Seems like the gist is that large multinational tech companies pay 2-4x what local or non software focused companies do. It's more or less the same in the US.
I am glad to hear the market is moving towards devs in Europe
I am rather shocked at some of the numbers from his salary survey. I have seen many mid and senior dev Booking positions listed in the recent few years in that typical 50-65k range.
Likewise for Catawiki. Their listed salaries were significantly higher than what I think is typical here, but I never saw anything over 100k.
The #1 challenge is that most salary ranges for advertised positions are not listed. If you are talking to a recruiter, the recruiter can usually give a range, but still I've never heard these numbers. I get approached weekly for "senior" positions that are in the 50-60 range.
Frankly, I don't believe the high salaries he talks about are numerous. There may be a few, but it would be shocking to find out that 150+k is typical in the examples he mentions.
In the US, particularly west coast and NYC (finance), 200+k is not surprising. 600k? I seriously doubt that is common, unless you're working in a hedge fund and getting 300k bonuses based on company performance.
Generally speaking, the Dutch workplace doesn't seem to hold developers in the esteem that they hold managers. Maybe that's reasonable, but it certainly puts the Netherlands at a competitive disadvantage. The company I work for would like to hire 5 Rails devs, but they cannot find anyone with the desired experience at the offered pay.
600k in Silicon Valley is certainly not unheard of. That's within range for Staff Engineer and EM roles at top companies, and there are a lot of Staff Engineers and EMs. In fact, it can go up quite a bit from there. M2 [0] pay can be in the 700k-900k range, and Director pay is typically 1M+. Keep in mind that salaries rarely go above 250k -- most of this compensation is in stock grants.
[0] M2 is an engineering manager with quite a bit of scope, possibly with some M1s as reports. Imagine a group of 20-50 people total. Exact headcount can vary because "scope" is a bit of an abstract concept that is correlated with -- but not perfectly matched to -- headcount.
When I was promoted to mid-level developer at Booking in 2017/2018, the salary range for the position started at around 60k. These days, it's probably in the low 70s.
I made $55k per year in 1990 as a software developer in the San Francisco area, but then Apple/Adobe and others here entered into an illegal hiring pact to fight it.. later, Internet.. things changed. Wages for working people, even to some extent software, have been stagnant for thirty years, while the cost of higher education and distinctive homes rose 300 percent, depending on your setup, health care too..
literal evidence, I can see cars advertised for sale that are essentially the same price point as they were in the 1990s (working person's market), yet the Dow Jones market average went from "breaking ten thousand" to what, thirty thousand plus now?
Something is very, very suspect with the high-end money game in the last thirty years. People who do actual work? see George Carlin, he will tell you
For comparison I make mid 70s as a mid level dev in a medium cost of living area of the US.
I feel that very often when Europe compares itself to the US on this, they only look at the super HCOL areas like SV, Seattle, NYC.
I feel like we are underpaid still, compared to SV and NYC devs.
For another comparison my coworker was recently promoted to senior dev and he is starting in the mid 90s.
Also there is no fancy comp, we have employee health insurance(that we still have to pay for both monthly and when we use any medical service -- for non Americans this is very standard), we have a 401k(retirement portfolio) that our employer matches the first 5% of everything that goes into it. We also have a few other niche benefits, but no fancy comp.
I just wanted to give a more realistic portrayal of the usual American dev.
I guess this is worth remembering. There are a lot of lower paying dev jobs in the US, but they don't get much publicity :).
Part of the problem is lack of awareness, and prior to more recently, lack of remote options. There are countless job boards and recruiting firms, and millions of "candidates" (many of whom fail FizzBuzz, but that is not visible in a simple resume).
If the qualified supply and the demand had awareness of each other, and if remote were an option, it would be better for most people. The companies would be able to acquire the talent they needed, and the talent would have better options.
On the other hand, the current system works enough... there may be some low quality developers working at some companies, but they just may be getting enough done that the companies can function. And the more skilled, more motivated people will obviously seek and possibly move for the better jobs and pay.
401k (or RRSP in Canada where I am) are also something that Europeans differ on. I don't know about the Netherlands. But Germany definitely is seriously lacking in this or ahead depending on your personal preferences.
Germany still puts a lot of emphasis on the state pension system. They also acknowledged quite some time ago now that they need a private system next to it. But in true German fashion it's very bureaucratic and puts all of your money in some insurance companies hands.
Instead of giving you tax free accumulation in whatever financial vehicle you choose, everything has to go through funds that scrape off most of your profits. Well actually they give you ~800EUR of interest/dividend/capital gains tax free.
Just so you understand, in Canada I can pay ~$CAD5500 (it changes from year to year) into a tax free savings account with after tax money. None of the gains or dividends from this will ever be taxed. And an RRSP I can contribute 18% of last year's income to (max ~$27.000CAD right now) and the capital gains and dividends from this can grow tax free and I only pay taxes on it once I'm retired and in a lower bracket and contributions lower my current tax burden.
And Germany allows me 800EUR of tax free dividends/gains.
Laughable. Truly abysmal.
(at least instead of paying your regular tax rate on capital gains/dividends beyond those 800EUR, which at max is 45%, you just pay 25% regardless of your income - haha).
Your shock at 600k is understandable, but note that the people pulling those numbers mostly don’t need to exist at smaller or less tech oriented companies.
It’s primarily either senior engineers who consistently have outsized business impact (for instance identifying and building systems that generate tens of millions of new recurring revenue for the company each year), or are significantly beyond senior, such that they’re having a similar business impact as would be expected of the C-suite of a 10-100 million/year company.
When you have a tech company with 10 billion/yr revenue, you need hundreds of people that fit into the above scopes. It’s definitely not most employees, but a career path into those positions becomes possible. Whereas in a smaller or less tech focused business there wouldn’t be enough scope for those people to justify their outsized pay.
I think the key here is "tech oriented" companies. If the product of the company is tech, then it's more possible for the devs to make a significant positive revenue impact.
In those cases, if the numbers add up (600k dev generates +3+MM revenue per year because of what and how they do), then it makes sense.
Perhaps the biggest shift in EU developer salaries will come from a shift in what types of businesses operate here. If that begins with US tech companies expanding here, then great. But I would like to see EU founded and grown tech companies to compete. I'm afraid what probably happens is the good ideas get built here and bought up by the US giants.
I had a friend work as snr. engineer at a startup taking a pay cut down to 80k, then went to work for big US tech company presumably for a significantly higher salary. All in Amsterdam (with some time remote). Certainly no senior dev in Amsterdam worth their salt would need to work for €55k or even probably €65k unless they chose to work at a startup that cannot pay competitive rate, or have other priorities
Edit I should add I'm also earning well above that as snr engineer in Amsterdam at a startup.
So this info is a bit old since I haven't been there in a while. When I was working for a contracting company back in Germany maybe 10 years ago, the standard rate they would charge for us was around 75EUR. That's 156kEUR.
This is what the "general contractor" is paid by the huge corporation. Not sure how much of that goes to the individual contractor and will depend on negotiation. Also there were some people that were billed at higher rates but obviously they would try and keep the number of those low.
Also keep in mind that from that you would have to pay all of the health and employment insurance premiums yourself. If your employer pays you 65kEUR they pay quite a bit on top of that in employment insurance health insurance etc.
To give you an idea, a company I work for pays contractor companies around 40-50€/h so about 75k€/year, and out of that the contributor gets about 30k€ before taxes.
Also, your 75€/h gives about 125-130k€/year, not 156k. So those guys would probably get paid 50-60k€ before taxes.
Not sure where you are. The example I gave was in Germany as mentioned. Where's yours?
I guess it depends on how you calculate as well:
My calculation was a simple 75EUR per hour * 40 hours per week * 52 weeks a year to arrive at 156k.
