(I've always loved that narrative for its optimism. In reality if you have a modicum of self-restraint you can save more money on a US salary than most people are making on a European salary, and tech tends to have excellent healthcare.)
After computing what I would have to pay for: - Piano lessons for the kids - child care - sports clubs - golfing - private tutors - rent / mortgage
I concluded that my quality of life would decrease. Europe is crazy cheep for families. The UK is particular, brexit did not do them any good.
100k+ has been close to the floor for entry level for a while now. Did you do the math on how much you'd earn over 10 years?
New York City and San Francisco Bay Area are similar or higher. I don't have much experience with the rest of the US.
Seems close to what I have seen offered there.
It depends.
https://www.levels.fyi/companies/facebook/salaries/software-...
Taking a close look at the data provided in this page, beyond merely considering seniority level and years of experience, reveals a noteworthy trend at Facebook. Many individuals are being hired at level E5 (Senior) with 6-8 years of "relevant" experience, and some even with 10 or more.
Some candidates with fewer years of experience, such as the 4 years you mentioned in your comment, are joining Facebook with PhD or Master degrees, which significantly bolsters their overall qualifications.
We’re not talking about just any programmer with 4 years of experience in web design straight out of a Bootcamp. These individuals are typically Ivy League graduate students with PhDs or Masters, and approximately 4 years of experience at Tier-1, or at the very least, Tier-2 companies (Fortune 500’s).
To illustrate, consider a recent data point submitted to Level/FYI on March 26th, 2024. This individual has been working at Facebook for 4 years and has accumulated a total of 10 years of work experience. Currently specializing in ML/AI, their total compensation amounts to $410,000 (comprising $230,000 in cash per year, along with $180,000 in RSUs per year).
Apple pays a bit below the silicon valley average, I am not quite I understand sure why---they sure have the money. I had a conversation with an Apple recruiter a couple of years ago who assured me this was not the case, and then eventually their offer was ~25% below my contemporary TC.
Also Canada tech salaries are quite a bit below US west coast levels.
100k is the floor, because 100k used to actually mean real money. I no longer think it is. I earn more than that and I believe we are struggling. I don't know how other people manage.
[1]https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=100%2C000.00&y...
I don't think that can be anything but 'lifestyle inflation'? Even if that's one income, supporting spouse and children.
Are you sure it's not just a coping mechanism (I can't find the right word, sorry), for those who didn't get those salaries to say this line?
Even in PHX my company offers 95k as starting base for junior devs.
The benefits will be decent, but nothing special, at a big place and dogshit anywhere smaller, so it’s not made up there. You’ll probably have 10 vacation days, maybe like 14 if they pool vacation and sick leave.
That’s not an easy scenario for other countries that care to counter.
I had concluded the opposite if you compound over 5-ish years.
With two tech incomes, you'll make approximately 4-5 million in the US counting equity, versus about 1 mil everywhere else except maybe Zurich. US expenses over 5 years would be about 800k-1mil excluding a home which you are likely going to sell for far more than you pay for.
For example, a Google IC5/6 in Paris would make between 150k-200k vs ~500-700k in the bay area.
You are likely not going to be renting an apartment with that kind of money, you are just making your landlord rich.
Instead, you put a 200k deposit, pay the same 8k per month as mortgage (approx 1/3rd of your salary is the rule of thumb), and sell the house or apartment after a while. That way, you are not losing any money.
Check https://www.nerdwallet.com/mortgages/mortgage-calculator for confirming these numbers.
If it becomes half, you still have a home to live in rent free.
More likely it doubles every 10-15 years.
> on the earning side
I'm not sure if you are aware but some of the things you mention are also provided by good employers in the US, but they are not obligated to.
Having worked for Big Tech(TM) in Ireland, I'm a _little_ sceptical of those numbers. There's a big gap, but, at least in the mid levels, it is not _that_ big.
Levels.fyi seems to have paywalled most of their data, so I can't find what Google pay in Paris, but the lowest they show for total compensation for an L6 is $390k, highest $720k. Both of those are serious outliers; median is $550k. While I'm always a bit suspicious of levels.fyi data, I think you're seriously exaggerating how big the gap is, at least in big tech (it can be a lot bigger in small startups).
If you work in tech for a few years that's kind of average. We are having a new PhD grad join next month with a 400k TC offer.
If you have trouble believing me, check out levels.fyi for (Facebook:E5, Google:L5-6, Nvidia:IC5, Apple ICT5).
>If you work in tech for a few years that's kind of average.
You should probably learn what "average" means if you're getting paid that much to develop software.
The second average is for similar tech jobs.
But good job resorting to ad hominem.
It’s absolutely NOT average for companies who aren’t the massive giants that those are. I’ve been in actual tech startups, not Uber for Clowns, and the best salary I’ve seen was an (admittedly very good) $170k for a senior dev position. That’s close to average when I talk to my friends and associates in tech in the valley and beyond.
