[HN Gopher] The trimodal nature of software salaries in the Neth...
___________________________________________________________________
The trimodal nature of software salaries in the Netherlands and
Europe (2021)
Author : emirb
Score : 146 points
Date : 2022-07-02 17:27 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.pragmaticengineer.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.pragmaticengineer.com)
| angarg12 wrote:
| My issue with this article is that it misrepresents a bit the
| people in the #3 tier, particularly those of pre-IPO companies.
|
| Sure, there are people who join such a company and make 1M when
| they IPO. But that is a one time event, and the engineering
| equivalent of winning the lottery. Once you prorate that by the
| number of years worked, the risk of failing, etc. it doesn't look
| as attractive.
| ido wrote:
| Ok let me make a probably very unpopular comment here: their 3rd
| point lists "companies benchmarking against all regional or
| global companies" but in fact what they mean is "companies
| benchmarking against the highest paying US tech hubs".
|
| I assure you "all regional or global companies" also include
| Vietnamese companies paying junior devs $300 per month - what is
| the advantage of the European engineer that is worth paying >=10x
| as much?
|
| If you're comparing globally you can't cherry pick only the
| _best_ paying regions because these are not your only
| competition. And there are a hell of a lot more Bangladeshi,
| Vietnamese & Nigerians than there are people living in SFBA or
| Seattle, and if you're truly competing globally you're also
| competing with them.
| breadloaf wrote:
| Well that really depends. I was outsourcing to India when it
| was still cheap. I probably did something wrong, but I provided
| definition of the project, set of unit tests and access to git
| repository so they can upload the result. I got completely
| useless trash code, incoherent excuses and wasted time.
|
| I paid the company for their "work" and never considered
| outsourcing again. Sometimes cheap means horrendously
| expensive.
| mlboss wrote:
| Any developer charging $3k will not be good. And even then
| you need to pay lot of attention on how they are doing.
| bilekas wrote:
| This might get a bad rep but I've had this experience too.
| It's not a blanket statement though. Outsourcing is fine but
| you definitely have need to do your homework. That's why you
| see a few of the outsourcing companies being bought over by
| their employers, because they're good.
|
| Out of curiosity and related to another HN topic, have you
| ever hired freelancers directly?
| breadloaf wrote:
| I tried to on the Upwork. But it is really hit or miss
| there.
|
| 1. I got hardware electric engineer to help me with a
| design of PCB. Guy was worth every cent.
|
| 2. Got embedded developer on separate project. Guy
| pretended that he can do a lot. I tried to explain to him,
| that I need a USB CDC device driver in MCU which has USB
| PHY and I want Windows to recognize and use usbser.sys
| (generic COM driver) or something similar. He told me that
| he understand what he is doing, I sent him the dev kit and
| then he ghosted me and I have ended up doing it myself with
| TinyUSB.
|
| So as I said, really hit and miss on Upwork. Some people
| are writing lofty skillset so they can get more per hour
| and then failing miserably.
| sumedh wrote:
| How did you select the outsourcing company?
| breadloaf wrote:
| 7 years ago, I don't really remember anymore.
| varispeed wrote:
| > what is the advantage of the European engineer that is worth
| paying >=10x as much?
|
| It is very simple - cost of insurance. It is much easier to
| persuade a worker making $300 a month to leak company secrets
| than someone making $20k a month.
|
| Plus workers in such countries may be incentivised (or have no
| choice but to do it) to spy on behalf of their government.
|
| If your company is doing something remotely serious, you can be
| almost certain someone you don't want will get hold of your IP.
| acchow wrote:
| This makes no sense. If you want to pay to keep secrecy, why
| not just raise their salary by 9x to keep them quiet?
| logifail wrote:
| > If your company is doing something remotely serious [..]
|
| (Sorry I have to ask this) but what types of companies are
| you talking about?
|
| Uber? Netflix? Spotify?
|
| For those maybe, just maybe, the secret sauce isn't actually
| secret any more, it was simply cheap VC money subsidising all
| our rides/viewing/listening.[0][1][2][3]
|
| [0] https://slate.com/business/2022/05/uber-subsidy-lyft-
| cheap-r... [1] https://financialpost.com/investing/investing-
| pro/investors-... [2]
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/08/technology/farewell-
| mille... [3] https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-
| fi-tn-uber-ip...
