I've been in UX for over 15 years, mostly in the U.S. and Germany, and I think looking at salary on the country level is the wrong level of granularity.
For example, it's completely possible that salaries in London are higher than in New York or San Francisco, given the high cost of living in London.
It could also be that there are more US-based UX people working in major US cities so that the average US salary looks higher.
Or maybe the sample size wasn't high enough to control for these kinds of regional differences.
So, while this data is directionally interesting I wouldn't apply it too much to your particular situation.
This is a tough question. I'm American but living in Germany, and it's quite confusing to me when I look at local jobs and see how much lower the pay is, when compared to the US. I don't really get it.
But, I think most professional jobs are like that. Lawyers and Doctors also make far less in Europe than in the US.
I think that overall in Europe, there is a much less steep income curve as you advance your career, skills, or education. This is good for the majority of people, but bad for your typical HN'er.
The US really has no equal if all you care about is making a shitload of money.
> I think that overall in Europe, there is a much less steep income curve as you advance your career, skills, or education. This is good for the majority of people, but bad for your typical HN'er.
I don't understand; how is this good for the majority of people?
Because the median is kept higher than in the US, where some people earn shitloads, but a large percentage of the population takes the short end of the stick.
This has several benefits outside of money: more integrated and coherent society (no "white trash" next to yuppies), less homeless people, less incarcerations and violent crimes due to being poor/uneducated/without future/etc. And more people thinking as part of the whole of their country/society, as opposed to "screw others, I just need to get to the top myself".
That said, some advanced countries, like Britain and (less so) France, do resemble the US more, compared to say Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, Netherlands, Italy, etc.
I'd be interested to see these numbers compared to the benefits offered by companies in each country. I know that in a lot of European countries it is normal to get more time off, the government offers more benefits, etc.
I say this because every time there is a thread saying, "X company just got this awesome benefit" someone always says, in Europe this is the norm.
Edit:
I also bring this up because I've seen companies in the US offer more money but 0 benefits in order to get you to pick them over another company where you'd actually be making more if you factor in the benefits. How much does that affect US vs Europe?
I don't have a statistical run-down by country (which would be the way to do this) but if you compare the US with, say, France, where salaries tend to be 40% of what they are in the US, here's what you have:
- Free health care (for Engineering positions, usually with a company-provided complement meaning you never have to pay for anything)
- 5 weeks paid vacation/year + 5-10 paid off-days/year (may be more at large companies, up to 9 weeks vacation + 10 days off)
- A nominal pension (unlike the health care part, this is not something you should be counting on, you need to save by yourself)
- Unemployment insurance (typically 2 years with 60-80% of your former salary, which is ideal to start a company)
- Free schooling for your kids up to & including High School (there are private institutions but they're typically worse than good public schools)
- Generally cheap higher-ed. The top Eng., law, medicine schools & colleges are publicly-run & free, while the top business schools will typically relieve you of 10K/year
On the flipside, you pay significant taxes on the announced salary. For a 45K€ position (developer with 1year/exp typically) you'll effectively receive ~34K€ from your employer, while the rest goes to the state, and you'll have to pay ~3K€ income tax on that. (Of note is that to get you to that 45K number, your employer already pays ~25K to the state on their side of things).
It varies between countries (I believe folks in the UK are less taxed but have more costly education for their kids for example).
I think in general, you're better off in the US or UK as long as you're single, or if you have a really senior position, and are better off in France/Germany with a family & an entry-level/mid-level position.
You don't get it if you just quit. However, there's a middle ground between quitting & being fired, "contractual separation", which is when you & your employer agree to end your employment. In that case, you get the unemployment insurance, and many people use it as a substitute for quitting, because of that fact.
That, and the income tax rate/whatever other country's equivalents are. A high salary doesn't mean a whole lot if your gross is less than half (well, maybe only to some people).
A lot of these numbers need to be weighted by the number of submissions; e.g. fewer samples implies higher variance.
The fact that the 3 people who reported from Arizona have high salaries, for example, doesn't mean that one should go to Arizona to find UX design work.
If you ask me, it does not make justice to compare salaries across countries. May be comparing salary within the industry, within a specific market might make sense.
Just with the data / samples gleaned from this website, I will not be able to make any proper assumptions / statistic.
I looked for a while and wasn't able to find a version online. Only news stories referencing it. I'd love to be able to see what they're making, as I just went through interviews there last week.
I suppose I should have said the spreadsheet was passed around internally at Google, although never released to the public. This was a great example of ambiguity in language. Imagine being a computer trying to parse my original sentence.
Very interesting, but I'd like to see more data for each country. (For instance, an average salary of around $21,000 was posted for Nepal, but this might be unduly influenced by one or two data points in the $70,000 range.) Displaying a median, not just an average salary, would be helpful.
Not very useful without data about cost of living in those places (that's why you want to know about it in other places, right?).
For example, Brazil is in a deep depression right now and BRL is devaluing fast, inflation is increasing, etc. What to make of the USD 18,966 figure?
Nice presentation but I don't see the real point. Are you going set your US-located job's salary based on a global average? Choose the highest place as a reference? Move there maybe? Would that salary maybe just be average in Switzerland? Below average maybe?
Pretty much useless. Pay varies so widely depending on state/city for example avg developer pay in San Francisco compared to Sacramento (100 miles away) fluctuates 10-15k (if not more). It also begs to question how honest people are when answering? Is this base salary or salary after benefits/bonus? As others mentioned, cost of living? San Francisco's avg 1 bedroom price is around $3120 while Sacramento is around $1000, that's $25,000/yr more in housing costs.
what's interesting to see in the US data is that Ageism seems to exist. the most experienced person gets paid less.