We could also go with 75EUR per hour * 8 hours a day * 255 business days in 2021 (I chose Hesse as the state as that's where Frankfurt is located, home to lots of banks and such, i.e. lots of contracting). That's 153k.
Since you're a contractor, choose how many weeks of vacation you wanna give yourself and subtract.
If you as a contractor get only 30k before taxes, then something is seriously wrong. I worked for a contracting company back when and that's what the rates are based on. I was an internal employee for them and I got paid more than the 30k you quote. I doubt an actual external contractor that we just placed would get less or just on par of what us employees got. That would not make any financial sense, as they would have to pay their own taxes, insurance etc. from it, while we don't.
Sorry, I was talking about contracting companies that provide work hours with their own employees, who are on contract. Companies like Altran for example.
I counted around 215-220 days of work per year for an employee. When counting holidays and so on that's about what you get in my experience in several European countries (mainly France and Spain, but also Germany where rates are higher it's true).
And yes, those employees get paid less than the internal employees of their customer. That's why they're often young.
Concerning freelance contractors, they get the full 100k€+ a year, but they then about half is going away in taxes. Still it's significantly more than employees, which compensates for the instability.
That makes much more sense now. So just a little difference in understanding/definition of "contractor" :)
And I can definitely corroborate the "young" part as well. We had some external contractors that we placed with our clients that made less than the 75EUR (IIRC maybe 60EUR or something) but they were young and/or from Eastern Europe.
Prepare to be shocked. The majority of SWEs employed at Google in the EU (Zurich, Dublin, London) have comp packages over 150k.
Note: 'comp packages'. Their salary won't always be over 150k, but when including stock and bonus, total comp will be. That's many thousands of SWEs.
If you look at advertised salaries, you won't see those numbers, because it won't include bonus/stock as those are considered 'at risk'. But considering that to not get bonus/stock you need to be on a verge of getting fired, it's not exactly a large risk.
Re 600k: It's not that uncommon. In excess of 5% of Big Tech SWEs make that sort of money.
>>> Prepare to be shocked. The majority of SWEs employed at Google in the EU (Zurich, Dublin, London) have comp packages over 150k.
1) It's factually wrong.
2) These 3 countries are paying in 3 different currencies so you might want to clarify 150k of WHAT. With an exchange rate of 1.4 in some directions it's actually quite important ^^
3) No matter the currency, it's still factually wrong :D
Knowing people who worked there on lower salary. Recruiter invitations to interview there for a lower salary.
If you want to be more specific, you really want to clarify the currency and the location because there is a massive disparity.
The highest paying by far is Zurich, in CHF, that also happens to have the lowest exchange rate (though it's been climbing steadily over the past decade).
Ok, it's mildly funny that that was enough for you to errantly declare 'factually wrong'.
1. 'salary' != 'total comp'. The bonus + stock components are substantial.
2. 'The majority' does not mean 'everyone'. There are def SWEs that have less than EUR150K as total comp, they are just the minority of all SWEs employed.
3. 'total comp' is very strongly affected by performance. High performing engineers at the same level can see a total comp twice what their lesser performing peers get. Looking at only 1 or 2 people can give a very skewed picture versus the real overall data.
4. Recruiter invitations will NOT be for total comp, only salary, because BigTech are careful to avoid any sort of implied contract or commitment for the bonus/stock portion of the comp. This creates a slightly odd dynamic where the recruiters can't talk about the real comp for the position. Given that bonus/stock is such a large fraction of comp it means that people will turn down recruiters in the mistaken belief that the comp is too low (as you apparently did?)
5. Zurich does pay a bit higher but on an absolute scale, it's nothing to do with the exchange rate. (ZRH total comp converted from francs to pounds is still likely to be a bit higher than the equiv London SWE total comp).
How much of the comp package extends beyond the first year? In my end of the woods the big stock grant only happens on hiring or special events, and after that it's salary & bonus.
I am shocked too. The highest advertised salary I've seen recently in the constant emails I get from EU recruiters is around €7,000/month (and that was with a message saying it's well above market rate). I have 15 years of experience in software engineering.
EDIT: I had written 70,000 per month but meant 7,000... which is 84,000 per year, or just below 100,000 USD.
The stock compensation is a huge factor. $200k base salary but expect at least $100k/year from stock grants and with the crazy high increasing valuation of tech company stocks that can easily double.
$200k base is not shabby at all, unless you live in SF or NYC.
$200k is about 168k EUR, and that would give you a really nice life in Amsterdam (which is one of the more expensive EU cities). Assuming you like the character of the city, and pre-covid could tolerate the tourists (big challenge there!), it is a pretty great place.
Add some stock options, and bank those for retirement, and you have a heck of a great life just about anywhere in EU.
My first tech job in London was at a medium-sized (~300 employees) tech company HQ'd in Seattle, with London being 2nd largest. Not long after I joined, one of the team leads left for a largish fintech, and slowly brought the rest of his team with him over the next couple of years. Despite this constant brain-drain, management refused to address the salary issues.
After a couple of years, I left to go there too, with a ~60% raise(!). I learnt from my manager, who left a month after me to the same fintech, that HR only benchmarked against "comparable companies in the same area", meaning west London suburbs, and ignored the pull of Central London finance, despite literally dozens of people leaving to go there. You gotta be realistic against who you're competing against, and thanks to how mobile tech professionals are, European companies are competing against not just their area or city, but often against Silicon Valley.
> You gotta be realistic against who you're competing against, and thanks to how mobile tech professionals are, European companies are competing against not just their area or city, but often against Silicon Valley.
If Europeans want to get better salary there's one option. Vote with their feet and simply work in SV.
Life is pretty great here. The low salaries are a bit disappointing, but other aspects of life (including vacation time and work/life balance) is far superior. Sometimes the money is just not a good enough reason to leave.
However, if the money can increase here, and we can stay here, then yes please!
From the SV employer’s perspective that’s the rub in trying to take advantage of the “inefficiency”. They can hire talented programmers in Europe for significantly less money but those programmers are going to insist on working less than their SV counterparts.
Even if the trade off is worth it considering only first order effects (i.e. $/hr) will those work/life attitudes end up influencing the US workers as well?
Not making a value statement here at all, just laying out the consideration.
I work at a company that employs developers in the US and in Europe. The European developers are more upset that they’re paid less, than the US developers care about the European benefits.
Having lived most of my life in the US, and only the last 8 years in NL, I wouldn't move back to the US to an onsite office unless the pay were at least 3-4x higher.
If I could work remotely from the mountains in Colorado again, I would consider it for a 3x increase. Less than that, and it's just not worth it. The quality of life here is that much better imo.
Absolutely agreed. It's sometimes really hard to understand how 'Americans' can't fathom getting stuff done 'the European way'. Somehow it seems impossible to them that having 30 days of vacation from day one of your career is possible. They can't fathom that hours in seat don't equal output. They can't fathom that you can care about your work and still just go home at reasonable hours (and still take care of say a production issue when needed but then obviously go home early next Friday or take the day off entirely).
> They can't fathom that hours in seat don't equal output.
Or at least not the implication.
Of course those things aren’t strictly equal but it seems like wishful thinking to believe that all those Americans working hard are not accomplishing any more than their European colleagues taking 30 day vacations and leaving at five o’clock. Diminishing returns, sure, but zero returns I don’t buy. On the contrary it’s pretty clear the returns are meaningful.
Life is about trade-offs. It doesn’t do anyone any good to pretend there’s such a thing as a free lunch.
Fair enough as like you say it's all a scale anyway. For the record I never left at exactly five or started at 9 for that matter back in Germany and I don't either where I am now (Canada).
I never felt bad about leaving at 3 in Germany though. I did/do in Canada. _Every_time_.
"Hours in seat" provide diminishing returns, just like "lines of code produced" do.
