Any time these guides come up they are simply shocking. I love Europe, I grew up there.
I don't understand why anyone would stay as a developer in the EU. Software is simply not valued.
Dev salaries are astounding. Senior engineers in the EU make less than entry level undergrads in the US or Canada. 60k Euros is 70k USD. People out of bootcamps with zero experience make more than that in the US. I don't have a single friend from university that I remember making less than 100k upon graduation. Mid-career salaries with bonuses and stock are 200k+.
I'm afraid that until things radically change in the EU we'll always have US tech giants. Living in the EU isn't worth a 4x pay cut for many people.
As someone who grew up in the US, and works as a software engineer in Europe, I can't understand why anyone would ever choose to work as a developer in America. :)
I have a very high quality of life here, strong protections as a permanent employee (increasingly less common in other industries in Germany, but not in tech!), a salary that is excellent compared to many of my peers, and comes with a purchasing power that I imagine meets or exceeds someone in my same position in New York or the Bay Area.
I won't pretend there aren't downsides (for example, stock as compensation is rare here, and not incentivised by the legal situation), but for me the upsides win over raw actuarial comparisons. I'd much rather have my compensation in Berlin than trade it for 2x or even 4x that in the US.
(Edit to add: once you bring rent, medical insurance and associated out-of-pocket costs, and paid time off into the picture, compensation in the US starts to look like a pretty raw deal IMO.)
I'm from New Zealand, but work in Europe. Recently I started working remotely for an American firm part-time. Those few hours I work for the Americans equates to about 3x the amount of stress from my EU job but with absolutely no protection (at-will clauses). There is such a palpable difference in culture, management style that I am fairly certain I would never work for an American firm again.
Out of curiosity, what were some of the differences in work culture you experienced? I've never worked outside the U.S., so would be interested to hear a different perspective.
Not OP - but I've worked with American and non-American tech companies. For similar-sized companies, my experience was that American companies are more obsessed with productivity and metrics, with more frequent meetings involving people who don't need to be present (including at least one one who is a level or 2 too high, but justify their presence by having to say something which occasionally derails the meeting).
On a purely subjective note: American work culture has lower trust and attempts to extract much more "productivity" from people doing the work compared to European companies, which is not always proportional to the salary differences. My sample size is fairly small (<5)
> comes with a purchasing power that I imagine meets or exceeds someone in my same position in New York or the Bay Area
That seems very unlikely. Housing is expensive in most of the major metropolitan areas in the US, but you more than make up for it with higher salaries.
The rest of your argument makes perfectly good sense, there's lots to love about living and working in Europe! It may well be worth it to you.
But it's disingenuous to mix those quality of life arguments with an argument about money. Tech workers in the US tech hubs live a financially/materially more comfortable life than those in Europe.
The only problem with your comparison (and I'm not saying devs don't make less money in EU) is that you can't just convert one currency to the other. You have to compare purchasing power and quality of life.
The same salary in US could be viewed as 'you are rich' or 'you can't pay rent' depending on with city you live in. Now, you are talking about different continents.
I would compare the possible lifestyles and quality of life: how long does it take to buy a house/apartment? Can you afford to travel on vacation? Can you save money for your kids' college (or do you even need to do that)?
Fair point, quality of life has a lot of non-fungible aspects (and I saw this as someone who has lived in 5 metro areas and 3 continents over the last 15 years), however the difference does not all get eaten by cost of living, especially if you stay disciplined. A single reasonably strong SDE you can pretty easily be making $250k, even after exorbitant bay area rents you can still save/invest 1-2x your total equivalent EU salary. Even just coming and living a frugal lifestyle for 5-10 years can be life changing.
That said, with the rise of big tech satellite offices and remote work, there is definitely a path to €150k+ total comp without leaving the EU, and over time this should put upward pressure on salaries across the board (London is ahead of the curve here).
Sure, and I'm in no way doubting that developers make more in US than EU. I'm just saying that it would be better if we had a comparison that was more realistic in terms of what you can actually get with your money - and also other things like healthcare, overtime, vacations, work culture.
I've made this point many many times on this site, but if you make 150k in san Francisco, and pay 4k a month on rent, you have more left over after rent and tax than a mid level developer in europe makes as a gross salary.
If you can only make 150K in San Francisco, you'd be better off moving to a MCOL or LCOL US city where you can make nearly that much and have no trouble paying rent. It's only worth working in San Francisco if you're making 200K+ and think you have a good shot at making 300-500K in ~5 years or so (or if you're already making >300K, obviously).
