Slightly OT but maybe helpful: Don't focus too much on the salary. It's just one tiny part of the whole package.
Your dev job pays your rent, food and savings. I assume that most dev jobs do this quite well.
Beyond this, the main goal of a job is to increase your future market value, your professional network and to have fun. So. basically it's about how much you are worth in your next job and that you enjoy your time.
A high salary doesn't help you if you do stuff which doesn't matter in a few years.
A high salary doesn't help you if you work at an unknown company which goes bankrupt in a few months and you cannot show a finished product or that you can stay at one job longer than 12 months.
A high salary doesn't help you if your coworkers are toxic or not the smartest guys or their English is on such a basic level that the communication and not the coding is your daily challenge.
A high salary doesn't help you if your CTO is a passive-aggressive, clueless guy who doesn't talk.
A high salary doesn't help you if you just work on some side projects nobody cares about, in a programming language you weren't hired for.
A high salary doesn't help you if you are not happy.
Happiness is paramount. And especially early on having opportunities for growth matters.
But after a couple years in the industry? A high salary goes really far. Note that "high" means different things to different people, but choosing a 300k/year job over a 200k/year job is often a good idea, even if it's to do stupid shit and not change the world. That doesn't mean you should choose misery over happiness for money, but it's rare that the choice is that stark.
Most tradeoffs are ill-defined and uncertain when you're choosing the job. Salary, on the other hand, is directly comparable, and it translates to something very real and concrete.
One of the primary reasons people are interested in high salaries is to stop paying rent and become homeowners, and to pay for things like travel, childcare, education, hobbies, etc.
If the only expenses you need to fund are rent and food, what are you doing in an industry this competitive and stressful?
In case you are interested, Urban Linker (french recruitment agency) publish somewhat detailed salary stats (in French), last one is form 2016 [0]. This only covers Parisian region, but it's really interesting to see how technology affect the salary.
This actually lines up with what I, a mid level .Net dev was expecting. When I first arrived in Paris I thought the compensation was low, but I was educated that that was the standard. It's improved a bit but not a whole lot.
Paris is still a great city to live in. We even managed to live there with child.
Can't open the doc because it's blocked by my employer. But generally the developer wage is very low in Europe compared with US(Bay area).
AFAIK London have the highest salary among european countries, usually handed out by Investment banks and other financial service companies.
In London a tier 1 bank's VP developer will typically get £90k-110k base, plus 15-40% bonus. If you work for a hedge fund, the base is typically 10% higher with 10-20% more bonus. To get a VP job in a bank you usually need 7 year+ experience after graduation.
In contrast the big tech companies in london pays about 10-20% less base salary than banks, far less cash bonus. But depends on which one you are working for, the RSU could be either similar to the states side or a bit less. The signon bonus is usually quite low as well.
Startups in London have very low pay, typically 50-60% of your market value in a bank.
So if you are a top developer with 15 years+ experience, works for a top hedge fund in London, you'll most likely take home < £200k, which is like $260, that's only about average wage for a google senior developer.
In the UK in the South you can similar salaries to London without the expense of London. I am a Senior .NET dev can I could get £50-70k. The expense compared to London is about 75%.
Up North in the UK get £40K for a senior dev is pretty hard work but everything costs half as much so it is totally relative to where you are living in the UK. The South is crowded with no infrastructure to handle it (driving in a nightmare).
Gibraltar is probably the best place to go if you can get a Job in Europe. Spain is stupidly cheap. Wages are less than say London, I lived like an absolute king on £27,000.
Switzerland, Zurich is the only place in Europe where you can earn Bay Area salaries; I am a software engineer/tech recruiter hiring on behalf of a handful of Swiss companies. If you look for a job (https://coderfit.com/openedjobs/), or know some engineeres who are, please reach out to me. You find my email in my HN-handle.
(From an employee's perspective, Switzerland can be counted "as an EU country" since you can work here with an EU passport.)
I would disagree. Zurich does indeed pay very well, but it's very hard to get a job there, and salaries are only competitive with the Bay Area at lower levels. That means it's possible to find a job that pays 100k, but 300k compensation packages are far, far more rare than in the Bay Area. I don't know any company apart from Google that pays that much for senior engineers.