It has been a measured fact that productivity per hour curves in the negative direction after about 7 hours per day (in sum, not necessarily contiguous).
For me the main reason is that I can be fairly sure that my neighbors are not starving, surviving on 7.25$/h jobs, getting crushed by medical debt or choosing not to address their medical issues because of money, there are (almost) no homeless people (in Amsterdam),...
Minimum wage is ~1/2-1/3 of my salary so I know that everyone is doing OK.
> there are (almost) no homeless people (in Amsterdam)
Any space that has few homeless in the Netherlands doesn't have them because the police removes them (that is to say, they dump them elsewhere or otherwise force them to leave).
Yes, of course there are people without housing, but there is infrastructure to care for them (I live quite close to one of these houses) so they don't freeze on the streets, don't develop months-untreated abscesses and don't bother me on the street. My taxes pay for that but that's exactly what taxes should pay for IMO.
I doubt its that easy - immigrating to the us is pretty difficult compared to other countries. Take canada and their express entry program - although salaries are pretty low there.
> Take canada and their express entry program - although salaries are pretty low there
Canada has out of control immigrations quotas. It's no wonder their own government are bragging that their devs are worth 50K less than in America [0].
Getting a visa isn't that easy, one reason salaries haven't gone up as much as they could have. I'd absolutely love to work in the US, but realistically it's a multi-year plan that could be scuppered by a visa lottery, HR policies around visa sponsorship, or an administration that decides it doesn't like my nationality any more.
If you don't already have family in the US, getting in is a real arse.
This and since covid it doesn't even have to be SV.
I know our company is looking for people "globally" now and what it really means is that it has to be within reasonable time differences to existing offices. But if you're off by a few too many hours but willing to work the time zones closer to the offices, then we are OK with that.
It does make sense to me as long as it's not too far off. It has to be livable. What that means I guess depends on your life situation and whether you are a night owl or an early bird for example and what covid opening hours are in stores etc.
Sadly, most US companies will still pay local rates to remote contractors. I imagine there are exceptions, but they'll be nigh-on impossible to find without a network in SV.
Not something done on a whim when you have a family. Might consider a remote position, though. My current job has decent benefits, and I do enjoy the work, but the pay absolutely stinks compared with the value of the work I'm performing. If openings start flying around with anything close to SV-level compensation I'd be hard pressed not to consider applying.
The issue however is that demand for software engineers in continental europe is much lower than in the uk / london area. Maybe that changed with brexit and more companies relocating to europe, but unless eu countries invest in / stimulate tech companies not much will change.
I was already aware of at least two big trading firms opening significant offices here, and now I expect there to be more. For those interested in fintec, Amsterdam is going to offer a lot of good options soon.
Thats interesting and definitely worth keeping an eye on. However a tech culture doesn't develop over night, so while companies may be relocating it doesn't mean they may be as desirable as those in the uk (appetite for using new tech, high pay and bonuses, perks and generally speaking that feeling of moving fast and breaking things). Continental europe, to me, appears more rigid and less open to change - killer traits for a healthy tech scene.
Came to London with my existing (traditional) engineering company.
After about 9 months (During COVID) got a series of offers from VC financed startups around London for a 90-100% raise,
so after that happening for about 2 months I interviewed at a few places, got offered a role and then buggered off to somewhere willing to pay me properly.
Exit interview with the old company
Them: "What can we do to keep staff",
Me: "Pay people closer to the market rates outside comparable companies...",
During my exit interview the HR person asked me what salary I'm getting. Figuring there's nothing to lose, I told her and said this is exactly why you've lost a dozen engineers to this company alone.
To their credit, not long after I left basically the whole engineering department got a 30%+ raise, it's just a pity they didn't address the issue sooner.
Interesting! I can echo these findings from from personal experience. For the past 5-6 years I had been doing remote work for a US west-coast based company from the Netherlands. My annual salary as a senior "data scientist" was at least double, if not triple, that of my fellow Dutch peers. Typically salaries around here seem to stall at the €45-60k/yr mark with very few positions open at higher tiers (and usually not advertised through any typical recruitment portals, where salaries are typically even lower, even when commanding decades of experience in obscure technologies). When I left that remote position the options really did seem limited, and I ended up taking a substantial pay cut. Short of trying to bootstrap your own company (VC-like funding here is also not very typical, with angel investors being almost non-existent) moving seemed the only option, which I had no real intention of doing. Even moving slightly east to Germany seemed to be the better option. I think our current predicament has really opened the market though. Remote work is no longer considered weird and there definitely are very talented and skilled engineers up for grabs here in the Netherlands if they are coached ever so slightly. I wonder if there is an opportunity here for an employment-agency-ish company facilitating the overseas hiring process and legalese. Exciting times!
What is missing in this article is that most developers that want to properly get paid in the Netherlands switch to freelancing. There are a lot of freelance positions where they work a couple of years for 75-95 euros per hour and achieve the 130-200k yearly income (still not as high as silicon valley).
They start with a 6/9/12 months contracts, but they extend the contract often in my experience. Freelancing is just charging your employer per hour with limited employee rights, but the period of the contract doesn't determine if something is a freelance job or not. Also the Dutch tax service isn't strict in checking freelance developers because they earn enough, but there is more discussion in the Netherlands for people that are being pushed into a freelancer position (Dutch people call this a `zzp'er`) for companies to lower the costs of the employer while the rights for the employee suffer.
Long-term freelancing, or I would call it B2B contract employee, is also the only way to work remotelly for abroad company.
Unfortunatelly EU has no means of cross-border employment yet other than establishing local subsidiary company. It is unlikely to happen if they "employ" a couple of people in various foreign countries. Company setup procedures and employment laws vary by country, salaries may vary by currency. It is just too complex at small scale.
Then the simpler solution is to use intermediary local contractors agency or just directly pay Euro invoices of long term freelancers.
It is legal but e.g. German companies prefer not to keep such contracts longer than 2 years. Why? That is another story...
There are payrolling companies that take care of all this. They have subsidiaries in every country, will give your remote employees all the things they have a right for according to the local laws, and send you an invoice.
In Canada (at least where I am) you basically earn employee status. I think it's the same in Germany ("Scheinselbststaendigkeit"). So you have to basically ping pong between two places or earn enough to just take a prolonged vacation until they can hire you back coz they like your work ;)
What works for me is Linkedin to be honest and recruiters will approach me or my Dutch developer friends for freelance contracts where they basically take a cut of the hour price (most of the time they take 10-15 euros/hour). Also being asked because of people that (pleasantly) worked with you is common as well and you could approach them to see if they need another freelancer for a project.
This is not true because you can pay yourself 68k as normal income/salary and the rest as dividend which will lead to 40% tax rate. Which is still a high tax rate, but not more than half.
This is fantastic news. As a reference point, in Denmark the highest software engineering salary I've seen is €120.000, which was at a large Danish corp. I'd love more data points.
1) Numbers are total compensation, the base salary is a LARGE amount below that. Few of the figures are hinting to bonus/shares being 50% of the base, if not more.
That's not to say it's bad but that's something to bear in mind. Some of the quoted companies are worthless because non public, other companies might go either way (Uber is not Facebook/Apple/Microsoft when it comes to stock). You certainly want to see how the shares are allocated, on what schedules, how's the taxation is working (US equity in US dollar can be big pain in Europe). Bonus are for those who believe in them (Uber is not known for having nice and stable management layer).
2) These are staff engineer positions, which are incredibly rare and selective.
- Not sure if Uber Staff is like L6 or L7, either way you're probably not going to achieve that in your lifetime. The later is like the head of a department with 100+ people below them them, basically a whole small company (if you want to talk about individual contributors it's even rarer than that). For the former, we're talking about a person with two decades of experience in tech and probably a chunk in the web industry (better have competing offers from Facebook London or Google Zurich).
