Over here in Europe (or at least Germany) salaries are incredibly uniform (doesn't really matter if you suck or get as much done in a day as others in 1-2 weeks; if your bugs get constantly reopened or your code is rock-solid), and most people seem to get maybe 35-50k€ after graduation (diploma/master's degree).
Bear in mind that the US is severely out of whack in terms of work/life balance. It's one of the things I find most difficult about living here - when I first arrived I had 10 days vacation a year. I currently only have 15. And don't forget to factor in healthcare costs and the like.
10 days vacation was one of the biggest reasons I didn't move to the US when I got my H-1B visa.
Company policy was that vacation was a reward for tenure, rather than a negotiable component of compensation. Best they could do was offer 20 days for the first year, and only the first year.
It was an asinine policy if you ask me. An immigrant is exactly the type of person who would want to take a holiday back home to see friends and family. To make the cost and hassle of two long flights worth it, it would have to be two weeks at least. And that would leave 0 days left for the rest of the year.
Agreed, I spend most of my vacation days visiting family back home - it's been a long time since I've had an actual holiday, lying on a beach in the sun.
Yeah, that IS crazy. How come companies don't offer holdays as comp? Here (Sweden) having an extra week holiday (6 rather than 5 weeks) is a common comp.
Why aren't companies competing with that in the US? If I was offered $150k with 10-15 days holiday and 50hr work weeks (expected), I'd immediately start bargaining for 25-30 paid days off, and make sure I wouldn't be expected to work more than 40h/w. Is that uncommon in the US?
Or is it common to take unpaid days off, which you can afford given the high salaries?
I suspect that, particularly in the startup arena, time is more valuable than money. VCs are throwing cash at you, but they want you to launch yesterday.
Sure, and I realize good developers are hard to find, but unless you are looking for the 23year old "ninja" type developers who like doing all nighters, would you not need to care about work/life balance of employees too?
Startups that need to launch yesterday I realize often have young employees without family, but these are large corps like Oracle/Yahoo/Google, these have to employ quite a lot of engineers in their 30s, 40s and 50s? Like I said, I'd be willing to accept a substantially lower pay for a good holiday (5-6 weeks), and a good work/life balance otherwise, like good processes that ensure there's no regular "crunch time".
It's not part of the culture. People sometimes quietly grouse about the lack of vacation time or the number of hours but no one is willing to publicly do anything about it for whatever cultural reason.
So in this culture, is it common to do a few years of high-income work with 12hr days and high compensation, and then you get a "quieter" job somewhere else when you need a job that allows you to pick the kids up at 4.30pm? Or how does it work? Obviously children aren't unheard of in Silicon Valley, and as far as I understand it's a pretty progressive part of the US, so I assume that families have two careers to worry about? Something doesn't add up if long days are norm.
> is it common to do a few years of high-income work with 12hr days and high compensation
People working the longest hours aren't necessarily making more money because of it. There's no overtime.
People don't want to make less as they go on in their careers, and don't want to look like they don't want to work a lot, so if they take less time they try not to do so overtly.
> then you get a "quieter" job somewhere else when you need a job that allows you to pick the kids up at 4.30pm?
Recalibrate your expectations. No one is leaving work at 4:30pm. 45 hours a week is called "40 hours a week" and no one works just 40 hours a week. People don't expect to do very much outside of work except on the weekends.
To me that seems insane. With the work I do, at 50 hours, I would be seriously burnt out (I used to be at a previous job). NOT good for the company.
By working ~40h I maintain my strength and keep delivering really good results. But when I sometimes do 1-2h overtime I notice that others (who come to work at 9:30-10) also leave at 5:50-6, so generally in Germany I'd say regular work hours are a given thing and most people don't do that much overtime, at least in IT. I've heard bad things about creative industries like ad agencies, or IT companies with lots of young engineers w/o kids.
I mean why would I work more - for more money, sure, but not for free. My employer doesn't pay me "overmoney" for the same amount of work, does he? I at least get an overtime account and this year I managed to reduce it by ~10 hours. With different overtime policies I definitely would NOT have taken the job - NOT good for the company ;-)
Thanks for the insights.
