NL: starting point is one month per year of employment. There's more detail to it, but that is the starting point.

This compensation does not sound "vastly more generous", but not bad for those that were less than 5 years employed.

This is in practice just a deferred salary scheme. Since the mandate attaches an unavoidable additional liability to every year of employment, that will get rolled into the total cost of employment by accountants.

So yes, when you collect the deferred salary it feels generous. But you were getting less salary up until that point in order to make the system solvent.

One may well prefer this arrangement, but one can't evaluate the generosity of the payment without also accounting for the cost that made it possible.

How is it unavoidable? If the employee leaves on their choice, is severance paid?

I think they mean unavoidable from the company's point of view - they can't make you quit, so when they hire you, they have to assume if they ever need to lay you off, they'll need to afford your severance.

Yes — I was slightly incomplete in my description, but you are exactly correct about what I meant. Company liabilities include things you are obligated to pay under uncertain future circumstances, so accountants have to make sure that such liabilities can be handled if they ever arise.

You'd be in the top 5% of software engineers in Europe if you pull >$55k after tax ANNUALLY. Let alone as a parting gift.

I think European dev market is a lot more complex than that; if you work in Zurich or London, do contracting, work for a major bank etc then the market is way different for you than if you do (say) PHP as an employee of a non-software company in Berlin.

The baseline is decently middle class with a solid safety net but there's a lot more room at the top than you're making out IMHO.

As always, to make cash as a "working" dev you have to get as close as you can to a gigantic money funnel of some sort. The main difference from the U.S. is that there are fewer and different money fountains, especially missing unicorn and VC money. Finance, FAANG outposts and doing specialised things for huge real-economy companies still pay well.

Zurich and London top out at $100k, any more and we're talking managerial responsibilities. Compared to SF or SEA they are only paying ~25% market rate.

The safety net argument has no legs. Australia and Canada both have social benefits that far exceed the majority of EU nations, yet pre-pandemic there was no shortage of $150k+ dev roles.

Zurich does definitely not top out at 100k. Depending on your negotiation skills, you'll start at about 120-140k in the big tech companies, around 120k in data science consulting, 120k for data science in banks, 80-100k at the smaller software companies.

The number of European devs making >$100k is a fraction of a percent. Your numbers tell the story — the pinnacle of the entire European continent is still only paying 25% comparable US market rate, and 60% comparable AU/CA rate. In a city more expensive than SF.

London isn’t more expensive than SF. And I have colleagues who make £450k+

> London isn’t more expensive than SF.

Zurich is.

> And I have colleagues who make £450k+

Just as there are American devs pocketing 7 figures annually. Again, the number of European devs making >$100k is a fraction of a percent. You can be making $100k in the US after a 6 month bootcamp or in AU/CA with a couple of years experience.

> Zurich is Not when you factor in the tax differential

I doubt that $100k is the 99th percentile for London developers, maybe it is for European in general.

If you've read salary threads, you’d know that everyone on Hacker News makes $1.5 million per year as an entry level software engineer, owns three houses and a Ferrari, and has a supermodel significant other.

I've employed developers in Zurich.

I promise you, the market for developers does not top out at anywhere near $100k.

That's closer to a starting salary (assuming a university degree).

I had an offer in London as a dev in finance at ~300k GBP total comp and a Series B startup offer over 100k GBP and that was more than 4 years ago. Ended up going with a much smaller seed-stage company in Berlin because I couldn't stomach the finance people and liked Berlin.

£300k, how much would that be in base salary?

Less than half. Tbh I found the whole "guaranteed" bonus thing quite confusing.

London finance attracts a crowd that I had very little in common with. To be honest I only interviewed to see what it was like. It wasn't for me.

Yet to find the first company in London which really offers a guaranteed bonus ️

Is it ok if I ask your YOE and stack?

10 years as a professional dev, CS degree, 10 years before that as a hobbyist. Regular meetup speaker, couple of international conference invites.

Mainly worked with high traffic Ruby apps but also done production C and Rust. Side interests in VMs and compilers.

These positions exist if you're good, experienced and most of all, not a complete asshole.

But cost of living was much more expensive as well. Especially for housing.

Good luck finding a dev job malig 150k+ in Canadian dollars.

In Canada? Work at a fintech, FANG, or as a quant.

London doesn’t top out at $100k. Neither does Zurich

This one is more generous, true, but the real question is, because the employer decides, how likely it is to be better than European countries that have the same standard for every employee.