I tried to get a job there about 8 months ago, and I could only convince 3 startups to interview me (after I failed to get a job at Google), and I didn't get an offer at any of them. I failed one for "cultural fit", one because I didn't do well enough in the technical phone screen, and with the third one I decided to stop the process because I had another offer and was tired of interviewing. It's fine to not accept people for cultural reasons, but if there are 4 startups that are hiring in Zurich, that kinda sucks for candidates.
Also, recently Google started paying new engineers in Zurich lower than in the US (same salary, far fewer RSUs). I guess the lack of competition in the European market is a good enough reason.
Do you know any companies in Zurich hiring developers that pay Bay Area salaries (100k junior, 200k senior) and hire >100 engineers a year?
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but while salaries are high and taxes are relatively low, general living costs are quite high. Particularly if you have kids and so want a bigger house and good schools.
I've looked at this and the benefits we get from staying in Germany outweigh the extra income earned.
I think Norway, Oslo absolutely can match or even pay slightly better than Zurich. An annual salary over 100K Euro for a senior software developer is not uncommon.
Data is impossible to read - seems like some people are converting their salary to USD, some others leave it in their home currency and a rare few provide the accurate currency. Interesting initiative though - would love to see this in a better format :)
It always bug me, when developers, people whose main task is passing different data to and fro, are unable to provide information in format that is unequivocal for recipient. Do you really, for example, in systems you create, store or send money data without currency information?
Options are not income and are worthless unless it’s a public company or there is a liquidity event. Considering options as a part of income is the same as if your company paid you in lottery tickets.
About stock options, I don't want to make a chart of the best companies (who offer more, etc..), I am interested in becoming more aware of the salary situation in Europe, to understand how this profession is seen.
This is sad. I mean, I think that numbers that we see in Silicon Valley are ridiculous, but it seems to me that here in Europe this profession it is not recognized for the value it delivers.
Reading input from my own country it seems I'm grossly underpaid right now.... Makes me feel extremely bad. Perhaps it's time for negotiations with my boss.
If its a couple percent it might be doable, but typically if you're underpaid the best option is move companies - even though you might like where you are right now, you can negotiate less hours for the same pay. Staying won't give you many options, and often, you can even jump right back into your company higher up the chain.
After seeing this i'm like i want to start crying. i'm actually a software engineer working on cryptocurrencies devops and system engineering back-end. My tasks wait for that :
1 - coordinate withe clients
2 - write code
3 - deployement
4 - testing (golang)
5 - writing specs
6 - putting down architecture
in tunisia what i get per month around 700€. a ford fiesta in here cost about 13k€.
Ask I suspected based on the salary of a VERY senior developer friend in Barcelona, the pay in Spain is terrible. I make 3x+ what he does and 5x+ most of the salaries in the spreadsheet. Too bad because my wife is Spanish and I'd like to move there some day but I'll have to be retired for it to make sense.
I don't think you're going to get a great response as that's a lot of identifying information you're asking for. Country, Area (optional), years of experience, gross salary and extras is what you really want.
In Finland, experienced developer with relevant skills can make 60-75 k€ year brutto, translating to 40-50 k€ netto. (Though lower salaries are not uncommon.)
Taxes are high and progressive, but you'll things like 4 weeks vacation, 3 weeks fully paid parental leave for dads (and partially paid for much longer), free education (incl. universities), free daycare, free healthcare, social security, etc. This is not without problems, of course, but has huge impact on stable, equal society and general safety.
(Free = some nominal fees may apply, great majority of costs paid by society.)
This survey should have a field for "total package" or "equity offered" given that has larger implications than just Salary. Free food and other perks also play a large role here.
For those complaining about formatting issues ( me as well ). I think someone should fork and re-format the sheet later today and release it back to this thread.