Sure if you are a typical full stack developer you are not going to make that much money unless you get into Google or something.
Also, base salaries are typically not that high, but the total compensation with equity can reach that pretty easily.
Could you elaborate what specialized skills though?
https://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=ac7c7bbe4f75d28c -- Staff software engineer 160-200k.
https://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=4a0886dfc2bbf783 -- 100-150k with need for top-secret clearance
Then in Bay area specifically
https://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=2629520bf28dce4d -- Senior staff 175-360k
https://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=9822ada0313c9665 -- 150-300k for staff engineer in ML
https://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=088b23b29fd809a7 -- Senior 185k
400-500k is way over average for the Bay Area, let alone anywhere else
Yes, I had considered moving to Europe after completing my Phd. The offers were about 1/3rd of US, with a significantly lower potential for growing beyond a few tens of percentages over 5-10 years.
Your average Leetcode drone that makes it into those companies is making $300k after 5 years.
Compilers. Not hot, but a bit niche so it sometimes pays well. Not any more than ML or distributed systems specialists.
>Your experience is not typical even at the companies you’ve named
You can check levels.fyi for averages, don't have to rely on my word.
>Your average Leetcode drone that makes it into those companies is making $300k after 5 years.
You are right. So, now the question is: given you are not an 'average leetcode drone' do you work in the US or Europe. I hope this clarifies why competent European computer scientists and engineers move to the US in large numbers.
Let's just take one perk I get to enjoy right now: I can afford to live in a high density city block with a long-term average yearly homicide rate below 4 per 100000 inhabitants.
In the U.S. I could replicate this only by purchasing a city block sized campus for myself and then investing in very very good screening of tenants and a private security force.
Based on average salaries of police and municipal infrastructure workers, combined with real estate prices in major U.S. metros, even with a bit of optimization, I couldn't get the cost to go below $2,150,023,240 for the first year (including real estate purchases) and about $1b yearly afterwards. I could maybe go lower by building my own city block somewhere outside a major metro, but I think infrastructure costs would eat that up.
And that's just one perk I got to enjoy: others, such as living within walking distance to my workplace, would be even harder to replicate. Yet others, like the ability to visit a borthel without having to worry about losing my job or going to jail, are nigh impossible.
Sure, there's additional efficiency where one action can help achieve multiple such perks, so let's assume I could replicate the lifestyle I enjoyed for a measlt $1b pa. That's about 8000x the annual income I had when I retired. And US salaries are not even 10x higher than Australian ones, so as far as I can tell, the math is not even close to working out.
(Of course, not everybody cares about these specific perks, and for some the U.S. may be a better fit. They're welcome to emigrate: the ones who don't appear to care enough to vote and keep these policies in place every 3 years, so I doubt anybody's getting the short end of the stick. The point is that it's stupid to compare salary numbers, because a lot of the things people want are trivial conveniences here and still unaffordable for even the richest people in other places, and vice versa.)
This is a little silly. There are many US cities that meet that standard. Seattle's rate is 6/100k which sounds reasonably safe to me. I've never known anyone (and none of my friends knows anyone) who has died by intentional homicide. It's simply not something that we worry about.
> living within walking distance to work is hard to replicate
Why would this be the case? Major cities have both large tech offices and dense housing. My office has many apartments, townhomes, and single-family homes within walking distance. The neighborhood it's located in is quite livable.
> visiting a brothel without losing my job is impossible
This one is probably true. If regular brothel access is a priority, then the US is probably not a good choice. Nevada might be an exception.
I do know people who were hit by a car while crossing residential streets.
I don't know any people who were hit by a car while crossing a highway.
This doesn't mean highways are safer to cross on foot than residential streets.
Similarly, the people who are not murder victims in US cities must change their natural behavior in thousands of costly and humiliating ways so as to not become victims, and all that effort still doesn't keep the murder rate lower than the 30-60s that US downtowns have. Do you mind your own business while a teenager walks out of the grocery store without paying? Congratulations, you won't show up in those homicide stats. But it's not merely the stats that were the problem: it's the amount of social disfunction that it indicates and you won't buy your way out of that by any realistic higher salary.
Similarly, I don't personally know anybody who died of lung cancer, but would also not be keen to wear a respirator so that I can safely eat in a restaurant where people smoke.
> There are many US cities that meet that standard.
Oh, I'm sure there are many such _cities_. But that's not the rate of my city, it's the rate of the high density business district I live in. The city itself has a still lower homicide rate, but it's not relevant. I can't find data about the homicide rate of high-density living downtown areas of Seattle, but I doubt it's lower than that of the city itself.
> living within walking distance to work is hard to replicate
Because then you have to make your city block purchase in the immediate vicinity of your employer's office, which will further increase costs since you won't be able to choose among the cheapest high density city blocks.