That's really the counterpart to the $600k developers from SV/NYC, a very far cry from the average developer, even a far cry from the usual good performer.
edit: Uber only IPO'ed in 2019. The article is talking about offers going as far as 2016. These offers were basically imaginary money. Employees didn't see a penny of it unless they were still in 2020 (after lockup period), and if they were, the realized number was certainly very different than the initial promise (note: Uber went down after IPO).
I'm currently a software engineer based in Berlin and I've found that stock options are not common at all in Germany [1]. I'm curious to know, is this scene different in Netherlands or other places in EU?
I believe that this depends less on the country where you are working and more on the country of origin of your employer.
During the years, I have worked for 3 German companies and none of them offered any stock options.
On the other hand, while working for an Israeli company and for an US company, I have gained about the same amount from selling the vested stock options of those companies as from the salary, i.e., due to the stock options, the total compensation was eventually about double compared to the salary.
No good stock options, not many getting rich after successful exits. Hence not many to fund the next good venture. A handful of VCs and some banks who had traditional money.
Most of the successful European companies look for an acquisition by a US company as an exit path. Silicon valley has an eco system of people who had successful exits funding the next startup. It is quite rare in Europe.
> Yes, healthcare and the cost of living are more expensive in the US
I feel Europeans looking in on the US from the outside consistently have a misleading view on healthcare. I'm saying this as a European in the US working in big tech.
My plan's maximum out-of-pocket in a year is ~$3k, which I can pay pre-tax thanks to an HSA. It is less than 2% of my total comp in the worst case (in 2020 I spent less than $300 on healthcare). In return I get coverage that is generally better than the free public healthcare back in Europe.
I think CoL is similar, but not as clear cut. One thing CoL discussions often miss is that many expenses are independent of the local CoL; for example, a Macbook Pro costs the same in every US city. If your salary adjusts exactly for CoL, you're actually doing better because of this.
My worries about US healthcare don't revolve around the cost or the quality, but more about the instability. If I know roughly how much I'll need to pay I can plan for it, even if it's quite a bit. But if I get into a crash in another state and taken to an out-of-network hospital without even being conscious, that can fuck up your finances straight away.
What I'd like to know is how much NHS-level healthcare would cost me in the US. Given a monthly payment, I want 100% of everything covered all the time. No out-of-pocket, no out-of-network, everything with no exceptions. I'm happy with generics, a bit of a wait and a non-private room, but I want 0 unexpected bills.
> What I'd like to know is how much NHS-level healthcare would cost me in the US.
If you're employed by a tech company, the out-of-pocket costs to you will be $0, and your standard of care will probably go up.
Yes, you will occasionally have a $10 or $20 co-pay, but on a tech salary costs are negligible unless you're on a ton of meds.
The problem with care in the US is how it's impacting the lower-middle class and the poor. The professional class generally have great care and don't pay much for it.
Not sure why parent is downvoted, as a European that has lived in Zurich, London and Oslo + NYC and SF healthcare cost is a non-issue for those of us lucky enough to work at a company that provides healthcare. This applied from what I understand to even the smallest startups.
US healthcare sucks in general, but for the wealthy (and most of the people reading this site falls into this category) it is actually pretty good.
Health care cost, or the predictability of it, is not an issue to not move to the US IMHO.
I really agree with you, and I am all in on M4A. But for the thread the important part is that if you are a software engineer moving to the US is safe.
Sounds like a pair of golden handcuffs. Is your family at least covered as well?
What if your partner gets in that car crash, or your kid has an expensive birth defect? Expensive care is a matter of time, not a matter of luck. It really makes me uncomfortable as well that timing or location (or employment) seem to matter.
And for the handcuffs if you get any other job it almost certainly has similar insurance.
The main issue is if you have no job, when you live you are offered what is called I think Cobra that will keep you on a similar plan. I’ve heard from coworkers that left, sometimes not voluntarily, that it is not cheap at all. California also has decent options for private insurance.
Zero out of pocket seems like a silly line in the sand. Why wouldn't you care about out-of-pocket max? The only reason I can see about a well-paid professional caring about $20 co-pays is because of a psychological aversion to being paid for healthcare.
(Not saying this feeling is necessarily wrong. Humans may have evolved a feeling that their community should take care of the sick and injured. Demanding more for this act, I think makes a lot of people feel tawdry and icky, in a similar way to paying for sex. Still this is a psychological, not an economic argument.)
Imagine, that you insisted on car insurance that covered every oil change and car wash starting at dollar zero. It'd probably be astronomically expensive.
Ah, sorry for not being clear; if I moved to the US, I wouldn't look for a plan like this. I'm convinced a US developer salary/benefits would be more than enough for me. I'm more curious what an NHS level of healthcare would cost, so set the parameters based on my experience.
My beef w/ the US healthcare system is that doesn't even need to be an accident. My wife went to see a specialist for a checkup. At the front desk, they said she had to pay around $200. She's the type to decide whether to do things based on cost, so she asked: "That's all?" Them: "Yes."
Six months later, I get a letter from a collections agency saying I owed $700. Confused, I call Kaiser to find out that not only was the $200 not the entire amount, they also apparently had no way of quoting accurately ahead of time (even though they knew exactly what she was coming in for), and as the icing on the cake, they forgot to mail us the bill, which is how it ended up going to collections.
I had to then press them to get an actual bill with itemized numbers, but it doesn't matter because the numbers make no sense anyways: none of the numbers match up to the amounts we paid, the insurance quoted price or the collections amounts. When pressed they all basically shrugged and said they don't understand how any of it works, and that's just how it is.
And the reason for this whole ordeal? We changed health insurance plans and Kaiser said they couldn't renew a prescription because it was a 2-in-1 and insurance only covered the two drugs if they came in separate vials.
That wasn’t the reason. I went to the ER with no insurance. While I was lying in a bed between visits from the doctor a woman came in and wanted payment for the ER. I asked in no uncertain language if it covered my ER visit and explained I knew the doctor would charge me separately. She said yes, so I paid.
I went home. The doctor billed me. I paid. The X-ray tech billed me (a surprisingly small amount). I paid. The hospital never billed me. Then the collections calls started.
> I feel Europeans looking in on the US from the outside consistently have a misleading view on healthcare
Maybe. All I know is that if I get sick or any other health emergency, I go to the hospital, they patch me up and I go home or stay there until I'm better. I literally have to do nothing else.
Even knowing what HSA or anything else is, is too much for 90% of the people, including me. Some of us view healthcare as something that should be there for everyone and with as little complications as possible, even if it is more expensive overall. When you're dealing with healthcare, you're most likely in a situation where you want to deal with as little as possible, so free public healthcare really help then.
So you are right on the general principle (at least I think so), that healthcare should just be available for everyone etc. That is not the case in the US.
But as a software engineer in the US it is not a worry. Like not at all.
I thought I answered this, but you are right. All the startups I have talked to, even seed startups, have decent medical.
There is a fundamental difference though. The startups actually use insurance so you have to deal with the insurance company, while Google/Amazon/others self insure and just use the network etc. So if you have Google insurance you call a specific Google number and they will help you. At least that have been my experience.
Many companies that self-insure still contract with an outside administrator that is usually a department/subsidiary of an insurance company. In my experience, there's no material difference. You still have covered procedures, tiers of insurance, etc. I've admittedly never worked for one of the big West Coast companies so perhaps their insurance is more gold-plated than the norm, e.g. I still pay out for my insurance even though my employer does as well.
You are probably right, I just know the administrator for the google and Amazon insurance were always super helpful and even though I have had some massive claims I never had to fight with the insurance company. Like I said many times I believe in any decent paying job in the U.S. healthcare is taken care of.