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Winning a competition means beating people at the top of a
| range, not the dregs.
|
| Implicit here in benchmarking globally is that you want the
| kind of devs that can move around globally. The engineers
| working at Vietnamese companies for $300/month aren't that.
| dv_dt wrote:
| Exactly. And it not just a generic hiring question. If you
| want engineers experienced in building leading edge compute
| systems - one may need to consider what it takes hiring those
| that have built them in highly compensated areas.
| kingkawn wrote:
| Niiiice calling people from poor countries "the dregs"
| ctvo wrote:
| The dregs, as in the bottom of the barrel, of the global
| developer salary band. There's no need to jump to the
| conclusion that it's a judgement on the country itself and
| look for something to be offended by.
|
| Due to current events someone could say the dregs of
| reproductive rights include the USA. They're not making a
| value judgement on the entire country.
| pedrosorio wrote:
| The competition is among companies (and the salary they are
| willing to pay to attract devs), so "the dregs" are the
| companies paying those salaries, not the devs.
| abduhl wrote:
| This is a VERY charitable reading of the GP's post. They
| mention beating "people" not companies and talk about
| "the kind of devs that can move around."
| ido wrote:
| I know we all want to believe we're the next Carmack but if
| there's a ton of solid engineers willing to work for a lot
| less money than you & at the same time global barriers drop
| that means downwards pressure from lower cost countries and
| upwards pressure from higher cost countries. I think the last
| decade or so was an anomaly due to the asset bubble inflating
| how much money (and how cheap that money was) tech companies
| had to spend.
| dymk wrote:
| You'd think that outsourcing would be all companies would
| be doing by now if there were indeed legions of capable
| software engineers willing to do just as good a job for a
| fraction of the price. That still appears to not be the
| case, despite remote (and so international) work becoming
| more commonplace with COVID.
| moneywoes wrote:
| Looking at the explosive growth of companies like Deel
| that worries me greatly
| wyager wrote:
| > what is the advantage of the European engineer that is worth
| paying >=10x as much?
|
| They produce better product.
| ido wrote:
| Maybe they do, maybe not? I mean that is exactly the same
| argument SFBA-based engineers can also claim. I believe it is
| mostly untrue.
|
| When I studied in Vienna a fellow student of mine returned to
| Poland after uni because his wife wanted to & we both started
| our first jobs as juniors at the same time with comparable
| positions, me in Vienna and him in Gdansk. His salary was
| almost exactly 1/3 of mine & I don't believe there was any
| performance component to that, I was simply earning according
| to Viennese standards and he according to Gdansk standards.
| moonchrome wrote:
| In more recent times (especially post COVID), by the time
| both of you are competent enough be independent he will be
| earning as much as you for 1/3 cost of living.
| ido wrote:
| Cost of living in Poland is not actually 1/3 of Austria,
| the difference in cost is much smaller than in salary.
| But it's true that the more senior you are the less
| geography affects your wage.
| moonchrome wrote:
| Austria != Vienna, similar to how London != UK.
|
| Equating for standard of living (eg upper middle class)
| you'll likely be 3x in Vienna. Although I'm just
| guestinating on Gdansk, maybe it's a really expensive
| place.
| ido wrote:
| Austria is a lot less variable than the UK, and Vienna is
| not really the most expensive city there at all
| (generally the further west you go the more expensive it
| gets). I'm pretty sure a lot of the smaller cities like
| Salzburg and Innsbruck are actually more expensive than
| Vienna and not at all certain Vienna is much or at all
| above the Austrian average (or at least urban average).
| yrgulation wrote:
| With the risk of sounding rude i am not even sure why
| austria is part of this debate as its totally irrelevant
| on the tech scene.
| ido wrote:
| It's simply a Westen European country I lived in, sorry I
| never lived and went to Uni + worked in the Netherlands
| to give a more topical example. My point was that borders
| are unfair in terms of compensation not just to Western
| Europeans but to a lot(most?) other people in the world
| outside [west coast/big city) Americans. And that true
| globalization will equalize things not only upward.
| yrgulation wrote:
| Well austria is firmly central european.
|
| Dont worry, old tech will always tend to become cheaper.
| Once countries such as austria take the lead on new tech
| pay will follow. The us and uk have invested massively in
| modern technologies. Actually the uk started the trend
| with its industrial revolution and the us overtook it
| thanks to its size and dna engraved appetite for risk and
| innovation.
|
| To increase your pay, austria would have to be less rigid
| and more open to risk. That will lead to the creation of
| more modern startups and more demand for your skills.
| Dont give into anti globalisation conspiracy theories as
| globalisation is benefiting austria by giving it access
| to vast markets. But since austria is mainly relying on
| old tech its now losing ground as it hasnt got much to
| sell.
| ido wrote:
| I haven't lived in Austria in almost a decade, I simply
| used it as an example than salaries in Europe aren't just
| lower than in the US but also higher than other places.
| Equitable pay means equalizing with everyone not just
| those above you.
| varispeed wrote:
| You can compare cost of living to an extent - assuming,
| for instance, that the worker won't go on holiday
| anywhere nice.
|
| Checked at one of known tour operators, for the same
| hotel and destination in the Caribbean, same duration and
| dates you will pay ~PS2900 when going out from London and
| PS4900 when going out from Cracow.
|
| Things like tech products will also cost broadly the
| same.
|
| Also engineers these days don't live like upper middle
| class (unless they come from such background). It's more
| like upper working class. Progressive taxation prevents
| workers from amassing capital and climbing the class
| ladder.
|
| People from upper middle classes get paid in ways out of
| scope of progressive taxes designed to keep working class
| in check.
| V-2 wrote:
| I don't believe the difference is anywhere near 300%.
| Maybe 20 years ago.