I’m not aware of any humiliating ways that I change my behavior to avoid being murdered, although perhaps if you observed me for a few days you would notice some.
I have never looked into buying an entire city block so can’t comment on that. I’ve been content with a single home so far.
Re murder rates: I can't find data for Seattle, but based on data I could find (San José below, LA) I'd expect the rate to be about 10x higher for downtown high-density areas than for the whole city. Which is pretty bad.
If so, answer the following questions.
- Have you ever seen somebody walk out of a convenience store without paying. If so, would you try to say anything disapproving to such a person?
- If you're a woman, have you ever taken an Uber instead of the bus service your taxes subsidize because of safety concerns? If not, has this happened to a partner or friend? Would you let your underage daughter take the bus home from somewhere alone after dark?
- Have you ever had to cross the road because you weren't comfortable walking past somebody standing/lying on the corner?
- It's 3am. A large group of teenagers are having a party in your apartment building. They're still at it and they're very loud. Are you comfortable heading over and asking them to keep it down?
- It's 6pm. A large group of teenagers are hanging out in a public park near your place. You are curious about what they're up to. Are you comfortable walking past them while keeping eye contact with one of them and visibly checking out what they're doing?
- Would you consider walking the streets regularly while wearing an all-red streetwear outfit with a red paisley style bandana? How about a different color,say blue?
- Would you feel safe wandering the neighborhood at night in a drag costume?
- Would you feel safe wearing a black t-shirt with white text announcing that you don't like the music of a popular local rap artist?
If you don't do some otherwise perfectly reasonable and morally activities because it would be irresponsible or unsafe to do so, you're modifying your behavior. If you don't feel that you need to modify your behavior to avoid being a victim of violent crime, chances are it's only because you're very very lucky with your preferences. Some people happen not to want to do any of these activites, of course, but that doesn't change the fact that one can safely engage in them here, but not in any comparable area in the U.S.
Rest of the west: Can people wear drag downtown without risking their personal safety?
Americans: On second thoughts, let's talk about something else.
Most Americans do not live in a constant state of mute terror, waiting for the day that some gangster cuts them down.
Of your examples, the only one that remotely resonated was "have you ever crossed the road because you weren't comfortable walking past someone standing on the corner". Yeah, I'll occasionally avoid a crazy person ranting on the corner. Also, I wouldn't walk by a bunch of teenagers while holding eye contact with them, but that's because I'm not a crazy old man. No need to scare some kids minding their own business.
Look, if only crazy old people make eye contact with each other, your community is not fine. And if everyone is so agitated that they'd be scared if you walked past them and made eye contact... well, that's not the strong testimony against people "living in a constant state of mute terror" that you seem to think it is.
About as convincing as claiming "I'm not gonna take my phone out of my pocket on a train, I'm not crazy! That just happens to be my preference, I don't wish to look crazy like the people who use their phones, nothing to do with crime" would be in [1].
But I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is. Ping me next time you're between jobs. If you live in a high-density area with a high homicide rate, I'll pay you a week's wages if you're willing to loiter on the streets for 3 hours a day every evening in an outfit of my choice and don't become a victim of violent crime by the end of the week. I won't pick an illegal (police or military uniform, revealing clothing) or politically charged outfit. If you're right about U.S. urban safety, this should be easy money.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Bart/comments/dc7b5p/got_robbed_on_...
It's great you gave a clear threshold instead of making it vague. Here are some US cities that would satisfy this criteria according to wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...) : San Diego, San Jose (yeah I'm surprised too..), NYC (also unexpected!), Portland, Seattle.
I don't believe those figures (and they're meaningless for europeans as you can't simply get a job in the US), but if you take them at face value finanically living in the US for a decade is the sensible approach.
Obviously you'd want to leave before your kids went to school
For example: https://www.levels.fyi/companies/facebook/salaries/software-... https://www.levels.fyi/companies/nvidia/salaries/software-en...
>and they're meaningless for europeans as you can't simply get a job in the US
We have plenty of Europeans in big tech, though the usual path is either through attending university in the US or intra-company transfers. You can get a job directly if yoy are extraordinary, but I have not seen that happen very often.
> Obviously you'd want to leave before your kids went to school
We tried this, and the kid refused.
> We tried this, and the kid refused.
That also works the other way.
An American colleague left Denmark so his children could grow up in the USA, but after about 3 months came back because the children missed their personal freedom. (Freedom to walk/cycle home from school, see friends without needing parents to drive them, etc.)
I attended a boarding school in a third world country, it was a pretty neat childhood!
I saw some videos recommending the Netherlands as the safest and one of the family friendliest places to bring up your children. It was about safe bicycle lanes and safe ways to and from school and all that. Cannot recommend Germany in that regard, because education system here sucks and bicycle lanes are not cleared quickly and early in winter, or not at all. Also many car drivers here feel too much entitlement to speed in the city.