Perhaps it is time for companies to compete for talent on these parameters instead? I think I've seen some companies trying to attract talent like that now that I think about it (was it stack exchange perhaps?). I might underestimate the power of the almighty buck here, but I'd take the employer that says "we value work/life balance, when we say 40h/week we mean it literally, we allow remote work, and we have 5 paid weeks off".
As for my questions above, it still doesn't add upp. Either you don't have kids as long as you hold one of these jobs or at least both parents can't have such jobs, so it's basically a job that requires one parent to stay at home at least part time? Or you need a nanny to pick up your kids after school/kindergarten?
My guess is that you are going to say that normally one parent (and not a random one) just stays home for years after having kids, but that would be a real blow to my view of SF/NYC as progressive...
It seems odd to me that people making a lot of money (which I hope these salaries are considered), wouldn't just invest a huge chunk of it in family/free time, by simply working less hours, e.g. 75% at 75% pay.
With my european glasses, the salaries look huge, but of course I haven't factored the cost of living and certainly not the impact on work/life balance. I hold a well paid (by local standards) full time dev job, and I drop off kids at 8 and pick them up at 4.30. Every other day my wife does that so I can work a bit longer. I never manage to do 40h at the office, but it's considered normal for people with kids to leave early and do an hour or so of work in the evening.
Not sure what my point is, I guess it's that I'm surprised of how a "culture of work" can form in this way in a country that is often percieved as valuing family quite a lot, especially in progressive regions where presumably equality means a lot. Also I'm surprised of how employers (candidates, rather) aren't pushing the compensation in a more work/life balance friendly direction. Especially since these were visa applications, a lot of which I assume come from people used to 5w holidays and actual 40h workweeks.
> I might underestimate the power of the almighty buck here, but I'd take the employer that says "we value work/life balance, when we say 40h/week we mean it literally, we allow remote work, and we have 5 paid weeks off".
Almost universally what you see in job ads and recruiter spam is "we offer exciting challenges" and that they've created the most fun place to work ever and if they mention compensation at all they offer "market salary" or "salary commensurate with experience", to the point where all these different messages sound pretty much the same.
I get hundreds of messages on linkedin and they all sound like the above with exciting challenges with a market salary, but I don't recall anyone attempting to promise above-market salary or better vacation time, even once. You would think that you could get a competitive advantage by promising tangible benefits as you suggest, but I've never seen it.
Some do mention being more flexible with remote work though.
> so it's basically a job that requires one parent to stay at home at least part time?
Yes, basically.
> Or you need a nanny to pick up your kids after school/kindergarten?
In the US children are universally bussed to/from school, you don't need to come pick them up yourself. So once they're old enough that they don't need constant supervision they often have a couple hours to themselves at home.
> My guess is that you are going to say that normally one parent (and not a random one) just stays home for years after having kids, but that would be a real blow to my view of SF/NYC as progressive...
In terms of labor conditions? CA and NY have a handful of better labor protections than the rest of the country, but progressive by your standards? absolutely not.
> It seems odd to me that people making a lot of money (which I hope these salaries are considered), wouldn't just invest a huge chunk of it in family/free time, by simply working less hours, e.g. 75% at 75% pay.
That would be great. I would totally do that.
Remember, people don't get paid by the hour so there's no counterincentive to employers using social pressure to get you to put in as much time as possible. There is no concept of a set number of hours you're supposed to work.
> Also I'm surprised of how employers (candidates, rather) aren't pushing the compensation in a more work/life balance friendly direction.
Yes. People are not willing to fight for this.
> Especially since these were visa applications, a lot of which I assume come from people used to 5w holidays and actual 40h workweeks.
The bulk of these these are from Asia or India where the salary differential might be very large.
In the past in the pages more than a couple of US developers have described a pattern in which they work for a year or 2, then quit and take 6 months off (living off of savings).
I would suppose that they were single with no dependents.
Yes, but healthcare is a few 100 bucks a month, which we pay too, only for us it's mandatory by government.
Vacation sounds like a real problem, but it seems like you could circumvent that by going freelance and just taking off x days a year between projects.
