Salaries for Developers and Designers across the world | Hacker News Reader

Salaries for Developers and Designers across the world

blog.splinter.me

30 pointsnvk46 comments

According to this a web developer in Italy makes 52k, while a senior web developer makes 30k. I wonder how many data points per country they have…

There is something off with these numbers, especially the UK figures. $43000 average for a software developer would be about £26500, thats quite low. I would expect it to be in the mid £30Ks.

If you're living and working in London that's the kind of salary you'd be looking at, simply because the rental prices around here are so high. Outside London I can see it being that much lower. £26,500 is about average wage in the UK, and salaries are not keeping up with inflation and cost of living increases over the last 10 years in all professions.

Indeed. Graduates aren't even far off starting on around £25k+ in the UK[1]. Somebody with a good few years experience can quite easily get almost double that.

[1] - http://targetjobs.co.uk/career-sectors/it-and-technology/286...

Where I live grad salaries are 18 - 22k

I started on £25k

Yeah, these numbers are definitely off for Japan. Developers get paid shit in Japan (which is probably a big part of why most Japanese software/websites blow).

Until recently my salary working as a PHP developer was £22K in the NE of England. As a senior dev £30k.

True in London, I imagine this changes dramatically outside of London though.

Actually I agree with that average. We've just hired 4 developers to work for us. We're based in Zone 2 London and we're paying them on average £28 000 (they all have 2 years or more in commercial experience)

£28k approx for someone with 2 years of experience in London is reasonably average.

It's entirely dependant on the language involved though. Ruby/Python/iOS developers for example, earn £45k on average.

This infographic has such slanted view of the development world. There is web developers and designers, SENIOR web developers and designers... and then everybody else.

As if the only purpose of software development were html pages.

As important as HTML and mobile development with cute stock pictures and animated charts have become the boom, this type of development does not represent 20% of the software development world.

Canada's salary points seem really low....or there's a lot of "you must know everything and we'll pay you minimum wage" jobs that they're scooping from the Canadian Job Bank. From that list, I want to be heading to either Australia or the US.

Also for PHP dev average, where do you get 75k for junior, and 100k+ or senior? Sure isn't Canada. 75k here is senior level salary, and that's in Toronto. I've only ever seen one PHP job in Canada that paid 100k, and that was an architect position, 10 years experience, and needed to have experience with incredibly large datasets.

I'd assume that the $100k jobs are filled already. Estimating the average salary from job listings is like estimating the economy from economic forecasts.

The site seems down from here.

Google Cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:blog.sp...

Relevant image: http://thumbnails.visually.netdna-cdn.com/salaries-of-web-de...

Here is the text, but the main part is the image:

Are you a Developer or Designer curious about your potential salary in different countries? You’ve come to the right place.

Below are some averages of yearly salaries per country. As it seems, the best paying countries for Web Developers are Australia (87K $), Japan (86K $), the US (76K $) and Canada (60K $), while the lowest paying countries are India (12K $), Malaysia (8K $) and Philippines (7K $). Graphic Designers seem to be most appreciated in Switzerland (96K $), followed by Australia (64K $). The numbers jump quite higher when talking about Senior positions, as well as for Software Developers in comparison with Web Developers.

Salaries of web developers in India, the Philippines, USA and around the world

If you are considering the startup life and you are attracted by popular startup hubs, the numbers look a bit different. Sillicon Valley’s Developers have an average salary of 119K $ per year, while London’s Developers make 79K $ per year and Berlin’s Senior Developers reach on average 80K $ per year.

And of course, you might consider working for one of the most appealing tech companies at the moment. Seems like the best paying ones are Google with 128K $ for Software Engineers base salary per year, followed by Facebook (124K $) and Apple (114K $).

So where are you going to head to? splinter.me is here to help you make the leap by keeping you in the companies radar for work opportunities that fit your skills and interests. So don’t forget to create your profile :)

Join splinter.me, it's 100% free

What would be more interesting is to see a comparison on take-home pay, that you can actually spend. The numbers don't seem very accurate at all on the site. Furthermore it's sort of beside the point : you're not working for money, you're working for value.

Eu generally has 50%+ tax rates, and a ~20% VAT on anything you want to spend, combining (roughly) to between 60% and 70% of your income disappearing in govt. coffers.

California seems to have slightly under 50% taxation, combined with 4.7% VAT. Which combines to 53-55% taxation.

