

Denmark https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/denmark (more than twice)

Germany https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/germany (around twice)

Switzerland https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/switzer... (more than three times, although this is an outlier)

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