I'll reiterate OP and say that these seem low to me as well...and dare I say that I still think Software Developers are underpaid?!
These employees are bringing in billions of dollars for these companies and for them to still receive < $200k per year is appalling.
Think about this. You get into work at 8am and you leave work at 8pm. You manage a team of engineers that are literally building the foundation for the future of the company. Your entire life is dedicated to making this company money.
> Think about this. You get into work at 8am and you leave work at 8pm. You manage a team of engineers that are literally building the foundation for the future of the company. Your entire life is dedicated to making this company money.
Do you really think this is truly representative of what the typical programmer is doing day-by-day?
Many will get in at 10am, leave at 4:30pm, manage nobody, and work on somewhat important projects that nevertheless are not even remotely the foundation for the entire company or the company's future.
The people who actually worked on the foundations of these companies are already multi-millionaires. The people spearheading huge projects at the highest level are also almost certainly making far more than $200k/year.
> You get into work at 8am and you leave work at 8pm
To be comparable, a salary number should reflect a full time work week, and be for a position which TWO people can hold, full time, while still having time to pick up kids. Obviously if I worked 12h days I'd be supporting my partner who could NOT have the same full time job. Not sure what these figures represent, I thought they were regular day-jobs, which you could hold while still having a meaningful work/life balance?
> These employees are bringing in billions of dollars for these companies and for them to still receive < $200k per year is appalling.
The same can be said for employees of any large corporation. Sure you may be more or less replaceable, but still: the dollars brought in are return on risk by investors. It's no more appalling than fast food workers being paid peanuts in fast food chains that make a billion.
Apple has about 3x what it pays out in salaries left over after paying everyone, McDonald's only has about 1x salary per employee profit. McDonald's would go broke if it doubled everyone's salaries, Apple could afford to do that and still be hugely profitable.
Point taken, I'm sure there are better examples than fast food of companies paying peanuts but earning millions per employee, probably due to huge investments/risks involved. Natural resources and banks come to mind.
Still, there is nothing that should make Apple pay more because they can, they only need to be competitive in salaries, not excessive. If they wanted to compensate employees more, that would probably not show up in these figures as it would likely not be base salary but rather bonuses/stock etc.
"Hard to find developers" just means "Hard to find people who will do X when we pay Y". As for cost of living, if NYC/SF tech companies offer competitive salaries for those areas (like $150k) that must be a fortune for people working remotely from almost anywhere else. So assuming that remote work is quite normal, and the companies accept paying SF salaries to remote workers from everywhere, I can't see how they can fail to find talent.
Depends. Maybe you should get a bonus if your work really has such an impact. And if you talk managing a team, that's not a developer position, that's a lead position (to me anyway).
35-50k€ is low, even for Western European standards. You cannot compare it to US salaries given the enormous differences in social structure when it comes to healthcare etcetera.
But still: tech salaries in Europe are low, and are being systematically depressed. The influx of relatively cheap engineers from Eastern EU countries is one influence, but not even such a big one, since most of them pretty quickly catch up (the tech culture means they're not easily isolated and exploited like other migrant workers).
The biggest depressing influence is simply social status: despite the scarcity, despite the value they add, there is an enormous resistance against awarding higher salaries to "nerds".
Now that I operate at management level, I experience this first hand. Everything adds up: our budget, the economics, the scarcity. We should easily be able to offer 30% higher salaries and still make out just fine, and it's the only way to compete with a handful of enlightened companies that pay well and the lure of self-employment (the only other way for engineers to break through the salary ceiling).
Nothing stands in the way of paying engineers better, except social status: paying a software engineer the same as (or more than) a manager is unthinkable. Despite the fact that those managers are less scarce, less skilled and add less value.
Plus, most software engineers I work with every day are hardly nerds. Maybe 1/3 of them are, the rest are just wearing suits without ties but are very professional at their job and attitude.
The "nerd" idea is a myth, a prejudice I myself had back in college. But it's not the reality. Most engineers are very very boring family men, not the enthusiastic hipster type in funky colored pants.