|
| Let's keep Vienna for comparison, but benchmark it
| against Warsaw (also substantially more expensive than
| the rest of the country). According to the data on
| Numbeo, "you would need around 2,562.64EUR (12,036.56zl)
| in Warsaw to maintain the same standard of life that you
| can have with 4,000.00EUR in Vienna". Making Warsaw only
| 1.5x cheaper.
|
| Gdansk is probably in the top 5 most expensive ones
| (meaning cheaper than Warsaw), more or less at a level
| you'd expect from a city of that relative size (at
| roughly 450k inhabitants it's the 6th most populous in
| the country).
| moonchrome wrote:
| OK - so roughly 2x. 1/3 was an exaggeration in reply to
| his 1/3 salary, but I actually did these calculations a
| couple of years ago and it wasn't that far off, I'm from
| Croatia and before settling down I considered moving to
| Western Europe. Turns out when I started freelancing and
| took advantage of low corporate income tax here (10%
| below 1M EUR/year and 10% gains tax) - the math for
| moving abroad never checked out - I made more money than
| my friends who moved to Germany/Ireland even before
| COVID, and it's just been getting easier with the move to
| remote working (that's commenting purely on cost of
| living/lifestyle I can afford - there are other factors
| to consider in these decisions).
| rocgf wrote:
| Your example is anectodal, hence basically worthless.
|
| There is a lot of inefficieny in the market, some of it
| inherent, some of it due to artifical constraints like
| location, but over time those tend to naturally get
| normalized. What I'm trying to say is that if it really
| were better for software to be built in Vietnam for 10% of
| the cost, that would just happen.
|
| It may be that companies have not figured out this neat
| trick or it might be that there are some inherent issues
| with developing software based purely on the cost.
| sealeck wrote:
| lmao the free market does not exist.
| ido wrote:
| My point was that this applies exactly the same for why
| European salaries are lower than American salaries. It
| makes no sense but it equally doesn't make sense that
| Europeans earn more than Asians or Africans. If you want
| equality it doesn't just mean you get to equalize with
| the top end, it also means the bottom gets to equalize
| with you.
| 988747 wrote:
| How long ago was that? Are you guys still in touch? Because
| it seems to me that recently developer salaries in Poland
| matched or even surpassed those in Austria :)
| sealeck wrote:
| I don't think this is likely to be true at a population
| level; Austria is a much richer country than Poland; has
| a much higher standard of education and in other sectors
| salaries are usually higher in Austria than Poland.
| V-2 wrote:
| What exactly implies Austria has a "much higher standard
| of education" than Poland?
|
| For example in the most recent PISA rating the average
| score of mathematics, science and reading is 513 for
| Poland (11th in the world) and 491 for Austria (28th
| place).
| BossingAround wrote:
| From my experience, it's more the culture rather than
| education that forms "suboptimal" engineers. After all,
| engineers mostly learn from online resources in English
| anyways, so the quality of formal education doesn't come
| to play _that_ much (and for the record, I don 't really
| believe that the top tech uni in Vienna is leaps and
| bounds better than the top tech uni in Krakow).
|
| It's the work culture in smaller cities that'll probably
| make the population differences.
| 988747 wrote:
| Agree that this isn't likely to be true at population
| level - I was talking about Software Developers
| specifically.
|
| Disagree on "much higher standard of education" - even if
| Austria comes on top, it's just barely, not by a lot.
| yrgulation wrote:
| I dont know where op gets their stats but pay in austria
| is by no means competitive. I know of a romanian dude who
| interviewed for a company there. Pompous session, ties,
| suit and the stench of a rigid hierarchy. Once they made
| their offer he laughed and told them he'd earn twice as
| much for the same (tech) job in romania. Perhaps an
| isolated case but DACH countries have an inflated sense
| of superiority not matching reality, at least in software
| tech. Interestingly i see many of them crapping on east
| europeans on this forum. Perhaps due to a sense of
| insecurity, but would be interesting if someone pulled
| some stats on how often they pull the east european
| "poverty" or "corruption" card out of their behind.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> Once they made their offer he laughed and told them
| he'd earn twice as much for the same (tech) job in
| romania. Perhaps an isolated case_
|
| Definitely not an isolated case. Austrian tech companies
| generally pay shit and are usually pretty backwards and
| burocratic due to the management heavy culture from the
| 20th century factories (WFH is frowned upon and your time
| in the office is tracked instead of looking at employee
| output) and highly conservative culture in general
| (everyone still uses cash). Also they put far too much
| value in having advanced degrees from their local
| universities rather than looking at experience and
| practical skills, so you end up in credential inflation
| town with colleagues who scuff at your code or technical
| opinions, because they "have a PhD from TU Sturmfart, and
| you don't".
|
| That explains why they have virtually no internationally
| successful local SW companies (unlike other small EU
| companies like Netherlands or Finland, or even poorer
| Estonia), and instead have just a bunch of mom and pop
| webshops, crusty ERP boyshops for local factories, and
| their outdated banking industry that can't even get stock
| trading and banking apps right and instead need to rely
| on the German Flatex and N26. Their only unicorn,
| Bitpanda, recently fired half the workforce, which they
| easily could because Austrian employees have virtually no
| protection against termination, so your employer can fire
| you without any reason with the 1-3 month notice period.