When I made ~$150k in SF, that equated to $8k/month after-tax. $2k/month for a decent studio/1-bedroom apt near Golden Gate Park. I felt very comfortable and very much enjoyed my quality of life on that salary.
The actual number is irrelevant; If you make <roughly average amount> in SF, and pay <way over the odds> for rent, post tax and rent, your leftover money is still more than a mid level engineer in Europe, even in London where the costs of living are proportional. If you make 2/3/500k it only skews in the balance of the bay area.
Which is a fun and profitable adventure for a kid out of college, but a functioning middle-class American grown-up owns his home. That "more left over,' while a lot, is not terribly much against the price of a family home here.
But the avocado toast ain’t cheap either! Neither is your Soulcycle class! People seem to find a way to spend their money one way or another anyway! But if you save the money, sure. However if you still buy the house in SF with that savings you tend to again lose all benefit. Thus the only way to do this correctly is make a lot of money in Sf for a decade, save most of it, move to some European country and don’t earn at all (this no tax).
> But the avocado toast ain’t cheap either! Neither is your Soulcycle class
A soulcycle class is $35/pop. Even at one a day, on top of $4000/month for rent, and income tax, you're still left with roughly the amount a mid level engineer in a european city (excluding maybe London) makes pre-tax. No amount of Avocado toast, or whatever the sneaker fad changes that equation.
> However if you still buy the house in SF with that savings you tend to again lose all benefit.
That's no different to buying a house in London or Amsterdam say, except once you've dumped $1m into your "modest" home, you're still earning 2.5x what the person in London/Amsterdam is.
> The same salary in US could be viewed as 'you are rich' or 'you can't pay rent' depending on with city you live in. Now, you are talking about different continents.
"You can't make rent"/"You can't buy a house with a reasonable commute" an a software dev salary is almost entirely a California and NYC-area phenomenon.
A "typical" software developer (even a junior) could afford a decent house within a reasonable commute in ~7 of the top 10 metro areas in the US (Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Philadelphia, Atlanta). In the remaining 3 (NYC, LA, DC), you'd probably end up with an unpleasantly long commute, although plenty of people make that choice. If you go further down the list of metros, the ratio is similar.
> How long does it take to buy a house/apartment?
In any of the metro areas mentioned above, you should be able to buy a house on a software dev salary as soon as you've save a 5-10% down payment (so $25-50k for a $500k house, more if you want something bigger/in a nicer area). The difference in salaries vs. Europe would typically allow you to save that within a couple years.
> Can you afford to travel on vacation?
Unambiguous yes - you can afford the monetary cost of a vacation on a software dev salary. Families in much less lucrative fields than software still take vacations.
Paid time off is trickier - European norms are for employers to provide much higher amounts of PTO for all employees, while most American firms are much stingier with it. This is something to explicitly shop around for and use as a decision criteria in a job hunt. There are definitely large American firms that provide 20-25 PTO days standard for new employees.
> Can you save money for your kids' college (or do you even need to do that)?
Annual tuition & mandatory fees at the flagship state university in the median state is ~$12k, so ~$48k for a 4-year degree. This excludes living costs, but you have to pay living costs at European universities as well. If returns on your college investments keep pace with tuition increases (many states have programs that can explicitly guarantee this), then you can pay tuition after 18 years by saving $2700/year per child.
You didn't mention healthcare, which often comes up, but software devs working as full-time employees will typically have good health insurance available through work, so that's not a problem in practice either.
There are tons of reasons to prefer Europe vs. the US (culture, a preference for dense living, lower-pressure work environments, more paid time off, etc.) but overall buying power isn't really one of them. Your salary will buy you more "stuff" (housing, cars, vacations, savings, etc.) in the US, unless you choose to live in one of the highest-cost regions of the country without a correspondingly high salary.
This is spot on. We made exactly the same calculation and you make more money, have better healthcare, can buy a better house, and save far more money in the US than in the EU as a developer.
Yeah, you have to buy the perks that are free (because your taxes go toward useful things) in the EU, but you make so much more money, that buying them is easy.
The US is a really strange place. It's far worse for 90% of people than the EU, but for the top 5% or so, it's unimaginably better.
