I found this fascinatingly counterintuitive.<p>I would normally expect that a broader market leads to lower prices for commodity goods. If I can only buy candy from the vendor at the movie theater, I expect to pay a higher price than if I can buy it from all the stores in the region, which I expect to be higher again than if I can import it from anywhere in the world. The reverse is true for developers? The companies with global reach instead pay the <i>most</i>?<p>And then it occurred to me that the efforts of good developers scale.<p>If I imagine a widget that makes a company 10% more efficient, a small lemonade stand might be willing to pay $20 for it, while a large company might find a price in tens of millions to be a bargain. Developers are more like this. Not <i>only</i> developers, mind you, but automation scales to the size of the problem almost for free!<p>If you give a good developer a hard problem and scale it across global markets, the return for that developer being <i>good</i> absolutely dwarfs any reasonable salary on a human scale. Therefore, it makes sense that for companies solving a certain class of problems, in markets above a certain size, that <i>any</i> reasonable salary is a bargain if it improves the quality of the developers the company can attract. I suppose the idea that software scales is the intuition upon which this site was founded in the first place.<p>I appreciate that the analysis in the article is good and much more complex than this. I just enjoyed the unexpected observation, and it left me feeling confident about my place in the world. There are never enough talented people to solve all the problems that need them, and if there ever is so much talent that I have trouble finding a job -- well, that's a world I'd like to live in anyway.
Humanities supposedly most brilliant minds work on the next e-billing system, AI on how to sell more crap that nobody really needs, keep a glorified message board afloat or enable the cancer that is advertisment.<p>They should work on how to address the climate catastrophe, the waste/recycling problem, food security, sustainable agriculture and land/water use, medical devices/health care or how to fix the broken participatory political system that has led us to the multifaceted crisis we all find us in.<p>None of the companies named in that article solve any of the existential threads we as species at large or society in the small face and yet they pay the highest salaries and we are supposed to chase those.<p>This adds to the dark and heavy ball of despair in my stomach more than anything.
Have we discussed the requirements for those fancy "Tier 3" jobs? I suspect it's overall <i>a lot</i> harder than most regular dev jobs.<p>Many developers are medium sized fish in small ponds, where they can get away with moderate effectiveness, bad programming habits and little study, or, if they are good, they easily stand out and enjoy the honor of getting the harder tickets assigned, yet may not ever be really challenged.<p>These top paying companies all seem to do quite complicated stuff, serve a lot of users reliably and implement major features quickly. FAANG codebases seem large and involve a lot of (custom) tooling that devs need to grok and processes they need to understand. Just the author's passing advice to study up for those interviews means ... many hours of study in that "100%-concentration-mode" that many people are not willing or able to put in even for 1 hour.<p>No doubt there are some cosy pockets in FAANG but, ultimately, building AWS or Azure from nothing can simply only be done by a certain type of person who is willing to bring a certain amount of effort. And those people the market rightfully grants the appropriate salaries. Right?
Those high salaries remind me of the stories of heavy smokers who didn't die of cancer or COPD. I think it's very unlikely to get those high salaries in Europe. Comparing them to salaries in Silicon Valley without context isn't really smart. I have always tried to see bay area salaries as as risk compensation.<p>E g. In Vienna/Austria a 2-3 bedroom apartment here is about 1-2k while in the bay area it's between 5-10k. If I lose my job I still have a social net that will soften my fall, while in SV you're on your own and can get evicted from one day to the other. We have a single payer healthcare system while in the US certain health issues can, despite being insured, lead to financial ruin.<p>That being said my salary was until now always a 5-figure salary. In my upcoming job I will for the first time in my career path get a 6-figure salary which excluding bonuses is 70% higher and including bonuses can be up to 89% higher than currently. It took me quite some while to get there, and I can assure others that jobs paying those amounts don't grow on trees. It requires both talent and charisma, and honestly also luck, to land such a job. Constantly switching jobs and chasing slightly higher salaries definitely isn't the way to go.
Every time I see this article reposted, I feel a pang of sadness. It's this chasing of the SF salary outside of the US that is supposed to be the holy grail of every engineer in rich EU countries.<p>Well, if you get hired by FAANG in Germany, you don't get the SF salary. My experience is that companies that do offer extreme salaries do not do so out of competition with FAANG (since FAANG does not compete with itself globally, i.e. FAANG companies tell you something like "if you want SF salary, come and work in SF," which tends to be difficult due to the exploitative nature of US immigration system).<p>Rather, there's some kind of a catch, like "we need you to know this highly specialized thing that globally only a handful of people have experience with" (I'm looking at you, AI solvers), or they provide conditions very few people can tolerate.
Within FAANG, there is again tri-modal distribution. There are people who are hanging in there in IC roles for 15 years and then they are new comers straight out of school with PhD in deep learning and multiple competing offers. Both groups make approximately same money. Then there is upper management layer who have gotten promoted well beyond their competence by jumping internally and externally and they make 5X of everyone else.<p>Truth to be told, vast majority of FAANG population doesn’t make those fairytale money.
IMHO the software engineering community has Stockholm’s syndrome around compensation (cue the doofy but not inaccurate jock/nerd dichotomy stereotype of not even 10 or 20 years ago).<p>This shit is hard. Even relatively intermediate SWE jobs demand a level of fluid intelligence and capacity for detail within 1-2 sigma of the hardest jobs on Earth, and the more elite software jobs are among the most demanding jobs on Earth.<p>This trend is accelerating as software “eats the world” or whatever we’re calling it now.<p>Why shouldn’t we make a fuckload of money?