| The cherry on top is that non-competes are legal here and
| employers can choose to enforce them, which, as we know,
| is what made SV the cradle of innovation. /s I rest my
| case.
|
| QOL is generally good there and you can live well there,
| provided you do anything but tech, ideally work for the
| state or government enterprises and coast till retirement
| on your inherited real estate.
| EUROCARE wrote:
| This matches my experience, and also consider: I'm paying
| less than 8% income tax and health and social insurance
| combined on my income in the CEE country where I live.
| What's the tax and insurance in DE and A?
| ido wrote:
| It was maybe 15 years ago, but today instead of Poland it
| would be some poor Asian country. My point is that it's
| not just that Europeans earn less than Americans, they
| also earn more than other regions. If you want _fairness_
| that also applies to people under you, not just people
| above you.
| yakak wrote:
| This isn't really directly true. A global company manager is
| not allowed to balance salary accounts and is usually given
| rules where US/Canada/western Europe are the same one head
| count and other countries are multiples according to typical
| comparative cost.
|
| The end result is that many jobs don't get opened at all in
| Europe but the ones that do tend closer toward US rates as this
| is what they were planning to pay but could not find the one
| high cost head the manager wanted.
| siva7 wrote:
| If you think a dev is a code monkey then yes, it doesn't matter
| if you hire someone from vietnam or seattle for your US
| business. If you're actually looking for a software engineer
| then i have bad news for you: professional software development
| is all about communication (with customers, requirements
| engineers, other developers and so on). That's why you are
| paying them ten times more, so they have a chance to understand
| your business domain and can consult you on technical
| decisions. Otherwise every manager and business owner on earth,
| including me, would hire just the Vietnamese dev instead of the
| 10 times more expensive US dev.
| bluepizza wrote:
| Even local subcontracting is quite difficult due to
| communication lines.
|
| I've worked with very talented offshore developers. They had
| good English, good CS knowledge, and good work ethics.
| Results were always crap anyway. And their number one
| complaint was always "they don't tell us enough, and we have
| to guess things".
| ido wrote:
| So you're saying the Dutch in the article shouldn't complain
| that they earn less than Americans then?
| siva7 wrote:
| The dutch isn't earning ten times less than the average US
| developer. At best two times less, but that's it (and FAANG
| salaries in US tech hubs are in no way representative for
| average US dev salaries)
| ido wrote:
| But it's exactly the same type of complaint "salaries in
| SFBA are higher for the same job in Amsterdam", why
| shouldn't a Pakistani dev level the same complain about
| developers in Amsterdam?
| siva7 wrote:
| For the same reason i outlined above: communication.
| Different time zones, language barriers, cultural
| barriers and so on. The communication between the SFBA
| and amsterdam team may still be easier due to more
| similiar cultures than between SFBA and pakistan.
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| So my read of the second and third groups was that the
| companies are being competitive against the top of that range
| (vs the first group that is just benchmarking against local
| peers). If I'm competing to win a competition, it doesn't
| matter how low the lowest performer is. It does matter who the
| highest performers are.
|
| So I feel like you may have just read the definition
| incorrectly (granted article could also have been more clear).
| lordnacho wrote:
| In my line of work, there are actually a bunch of Vietnamese
| guys making Western level quant trader type salaries, living in
| small castles in their home country.
|
| The thing is, you can't suppress the wages unilaterally for
| someone who knows how to do things. There's always going to be
| some other firm offering them a similar deal, with the same
| capital (equipment, IP, support, trading capital etc) for them
| to use. So even if you know they only need a tenth of what a
| Western quant needs to live well, you can't just offer them
| that, they will end up taking an offer very similar to what
| they'd get if they moved to NYC or London.
|
| The $300 people are victims of supply and demand. Often it's
| cookie-cutter type contract work that many people know how to
| do, and the real problem they have as a supplier of that
| knowledge is how to get in the front of the queue to be the guy
| to help a western small-time entrepreneur build his website.
| When this is the case, the organiser, basically the owner of
| the outsourcing company, has all the negotiating leverage and
| sets the price accordingly.
|
| The difference is that the firm with very specifically
| exploitable capital needs specific knowledge to operate that
| capital. You need devs with certain skills, and there's only so
| many of them, especially as your process gives a lot of false
| negatives. As such devs are rarely identified, you are wasting
| a lot of money not splitting the pie generously when you find
| one. I was talking to someone the other day and the agent told
| me there were 40 candidates interviewed for three roles, which
| is a huge amount as I had 5 one-on-ones plus a takehome.
|
| Firms that don't really have anything special will not pay
| anything special, in relation to where the employee is based.
| Dove wrote:
| I found this fascinatingly counterintuitive.
