I am a software developer with experience in Python/Django/MySQL for 3 years. I am currently interviewing with Stockholm area startups. The companies are modern age startups working in the area of mobile and ecommerce. I want to know what is a good salary for 3 years experienced web developer in Stockholm area?
1. Average Salary for a software developer with 5 year experience. 32,000 - 38,000 SEK/Month.
2. You can calculate your take-home money here [1].
3. Average 2nd hand rental apartment (30-50 sqm) 5,000 - 7000 SEK/Month. Its easy to find single-person accomodation. [2]
4. The quality of an average apartment is pleasant. Kitchen & Laundry is fully functional from day 1 in every apartment around Sweden.
5. If you've kids, then day-care (preshool) is highly subsidized & generally good quality. All education is free for everyone from age 7-70
6. Almost everyone speaks English. You'll not find any difficulty even if you dont know Swedish.
[1]. http://www.ekonomifakta.se/sv/ (you can enter kommune as Stockholm & enter your salary and date of birth)
[2] http://www.blocket.se/bostad/uthyres/stockholm?sort=&ss=&se=...
Tax is dependent on where (which kommune) you live. Its generally between 29.5% to 32% until your salary is 32,000 SEK.
You pay higher tax on income more than 32,000 SEK and it goes upto 50%.
There is no way to reduce your taxes (apart from tiny tiny amount of church tax) for salaried employee.
Unless you live far out that sounds low for a 2nd hand contract. Anywhere close to the city it is more like 10k for 30 sqm.
I guess I am too blinded by the prices in and around the central parts of Stockholm. :)
I've 5 examples (1 including me.) who found a reasonable place to live for that money around Stockholm area.
Btw. I made an experiment that shows approximate commute times on weeekday morning (including walks to stations but no walk from Sthlm Central Station). http://commutemap.azurewebsites.net/
Edit: note the green "islands" of 20minute commute that extend along the commuter train lines.
More precisely, when I see rents quoted for most cities, I tend to assume that people are quoting rents for standard, legal rentals, not quoting the cheapest rent possible for an illegal sublet.
Edit: I should add I'm not implying anyone in this thread is doing anything odd or misleading or anything, just that it's opening my eyes to how different rentals are over there. Thanks for that.
It's a great city though and definitely one of the best places in the world to live in.
I've plenty of school/work friends working across Sweden.
We discussed this many times about salaries in Stockholm, Göteborg & Malmo and then try to compare it with other European cities (London, Berlin, Paris etc.)
Most of my friends within 5 years experience are between 30,000 to 38,000 SEK /Month across Sweden. All Stockholmers are between 32,000 to 38,000.
My personal salary is more than that bracket but I've 10 years experience & know plenty of stuff from internet scalable middleware to performant front-ends, to programming languages to many species of databases. So I usually don't consider myself average & my salary range in 50s.
For comparison, in Copenhagen, the avg. salary for 5 yrs is around 37K DKK, which corresponds to 47K SEK. That's according to our labour union statistics. I'm a bit surprised if the difference between our two cities is really that large (but maybe it is).
I've also friends who are working in Copenhagen & Salary is more there. Then there are friends who work in Copenhagen but live in Malmo because housing is more expensive in Copenhagen than anywhere in Sweden.
If I would rate Oslo, Copenhagen & Stockholm from salary point of view, it'll follow as:
1. Oslo 2. Copenhagen 3. Stockholm
All this comes from my personal circle of friends.
In some ways yes, in some no. Short-term or unofficial sublets are more expensive than the prices you mention elsewhere in the thread. Especially sub-lets of a single room have shot up in price, because there's a shortage of dorms in Copenhagen, so many university students are trying to do temporary room rentals on the private market.
But "proper" rentals of a regular apartment are much easier to get in Copenhagen than in Stockholm, without needing to sit on a multi-year waitlist. A typical 1-bd legal/official rental on a 1+ year contract might be around 5-7k DKK, i.e. about 6-9k SEK. A 2-bd maybe 6-10k DKK (8-13k SEK). You can certainly pay more too, but there are a lot in that range.
The quality of apartments are better in Sweden than in Copenhagen. You can open blocket and book a visit to any Malmö apartment for that matter and you'll see the difference easily.
The same quality of life (living, rental etc.) is expensive in Copenhagen.
In my opinion most Malmö apartments are just sort of drab and depressing. Where they are nicer is that they are newer, so have elevators, more modern bathrooms, etc. But the ones I've seen have a quite... institutional feel to them. They remind me of a school or government building: 1970s or 1980s concrete-and-tile construction, arranged into big housing developments with rows of identical-looking buildings. It's practical I guess, but doesn't have much character. There are a few renovated pre-20th-century buildings in central Malmö that have a lot more character. A friend-of-a-friend has a really beautiful apartment in one of those, an old brick factory building converted to housing, with floor-to-ceiling windows and interesting architectural design. But those kinds of places aren't cheap at all.
The main problem though is that in most of Sweden it's just impossible to get a proper rental without waiting years on the waitlist. All you can get are these temporary sublets, where you're always at risk of having to move. The only other alternative, if you don't have years to wait, is to buy an apartment. You can do that pretty reasonably in Malmö if you have the money, probably cheaper than Copenhagen (but purchasing in Copenhagen is cheaper than purchasing in Stockholm).