Slightly different reasons, but I'm seeing something similar in New Zealand.<p>Domestic companies benchmark against each other, and pay lower salaries. Meanwhile Australian companies have mostly come to terms with remote work after the lockdowns, which makes NZ as a valuable recruitment market. (If an engineer can be productive a 30m drive from their Sydney office, they can probably be productive a 3h flight too, especially if they're in a country with very similar laws, culture, educational system, etc.)<p>And since they benchmark against each other and because NZ is so small, close, and similar, Australian firms mostly don't adjust their salary bands from (higher) Australian norms, so they pay 25-30% more for comparable roles than a domestic NZ company would. Meanwhile a few American companies are also starting to recruit, and again, most don't adjust their salary bands, and so generally pay 50-80% more than domestic NZ companies.<p>It's an odd situation; I recently jumped from a NZ company to an Australian one (mostly for non-monetary reasons), but got a more than 25% raise, and when I resigned, my manager was quite open that yes, management is aware that Australian companies are paying more than local companies but as long as other NZ companies aren't competing, they don't feel like they can afford to either.<p>I'll be fascinated to see how this works out.
My proposition is that in Europe, if you're making tier 3 salaries, your life is actually shit. You're working for American companies with shitty work life balances, "we're making the world a better place" hellholes that layoff hundreds of people whenever there's a chance.<p>Working full remote for a nice European company with proper work life balance and tier 2 salaries is way better.
Ok let me make a probably very unpopular comment here: their 3rd point lists "companies benchmarking against all regional or global companies" but in fact what they mean is "companies benchmarking against the highest paying US tech hubs".<p>I assure you "all regional or global companies" also include Vietnamese companies paying junior devs $300 per month - what is the advantage of the European engineer that is worth paying >=10x as much?<p>If you're comparing globally you can't cherry pick only the <i>best</i> paying regions because these are not your only competition. And there are a hell of a lot more Bangladeshi, Vietnamese & Nigerians than there are people living in SFBA or Seattle, and if you're truly competing globally you're also competing with them.
Without taxes the per country salaries are only meaningful to employers? The 55000 would be 4580 per month or 38400 and 3200 after tax in NL.<p>Depending on the company you can easily spend 8 hours on extra nonsense during free hours: unpaid breaks, long commutes, messages, phone calls.<p>IMHO it's a crap deal compared to other jobs.
My issue with this article is that it misrepresents a bit the people in the #3 tier, particularly those of pre-IPO companies.<p>Sure, there are people who join such a company and make 1M when they IPO. But that is a one time event, and the engineering equivalent of winning the lottery. Once you prorate that by the number of years worked, the risk of failing, etc. it doesn't look as attractive.
I am curious to see how this plays out with the coming recession (hiring freezes instituted already). I suspect that #3 segment will prove to be ephemeral - a result of fed's QE unlimited regime.
Unfortunately this misses the difference in taxation vs. the US. You pay almost nothing for healthcare at any tech company and pay much lower taxes (both income and sales tax). So European offers are still much less competitive than the US.
I understood category 1, but that's where the author lost me.<p>1: "Companies only benchmarking against their local competition". So indeed a local dev shop will compete against other local dev shops. Or a supermarket against other supermarkets nearby, this makes sense.<p>2: "Companies benchmarking against <i>all</i> local companies, even if they are not direct competitors". I understand the meaning of these words, but the examples don't compete with all local companies. Disney Streaming is globally competing against other streaming services, not competing against a local supermarket.<p>And then category 3 is somehow competing regionally or globally (against <i>all</i> companies) instead of locally, but again I don't see the example GitLab doing anything different from Disney Streaming: both compete globally in their tech niche.<p>If an architect job next door pays double, what do category 2|3 companies care?
I was wondering what makes companies be willing to pay Bay Area packages for engineers in only a few tech hubs. Supply and Demand? But then at least FANNGs have a hard time finding talents in European countries too, at least in Germany. And the number of engineers they hire is small compared to that in the US, so the companies could afford larger packages, right?<p>If it were not supply and demand, then it's puzzling to me why companies didn't want to pay packages comparable to the Bay Area in cities like London or Berlin. Is it because these cities do not have teams that own sufficiently mission-critical products or systems? If that's the reason, then why can't the cities own more products?
A friend of mine went through all those tiers(salary-wise at least) within a year and then got laid off several months in.<p>I would've stopped at tier 2, but he's a risk taker, which both enables him to do amazing things and occasionally gets him into serious trouble.<p>In any case this distribution is definitely there and interestingly if you, like me, hail from a popular outsourcing destination, your employer might charge the client high-tier rates and pay you a low-tier wage, so it's advisable to shoot for at least the mid-tier if you can manage to get through the recruitment process.
I have serious issues moving to the Netherlands due to this.<p>Based on this article, I’d be at the top end of the #2 range.<p>I easily get offers from the #1 range, but they’re so low it’s pointless. #2 seems to rather hire candidates that are already local.<p>#3 requires me to do a song and dance that might ultimately be worth it, but sickens me. Maybe I’ll eventually find a #3 that doesn’t require the silly hoop jumps.
Average salary in Italy is 35k gross (large consulting companies, local companies)<p>I’ve seen good companies pay senior engineers up to 60-70k (Gucci, Satispay, BendingSpoon, …)<p>I think it perfectly matches the article!
It’s unclear where these companies are in The Netherlands. Probably restricted to the Randstad? Haven’t really seen the mentioned salaries ranges outside Amsterdam