I still pay a portion of my paycheck for insurance too, and the amount varies depending on which insurance you want. I think the highest I have seen is still less than $500/month for whole family coverage.
A few messages below in this thread, someone writes:
"San Francisco’s only level 1 trauma center does not take private insurance, so if you are taken there, expect an absolutely massive bill despite how good your employer-provided health insurance is."
Sounds like this would be a worry for anyone in the city, software engineer or not.
> But as a software engineer in the US it is not a worry. Like not at all.
Cool. What about the rest of you, the majority of people who are not in tech? I get the feeling that many Americans don't worry about services as long as they themselves are covered, while many go without.
The list of countries without "universal government-funded health system" is smaller than the list of countries with it. US (together with Uganda, Yemen, Jordan and some other countries) is pretty lonely with its healthcare system.
In general, the West does not work like the US when it comes to healthcare. And when you compare globally, the US still has the highest "Health Expenditure per capita", far higher than any other country really.
There is no way to spin it, healthcare is absolutely terrible in the US and gets worse every year.
I wasn't trying to spin the healthcare situation, just to point out that "fuck you, got mine" isn't really unique to the USA, but is echoed in the entirety of the global west.
One just needs look at the vaccine distribution situation to see this writ large.
I think the key difference here is that you are ultimately at the behest of your insurance company. I don’t like the idea of insurers making decisions over my health. I’d take the British NHS over US system any day as I know ultimately if I’m sick I can rely on it. You don’t have a plan B in US - or am I mistaken?
You are mistaken, in the good plans all they do is serve as a middleman that pays most of the bills, and all the bills after a certain number.
Having lived in London, NYC and SF and broken bones in all locations I can say if I could choose to have a big issue I would probably do it in SF but they all gave good treatment and I am thankful and think the healthcare is good enough in all places that I would not even take that into account when choosing where to live of those places.
I’m genuinely surprised you trust the intentions of an insurance company over a nationalised health system. Insurance companies are famous for weasling their way out of claims.
There is a yearly out of pocket maximum in the best insurances. It doesn't matter what happens, I will pay max something like $10k for me and family no matter what happens.
This is true for all of Google and Amazon (note that this is all Amazon workers including those that work in delivery centers).
On a country wide look we are super privileged, and of course if I could choose I would pay a bit more tax and cover everyone. But that is not an option. I am just saying if you are software engineer, you will most likely be fine.
Edit: Also these big companies don't really have insurance, but insure themselves and just use the network and negotiating capabilities from the insurance companies.
Yes, there is a different amount for out of network yearly max, but it’s still less than $10k. It applies to anything.
I’ve had several surgeries, one was over $100k just for the surgery (a broken arm that was healing wrong and had to be reset, all the tendons were turn off from the bone) and insurance paid without any questions.
A stated many times it is not my preferred system, but as a software engineer you and your family will be taken care of and healthcare is not a worry.
San Francisco’s only level 1 trauma center does not take private insurance, so if you are taken there, expect an absolutely massive bill despite how good your employer-provided health insurance is.
It really doesn't work that way. My insurance covers out of network as well with a yearly maximum. My wife has gone to ER by ambulance a few times (she gets really strong periods and sometimes faints in strange places). It has always been covered.
This is fine while you're employed, but what if you lose your position or decide to take a couple years off? Then it becomes a different equation.
Spread out over time, in the places I lived outside of the US that was not really a concern. Same with most other "social care" situations. In the US, it all felt a lot more tenuous which was a source of constant low-key anxiety.
Keep in mind that the plan is tied to your employment, paid by your employer, and better than what many Americans do have as a healthcare plan.
It's a good place to be if you're in the upper middle class and above, but people working in the service industry have worse healthcare outcomes in the US than in Europe.
That is true as long as you are employed. Once you lose employer-provided healthcare or fall on hard times and your expenses mount with no income, things get a lot more tenuous. The folks perched at the top of the heap are not the ones who are the determinant factor in the quality of healthcare provisions in a country.
You make it sound as if your healthcare cost is limited to 2% of your total comp. My credit cards/atm records show that I spent nothing on healthcare in 2020, as I am "young and healthy" and skipped my annual checkup because Covid. But my W2 box 12 dd entry says that $19246 was paid on my behalf.
Also when I go to coveredca.org I find that the maximum cost for healthcare this year if I were unemployed and 64 years old would be 76k.
Sadly, each of these figures is substantially more than 2% of my total comp. Sure, my wages as a Bay Area FANG engineer are high compared to European counterparts at less prestigious employers, but the elevated costs of healthcare are still material to me and in fact it is by far the largest expense in my retirement budget (savings for retirement being by far the largest sink for my present income).
Unfortunately not everyone thinks like you. Though I would agree.
For anyone that will listen I will tell them not to answer to the lure of prestige and 'benefits' of FAANGs but a lot won't. It's just too prestigious for them. Who doesn't want to work for Google?
Who wouldn't have wanted to work for IBM back in the day?
(a friend of mine worked for IBM precisely because it would look good on a CV even today and is now at Google ;))
How do the responsibilities compare? I am at the upper end of the local senior positions in companies(well, well below 100k) and get offers for up to 100k.
Currently i am doing consulting, building up the organization to be more modern, creating videos, system architecture positions for customers, golang courses and development, some frontend stuff. Is this something similiar to these top paying companies?
And do all of these require the leetcode interviews you always read about? Sure would like to double my salary in germany haha
> Stripe and Spotify have both started to hire for permanent remote positions in Europe as well, expanding their hiring pool to all of the EU. Both companies are competing across Europe, and not with the local market. They join companies like GoDaddy, GitLab, GitHub, and others who have been doing this for years.
Although I know for a fact this is true, in the case of Stripe at least, I haven't been able to fit any role that fits myself (frontend/junior) so I guess they're looking only for more senior positions in this remote-covid post-era...
PS: If anyone at Stripe is hiring for more junior/middle frontend sofware engineer or fullstack node/ts/js/graphql/jamstack/serverless positions do let me know! mail on the profile
if you have children it can be quite a lot. A few friends of mine moved to the US to work and they're paying tens of thousands per year for two kids childcare / education, and they have two cars. Meanwhile in a lot of European cities good schooling and childcare is either free or heavily subsidised and you might get away with one car, if you need one at all.
It seems like in a lot of the tech hubs in the US you need to make ~120k+ for a middle-class family lifestyle whereas in almost all European cities with 50-70k you're probably good.
this article is about the $320K compensation packages and their volatility, these expenses just do not scale at all.
the point of the article mentioning the "but cost of living" rebuttal was specifically to point this out, they just didn't finish the sentence to drive the point home.
Is there a list of companies that fall into category 3 that offer fully remote positions? I worked at a tier 3 company in the bay area and have since settled into what's probably a tier 2 company in Europe. I am considering moving back to the US after covid and doing another 4 years at a tier 3 company, but I would much rather find a job that pays $300k fully remote from Europe (even if that means working on an east coast timezone) than relocating back to the cesspit of San Francisco for $500k.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 198 ms ] threadI am glad to hear the market is moving towards devs in Europe
Traditional businesses hiring devs tend to pay the local rate for "engineers".
Software businesses hiring devs tend to the pay the local rate for "software developers".
Big tech companies with a local branch or remote position pay something way higher than the other two but usually expect much more too.
Likewise for Catawiki. Their listed salaries were significantly higher than what I think is typical here, but I never saw anything over 100k.
The #1 challenge is that most salary ranges for advertised positions are not listed. If you are talking to a recruiter, the recruiter can usually give a range, but still I've never heard these numbers. I get approached weekly for "senior" positions that are in the 50-60 range.
Frankly, I don't believe the high salaries he talks about are numerous. There may be a few, but it would be shocking to find out that 150+k is typical in the examples he mentions.