Sure, I agree with you on everything. Your comment is a bit more detailed than just converting EUR to USD, and gives a better feeling on the actual difference. As I mentioned on my comment, I was not disagreeing that the dev make more money in US, but just that the parent comment was not considering some things you have to pay in US, that makes the difference a bit smaller
1) In Europe you don't get unexpected medical bills for tens/hundreds thousands of dollars when you have some medical issue.
2) Your kids won't get shot in the school.
3) You don't have to drive 20 minutes to the closest store to buy bread and milk.
4) I have 35d of paid vacation, while AFAICT in US you're lucky if you get 20. I'd get a brain melt or die from overworking if I had any less vacation days than now.
I've never been to US so I overly generalize and cherrypick based on what I've read, but I think what I wrote above will ring bell to many others.
Apart from that, other issues like: being close to family etc.
I could imagine going to US for a few years and get $$$ and get back, but overall, US does not seem to me like an American dream from the 90s anymore.
1) That almost certainly will not happen with the health insurance as a software engineer.
2) An average of three children die per year in school shootings, giving odds of roughly 1 in 800,000 (hard to tell with such tiny sample sizes). Your child is more likely to be struck by lightning and far more likely to die in a fire or car accident. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/10/11/lockdown-...
3) That is just not true unless you live in a rural area. I don't know where you get that from. Denser cities have groceries often within walking distance, and most suburbs will have plenty of grocery stores within a 5-10 minute drive.
4) Unlimited PTO is extremely common for tech companies in the US. It's not uncommon for me to see people taking 7+ weeks.
There are issues in the US of course, but I really would not completely trust low-effort media narratives. There's a reason people come here.
I exaggerated in my post, but the general difference is: in US to access high paying jobs, you can either live in city centres where rent is sky high, or suburbs which are very car-centric. This is not compelling to many Europeans. I might not be earning six-digit salary, but I don't share a room with 3 people and don't live in a van (this is probably grotesque but there were many stories like that on HN alone).
About the shootings, yes, media coverage is skewing things a lot. I live in France and my friends abroad think there's an islamic terrorist attack happening here every week.
Anyway, the US society feels way more class-divided. Even if as an employee of FAANG I would get a good health insurance, the way the system works overall for average folk just doesn't make me feel like living in such a system. (What if I lose a job for whatever reason? No fancy insurance anymore!). And as someone with a "preexisting condition" I'm actually not sure how my case would be treated in case I wanted to apply for a visa.
1. Even if you spend another $3000/month on housing (ridiculous and unrealistic), that's just $36000 a year. That's far exceeded by the pay increase in the US.
2. There is a long long long distance between the average case and the worst case that you are describing, especially for engineers. Sharing a room with 3 people or living in a van is very very very far from the average case. Pretty much no engineer needs to do this. If they are, they are doing it to save to the max or doing something very wrong.
3. Same with health insurance. You don't need FAANG for good health insurance. 92% of people have health insurance. Granted, that is of varying quality but being uninsured is far from the average case.
My sense of the US vs. western Europe is that the US is quite a bit worse if you are in the bottom 30%, slightly better in the average case, and much better for the top 20%. And engineers easily make it into the top 20%. So perhaps the peace of mind is worth it since rock bottom is so awful in the US. But there still is a big difference between average and worst case, and the media hyper focuses on the worst case.
Thx for the reply. It's always difficult to evaluate things from the outside without having full context.
Re: housing + medical costs, yep, the quick math says that unless things go really terribly wrong, in a few years one should build up a substantial safety net despite the costs.
For young and healthy (new graduates etc.) it definitely makes sense to go to US for a few years (and then perhaps come back as a remote person in Europe and start a small EU office, I know that's how many EU offices of US second-tier (non-FAANG) big techs have started).
> I exaggerated in my post, but the general difference is: in US to access high paying jobs, you can either live in city centres where rent is sky high, or suburbs which are very car-centric. This is not compelling to many Europeans. I might not be earning six-digit salary, but I don't share a room with 3 people and don't live in a van (this is probably grotesque but there were many stories like that on HN alone).
Rent in SF-NY is high, but it's not that high. It's far less than the extra money that you make. $3k/month will get you a nice apartment just for yourself, no roommates. $4k/month will get you something awesome.
On $150k/year, which is what my students make as their entry-level salaries at Google and friends, you can buy an apartment in almost every metro area in the US so that you don't even need a car. As a mid career developer you can easily afford a house even in SF-NY. I don't even have a driver's license...
