$30 per hour is way more than a $30,000 salary. Technically $30/hr is double that - roughly $60,000 per year. If you are a full-time employee in the U.S. then typically other benefits such as health insurance, 401k, vacation time, etc will be factored in, so typically if you were interviewing a U.S. citizen for the job, then whatever “hourly rate” the salaried employee would be at ($60k salary ~ $30/hr) should be multiplied by something like 1.3 or 1.5 for a contractor rate to account for the employee benefits they are not receiving from you. So $30 would become $40+ instead for a contract rate.

FWIW, that's double the federal minimum wage. I'm mostly pointing out how absolutely absurd our minimum wage is.

I believe the US federal minimum wage is $7.25/hr

https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/wages/minimumwage

California minimum wage.

https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/faq_minimumwage.htm

$30k is far beyond minimum wage in most of the world.

Looking at the list of countries by minimum wage [1] containing data for 201 countries:

* only 5 countries have nominal, effective minimum wage above $30k (Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland)

* when accounting for Purchasing Power Parity no country has minimum wage allowing to buy more than $30k in US (obviously ignoring Argentina, as it data is not reliable)

Additionally earning $34,000 in 2012 made you into the richest 1 percent globally [2]. So we may guess that today $30k easily lands you in the richest 5 percent globally.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_minimum_w...

[2] https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/02/27/were-all-the-1-percent/

30k Euros is what I got with 5 years experience as a developer in Italy, and it's quite normal here.

Yup. German minimun wage is 19.968 € (~ 24.353 $)

Interestingly a couple of high-wage countries that come to mind don't have a minimum wage at all: Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden.

20 Euros per hour is a lot better than $30k per year.

It's about top 20% in Malaysia, which is #37 in GDP.

He may not be in the US.

In most of the world you can hire a junior programmer for $30k.

Gaming? (at least here)