|
| I would normally expect that a broader market leads to lower
| prices for commodity goods. If I can only buy candy from the
| vendor at the movie theater, I expect to pay a higher price than
| if I can buy it from all the stores in the region, which I expect
| to be higher again than if I can import it from anywhere in the
| world. The reverse is true for developers? The companies with
| global reach instead pay the _most_?
|
| And then it occurred to me that the efforts of good developers
| scale.
|
| If I imagine a widget that makes a company 10% more efficient, a
| small lemonade stand might be willing to pay $20 for it, while a
| large company might find a price in tens of millions to be a
| bargain. Developers are more like this. Not _only_ developers,
| mind you, but automation scales to the size of the problem almost
| for free!
|
| If you give a good developer a hard problem and scale it across
| global markets, the return for that developer being _good_
| absolutely dwarfs any reasonable salary on a human scale.
| Therefore, it makes sense that for companies solving a certain
| class of problems, in markets above a certain size, that _any_
| reasonable salary is a bargain if it improves the quality of the
| developers the company can attract. I suppose the idea that
| software scales is the intuition upon which this site was founded
| in the first place.
|
| I appreciate that the analysis in the article is good and much
| more complex than this. I just enjoyed the unexpected
| observation, and it left me feeling confident about my place in
| the world. There are never enough talented people to solve all
| the problems that need them, and if there ever is so much talent
| that I have trouble finding a job -- well, that's a world I'd
| like to live in anyway.
| FredPret wrote:
| By this logic, the best deal for a good developer will almost
| always be to start a company
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| A good developer actually sort of needs other people to make
| this happen, though. Unless the good developer is also good
| at business, marketing, and at a lot of other things that are
| easy to take for granted. While those facilitating roles are
| to some extent more replaceable, they are still quite
| necessary to allow the good developer to work their magic.
|
| While polymath geniuses that excel in many different areas
| definitely do exist, they're a lot more rare than those who
| merely excel in one or two areas.
| Dove wrote:
| I suppose that is true, if you reason narrowly.
|
| There is another force in play: the degree to which support
| makes the individual more powerful. I am much closer to my
| full potential as a problem solver when surrounded by
| effective management/facilities/IT/legal/differently-
| specialized-peers/enough-people-to-work-on-truly-large-
| systems than when I go it alone. Having spent significant
| time both as a freelancer and in mind bogglingly huge
| corporations, the corp lifestyle has its drawbacks for sure
| -- but I myself find the benefits of support and large
| problems to dramatically outweigh the drawbacks of politics
| and lack of freedom. Your mileage may vary, of course. Shoot,
| _my_ mileage has varied over the course of a career. Still,
| the intuition seems solid: you aren 't going to be solving
| Google-datacenter or Amazon-logistics levels of problems with
| your personal startup calendar app. At least, not usually,
| not for a while.
|
| If there is a minimum size market which can maximize the
| impact of a good developer, I suspect there might be a
| minimum size company, too.
| acchow wrote:
| That is indeed always the best deal for every developer who
| wants to be an entrepreneur. But it's not for everyone - some
| people just want to code.
| sumedh wrote:
| Getting contracts is a different skillset.
| kortilla wrote:
| Only if the developer is capable of finding a business
| product that can be automated at scale. Nobody suggested that
| part was trivial.
|
| Once you have a business with that problem, then developers
| are worth significant money.
| de6u99er wrote:
| Those high salaries remind me of the stories of heavy smokers who
| didn't die of cancer or COPD. I think it's very unlikely to get
| those high salaries in Europe. Comparing them to salaries in
| Silicon Valley without context isn't really smart. I have always
| tried to see bay area salaries as as risk compensation.
|
| E g. In Vienna/Austria a 2-3 bedroom apartment here is about 1-2k
| while in the bay area it's between 5-10k. If I lose my job I
| still have a social net that will soften my fall, while in SV
| you're on your own and can get evicted from one day to the other.
| We have a single payer healthcare system while in the US certain
| health issues can, despite being insured, lead to financial ruin.
|
| That being said my salary was until now always a 5-figure salary.
| In my upcoming job I will for the first time in my career path
| get a 6-figure salary which excluding bonuses is 70% higher and
| including bonuses can be up to 89% higher than currently. It took
| me quite some while to get there, and I can assure others that
| jobs paying those amounts don't grow on trees. It requires both
| talent and charisma, and honestly also luck, to land such a job.
| Constantly switching jobs and chasing slightly higher salaries
| definitely isn't the way to go.
| fnbr wrote:
| Wait, really? That's incredible! EUR1-2k for a 2-3 bedroom
| apartment in Vienna? You would barely see that anywhere in
| Canada, let alone a major city.
| de6u99er wrote:
| Yes:
|
| https://www.immowelt.at/liste/wien/wohnungen/mieten?ami=100&.
| ..
| jotm wrote:
| It's not that incredible considering availability,
| requirements, time from arrival to country to getting the
| keys, etc. But yeah, once you are renting it, it's pretty
| nice until you have to move.
| lnsru wrote:
| The same is valid for Munich. 2-3 bedrooms plus dining room
| is <2k here. However it's not the best apartment in the city,
| rather okayish. Also it's hard to hit 5k after taxes salary
| limit here.
