In India Booking is known as the company you want to call when you want to visit Europe. The questions they ask in the phone screen are relatively simple by Indian standards so it's straightforward to get tickets and travel to Amsterdam. They don't seriously consider working there because perl isn't the only thing unappealing about Booking. The pay is so mediocre that Indian devs would prefer to stay in India rather than move.
Caveat here is that I'm not referring to all Indian devs, only the few I'm acquainted with.
I'm courios about the salary offered. In Amsterdam Booking is known to be paying above the market average. Their salary range is also listed stack overflow careers page. Are salaries really that hight in India?
In India there are two kinds of software jobs - the ones at outsourcing firms like Infosys and the ones at firms that make their own products like Google, Flipkart, Amazon, Uber, Ola etc. The former pay the minimum possible, of the order of $15-20k a year. A mid-level engineer at the latter can expect to earn $50-60k easily, plus stocks. Booking offers something similar, at a significantly higher cost-of-living.
If these engineers want to move abroad, they'd usually prefer the US because salaries there are significantly higher.
Depends on where you are and your skill set. If you are a good engineer (10+ exp.) in Bangalore/Hyderabad and land in a product dev company, you might be looking at INR 40 lakhs (~60k USD). By any standard this is a lot and can lead a fairly luxurious life. Few of my friends are getting paid this kind of salary.
But even if you have good skill set, but don't want too much pressure and would like a fairly stable at some Indian consulting company, you might only be drawing around 30k USD. But you get to earn if you are sent for an onsite assignment.
There are quite conflicting reports on pay there, and from what I can tell from their stackoverflow job postings, they're above average. What sort of pay would you expect in India for a job like this?
As I explain here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15301468), the Indian devs that Booking targets earn comparable salaries at a lower cost of living. If these devs are willing to move abroad, they'd move to the US.
Market rate in Amsterdam is pretty low compared to the US salaries you see all over the internet.
According to Glassdoor for example the average salaries for Software Engineer are:
- US: $103k
- NL: €45k
For somebody who's moving halfway across the world anyway, I can imagine they'd prefer to look for a job in the US.
Edit: The comments below are all correct. I didn't mention any of the secondary benefits since the internet hardly ever mentions those. To somebody from a country where things like health insurance and paid sick/vacation days hardly exist, there's a much smaller chance they look into those things.
Also in the US a lot is dependent on employer (health care, vacation days, etc.), whereas in the Netherlands many things are set by law.
My point was that people who look at salaries on the internet and compare those, will often choose the highest and dismiss the lowest.
This is a misleading way to compare salaries and cost of life between countries.
A much better metric is to look at net disposable income after tax, if you're focusing on the "making money" aspect.
If you're focusing on the life quality aspect you'll also have to consider mortgage, car ownership and time off.
Example:
- In Netherlands you have 24 business days of time off, where you can take them from the moment your contract begins (not after 1 year working), and you can take them however you want.
- Taking a mortgage in Netherlands is currently cheaper than renting and most houses in the "sweet spot" cost around 300k euros, which is ridiculously cheap. Monthly payments are subsidized by the government (for some years) which makes it cheaper than renting.
To summarise, every country has a lot to offer, and at the end of the day life is not just about money.
while true, this doesn't tell you the whole story. insurance, taxes and pension are calculated way differently from the US. Also prices for those 3 are way different.
I searched for US in general, but I can imagine SV salaries cause the national average to increase a lot. Then again, from my experience, most Dev who want to move to the US want to move to SV or NYC, partially because of the salaries and forget to think about the details. Especially the younger ones.
Caveat here is that I'm not referring to all Indian devs, only the few I'm acquainted with.