Also the big bonus/shares culture is not as prevalent in Europe.
Anyone here making more than that or knows anyone that does?
Also the big bonus/shares culture is not as prevalent in Europe.
Anyone here making more than that or knows anyone that does?
31 comments
I'm not disputing, I'm impressed and being debt free is an amazing luxury to have!
Freedom to do what you want does not increase linearly with income.
For example, one step is "Not affording any car" Now, affording any car allows way more freedom than not affording any car. A used, but good condition car can be a major improvement from a less reliable car, but it's not as major an improvement than car vs no car, but it comes with only a slight increase in income. A brand new car presents even less relative improvement from a good-condition used car, but requires a significant increase in income. A brand new exotic sports car is at the other end of the spectrum from "any car at all", an order of magnitude higher price for no practical value at all, but some increase in some kind of personal fulfillment or measure of success. Diminishing returns indeed. This applies to homes, goods, leisure activities.
So, unless you can get to the point of being "fuck you" rich, salary does not really matter.
It's not like 200k would grant me significantly more leisure time, probably quite the opposite, I'd be expected to work more and harder, for what? being able to buy the luxury car instead of just a normal car? Nah.
That's the main point of having a high salary for a lot of people.
It's about achieving freedom
Moreover, I have seen eastern Europe nearshore at these rates. I believe that outside of finance and middle management you'll have a hard time to breach 150kCHF.
Myself, I don't have much skills, basically no degree, French side of Switzerland in an easy going consultancy firm and earning 120k I think I could get 130 but not much more than this without freelancing...
As long as I can see myself sitting on the bench 2-3months without being fired, I don't see a point ot leave.
A cost and savings breakdown for Zurich: https://swissdevjobs.ch/blog/how-to-find-job-as-software-dev...
There's a lot of other companies that want their employees to work overtime, but thats probably true in a lot of countries - probably even in the US.
I wish there was some way of balancing the news coming out of countries - without resorting to censorship. It would remove a lot of prejudice,
I agree with this sentiment, I happen to work 996 on my own stuff mainly because I love it. I know a lot of people who have jobs and pour themselves into it because they love what they do as well.
I'd say its only an issue once you are being punished for not working 996.
"I personally think that 996 is a huge blessing," he said. "How do you achieve the success you want without paying extra effort and time?"
But its not really a "China" problem. There's a lot of startups and mature companies in the US that have similarly aggressive personalities at the helm who demand a lot from their employees.
My main point was the notion that people are assuming that its universal in China, when its not always true (whether its more prevalent than in the US or not - i dont know).
The only reason I'm even making this point was because how grandparent to my comment made a simple comment about how companies in Shenzen pay a lot, and the response to that was a blanket "but 996" when that might not be true.
It would behove us all to expect and believe that a country is usually more nuanced than the extremes that make it across a border.
Funniest pro-china comment I have ever read.
Would you mind reviewing the site guidelines at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html? You might also find these links helpful for getting the spirit of this site:
https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/hackernews.html
http://www.paulgraham.com/trolls.html
http://www.paulgraham.com/hackernews.html
Got promotion is not easy here, you need to be expertise in some technical areas, and pass promotion interview, there will be many questions from many experts during that interview, you won't be considered as qualified until every answer from you satisfies them, that is why many young engineers choose to leave in one or two years, there are not much chances for them, and even you are true expert, you will get frustrated.
but life is not that hard than you think, I have a Tencent's game engineer friend, he is a tennis fun, what I get from him is they have tennis activity every day, and he can go off work at about 6PM to play tennis 2-3 days every week.
and I heard some guys from google, they need the same long hours work and pretty stressful, just they don't need to stay at the same work place that long, they have the working place flexibility.
The problem for Americans (that I have talked to here) is that allegedly your IRS is absolutely ruthless at taxing you even if you decide to settle down here. I'm sure good accountants help, but some people say they are having even problems opening bank accounts. Banks are afraid or the IRS too somehow.
Otherwise it shouldn't be a big problem, I guess you do have to bring something to the table compared to the same local guy, but life's more relaxed here. If you like that, it's a good idea. If you are crazy ambitious money and career wise, nothing beats America.
No thanks. I don't like authoritarian dictatorships.
First, if I'm looking to make money that I want to put into global investment, it doesn't matter where I earn it. The absolute number is what matters. In reality, the number that matters is how much I can save, in absolute numbers, after taxes and cost of living have been deducted, but still the salary does not scale with cost of living. In that case, if I'm willing to maximize my investment, it's possible that I'm willing to move to the best paying country (i.e. the country where I can earn the maximum absolute number after taxes and cost-of-living has been deducted) for a while. "Global investment" may be quite broad and may include, for example, effective global altruism (i.e., asking the question "If I want to maximize my life's impact in improving others' lives, where should I work and where should I donate globally?").
Second, if we're talking about a job that is a seller's market, i.e., where I have has some very specialized skill, then the fact that the company is willing to pay double the amount if I happen to live in Silicon Valley but only half the amount if I happen to live in Romania, is pretentious. The reason is that the company is in need of my skill regardless of where I live and my acceptable business cost to them is a Silicon Valley salary. The difference from paying me less just because I happen to live in Romania is simply money that goes into their pockets. Why shouldn't it go into mine? In fact, if my skill is specialized enough, I should be able to negotiate for that, since their best next alternative may be a Silicon Valley hire.