Here in the US we basically have little or no social safety net, and certainly few meaningful regulations and laws protecting labor. Our "wow just wow" salaries have less buying power than yours, because any difference in the margins is eaten up by having to use the additional salary for basic services you would be able to (mostly) take for granted as being government supplied (via taxation and other means).
Mainly corrupt, well-connected private businesses who take a generous cut of the benefits the government contracts them to distribute, one way or another.
I'm not too sure about that. Yes, if you compare the average American to the average European, you make more and have to pay for more things, so it more or less evens out.
No, it doesn't really even out at all. There are several factors you're neglecting to consider here.
The salaries listed here are in our highest cost of living areas. The vast majority of developers aren't earning anywhere near these wages. Most are in the $50,000-$90,000 range (not too far off of your EUR$35k - $50k figures). Second, I think you're discounting far too heavily how much extra the average American has to contribute on his own for his own health and retirement. One might consider the 15%-20% one should take out of his pre-tax salary for savings to be an implicit tax we have to pay. The federal marginal rate for an individual earning $130k/yr is around 30% (for the sake of argument--it's actually a bit higher). In SF and NY, the state taxes wll boost that 8%-10% (or more). So the base tax rate is already around 40%. Couple that with this implicit tax, and Americans are paying a "tax" that is about what Europeans pay. Except we get a lot less for it by a long, long way. And, actually, since it's infreqent to earn that much money as a software developer without having a college degree, there is the additional factor of the cost of our education. Most people can't afford the 15%-20% hit to their pay because of the high cost of everything else, so the 'add-on' cost that hits them in retirement is even worse.
Well, a 50k salary will net you <30k€ in Germany (but more if you have kids). You probably should also save a bit for retirement, since you won't get much from the state (today's retired receive much more than they paid into the fund, but current generations will receive much less). Oh, and we have a 19% sales tax over here (7% on groceries, and food is actually very good and cheap in Germany, at least in stores).
I'm surprised by the (low) 50-90k salaries you mention. I've always read much higher numbers. Probably due to the bias on blogs/news sites to West Coast companies.
Hey ah guys. Most devs in HK earn < 30k USD a year. China is half that, Taiwan is even worse. When you factor in how freaking expensive everything is in HK, especially real estate, HK devs in general are basically slave labors.
In the U.S. a Software Development(dev, designer, etc.) job is a middle class role. What is a developer in china? Lower class? What is a middleman class job then?
EDIT: Should probably define middleman class then...I guess I'd have to say, being able to purchase a house, pay off student debt in less than 10 years, afford to have children, buy a car, go to events and maintain a relatively comfortable lifestyle.
Software dev is definitely a middle class job in China, but in HK, it's only considered marginally better than clerical work. Labor in Greater China for any job other than the most exploitative ones (finance, sales, insurance, legal, upper management) are treated like dirt in general. Don't even get me started on the hours and the lack of benefits and incentives.
An entry level dev in Beijing from Beida/qinghua can easily pull in 20k rmb a month in Beijing (if they don't go abroad for grad school). There is competition for good devs that is pushing up salaries yearly. They are hardly diaosi.
Devs in HK aren't valued outside of banking; Taiwan is similar (many are coming to mainland to make more money, go figure).
India, oddly enough, seems much more competitive to me in terms of dev salaries.
I find that odd. The jobs you mentioned (finance, sales, insurance, legal, upper management), with the exception being upper management, will most likely net you less than what a developer makes here in the U.S.
I should mention that those salaries are much more variable than developer salaries. It's not uncommon to find an insurance salesmen make less than $50k per year, but it also wouldn't be uncommon to find one that makes well over $150k.
It's really hard to see the future of the middle-class here in the U.S. I can't name five jobs that are a ticket to a comfortable lifestyle, whereas 20 years ago you could fire off 20 or so jobs.
In Germany, all those jobs you mention will also make more/much more than a developer. I think the tech sector in the US is very strong and competes for devs.
I think I understand this. In both the US and in Germany, a lot of developers -- kids right out of college -- will work for a lot less than the value they add. Too young to know better; nerdy and bad at negotiation.