| ficklepickle wrote:
| Canada has the lovely combo of low salaries and high rent
| de6u99er wrote:
| I forgot to mention. 5 weeks of PTO or like in my case, after
| having paid into the system enough years, 6 weeks of PTO. Plus
| 100% paid sick leave! And lastl but not least between 12 and 24
| months (parents' choice) parental leave which can be consumed
| half-half by both parents.
| [deleted]
| UweSchmidt wrote:
| Have we discussed the requirements for those fancy "Tier 3" jobs?
| I suspect it's overall _a lot_ harder than most regular dev jobs.
|
| Many developers are medium sized fish in small ponds, where they
| can get away with moderate effectiveness, bad programming habits
| and little study, or, if they are good, they easily stand out and
| enjoy the honor of getting the harder tickets assigned, yet may
| not ever be really challenged.
|
| These top paying companies all seem to do quite complicated
| stuff, serve a lot of users reliably and implement major features
| quickly. FAANG codebases seem large and involve a lot of (custom)
| tooling that devs need to grok and processes they need to
| understand. Just the author's passing advice to study up for
| those interviews means ... many hours of study in that
| "100%-concentration-mode" that many people are not willing or
| able to put in even for 1 hour.
|
| No doubt there are some cosy pockets in FAANG but, ultimately,
| building AWS or Azure from nothing can simply only be done by a
| certain type of person who is willing to bring a certain amount
| of effort. And those people the market rightfully grants the
| appropriate salaries. Right?
| sidlls wrote:
| I work at such a "tier 3" company. It's not about the
| complexity of the tooling or the code. Most of that is stuff
| the typical Enterprise Java Dev can "grok" easily enough with
| just a bit of a learning curve. The problems of scale and
| infrastructure are mostly abstracted from engineers at these
| places already, and that's where the complex tooling comes in.
| The rest of it is unnecessarily complicated, mainly because
| these companies have two problems. One: they've made a point of
| hiring at the high end of the education pool (masters, PhD) to
| work on what amounts to glorified CRUD--these people are bored,
| and add complexity where it is unnecessary. Two: the promotion
| mechanism depends on running a technically complex, "needle
| moving" project--this also promotes unnecessary complexity.
|
| The real reason the salaries at these companies is higher is
| also two-fold: 1) "everyone" wants to work there, so they can
| be selective and use salary as a justification for that
| selectivity; 2) they want to keep their overqualified staff
| happy enough to not start competitors.
| kortilla wrote:
| > with just a bit of a learning curve
|
| This downplays how bad many developers are. I have some web
| dev friends that know how to use exactly one framework, one
| language, one source control, and never touch the cli out of
| a few commands stackoverflow told them to run. Changing from
| GitHub to bitbucket would be a major undertaking for them and
| that's not even abandoning git.
|
| They do well managing the small business apps they do, but
| they have no interest or motivation to learn anything
| different.
|
| Now, keeping that bar in mind, there are devs worse than them
| that they complain about to me. They struggle with basic
| input validation (understanding what is executed on the
| client vs server, where strings can be trusted, etc).
|
| Having come from Google, the tooling learning curve is only
| trivial if you already have a completely different mindset
| about what it means to be a programmer than 90% of the labor
| market.
| hawk_ wrote:
| I am curious to see how this plays out with the coming recession
| (hiring freezes instituted already). I suspect that #3 segment
| will prove to be ephemeral - a result of fed's QE unlimited
| regime.
| aenis wrote:
| Booking.com, quoted in the article, is a prime example of what
| happens when those companies are squeezed. They let a lot of
| people go in 2020, haphazardly, then they scrambled to re-hire
| as wheels started falling off their platform. I turned them
| down despite them offering a good salary bump.
| sealeck wrote:
| If you look at Google, Apple, Amazon, etc's balance sheets
| they're quite solid, not really at this point propped up by
| monetary policy any more.
| UkrainianJew wrote:
| It's not that easy. Lots of Amazon's profits come from
| countless unprofitable startups blowing VC money on AWS.
| Google is swimming in money because numerous companies have
| generous ad budgets. Apple relies on people exchanging their
| smartphone every year or so because why not.
|
| You cannot expect these things to go unchanged if the Fed
| stops throwing money around like it's used to. And if it
| doesn't, a bag of rice will soon cost $1000 because we have
| an shortage of farm workers and an oversupply of wellness
| bloggers, influencers and administrators.
| hawk_ wrote:
| Fed's balance sheet has barely started contracting. This
| contraction cycle has a while to play out.
| [deleted]
| sytelus wrote:
| Within FAANG, there is again tri-modal distribution. There are
| people who are hanging in there in IC roles for 15 years and then
| they are new comers straight out of school with PhD in deep
| learning and multiple competing offers. Both groups make
| approximately same money. Then there is upper management layer
| who have gotten promoted well beyond their competence by jumping
| internally and externally and they make 5X of everyone else.
|
| Truth to be told, vast majority of FAANG population doesn't make
| those fairytale money.