I will polish results for having an overview, probably will publish it here. I made the mistake to not specify currency from the beginning, would you mind send me the correction to make? fvbenigni@gmail.com
Salaries in Serbia can go up to 40-45000 on an annual basis ( taxes can be pretty insignificant). Even though that is not a lot of money, you can live lavish lifestyle of that money, since everything is super cheap ( monthy rent in the city center, 2 room apartment can be found for 300€)
Unless we jetted out into the atlantic the day after brexit we are definately still geographically and culturally European not to mention in the eu for two years and chances are we will negotiate some deal even after that.
The salary in EU for developers (medium and above) is already lower than developers in big cities (e.g. Beijing, Shenzhen) in China. I guess in the coming years people will try to find job in China for top pay if US is not an option.
Oh dang, missed the "annual" part of that question. I have no idea, would have to calculate holiday wages and stuff... And OP has no contact info in his profile to let him know which entry to update.
On the currency debate: I'd always assume local currency.
I doubt any of these are in USD, unless stated; the default, in this case, is EUR - or indicate.
I've been considering Iceland. I'd be interested in hearing about where you work and how you like Iceland. It's hard to find information about software developers in Iceland.
thinbeige|8 years ago
Your dev job pays your rent, food and savings. I assume that most dev jobs do this quite well.
Beyond this, the main goal of a job is to increase your future market value, your professional network and to have fun. So. basically it's about how much you are worth in your next job and that you enjoy your time.
A high salary doesn't help you if you do stuff which doesn't matter in a few years.
A high salary doesn't help you if you work at an unknown company which goes bankrupt in a few months and you cannot show a finished product or that you can stay at one job longer than 12 months.
A high salary doesn't help you if your coworkers are toxic or not the smartest guys or their English is on such a basic level that the communication and not the coding is your daily challenge.
A high salary doesn't help you if your CTO is a passive-aggressive, clueless guy who doesn't talk.
A high salary doesn't help you if you just work on some side projects nobody cares about, in a programming language you weren't hired for.
A high salary doesn't help you if you are not happy.
scarmig|8 years ago
But after a couple years in the industry? A high salary goes really far. Note that "high" means different things to different people, but choosing a 300k/year job over a 200k/year job is often a good idea, even if it's to do stupid shit and not change the world. That doesn't mean you should choose misery over happiness for money, but it's rare that the choice is that stark.
Most tradeoffs are ill-defined and uncertain when you're choosing the job. Salary, on the other hand, is directly comparable, and it translates to something very real and concrete.
closeparen|8 years ago
If the only expenses you need to fund are rent and food, what are you doing in an industry this competitive and stressful?
Fradow|8 years ago
[0] https://www.urbanlinker.com/le-webzine/etude-des-salaires-de...
yardie|8 years ago
Paris is still a great city to live in. We even managed to live there with child.
shanwang|8 years ago
AFAIK London have the highest salary among european countries, usually handed out by Investment banks and other financial service companies.
In London a tier 1 bank's VP developer will typically get £90k-110k base, plus 15-40% bonus. If you work for a hedge fund, the base is typically 10% higher with 10-20% more bonus. To get a VP job in a bank you usually need 7 year+ experience after graduation.
In contrast the big tech companies in london pays about 10-20% less base salary than banks, far less cash bonus. But depends on which one you are working for, the RSU could be either similar to the states side or a bit less. The signon bonus is usually quite low as well.
Startups in London have very low pay, typically 50-60% of your market value in a bank.
So if you are a top developer with 15 years+ experience, works for a top hedge fund in London, you'll most likely take home < £200k, which is like $260, that's only about average wage for a google senior developer.
pmlnr|8 years ago
Because it usually comes with built-in social security and nationwide health insurance.
> AFAIK London have the highest salary among european countries,
Nope. Scandinavia.
lucas_maximus83|8 years ago
Up North in the UK get £40K for a senior dev is pretty hard work but everything costs half as much so it is totally relative to where you are living in the UK. The South is crowded with no infrastructure to handle it (driving in a nightmare).
Gibraltar is probably the best place to go if you can get a Job in Europe. Spain is stupidly cheap. Wages are less than say London, I lived like an absolute king on £27,000.
walshemj|8 years ago
iwangulenko|8 years ago
(From an employee's perspective, Switzerland can be counted "as an EU country" since you can work here with an EU passport.)
