Someone of his caliber could easily work remotely and earn 200k+ a year

> It might sound weirdly low for someone in IT in the USA, but first, not everyone commands FAANG sales, and second, wages in the EU are comparatively low. With some seniority, you can rise to $100k relatively easily, but you have to sell your soul to either some consulting company or old Fortune-500 industries.

Exactly.

The non profit is registered in a small town of Maine-et-Loire.[1] Assuming this is close to where the developer lives, €42k goes a long way there. You also have to factor in that he doesn't have to take the Parisian Metro every morning and live in a tiny apartment for €1,000/month.

[1] See the "Is Lichess a non profit?" https://lichess.org/patron

> €42k

Note that a competent full-stack Scala developer like Thibault can easily make €70-80k at a French company while working mostly/fully remote. And even more so going into contracting and/or working for foreign clients.

He has his own reasons, working on his own thing being a huge one obviously, but he could definitely make more and keep a similar lifestyle.

The $56k/€42k is before tax [π].

Personally I would struggle to pay for a house, support dependants, and save for retirement on that amount. Partially because I went back to $zero in my thirties (although I know plenty of people in the same category much older... Trying to catch up is hard mode).

[π] https://old.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/mpasyl/i_started_lic...

FAANG salaries in the EU / UK can be nearly as high as in the US though, which in some locations does drive up the compensation for all SWEs.

Based on StackOverflow dev survey, EU salaries are roughly 60% of what you get in the US. You'll be hard-pressed to find equivalent positions paying the same in both regions.

Are those 1:1 comparisons? I know typically in the US salaries advertised are not exactly take-home pay, but before tax amounts, and is some places in Europe salaries are advertised as take-home pay.

Well it'll never be 1:1 due to differences in health care etc., of course, but those were all before tax from what I understood.

Not sure how companies advertising take-home pay would work when your tax rate depends on e.g. marital status (at least in Germany it could be off by maybe a factor of 2 in both directions), which country/region are you thinking of there?

The salaries in London for FAANG are equivalent to about 60-70% of those in the US. The stock grants are typically smaller, also, though this is less true for software engineers.

The one I used to work for had a real problem of developers leaving for the US on an internal transfer after 12 months, precisely because of the salaries.