In the US, particularly west coast and NYC (finance), 200+k is not surprising. 600k? I seriously doubt that is common, unless you're working in a hedge fund and getting 300k bonuses based on company performance.
Generally speaking, the Dutch workplace doesn't seem to hold developers in the esteem that they hold managers. Maybe that's reasonable, but it certainly puts the Netherlands at a competitive disadvantage. The company I work for would like to hire 5 Rails devs, but they cannot find anyone with the desired experience at the offered pay.
[0] M2 is an engineering manager with quite a bit of scope, possibly with some M1s as reports. Imagine a group of 20-50 people total. Exact headcount can vary because "scope" is a bit of an abstract concept that is correlated with -- but not perfectly matched to -- headcount.
literal evidence, I can see cars advertised for sale that are essentially the same price point as they were in the 1990s (working person's market), yet the Dow Jones market average went from "breaking ten thousand" to what, thirty thousand plus now?
Something is very, very suspect with the high-end money game in the last thirty years. People who do actual work? see George Carlin, he will tell you
I feel that very often when Europe compares itself to the US on this, they only look at the super HCOL areas like SV, Seattle, NYC.
I feel like we are underpaid still, compared to SV and NYC devs.
For another comparison my coworker was recently promoted to senior dev and he is starting in the mid 90s.
Also there is no fancy comp, we have employee health insurance(that we still have to pay for both monthly and when we use any medical service -- for non Americans this is very standard), we have a 401k(retirement portfolio) that our employer matches the first 5% of everything that goes into it. We also have a few other niche benefits, but no fancy comp.
I just wanted to give a more realistic portrayal of the usual American dev.
Part of the problem is lack of awareness, and prior to more recently, lack of remote options. There are countless job boards and recruiting firms, and millions of "candidates" (many of whom fail FizzBuzz, but that is not visible in a simple resume).
If the qualified supply and the demand had awareness of each other, and if remote were an option, it would be better for most people. The companies would be able to acquire the talent they needed, and the talent would have better options.
On the other hand, the current system works enough... there may be some low quality developers working at some companies, but they just may be getting enough done that the companies can function. And the more skilled, more motivated people will obviously seek and possibly move for the better jobs and pay.
Germany still puts a lot of emphasis on the state pension system. They also acknowledged quite some time ago now that they need a private system next to it. But in true German fashion it's very bureaucratic and puts all of your money in some insurance companies hands.
Instead of giving you tax free accumulation in whatever financial vehicle you choose, everything has to go through funds that scrape off most of your profits. Well actually they give you ~800EUR of interest/dividend/capital gains tax free.
Just so you understand, in Canada I can pay ~$CAD5500 (it changes from year to year) into a tax free savings account with after tax money. None of the gains or dividends from this will ever be taxed. And an RRSP I can contribute 18% of last year's income to (max ~$27.000CAD right now) and the capital gains and dividends from this can grow tax free and I only pay taxes on it once I'm retired and in a lower bracket and contributions lower my current tax burden.
And Germany allows me 800EUR of tax free dividends/gains. Laughable. Truly abysmal.
(at least instead of paying your regular tax rate on capital gains/dividends beyond those 800EUR, which at max is 45%, you just pay 25% regardless of your income - haha).
It’s primarily either senior engineers who consistently have outsized business impact (for instance identifying and building systems that generate tens of millions of new recurring revenue for the company each year), or are significantly beyond senior, such that they’re having a similar business impact as would be expected of the C-suite of a 10-100 million/year company.
When you have a tech company with 10 billion/yr revenue, you need hundreds of people that fit into the above scopes. It’s definitely not most employees, but a career path into those positions becomes possible. Whereas in a smaller or less tech focused business there wouldn’t be enough scope for those people to justify their outsized pay.
In those cases, if the numbers add up (600k dev generates +3+MM revenue per year because of what and how they do), then it makes sense.
Perhaps the biggest shift in EU developer salaries will come from a shift in what types of businesses operate here. If that begins with US tech companies expanding here, then great. But I would like to see EU founded and grown tech companies to compete. I'm afraid what probably happens is the good ideas get built here and bought up by the US giants.
Edit I should add I'm also earning well above that as snr engineer in Amsterdam at a startup.
This is what the "general contractor" is paid by the huge corporation. Not sure how much of that goes to the individual contractor and will depend on negotiation. Also there were some people that were billed at higher rates but obviously they would try and keep the number of those low.
Also keep in mind that from that you would have to pay all of the health and employment insurance premiums yourself. If your employer pays you 65kEUR they pay quite a bit on top of that in employment insurance health insurance etc.
Also, your 75€/h gives about 125-130k€/year, not 156k. So those guys would probably get paid 50-60k€ before taxes.
I guess it depends on how you calculate as well:
My calculation was a simple 75EUR per hour * 40 hours per week * 52 weeks a year to arrive at 156k.
We could also go with 75EUR per hour * 8 hours a day * 255 business days in 2021 (I chose Hesse as the state as that's where Frankfurt is located, home to lots of banks and such, i.e. lots of contracting). That's 153k.
Since you're a contractor, choose how many weeks of vacation you wanna give yourself and subtract.
If you as a contractor get only 30k before taxes, then something is seriously wrong. I worked for a contracting company back when and that's what the rates are based on. I was an internal employee for them and I got paid more than the 30k you quote. I doubt an actual external contractor that we just placed would get less or just on par of what us employees got. That would not make any financial sense, as they would have to pay their own taxes, insurance etc. from it, while we don't.
I counted around 215-220 days of work per year for an employee. When counting holidays and so on that's about what you get in my experience in several European countries (mainly France and Spain, but also Germany where rates are higher it's true).
And yes, those employees get paid less than the internal employees of their customer. That's why they're often young.
Concerning freelance contractors, they get the full 100k€+ a year, but they then about half is going away in taxes. Still it's significantly more than employees, which compensates for the instability.
And I can definitely corroborate the "young" part as well. We had some external contractors that we placed with our clients that made less than the 75EUR (IIRC maybe 60EUR or something) but they were young and/or from Eastern Europe.
Note: 'comp packages'. Their salary won't always be over 150k, but when including stock and bonus, total comp will be. That's many thousands of SWEs.
If you look at advertised salaries, you won't see those numbers, because it won't include bonus/stock as those are considered 'at risk'. But considering that to not get bonus/stock you need to be on a verge of getting fired, it's not exactly a large risk.
Re 600k: It's not that uncommon. In excess of 5% of Big Tech SWEs make that sort of money.
Nitpick: of those three, only Dublin is in the EU.
1) It's factually wrong.
2) These 3 countries are paying in 3 different currencies so you might want to clarify 150k of WHAT. With an exchange rate of 1.4 in some directions it's actually quite important ^^
3) No matter the currency, it's still factually wrong :D
If you want to be more specific, you really want to clarify the currency and the location because there is a massive disparity.
The highest paying by far is Zurich, in CHF, that also happens to have the lowest exchange rate (though it's been climbing steadily over the past decade).
1. 'salary' != 'total comp'. The bonus + stock components are substantial.
2. 'The majority' does not mean 'everyone'. There are def SWEs that have less than EUR150K as total comp, they are just the minority of all SWEs employed.
3. 'total comp' is very strongly affected by performance. High performing engineers at the same level can see a total comp twice what their lesser performing peers get. Looking at only 1 or 2 people can give a very skewed picture versus the real overall data.
4. Recruiter invitations will NOT be for total comp, only salary, because BigTech are careful to avoid any sort of implied contract or commitment for the bonus/stock portion of the comp. This creates a slightly odd dynamic where the recruiters can't talk about the real comp for the position. Given that bonus/stock is such a large fraction of comp it means that people will turn down recruiters in the mistaken belief that the comp is too low (as you apparently did?)