> Even if as an employee of FAANG I would get a good health insurance, the way the system works overall for average folk just doesn't make me feel like living in such a system.
That's the thing. The US works for the people in the top 5% and is pretty bad for the people in the bottom 90%.
> And as someone with a "preexisting condition" I'm actually not sure how my case would be treated in case I wanted to apply for a visa.
Visas don't have healthcare checks. You'll be fine.
> As a mid career developer you can easily afford a house even in SF-NY.
I’m pro-US and SF/NY as anyone but this isn’t accurate. If you want a house comparable to one you’d get in a MCOL city like Sacramento/Portland (3-4 bd, 1800+ sqft, good schools), you’re going to be forking over $2m+. That’s not very easy to achieve even for SF engineers. You need to be staff at FAANG or similar and preferably with a high earning partner (lawyer, doctor, executive, etc). Otherwise you’re gonna be house poor.
I still agree US is generally very good for engineers, especially ones in SF/NY/Seattle. But let’s not fool people with saying real estate is also very affordable...
Compared to most jobs, developers are still pretty valued. I'm a junior software engineer in Sweden with an MSE degree. My entry salary was a bit lower than average for this industry at $50,000/year ($3000/month after taxes), but that's still higher than what 95% of nurses make in this country.
It's not, but I (as the parent has pointed out) find it astounding that salaries are so low compared to the US. Not necessarily because of absolute value of the salary, but because of the relative value to the biz people work in.
AFAIK, SaaS companies aren't charging demonstrably less for their applications in the EU than they are in the US. So the ratio from development to commercial value in the EU is significantly higher.
In other words, management/founders/investments/equity holders should be far more profitable in the EU and its to the detriment of the individual engineer. Income inequality is therefore in theory more exacerbated.
Well, seniors can make like 70-80k€ where I live, which is like the 3rd percentile in my country. Still true though, the salaries are not great compared to the US.
Is Canada that much better though? I briefly considered it but I determined that the high rents and not so high wages would not be worth it for a move.
The situation in Canada changed a lot in the past 2-3 years. It used to be that hearing about people making 200k mid-career in Canada was rare, now it's becoming more common. You're still taking a ~25% pay cut compared to the US. It really depends though, if you work for a large US company in Canada you are far better off than working for a Canadian company.
> Well, seniors can make like 70-80k€ where I live, which is like the 3rd percentile in my country. Still true though, the salaries are not great compared to the US.
That also means you have no room for growth. In the US 200k/year would put you in the 10th percentile for household income. You have plenty of room to build up from there. The thing about the EU is that not only are salaries low, the ceiling is also low.
Canada is Vancouver or Calgary? What place you have in mind? Speaking for Montreal 200k basically unheard here. Industry is predominately gaming or banking, and the talking about median of 100k base for senior, bonuses are around 10%
GTA and Vancouver. No idea how the rest of Canada is. Yeah, I hear that gaming in Montreal is poorly paid and Canadian banks don't care about software; I don't know anyone that is well paid by a Canadian bank.
I guess it's differs quite a bit between specific countries, but where I live (which is pretty close to as far east as you can get without leaving the EU) that might had been the case a couple of years ago, but now 60k pre tax is not at all an exceptional salary reasonable for a senior developer (I'd around 80k is close to the upper bound). And the living expenses are not even close to the more expensive W. European cities, you can get a fairly decent 2 bedroom apartment in a relatively good area for below 200k.
To be fair the gap between senior developer and entry level salaries is pretty big here. Entry level salaries might around 30k (which is close to the median overall full time salary here if you live in the capital).
I personally know multiple senior devs in Poland doing multi-year contracts at 110-130k eur per year. In Western Europe, with their skillset, they'd probably get just 20-30% more, so the gap is closing even at the top end of the market.
Eastern Europe,or at least some parts of it, already seeing tech salaries getting closer to those in western Europe,while cost of living is still fairly reasonable.
Dev salaries are astounding. Senior engineers in the EU make less than entry level undergrads in the US or Canada. 60k Euros is 70k USD. People out of bootcamps with zero experience make more than that in the US. I don't have a single friend from university that I remember making less than 100k upon graduation. Mid-career salaries with bonuses and stock are 200k+.
I'm afraid that until things radically change in the EU we'll always have US tech giants. Living in the EU isn't worth a 4x pay cut for many people.