So US is not just well-paid, but you actually get to keep a bigger part of that. From a $76k pay you could have ~$30k disposable income after rent (outside of SF proper), while the $50k in the EU, you'd be lucky to get $15k disposable income after rent out of that (and that's ignoring that tech stuff is more expensive to start with before the tax even comes into the picture).

Coral cache has it: http://blog.splinter.me.nyud.net/salaries-for-developers-and...

Any idea how a "web developer" in Japan make $86K while a "software developer" in Japan only makes $31K?

Because these numbers are drawn out of a rabbit's arse?

They don't provide methodology, or any decent description of categorization; this infographic is worse than useless, it obviously has an agenda.

The infographics are dismal. The bars in 'Average Salary by Specialty' indicate that Python developers make twice what Javascript devs earn, while in reality it is around 10%. When you look at Java, an approximate 10% difference between Junior and Midlevel results in much more similar bar heights.

What's missing is where the numbers are coming from, how many replied and whether it is in any way representative.

The numbers for Germany are very odd. 24k for a designer is pretty close to the poverty line, I believe. Is that before or after tax? I guess it suffers from a lack of participation from many non-anglosaxon countries, so I would not use any of these numbers in actual interviews.

These seem to be quite high, especially the Australian salaries.

The average web developer here earns $93,000 AUD?[1] That means that half of web developers are earning more than that.

That's substantially higher than the national median household income of $63,000 AUD [2]

[1]: As few have pointed out, this is correct if we assume the graphic meant average == median. But my point still stands: A reasonable chunk of people get paid more than that.

[2]: http://www.censusdata.abs.gov.au/census_services/getproduct/...

Average means little, actually. If a guy makes a million per year and another four make 100k, their average salary is 280k...

I guess the author should clarify if the reported number is the median salary (in which case your assertion that half the web dev are earning more than 93K AUD is correct) or if 93K is the average salary (which can be biased by a few very high earners).

Yep. Usually when talking about salaries the median is used and it is stated explicitly when talking about the numbers so I was surprised myself when they kept using the word average. After all, there are 3 ways to calculate averages so it's quite ambiguous for splinter to simply say average.

> The average web developer here earns $93,000 AUD? That means that half of web developers are earning more than that.

Not necessarily. They don't mention whether it is the mean or median.

I think you're mixing up average and median.

Fair enough. The article doesnt specify if it's mean or median.

Not necessarily. A median of $93,000 AUD would mean that half of web developers are earning more.

Google Australia salaries for Mid-Level Web Developers sit around the $110-150k mark. Senior Developers, team leads etc can be earning $180-300k.

Source: I know a lot of Googlers and find salaries interesting

Those numbers are worthless. 69700 USD for a software developer in Switzerland is much too low. Even starting salaries are higher than that in most parts of Switzerland. I think the average is probably around 120000 USD.

The "join splinter" modal that automatically displays while reading the page completely obscured my mobile viewport but the close button was offscreen, and I was unable to continue reading.

Ah, another inaccurate salary comparison chart that doesn't take into account standard of living and how that differs vastly from country to country (and regions within the countries).

Its not as much standard of living, but cost of living. Which varies not only between country, but even state. Average for some countries makes sense, but for countries like US the average is pretty meaningless. The average difference in income for two comparable developers between say Texas and California is going to be huge.

I wonder why software developers in Japan make so little (35k), but web developers there make a lot (85k)?

Because these numbers are drawn out of a rabbit's arse. No other way to explain it. Doesn't help that they don't give a description of the categories, or methodology

Too bad there's a huge popup covering the article that you can't clear on an android phone...

On average Senior Web developers in Spain make $52,600 (37,000€)... no way.

Of course some people make this(and much more), but we are talking on average so this number it's false.

The next step would be cross reference this with GDP per capita.

Or the Big Mac Index! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index

I was just thinking that along with other stats. For example:

* industry volume vs need (supply/demand) * average education requirements * comparison to other high paying jobs in that same country (lawyers/doctors in the US) * programming language usage (Ruby, PHP, Javascript, Java whatever else).

and idk. Just to get a good idea of how each country stands.

What's special about swiss graphic designers?

The cost of living in Switzerland is pretty high.

Its not their "designers", it's the fact that they really value design in Swaziland.

lol, Switzerland != Swaziland

Across the world ? Where are Latin America and Africa ?

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