[mbork_pl]

FWIW, I get on the order of $40/hour as a senior with almost 10 years experience, and it allows me not to worry too much about spending (with a wife earning about a third of my salary and two kids). I think I could easily earn at least 50% more if I wanted to work for some rich but soul-crushing corp, but for obvious reasons I don't do that. I guess US cost of living is just insane. (I live in central Europe.)

[danans]

> FWIW, I get on the order of $40/hour as a senior with almost 10 years experience, and it allows me not to worry too much about spending (with a wife earning about a third of my salary and two kids)

How much do you pay annually out of pocket for health insurance premiums and other healthcare expenses?

In the US that expense is very high, and is a major source of worry for working families.

[mbork_pl]

> How much do you pay annually out of pocket for health insurance premiums and other healthcare expenses?

Very rough estimation: $9000. I'm not sure how much my wife pays - this is paid by the employer and she usually doesn't bother to check. (This is mainly insurance, we seldom use public healthcare.)

[yonaguska]

My wife is a full-time-mother and is currently uninsured because we'd be looking at doubling the cost of insurance, and paying close to 25k a year for insurance. It is a completely broken system at this point.

[ponector]

I'm similar salary band, I pay 9% of my annual salary for mandatory medical insurance, but it's usually hard to get an appointment in reasonable time so you are going to pay extra 50-100€ for a visit to the same doctor, but in private clinic. And also vaccination and dental is not covered by that 9% payment.

[alephnerd]

For most white collar jobs like tech here in the US, your out-of-pocket as percentage is income doesn't play a role in how we decide salary bands.

For a family of four, the average health plan is around $10k out of pocket from the employee along with around $20k in employer costs [0]. Yet the median American SWE salary is $187k [1] versus $66k in Poland [2], $93k in Canada [3], and $111k in the UK [4]. Either way an American ends up earning significantly more after healthcare costs and insurance.

The issue is salary expectations at the lower performance band haven't kept up with what is expected at that salary band.

> In the US that expense is very high, and is a major source of worry for working families

When benchmarked against similar peer cities in Canada [5] or the UK [6], CoL is roughly at par yet salaries are significantly higher in the US, especially when comparing peer tech markets like SF [7] versus London [8].

This is the crux of the issue - demanding 100% WFH well past the end of COVID made it hard for us to justify domestic hiring when

1. Async was successfully proven to not impact business operation

2. A reverse brain drain of all nationalities in the US during COVID meant it was easier for employers to work with them to open a hub office or GCC abroad

3. A new grad is demanding salaries that simply don't make the economics of training and hiring new grads work. At $70k-$110k it does, but not beyond that.

4. Companies have now adopted the Netflix model - by cutting low performers, we can actually give higher pay bands to employees who actually have a business impact, as can be reflected in the rise in 75th percentile tech salaries.

[0] - https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/how-muc...

[1] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/united-...

[2] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/canada

[3] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/canada

[4] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/united-...

[5] - https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_countries_resu...

[6] - https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_countries_resu...

[7] - https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...