5. Zurich does pay a bit higher but on an absolute scale, it's nothing to do with the exchange rate. (ZRH total comp converted from francs to pounds is still likely to be a bit higher than the equiv London SWE total comp).
2. If you consider L5 (senior) and above to be the majority then that might be true, but I wouldn't call that the majority.
We can agree that it's meaningless to discuss comp online with no context. ;)
P.S. Zurich pays more on the lower levels.
EDIT: I had written 70,000 per month but meant 7,000... which is 84,000 per year, or just below 100,000 USD.
$200k is about 168k EUR, and that would give you a really nice life in Amsterdam (which is one of the more expensive EU cities). Assuming you like the character of the city, and pre-covid could tolerate the tourists (big challenge there!), it is a pretty great place.
Add some stock options, and bank those for retirement, and you have a heck of a great life just about anywhere in EU.
I think this will be the most important legacy of COVID.
After a couple of years, I left to go there too, with a ~60% raise(!). I learnt from my manager, who left a month after me to the same fintech, that HR only benchmarked against "comparable companies in the same area", meaning west London suburbs, and ignored the pull of Central London finance, despite literally dozens of people leaving to go there. You gotta be realistic against who you're competing against, and thanks to how mobile tech professionals are, European companies are competing against not just their area or city, but often against Silicon Valley.
If Europeans want to get better salary there's one option. Vote with their feet and simply work in SV.
However, if the money can increase here, and we can stay here, then yes please!
Even if the trade off is worth it considering only first order effects (i.e. $/hr) will those work/life attitudes end up influencing the US workers as well?
Not making a value statement here at all, just laying out the consideration.
If I could work remotely from the mountains in Colorado again, I would consider it for a 3x increase. Less than that, and it's just not worth it. The quality of life here is that much better imo.
> They can't fathom that hours in seat don't equal output.
Or at least not the implication.
Of course those things aren’t strictly equal but it seems like wishful thinking to believe that all those Americans working hard are not accomplishing any more than their European colleagues taking 30 day vacations and leaving at five o’clock. Diminishing returns, sure, but zero returns I don’t buy. On the contrary it’s pretty clear the returns are meaningful.
Life is about trade-offs. It doesn’t do anyone any good to pretend there’s such a thing as a free lunch.
I never felt bad about leaving at 3 in Germany though. I did/do in Canada. _Every_time_.
It has been a measured fact that productivity per hour curves in the negative direction after about 7 hours per day (in sum, not necessarily contiguous).
Minimum wage is ~1/2-1/3 of my salary so I know that everyone is doing OK.
Any space that has few homeless in the Netherlands doesn't have them because the police removes them (that is to say, they dump them elsewhere or otherwise force them to leave).
Canada has out of control immigrations quotas. It's no wonder their own government are bragging that their devs are worth 50K less than in America [0].
[0] https://globalnews.ca/news/4178326/amazon-vancouver-tech-wor...
If you don't already have family in the US, getting in is a real arse.
You'll sleep weird hours, but such is life on the global internet.
I know our company is looking for people "globally" now and what it really means is that it has to be within reasonable time differences to existing offices. But if you're off by a few too many hours but willing to work the time zones closer to the offices, then we are OK with that.
It does make sense to me as long as it's not too far off. It has to be livable. What that means I guess depends on your life situation and whether you are a night owl or an early bird for example and what covid opening hours are in stores etc.
https://www.ft.com/content/3dad4ef3-59e8-437e-8f63-f629a5b7d...
I was already aware of at least two big trading firms opening significant offices here, and now I expect there to be more. For those interested in fintec, Amsterdam is going to offer a lot of good options soon.
Came to London with my existing (traditional) engineering company.
After about 9 months (During COVID) got a series of offers from VC financed startups around London for a 90-100% raise,
so after that happening for about 2 months I interviewed at a few places, got offered a role and then buggered off to somewhere willing to pay me properly.
Exit interview with the old company
Them: "What can we do to keep staff",
Me: "Pay people closer to the market rates outside comparable companies...",
Them: "Oh we can't afford to do that".
To their credit, not long after I left basically the whole engineering department got a 30%+ raise, it's just a pity they didn't address the issue sooner.
Unfortunatelly EU has no means of cross-border employment yet other than establishing local subsidiary company. It is unlikely to happen if they "employ" a couple of people in various foreign countries. Company setup procedures and employment laws vary by country, salaries may vary by currency. It is just too complex at small scale.
Then the simpler solution is to use intermediary local contractors agency or just directly pay Euro invoices of long term freelancers.
It is legal but e.g. German companies prefer not to keep such contracts longer than 2 years. Why? That is another story...
An example would be Velocity Global - https://velocityglobal.com/
In Canada (at least where I am) you basically earn employee status. I think it's the same in Germany ("Scheinselbststaendigkeit"). So you have to basically ping pong between two places or earn enough to just take a prolonged vacation until they can hire you back coz they like your work ;)
1) Numbers are total compensation, the base salary is a LARGE amount below that. Few of the figures are hinting to bonus/shares being 50% of the base, if not more.
That's not to say it's bad but that's something to bear in mind. Some of the quoted companies are worthless because non public, other companies might go either way (Uber is not Facebook/Apple/Microsoft when it comes to stock). You certainly want to see how the shares are allocated, on what schedules, how's the taxation is working (US equity in US dollar can be big pain in Europe). Bonus are for those who believe in them (Uber is not known for having nice and stable management layer).
2) These are staff engineer positions, which are incredibly rare and selective.
- Not sure if Uber Staff is like L6 or L7, either way you're probably not going to achieve that in your lifetime. The later is like the head of a department with 100+ people below them them, basically a whole small company (if you want to talk about individual contributors it's even rarer than that). For the former, we're talking about a person with two decades of experience in tech and probably a chunk in the web industry (better have competing offers from Facebook London or Google Zurich).
That's really the counterpart to the $600k developers from SV/NYC, a very far cry from the average developer, even a far cry from the usual good performer.
edit: Uber only IPO'ed in 2019. The article is talking about offers going as far as 2016. These offers were basically imaginary money. Employees didn't see a penny of it unless they were still in 2020 (after lockup period), and if they were, the realized number was certainly very different than the initial promise (note: Uber went down after IPO).
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/5778f3d0-1b3c-11ea-97df-cc63de1d7...
During the years, I have worked for 3 German companies and none of them offered any stock options.
On the other hand, while working for an Israeli company and for an US company, I have gained about the same amount from selling the vested stock options of those companies as from the salary, i.e., due to the stock options, the total compensation was eventually about double compared to the salary.
https://www.notoptional.eu/en/country-ranking
No good stock options, not many getting rich after successful exits. Hence not many to fund the next good venture. A handful of VCs and some banks who had traditional money.
Most of the successful European companies look for an acquisition by a US company as an exit path. Silicon valley has an eco system of people who had successful exits funding the next startup. It is quite rare in Europe.
I feel Europeans looking in on the US from the outside consistently have a misleading view on healthcare. I'm saying this as a European in the US working in big tech.
My plan's maximum out-of-pocket in a year is ~$3k, which I can pay pre-tax thanks to an HSA. It is less than 2% of my total comp in the worst case (in 2020 I spent less than $300 on healthcare). In return I get coverage that is generally better than the free public healthcare back in Europe.
I think CoL is similar, but not as clear cut. One thing CoL discussions often miss is that many expenses are independent of the local CoL; for example, a Macbook Pro costs the same in every US city. If your salary adjusts exactly for CoL, you're actually doing better because of this.
What I'd like to know is how much NHS-level healthcare would cost me in the US. Given a monthly payment, I want 100% of everything covered all the time. No out-of-pocket, no out-of-network, everything with no exceptions. I'm happy with generics, a bit of a wait and a non-private room, but I want 0 unexpected bills.