| jotm wrote:
| I've been an IC at a company providing IC services to small
| companies in the buildings next to FAANG HQs. I've worked as an
| IC designer, have been involved in a lot of IC (obviously) and
| I also have several years of experience in IC. So clearly, ic
| wot ppl mean when they type IC.
|
| As an IC on various forums for over a decade, I've only started
| commonly seeing this abbreviation in the past 2 years.
|
| Just don't.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| However, an IC @ Google outside the US still makes 2-3x what
| their local employment market will pay even without playing all
| careerist & promo games.
|
| Source: was IC @ Google.
|
| Frankly I've accumulated the cynical opinion that Google
| _wants_ to asphyxiate the local job markets of talent. They
| need to do this to keep their lead in advertising, etc., and
| they can afford to do it because of their lead. Paying 2x what
| local employers pay stops many local employers (usually
| underfunded by anemic local investment culture) from firing up
| some fancy new ad-tech startup or whatever.
| wdb wrote:
| It's unclear where these companies are in The Netherlands.
| Probably restricted to the Randstad? Haven't really seen the
| mentioned salaries ranges outside Amsterdam
| arnvald wrote:
| You're right, it's either Amsterdam or remote.
| yread wrote:
| [2021]
|
| Previous discussion
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26388936
| dang wrote:
| Thanks! Macroexpanded:
|
| _Tripolar Nature of Software Engineering Salaries in the
| Netherlands and Europe_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26388936 - March 2021 (134
| comments)
| 6510 wrote:
| Without taxes the per country salaries are only meaningful to
| employers? The 55000 would be 4580 per month or 38400 and 3200
| after tax in NL.
|
| Depending on the company you can easily spend 8 hours on extra
| nonsense during free hours: unpaid breaks, long commutes,
| messages, phone calls.
|
| IMHO it's a crap deal compared to other jobs.
| acchow wrote:
| By this diagram, if you can't climb from the second curve onto
| the third one, then it is indeed a bad deal and it would make
| financial sense to switch to some other career.
| yrgulation wrote:
| Yep, pretty much. Tech jobs are no longer highly paid. Also
| earning 3200 eur after tax in the nl is lower than earning 2500
| eur in, say, romania, once you factor in the cost of living.
| BossingAround wrote:
| Every time I see this article reposted, I feel a pang of sadness.
| It's this chasing of the SF salary outside of the US that is
| supposed to be the holy grail of every engineer in rich EU
| countries.
|
| Well, if you get hired by FAANG in Germany, you don't get the SF
| salary. My experience is that companies that do offer extreme
| salaries do not do so out of competition with FAANG (since FAANG
| does not compete with itself globally, i.e. FAANG companies tell
| you something like "if you want SF salary, come and work in SF,"
| which tends to be difficult due to the exploitative nature of US
| immigration system).
|
| Rather, there's some kind of a catch, like "we need you to know
| this highly specialized thing that globally only a handful of
| people have experience with" (I'm looking at you, AI solvers), or
| they provide conditions very few people can tolerate.
| 202206241203 wrote:
| _> Well, if you get hired by FAANG in Germany, you don 't get
| the SF salary._
|
| I don't think Germany has at-will employment. Plus all the
| taxes to feed people who don't want to work.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Unfortunately, I have to agree. The truth is that it's entirely
| possible for some people to get SF FAANG level salaries while
| working in the EU, but those salaries are extremely _rare_.
| It's not the same as SF or Seattle or NYC where there are
| numerous job opportunities and career paths that could lead to
| those salaries. Instead, they're reserved for a select few high
| achievers who are uniquely talented and accomplished.
|
| This article has caused a lot of consternation in one of the
| international forums I follow with a lot of younger people
| getting started in their EU tech careers because they can't
| figure out why they're unable to find compensation coming close
| to this _anywhere_.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| _Base_ level compensations for FAANG positions outside of SV
| are indeed pretty typical and humdrum.
|
| But they contain a large equity portion. And over 2-3 years
| that equity portion ends up being more than the base salary,
| and you can get pretty close to a Bay Area compensation range.
|
| e.g. I was L4 @ Google Waterloo in Canada. Base compensation
| was nothing special. Good for the immediate area, but not
| stellar. Yes, nice perks, amazing benefits, decent vacation,
| good bonus, etc. But after accruing RSUs for a few years you're
| probably making double what you started with. Especially so if
| the stock goes up a bunch.
|
| Could you make more money working directly for Google in SV?
| Certainly, but your cost of living would be way higher. But
| even if you stay home you're likely making at least twice what
| your peers in the regular local companies are making.
|
| Unfortunately it's terrible golden handcuffs, because nobody
| else in the region will be able to match that compensation
| package.
| mupuff1234 wrote:
| That was true for the longest bull run in history, which may
| or may not continue.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Sure, though the equity refreshes done at Google are done
| yearly targeting a $$ range at the current share price, and
| then vesting over multiple years. So even if the stock goes
| down it will tend to amortize out to about the same over a
| number of years, and if the stock goes up a bunch again
| older grants made "at the bottom" could even net you big
| results.