(For clarity, the above are illustrative examples. I'm not an effective altruist, do not have such a specialized skill, and do not live in Romania.)
1-1,5k for high end apartment's rent (which is waaaay too much anyway), 400 for the car and 1k for other necessities.
If taxes were 33%, you'd be left with 66k.
66k - 12x(1.5k+400+1k+100) = 30k. That's still a lot more money left than if the person was in NYC without a lease/finance and with rent that's twice as much.
Most online comparisons are weird for two reasons: 1) they include the cost of car ownership, which is common in neither place, and 2) most rental apartments in London are furnished and in NY are not. I’ve seen comparisons for the cost of a furnished rental, but in NY you’d pay a huge premium for that. It’s also, of course, just plain hard to choose equivalent neighborhoods.
Reportedly, the rental market in London is even tighter than in NY. My friends say you can get a 1-BR or 2-BR for about 10% more than in NY (after accounting for exchange rates, and with housing stock / in a location that they consider equivalent to what they’d left behind), but it will be smaller simply because historically London buildings have been constructed with smaller rooms than NY ones.
Food in London seems to be more expensive than in NY. Medical care, of course, is less expensive. Transit is close enough to be a wash. Etc.
Senior full time employees usually earn 120-130k CHF. Taxes are lower than anywhere in the US on top of this.
Ping me at iwan@gulenko.ch if you want to work in Switzerland and hold a EU-28 citizenship. (Otherwise work visa is impossible.) I run a local recruitment consultancy.
This is further strengthened by our educational system which promises "sexy jobs" in the tech sector that don't require a technical background.
We also don't have places like hacker news which has a friendly healthy unionizing effect.
I believe this is the primary cause we're not seeing such high salaries in Europe. I think it's also the reason we're not seeing as much innovation happening in Europe.
I agree that if you were a specialist consultant and found an exploitable niche, you could pull USD$200k equivalent here.
OTOH this salary doesn’t go far in terms of lifestyle in Sydney. It is expensive, it’s probably enough to live off but I’m not sticking half my salary into the stock market like you American developer like to do.
200k US in Sydney means either get great at kernel level code or multithreaded c++ and help the poker players make more money from the stock market. Or forget technical and become a senior scrum master or project manager for CBA. I think rural doctors and phsyciatrists rake it in, and geologists during the next mining boom. Install air conditioning is another way or any kind of trade where the labour component can be marked up extortionately and where some “tax planning” can be utilised.
In the last 5 years SV companies have started to open offices in Montreal (google has been here for a while, fb came semi recently), and that sweet sweet USD + venture funding gives them a real edge in what they can pay people. FTEs with a US base can make 150k+ which is quite a jump above Canada based firms. From what I've seen those tend to be around 100k for someone with ~10 years experience, and anything higher is considered quite good.
Senior engineers here that work remotely for US companies can earn upward of 250k USD, but I know very few that do - and you need to enjoy remote work. Other option would be working at a bank or insurance company.
https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-...
Btw a large reason why the US spends more on healthcare than other countries is research & development.
where you can keep your employer coverage for 18 months while you find a new job.
https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-...
Someone earning $200k doesn't really need to worry about that kind of thing.
I've personally never seen it. Not saying it doesn't exist, but that'd be extremely rare.
I’m pulling in 150k (AUD) +super, 10+ years in Java, web, streaming data, functional programming, Scala some Haskell, cloud, devops etc.
Looking at the common job listings I’m seeing 120-140k for full-time perm. I work for a niche specialised consultancy that bills me out at $1500-2000 per day doing Kafka work for some tier one companies but I’ve not seen any publicly advertised jobs in that salary range advertised. Saying that some of the tier ones in Australia I’d also not want to work for as a perm after spending a few months at them, some are very archaic/disfunctional, so far it’s been 50/50 on good vs bad contracts.
I’m on 165+ super and I applied directly. If i wasn’t desperate to leave a shite job I’d probably got more.
I think the trick is to find the people who are making good money and aren’t tight. I’ve worked for company’s flush with cash but want to pay market rates. This is stupid in my opinion and is the “European” culture but I think slowly some realise there is effectively a pool auction on good developer and are willing to bid higher. Had an email about SIG 160k plus bonuses and I imagine they’d go higher. I would work for that kind of company though.
I think the trick is to filter out companies that don’t want to pay what you want, and wait longer. There is no correlation between pay and how stressful or enjoyable the job is so hold out for the bucks, but of course also filter for lifestyle considerations and career progression.
If you are in Sydney looking for a job do us all a favour and add 50k to the highest you’ve seen and make that your baseline. Don’t tell them what you earn.
To compensate for the higher rejection rate, increase your application rate.
I’m at the upper end of IC pay scale and I’m on 200-220k NZD, depending on how bonus shakes out.
This is roughly 130-140k USD.
Also contractors are paid by the hour, so rarely sick (usually an amputation is required to not attend), always do overtime and hardly ever take holidays unless forced...
Yes, you might get 140K CHF, but be ready to pay 20 CHF for a meal that would be around 8 euro in neighbouring countries.
My employer pays part of health insurance, retirement funds, unemployment insurance and you don't pay VAT.
Realistic goal for 1-3 years.
I think that figure sounds a bit optimistic. Being an entry level developer at a US-based Fortune-500 corporate with offices in India, I make around 17k USD, while I heard a similar role in the US office gets paid around 85k USD.