IDK what is a good salary in US/Canada, I live in European Union. My salary as WordPress developer is more than 4,5k USD/month and I see job offers with 8k USD as well (still for WP developers, this is my specialization and I know this field the most; I expect for better recognized PHP fields like modern frameworks like Laravel it could be more)

And yes, 4,5k USD/month is massively good salary for Europe.

On the other hand, I see many job offers with salaries being just a joke (idk if they find any good developers for such money)

Where in the EU are good (web) devs willing to work for less than 8k USD, considering the current work market situation? I am in urgent need of those. :^)

I also live in the EU, and 4,5k is not a massively good salary for a programmer in my country (Denmark). This is usually what a junior is paid.

Absolutely agree, 4.5K USD (3,970€) is certainly not a "massively good salary for Europe" although that heavily depends on the country. Here in Germany its about entry level for a CS major

Yeah, Europe has significant variance in a) reporting of salaries (some report pre-tax, others post-tax) and median income levels. Generally though, programmers are paid pretty well by the standard of the country they live in.

Is the 4,5k before or after tax?

4,5 K USD/month is 54K USD/year gross which is 47K EUR/year gross. That's not massively good salary across ALL Europe.

In eastern and southern europe: that's probably good for a junior engineer, and perhaps average for a senior

In northern europe: that's probably average for a junior, below average for a senior

I don't think salaries across Europe are comparable. There are huge discrepancies between locations.

For example, in Berlin it seems to me that average salaries are around 70k EUR/year (6.6k USD/month) and really good salaries are well above 90k EUR/year (8.5k USD/month).

You can see more data in https://www.levels.fyi, which it is skewed to the high side, but gives you an idea about what good offers are nowadays.

Same here in Switzerland. And other than working on actual modern PHP these jobs are usually maintaining old software with weird custom scripting languages like typoscript xsml ...

I'd consider a PHP job, but only if they quarantee they don't have any of those legacy maintaining things lying around.

> I'd consider a PHP job, but only if they quarantee they don't have any of those legacy maintaining things lying around.

I see your point, but there is lots of legacy code (in any language) laying around and making shit tons of money for their owners - hence the need to maintain these systems.

I love maintaining old rails projects. No worries with that, MVC is making it easy to work with any project done by someone who knows the language. The language allows and encourages updating as well. It can be fun even.

PHP had no common way to do anything for a long time and you still see it from people writing PHP today.

My point was more that if there's money being made with some chunk of code, a sensible product owner would allow a modern refactor or even a rewrite in the same language to not endanger the long term success of said app.

I see. Well personally I never witnessed such a product owner. My whole carrier with PHP legacy code evolved around 'never touch a running system'

But I like the idea that these people may exist out there :)

PHP salaries in the UK are decent. Perhaps a little lower on average than other ecosystems (the high-end has a tendency to use other languages), but I've definitely seen some well paid jobs. As a junior it may well make sense to start with PHP as there are just lots of jobs available, then you can move onto something else. There are other good options too of course.