OK, the difference between Germany and the US is that job creation is easier in the US -- less regulations on employers. One piece of evidence that this is so is the high youth unemployment in Europe compared to the US. Once all the developers willing to work for less than they could get have been hired. The employers in the US (at least during go-go times like now) are still motivated to hire additional developers -- because the US economy is good at utilizing all the development talent it can get. It is still profitable (just not quite so much) to hire a developer who demands the be paid comensurate to the value they add to the employer.
So, in the US, people who are good at negotiation and know they're good can hold out for higher salaries -- and still get hired -- at least until there is a slowdown.
There is my theory: German dev jobs are filled by workers who are bad at negotiation (like many many nerds are) or they do not have enough work experience to realize what they are worth. German employers probably do not have the
capacity to employ everyone willing to work as a dev.
In contrast, in the US, a lot of devs are also paid less than they are worth -- because people, i.e., young nerdy men are basically the same wherever you go -- but there are also devs whose attitude is, well, I'd be happy to work for you if you pay me $200,000 a year. If you cannot meet my salary requirements, well, there's other productive things I could be doing with my time or maybe I'll travel and live off savings for a few years -- or maybe I'll keep on job hunting.
US employers would prefer to hire from the first group, but
eventually all the qualified devs in that group have been hired. US employers are willing to hire from the second group -- since their labor can still be converted into more income than required to pay the dev the high salary -- making it profitable to do so.
If my theory is correct, the way to get a high salary in the US is to have the option of refusing to work -- i.e., no immediate need for money (or to please one's parent by getting a prestigious job). That's the way negotiation works: if my best alternative to a negotiated agreement (BATNA) is pretty good, then my negotiating position is pretty good.
This is basic microeconomics, and it works even if many devs are willing to work for much less than the value they create. There is no need for us to convince those devs to get better at negotiation. Or unionize of anything like that. That all changes, though, when not every dev who needs a job can find a job. (Which is an argument for taking a pay cut during economic downturns, I guess.)
In general, I agree with our assessment, but let me add that I constantly got great evaluations by my superiors, but when I asked for a 10% raise they laughed in my face. I don't work there anymore, but other companies also didn't pay much more when I went looking (without acute need).
Maybe it's the business (consulting) where they only care about the hourly margin, not about your performance (although I did an internal fixed-price project back then; probably saved the company's ass on that botched POS they had built). Generally, my impression is that salaries in Germany are very homogenous, and affected largely by age/experience and rank. You'd have to be a well-marketed freelancer to achieve high hourly rates (only a few people - relatively speaking - can do that).
I'm not sure where you get your numbers but having managed an office in Shanghai I can tell you that is not accurate. These numbers are all translated to USD. Entry level devs were in the 18-20K range. Mid to senior devs were in the 30-35K range and a Director was in the 50-60K range. We had our entry level and mid-range devs hired away for 20% more by eBay or other larger US companies from those numbers. However, in Shanghai, that means your devs are usually commuting for an hour via public transit from the outer ring because you can't actually live in Pudong or Puxi for that kind of money unless your family has been living there already for a long time. And none of our devs were in that position since they were pretty much all from different parts of the country.
You might want to consider Ireland or the UK if your spoken English is as good as your written English. Salaries aren't quite bay area, but they're better than what you describe, especially for a master's!. With 20 days of vacation a year and people who don't take it for granted you'll spend all weekend working I have no intention to return to the US.
That's also quite low. (When I did contractor work (PHP) in the Netherlands almost a decade ago I already charged 500 euro/day, and up to 80 euro/hour for certain gigs.)
And none of that really amounts to much if you subtract the taxes, overhead and most of all the time spent between gigs.
If you do well you can make out considerably better than on a salary, but still, 490 per day for a .NET engineer (biggest shortage there is in IT in Europe) contractor is on the low end.
Over here in Europe (or at least Germany) salaries are incredibly uniform (doesn't really matter if you suck or get as much done in a day as others in 1-2 weeks; if your bugs get constantly reopened or your code is rock-solid), and most people seem to get maybe 35-50k€ after graduation (diploma/master's degree).