New buildings in Sweden compares more or less the same as new buildings in Copenhagen. My point was the more or less "same kind of things" is expensive in Copenhagen.
Regarding the rentals, if you'are willing to pay more money for the new buildings, its easy to rent out in Stockholm.
I would like to say that there is NO QUEUE in Stockholm if you would like to rent out a brand new space in a modern building. Yes the supply isn't that large for new productions, but you can found a new one with first hand contract under 2 months of time.
Again, this time would be less in Copenhagen, but the rent of New Buildings are more in Copenhagen than the new buildings in Stockholm. (within 20 minutes of commute of course).
But if you're really willing to go 20 minutes out on S-train, Copenhagen becomes dirt cheap. 20 minutes takes you all the way out to places like Rødovre, Brøndby, Taastrup, Ishøj, or Tårnby, which are very cheap, 1-bd for more like 4k DKK (5k SEK), possibly less if you look around. Overall I just don't see Copenhagen as an expensive city for housing. Some things are expensive, but housing isn't particularly so.
If you're willing to live 20-25 minutes from City, the cost isn't much different than Malmo or Göteborg.
Ping me on david@universalavenue.com if you want help/info/apply for a job.
I'm in my fourth year now as a ruby developer. I make 34000 SEK/month.
You of course get some monetary benefits if you have kids and such.
(to save anyone the google)
1) Check what medical health insurances are be offered by your employer. The public health care is handling any serious things very well, but there might be significant queues to get check-ups or treatment for small things, and this could be mightily annoying. [0]
2) Check how the employer helps you in finding an apartment. There's rent control in Stockholm, the rental market is dysfunctional, and actual rental contracts are a thing like property ownership is elsewhere (except that it's black market). [1] [2]
These would be much more important than the last digits in you gross salary, out of which a significant part will be taken as taxes and mandatory social insurances.
Most other things will probably be the same regardless of what your employer specifically does, so you can study the materials published by the Swedish government to learn about social issues. [3]
[0] http://www.thelocal.se/20140117/hospital-queues-tied-to-insu...
[1] http://www.thelocal.se/20130723/49206
[2] http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014241278873242023045790529...
Finally what about CTO or VP/Director of Engineering, with the same amount of industry experience? I'm trying to get a handle on these things before moving to Stockholm, as well.
You should be looking at maybe 550-750/y as dev, at least for the major corporations. Startups are always hard to predict, especially if there are other compensations.
That range is about 50k USD/year, if any Bay Area people want to have a laugh.
To be honest, 50k USD/year strikes me as low for two reasons:
1. I always assumed Sweden would have quite high taxes (indeed according to Wikipedia it seems higher than the US).
2. Stockholm sounds like an expensive place to live in, just because it's a major European capital and those are rarely cheap.
The taxes are quite high (25-35% income tax for the ranges we are discussing) and the salaries are relatively low, yes. You don't go working in Sweden to get rich, period.
It should be noted that the swedish salary includes 5 (mandatory) or 6 (commonly negotiated) weeks of paid vacation, and often comes with no expectation to work more than 40h/week. This is a cultural difference that weighs heavily in favour of the lower swedish salary. Still, the swedish tech salaries are very low compared to the US. There are other reasons: One reason the salary structure in sweden is quite flat is likely that higher education is free and grants/subsidies/loans to studens are decent. This means that getting higher education is very low risk (so in itself doesn't motivate a large reward).
Simply put: your salary in sweden is what you need to live. You don't save to afford a long unpaid holiday, you don't save (a lot) for retirement, you don't save money in case you get sick, you don't save towards you childrens education and so on and so forth.
Companies like Spotify are unlikely to require Swedish but something like more traditional consultancies usually want Swedish.
In the multinationals you can manage without Swedish but it tends to be harder to get a job if you do not speak Swedish.
If I were you, I would not settle for anything less than 35k. Maybe you can push it to 40k.
and "try visiting STHLM Tech Meetup's bar mingle after each event: http://www.meetup.com/STHLM-Tech-Meetup/ "
But also check out Linkedin and monster and such for corporate jobs. I believe most are up there. Otherwise try to network with people working in the big corps, that is usually the best way to get in.
http://www.arbetsformedlingen.se/Globalmeny/Other-languages....
I think search is just in Swedish, but many jobs are listed in English:
http://www.arbetsformedlingen.se/4.38a41afd11d99fbdb65800016...
They may have some postings that could suit you. If nothing else you can find some startups worth looking into.
Other than that, try visiting STHLM Tech Meetup's bar mingle after each event: http://www.meetup.com/STHLM-Tech-Meetup/
Average rent is very very hard to answer, it will depend on a bunch of factors such as location, building age, the exact form of contract, and so on. Getting a "pure" rental apartment is very very difficult, the required queue times to get one in central Stockholm are silly.
This list http://www.hemhyra.se/stockholm/stockholms-dyraste-och-billi... (in Swedish, but it's mostly street names and prices) show values between 320 and 1,745 SEK/m^2/year. Homes in Sweden are always specified using the exact floor area in square meters.