ThePawnBreak|8 years ago
I tried to get a job there about 8 months ago, and I could only convince 3 startups to interview me (after I failed to get a job at Google), and I didn't get an offer at any of them. I failed one for "cultural fit", one because I didn't do well enough in the technical phone screen, and with the third one I decided to stop the process because I had another offer and was tired of interviewing. It's fine to not accept people for cultural reasons, but if there are 4 startups that are hiring in Zurich, that kinda sucks for candidates.
Also, recently Google started paying new engineers in Zurich lower than in the US (same salary, far fewer RSUs). I guess the lack of competition in the European market is a good enough reason.
Do you know any companies in Zurich hiring developers that pay Bay Area salaries (100k junior, 200k senior) and hire >100 engineers a year?
eoin_murphy|8 years ago
I've looked at this and the benefits we get from staying in Germany outweigh the extra income earned.
olavgg|8 years ago
tiagopc|8 years ago
jpmonette|8 years ago
ciaoben|8 years ago
At the end I plan to polish the results and publish them
kornakiewicz|8 years ago
ciaoben|8 years ago
Palmik|8 years ago
briandear|8 years ago
ciaoben|8 years ago
About stock options, I don't want to make a chart of the best companies (who offer more, etc..), I am interested in becoming more aware of the salary situation in Europe, to understand how this profession is seen.
m00dy|8 years ago
kowdermeister|8 years ago
LusoTycoon|8 years ago
ciaoben|8 years ago
pbosko|8 years ago
pmlnr|8 years ago
lowry|8 years ago
ciaoben|8 years ago
kowdermeister|8 years ago
dmitriid|8 years ago
Was this survey created by an American? ;)
ciaoben|8 years ago
__warlord__|8 years ago
flipp3r|8 years ago
RCa_|8 years ago
ciaoben|8 years ago
kevindqc|8 years ago
Nice..
RugnirViking|8 years ago
otherwise, interesting survey. I hope i'm not too much of an outlier here to mess with the result for uk.
_hao|8 years ago
RugnirViking|8 years ago
internity|8 years ago
johnflan|8 years ago
Mc_Big_G|8 years ago
eoin_murphy|8 years ago
ciaoben|8 years ago
Yaggo|8 years ago
Taxes are high and progressive, but you'll things like 4 weeks vacation, 3 weeks fully paid parental leave for dads (and partially paid for much longer), free education (incl. universities), free daycare, free healthcare, social security, etc. This is not without problems, of course, but has huge impact on stable, equal society and general safety.
(Free = some nominal fees may apply, great majority of costs paid by society.)
fmsf|8 years ago
drinchev|8 years ago
For those complaining about formatting issues ( me as well ). I think someone should fork and re-format the sheet later today and release it back to this thread.
praeconium|8 years ago
https://affliction123.github.io/euDevDash/
please let me know how to improve and what info is interesting for You to present/focus.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15109316
staticelf|8 years ago
ciaoben|8 years ago
gfiorav|8 years ago
staticelf|8 years ago
predskolsko|8 years ago
thriftwy|8 years ago
RugnirViking|8 years ago
Pray tell, why?
Unless we jetted out into the atlantic the day after brexit we are definately still geographically and culturally European not to mention in the eu for two years and chances are we will negotiate some deal even after that.
bhaak|8 years ago
Seems to be only targetting EU countries, not European countries.
simonkamronn|8 years ago
kyriakos|8 years ago
izacus|8 years ago
ciaoben|8 years ago
zyzyis|8 years ago
lucb1e|8 years ago
MrBuddyCasino|8 years ago
pmlnr|8 years ago
ciaoben|8 years ago
sashavingardt|8 years ago
sgt|8 years ago
Maultasche|8 years ago
dhxt|8 years ago
unknown|8 years ago
[deleted]
eggie5|8 years ago
user5994461|8 years ago
chesterc|8 years ago
kilotaras|8 years ago
misiti3780|8 years ago
unknown|8 years ago
[deleted]
gokhan|8 years ago
gressquel|8 years ago
iofiiiiiiiii|8 years ago