Also it's interesting to note that every UX requirement these days asks for substantial coding experience (on top of everything else non-code related) yet the salaries are at par with a junior coder.
> "The average salary ... being $125,667 in Arizona."
This immediately struck me as preposterous, as I'm familiar with the local Arizona economy.
Then I saw that number is based on a sample size of 3 survey respondents. When your sample size is so small that the results are statistically meaningless, why even bother making such a claim?
I'd be really interested in data from China and Japan.
China has one of the fastest growing tech industry in the world. As for Japan, I really want to live there because of the high quality of life, but am hesitant since the tech industry doesn't look promising.
Why can't we see median? That's also a really good metric to have... in fact it arguably makes even more sense because salaries have a long tail on the higher end which inflates the average by a large amount while moving the median in an easy to understand way.
Indeed.com says most Angular jobs in Florida advertise $60,000 to $80,000 and a lot of those are actually back end jobs because the person who wrote the ad doesn't know what they're talking about
I think there is a huge opportunity to move more software development to developing countries. It could become the next version of sweatshops, which have done an immense amount to improve the wellbeing of people in the third world. The winners of using cheap labor from overseas are the companies that hire them and the people they hire. The losers are the workers in the first world who are outsourced. But it's crucial to understand that both nations as a whole benefit, and the first world nations are more than capable of redistributing wealth.
When you cut through all the self-interest and xenophobia surrounding outsourcing, there still remain many quality and communications issues. But I believe these will be reduced as more people learn English and recognize the value of English as a market skill.
Very true. Many people insult Apple over their factories, but the fact remains, those jobs some of the best in the area and are subsequently heavily contested.
46 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 90.6 ms ] threadFor example, it's completely possible that salaries in London are higher than in New York or San Francisco, given the high cost of living in London.
It could also be that there are more US-based UX people working in major US cities so that the average US salary looks higher.
Or maybe the sample size wasn't high enough to control for these kinds of regional differences.
So, while this data is directionally interesting I wouldn't apply it too much to your particular situation.
I believe this is the case in tech
But, I think most professional jobs are like that. Lawyers and Doctors also make far less in Europe than in the US.
I think that overall in Europe, there is a much less steep income curve as you advance your career, skills, or education. This is good for the majority of people, but bad for your typical HN'er.
The US really has no equal if all you care about is making a shitload of money.
I don't understand; how is this good for the majority of people?
This has several benefits outside of money: more integrated and coherent society (no "white trash" next to yuppies), less homeless people, less incarcerations and violent crimes due to being poor/uneducated/without future/etc. And more people thinking as part of the whole of their country/society, as opposed to "screw others, I just need to get to the top myself".
That said, some advanced countries, like Britain and (less so) France, do resemble the US more, compared to say Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, Netherlands, Italy, etc.
I say this because every time there is a thread saying, "X company just got this awesome benefit" someone always says, in Europe this is the norm.
Edit:
I also bring this up because I've seen companies in the US offer more money but 0 benefits in order to get you to pick them over another company where you'd actually be making more if you factor in the benefits. How much does that affect US vs Europe?
- Free health care (for Engineering positions, usually with a company-provided complement meaning you never have to pay for anything)
- 5 weeks paid vacation/year + 5-10 paid off-days/year (may be more at large companies, up to 9 weeks vacation + 10 days off)
- A nominal pension (unlike the health care part, this is not something you should be counting on, you need to save by yourself)
- Unemployment insurance (typically 2 years with 60-80% of your former salary, which is ideal to start a company)
- Free schooling for your kids up to & including High School (there are private institutions but they're typically worse than good public schools)
- Generally cheap higher-ed. The top Eng., law, medicine schools & colleges are publicly-run & free, while the top business schools will typically relieve you of 10K/year
On the flipside, you pay significant taxes on the announced salary. For a 45K€ position (developer with 1year/exp typically) you'll effectively receive ~34K€ from your employer, while the rest goes to the state, and you'll have to pay ~3K€ income tax on that. (Of note is that to get you to that 45K number, your employer already pays ~25K to the state on their side of things).
It varies between countries (I believe folks in the UK are less taxed but have more costly education for their kids for example).
I think in general, you're better off in the US or UK as long as you're single, or if you have a really senior position, and are better off in France/Germany with a family & an entry-level/mid-level position.
I hope this gives you a better idea
The fact that the 3 people who reported from Arizona have high salaries, for example, doesn't mean that one should go to Arizona to find UX design work.
Just with the data / samples gleaned from this website, I will not be able to make any proper assumptions / statistic.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2015/07...
But it was definitely not a secret internally.
For example, Brazil is in a deep depression right now and BRL is devaluing fast, inflation is increasing, etc. What to make of the USD 18,966 figure?
Nice presentation but I don't see the real point. Are you going set your US-located job's salary based on a global average? Choose the highest place as a reference? Move there maybe? Would that salary maybe just be average in Switzerland? Below average maybe?
That data is freely available elsewhere. Salaries are harder to get.
Also it's interesting to note that every UX requirement these days asks for substantial coding experience (on top of everything else non-code related) yet the salaries are at par with a junior coder.
At my first dev job in LA, in the mid-2000s, I was making $57,000.
This immediately struck me as preposterous, as I'm familiar with the local Arizona economy.
Then I saw that number is based on a sample size of 3 survey respondents. When your sample size is so small that the results are statistically meaningless, why even bother making such a claim?
China has one of the fastest growing tech industry in the world. As for Japan, I really want to live there because of the high quality of life, but am hesitant since the tech industry doesn't look promising.
edit The 8 - 12 yrs exp range in FL has an average of 237,900 - this can't be right.
When you cut through all the self-interest and xenophobia surrounding outsourcing, there still remain many quality and communications issues. But I believe these will be reduced as more people learn English and recognize the value of English as a market skill.