Yeah, it's not really accurate for the PIGS , and even in northern Europe, it's not as high as in the States.

I had to look the term up, but my first guess was correct ("Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain")

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PIGS_(economics)

FYI - Another one I learned while being in Europe is FIGS, which sort of represents the "more economically developed" Euro languages - French, Italian, German, Spanish. This pretty much covers every nation you would need to speak to in order to do legitimate business in Europe. (Scandinavia generally will do business with English speakers)

The Germans are pretty solid English speakers too. More so than the French, Italians, or Spaniards, anyway.

I live in Germany, good luck trying to speak English outside the big cities or people with lower levels of education.

Thankfully it doesn't matter to me as I speak the language fluently.

I was about to flag him for being offensive to Italians ;)

Possibly a dumb question, what does PIGS mean?

Maybe "Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain"?

Actually it's PIIGS you add Ireland to the mix and you're right.

Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain

Doesn't sound like much. What lifestyle do you afford on this? Any improvement prospects?

Better than half of my peers for sure.

Of course you can grow with time, both in salary and in responsibility, for now I'm the classical code monkey but I have an idea for a startup that would like to develop so I will leave the job before the end of the year.

I've read that many "young" Italians live in their parents house at least until their early 30s. Maybe he's in the same situation.

Actually yes, I live with my parents.

I would probably be able to rent a small 1-room flat but for now I prefer to save money.

I'm not sure you know what you're talking about, 17k in Italy as junior-anything, is EXTREMELY well!

I actually missed the junior part :)

First of, congrats. Out of curiosity, what technologies are you paid to use? Rails/ObjC (ios)?

Junior 17k in Italy? That sounds a little bit wild...

NOTE: Sorry, I understood 17k per MONTH. Scratch the comment (keep the congrats! :-P )

I work in C#, sometime javascript if needed.

For a small IT consulting firm.

Where in Italy?

My girlfriend studies Italian and we might move to Italy for a year or two, hence I'm curious. Significant differences in terms of salary?

A medium city in north Italy. There are significant differences in terms of salary and HUGE differences in term of jobs availability and cost of living.

Some planning is needed if you want to a nice living.

I thought about the north for sure - maybe Genova or Milano

You mean 17000 after taxes?

Yes

That's like what, 22K before tax?

Much more - you should consider that under "taxes" in Italy we also consider medical coverage (which is actually part of the taxes) and a retirement plan (which is not actually a tax, but practically it's almost the same). The retirement plan for full time, normal employees, runs at an incredibly high 33% of your salary. In my personal opinion, this is the REAL problem here, more than taxes.

I'm getting payed more than that for an internship in france!