Maybe companies like Kaiser do things like that?
If you're employed by a tech company, the out-of-pocket costs to you will be $0, and your standard of care will probably go up.
Yes, you will occasionally have a $10 or $20 co-pay, but on a tech salary costs are negligible unless you're on a ton of meds.
The problem with care in the US is how it's impacting the lower-middle class and the poor. The professional class generally have great care and don't pay much for it.
US healthcare sucks in general, but for the wealthy (and most of the people reading this site falls into this category) it is actually pretty good.
Health care cost, or the predictability of it, is not an issue to not move to the US IMHO.
Yeah, I mean no shit. It's like that all over the world.
What is really important is how healthcare is for the 99% rest of population, who needs help more than you who are wealthy. That's the problem.
What if your partner gets in that car crash, or your kid has an expensive birth defect? Expensive care is a matter of time, not a matter of luck. It really makes me uncomfortable as well that timing or location (or employment) seem to matter.
My wife was covered before we were married as well, being in a stable relationship was enough.
And yes agree I would like healthcare to be not tied to employment.
The main issue is if you have no job, when you live you are offered what is called I think Cobra that will keep you on a similar plan. I’ve heard from coworkers that left, sometimes not voluntarily, that it is not cheap at all. California also has decent options for private insurance.
Wealthy people in the US are over-tested, which leads to over-diagnosis and over-treatment, and these things cause harm.
(Not saying this feeling is necessarily wrong. Humans may have evolved a feeling that their community should take care of the sick and injured. Demanding more for this act, I think makes a lot of people feel tawdry and icky, in a similar way to paying for sex. Still this is a psychological, not an economic argument.)
Imagine, that you insisted on car insurance that covered every oil change and car wash starting at dollar zero. It'd probably be astronomically expensive.
Six months later, I get a letter from a collections agency saying I owed $700. Confused, I call Kaiser to find out that not only was the $200 not the entire amount, they also apparently had no way of quoting accurately ahead of time (even though they knew exactly what she was coming in for), and as the icing on the cake, they forgot to mail us the bill, which is how it ended up going to collections.
I had to then press them to get an actual bill with itemized numbers, but it doesn't matter because the numbers make no sense anyways: none of the numbers match up to the amounts we paid, the insurance quoted price or the collections amounts. When pressed they all basically shrugged and said they don't understand how any of it works, and that's just how it is.
And the reason for this whole ordeal? We changed health insurance plans and Kaiser said they couldn't renew a prescription because it was a 2-in-1 and insurance only covered the two drugs if they came in separate vials.
I went home. The doctor billed me. I paid. The X-ray tech billed me (a surprisingly small amount). I paid. The hospital never billed me. Then the collections calls started.
(I would expect the cost of the tech to be included in the hospital billing)
Maybe. All I know is that if I get sick or any other health emergency, I go to the hospital, they patch me up and I go home or stay there until I'm better. I literally have to do nothing else.
Even knowing what HSA or anything else is, is too much for 90% of the people, including me. Some of us view healthcare as something that should be there for everyone and with as little complications as possible, even if it is more expensive overall. When you're dealing with healthcare, you're most likely in a situation where you want to deal with as little as possible, so free public healthcare really help then.
But as a software engineer in the US it is not a worry. Like not at all.
There is a fundamental difference though. The startups actually use insurance so you have to deal with the insurance company, while Google/Amazon/others self insure and just use the network etc. So if you have Google insurance you call a specific Google number and they will help you. At least that have been my experience.
I still pay a portion of my paycheck for insurance too, and the amount varies depending on which insurance you want. I think the highest I have seen is still less than $500/month for whole family coverage.
"San Francisco’s only level 1 trauma center does not take private insurance, so if you are taken there, expect an absolutely massive bill despite how good your employer-provided health insurance is."
Sounds like this would be a worry for anyone in the city, software engineer or not.
Cool. What about the rest of you, the majority of people who are not in tech? I get the feeling that many Americans don't worry about services as long as they themselves are covered, while many go without.
~half of the humans don't even have internet access.
In general, the West does not work like the US when it comes to healthcare. And when you compare globally, the US still has the highest "Health Expenditure per capita", far higher than any other country really.
There is no way to spin it, healthcare is absolutely terrible in the US and gets worse every year.
One just needs look at the vaccine distribution situation to see this writ large.
But that is beside the issue in this thread. All software engineers can safely move to the US and not worry about healthcare.
Personally I would not move now as I think democracy is dying, but that is a different concern I guess.
Having lived in London, NYC and SF and broken bones in all locations I can say if I could choose to have a big issue I would probably do it in SF but they all gave good treatment and I am thankful and think the healthcare is good enough in all places that I would not even take that into account when choosing where to live of those places.
Maybe you can elaborate a bit more on this.
This is true for all of Google and Amazon (note that this is all Amazon workers including those that work in delivery centers).
On a country wide look we are super privileged, and of course if I could choose I would pay a bit more tax and cover everyone. But that is not an option. I am just saying if you are software engineer, you will most likely be fine.
Edit: Also these big companies don't really have insurance, but insure themselves and just use the network and negotiating capabilities from the insurance companies.
Does that usually apply for out-of-network treatment? Or long-term medication/care?
I’ve had several surgeries, one was over $100k just for the surgery (a broken arm that was healing wrong and had to be reset, all the tendons were turn off from the bone) and insurance paid without any questions.
A stated many times it is not my preferred system, but as a software engineer you and your family will be taken care of and healthcare is not a worry.
Spread out over time, in the places I lived outside of the US that was not really a concern. Same with most other "social care" situations. In the US, it all felt a lot more tenuous which was a source of constant low-key anxiety.
It’s certainly not perfect, and in my citizen hat I think it’s quite flawed, by as experienced by most software engineers it is not a huge concern.
It's a good place to be if you're in the upper middle class and above, but people working in the service industry have worse healthcare outcomes in the US than in Europe.
Also when I go to coveredca.org I find that the maximum cost for healthcare this year if I were unemployed and 64 years old would be 76k.
Sadly, each of these figures is substantially more than 2% of my total comp. Sure, my wages as a Bay Area FANG engineer are high compared to European counterparts at less prestigious employers, but the elevated costs of healthcare are still material to me and in fact it is by far the largest expense in my retirement budget (savings for retirement being by far the largest sink for my present income).
You make it sound like Bay Area FANG is more prestigious while in reality they just pay more. There is a difference between admiration and salaries.
For anyone that will listen I will tell them not to answer to the lure of prestige and 'benefits' of FAANGs but a lot won't. It's just too prestigious for them. Who doesn't want to work for Google?
Who wouldn't have wanted to work for IBM back in the day?
(a friend of mine worked for IBM precisely because it would look good on a CV even today and is now at Google ;))
Currently i am doing consulting, building up the organization to be more modern, creating videos, system architecture positions for customers, golang courses and development, some frontend stuff. Is this something similiar to these top paying companies?
And do all of these require the leetcode interviews you always read about? Sure would like to double my salary in germany haha
Although I know for a fact this is true, in the case of Stripe at least, I haven't been able to fit any role that fits myself (frontend/junior) so I guess they're looking only for more senior positions in this remote-covid post-era...
PS: If anyone at Stripe is hiring for more junior/middle frontend sofware engineer or fullstack node/ts/js/graphql/jamstack/serverless positions do let me know! mail on the profile
They should add, [but not that much more expensive].
It seems like in a lot of the tech hubs in the US you need to make ~120k+ for a middle-class family lifestyle whereas in almost all European cities with 50-70k you're probably good.
the point of the article mentioning the "but cost of living" rebuttal was specifically to point this out, they just didn't finish the sentence to drive the point home.
So the 300k guy is in that last segment of the 'tripolar' camp the author talks about, but that is a small one.