If you're happier in the EU that's fine, but the math definitely doesn't check out for people focused on finances: even when you take soft benefits into account
What I am saying is: the math definitely doesn’t check out because apparently someone in my position would be doing 3x in the US
For the things not free you can often have them paid for if you are in the low income brackets, and some places just give credit for those types of activity to all children.
The reasoning is that children of low income families shouldn't be excluded.
No shit. That's why working people voted to remain. That's why young people voted to remain. That's why educated people voted to remain.
The majority of people in the UK today that voted, voted to remain. Far more leave voters have died in the last 8 years than remain voters.
It's not a matter of offering benefits in kind instead of money, but rather a fundamental difference in resources available.
Denmark rates at 68k / 77k. So much closer. Norway is tricky to compare and Netherlands, Ireland and Switzerland are tax havens.
- Nominal: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(no...
- PPP: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PP...
Developer salaries in Norway are decent as Europe goes but if you want to make money hand over fist there's no other place like America. Yes even with all the old world perks imaginable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
Once you return home you might get to keep the job while in the hone country and rake it in.
Despite all the European love, most of Europe (and rather, most of the world) is pretty poor compared to US.
If you don't invest in (or put up lots of barriers to) the health and education of the entire community, then you are going to have an unhealthy and uneducated community.
That's not to say we don't have many problems, but in my personal experience it's a lot less than the US in those regards.
This really depends on the country. In the UK you need to go private and pay if you want any kind of timely healthcare.
This statement really depends on whatever part of the USA you're in and what kind of work you do.
> No $200k TC interns out here.
I haven't seen that yet, but I think an SF-based intern (if they were paid for the whole year) would make roughly $120k. There are plenty of people living in the Bay who haven't lived there 10 years who comparatively take home very little.
All that to say, I don't think we need to dice up and turn the developer market against itself. We've all been affected by wage stagnation, the rising cost of metros, and the threat that we must live in them or else. Labor movements are good for all laborers, etc etc etc
Unlike professions like plumbers, however, IT personal is becoming increasingly easy to come by. And since they never really formed unions, the so called golden days are over for a lot of IT professionals. Maybe excluding hardcore IT operations, networking and at least for now developers.
I wouldn’t be able to earn what I do as a truck driver though. Maybe half with more hours? Interestingly enough I didn’t get there by being rewarded for any work. I got there by switching jobs.
It's the geopolitical west that's largely stuck in this situation, but IIRC that has been the case for a while now - when I was considering emigration around eight years ago I noticed that the salary differences are not as huge as I thought and in some places (like Germany) it's just a job like any other.
I hear SAP is kind of a big deal.
In the end they had a shortage of nearly 100,000 drivers and had to massively incentivise new entrants to the industry. It's a complete outlier as far as blue collar vs white collar jobs in the UK/EU for the most part.
https://www.bbc.com/news/57810729
That said, overall the EU is paying somewhere around €80-120k for Senior Developers in the HCOL areas and as low as €45k in places like Spain. Overall, individual Contributor salaries outstripping even minor middle management is rare below architect or principal outside of FAANG.
This leads to the situation the commenter above identifies - that fairly vacuous softer-skill based IT Roles like Scrum Master or ART or Release Manager out-earn the median Engineer and are seen as a viable alternative for motivated people.
How defensive. It seems to me like it would take someone with a rather fragile ego and low level of maturity to infer and write such a thing. I didn't call you or anyone else a bootlicker, so maybe save the personal attacks for your next sprint review or Reddit.
> nontechnical roles are not automatically fluff, and meetings are not automatically wastes of time.
If this had been your interpretation of my comment, then you'd have been right, but it's a choice to hold back and interpret a comment maliciously or charitably, and it's a choice to put people down. Non-technical roles do have value, as long as they aren't themselves an embodiment of their crippled inefficient bureaucracy.
It’s true that living anywhere near the Sydney metro is unaffordable though, even on a 180k salary.
Interviews have always been tough for development positions in the US, whether it's a 60k out of college position in the Midwest or more senior position for a coastal company making the big bucks. It is possible to get lucky and not have to be whiteboarded, but much of the time an applicant is getting grilled.
Although it's obviously objective, I completely agree when comparing to a country like India. However, I'm not so sure it's as huge of a difference as what you are implying when comparing Western countries to non-coastal US developers. I've long since graduated, but if I were still in school and not too far into a CS degree I would probably drop out and be an electrician or plumber, freelancing application development on the side if I still had the energy.
It means picking up a trade or just doing a scrum master job or traffic duties become viable alternatives.
Developers are caught in stagflation. Buying a property in Sydney metro area (within 90m commute) for example would be challenging for most devs.
Prices have tripled and over the frame of 15y while dev salaries or contract rates have not increased.