|
| But of course there's also the chance that not only will
| Google's stock go down, but their revenues... and
| generosity... will to.
|
| Me, I "lucked out" and sold my RSU at the peak. Though I've
| been living off the cash proceeds since, so.
| Jacqued wrote:
| In my experience, this is mostly wrong. You don't get 500-600k
| Silicon Valley offers in Europe just for being a solid
| engineer.
|
| You do get a total comp that is 2-3x local market if you manage
| to get into FAANG like companies and even the tier below. I
| think this is what Gergely is describing.
|
| That is still life changing for a lot of engineers, and worth
| the 3 month grind to get through the interviews. At least it
| was for me, and this article was a big part of why I made the
| jump.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| 2-3x local market is doable even outside of fangs, usually
| with more flexibility (remote was a nice perk pre-pandemic)
| and no bullshit interview.
|
| If you pair it with working via your own limited company and
| get your taxes down to single digits or low double digits you
| can make as much as salaried people on 300k - and with no
| equity that can go up or down (sure, and no holidays or sick
| days if you're the kind of person that does those).
|
| Yet, even when you hit 200+k in EU, you're still left
| thinking you could be making 600k in SV.
| dubswithus wrote:
| You mean consulting?
| FrenchDevRemote wrote:
| >(sure, and no holidays or sick days if you're the kind of
| person that does those).
|
| the kind of person that does those? you mean humans?
| 2-718-281-828 wrote:
| > or they provide conditions very few people can tolerate.
|
| Like intimate cleaning and nursing of old and very sick people
| under immense time pressure and emotional stress.
|
| Oh, well ... never mind
| idlehand wrote:
| Gentle reminder that wages are set by markets generally based
| on the cost of replacement. If you don't have a moat in the
| form of education and experience, you won't have very
| impressive pay. Working in the public sector just makes this
| worse because politicians need to keep your wages down to
| have room in the budget for their pet project which will
| hopefully get them re-elected.
| splittingTimes wrote:
| Humanities supposedly most brilliant minds work on the next
| e-billing system, AI on how to sell more crap that nobody really
| needs, keep a glorified message board afloat or enable the cancer
| that is advertisment.
|
| They should work on how to address the climate catastrophe, the
| waste/recycling problem, food security, sustainable agriculture
| and land/water use, medical devices/health care or how to fix the
| broken participatory political system that has led us to the
| multifaceted crisis we all find us in.
|
| None of the companies named in that article solve any of the
| existential threads we as species at large or society in the
| small face and yet they pay the highest salaries and we are
| supposed to chase those.
|
| This adds to the dark and heavy ball of despair in my stomach
| more than anything.
| jotm wrote:
| As individuals, and even as companies, we can't do much.
| Worrying about it is just stressing for no benefit to anyone.
|
| Governments, elected by the citizens, need to address such
| strategic concerns.
|
| And they actually do. In case it's not clear, most people just
| don't give a fuck. Hence the weak response to climate change,
| etc.
|
| So don't stress, just live while you can.
| hintymad wrote:
| I was wondering what makes companies be willing to pay Bay Area
| packages for engineers in only a few tech hubs. Supply and
| Demand? But then at least FANNGs have a hard time finding talents
| in European countries too, at least in Germany. And the number of
| engineers they hire is small compared to that in the US, so the
| companies could afford larger packages, right?
|
| If it were not supply and demand, then it's puzzling to me why
| companies didn't want to pay packages comparable to the Bay Area
| in cities like London or Berlin. Is it because these cities do
| not have teams that own sufficiently mission-critical products or
| systems? If that's the reason, then why can't the cities own more
| products?
| ceeplusplus wrote:
| Unfortunately this misses the difference in taxation vs. the US.
| You pay almost nothing for healthcare at any tech company and pay
| much lower taxes (both income and sales tax). So European offers
| are still much less competitive than the US.
| maccard wrote:
| in some states. On a salary of PS120,000 in the UK, you'll take
| home 60% of your pay [0], meanwhile in California on $145,000
| [1] you take home 63%.
|
| The real difference is that it's very hard to be paid 120,000
| in the UK.
|
| [0] https://www.thesalarycalculator.co.uk/salary.php
|
| [1] https://smartasset.com/taxes/california-paycheck-
| calculator#...
| varispeed wrote:
| This is a bit misleading, because on PS120k salary the
| employer has to additionally pay PS17k of employer's NI which
| comes from your salary budget. So in real terms you make
| PS137k and your take home is about 53% (and it's get worse as
| your pay goes up as you are losing personal allowance and
| your take home quickly becomes less than 50%). It does not
| account for Apprenticeship Levy. It's a quite nasty way for
| the government to hide the true level of taxation from
| employees.
| maccard wrote:
| There's always a hidden cost. There's also the fact that on
| 120k an employer is required to contribute 3% and likely
| does so via salary sacrifice which changes the numbers
| again.
|
| The number I picked for California is also on the higher
| end, other states are lower again. All thats to say a
| direct general comparison isn't possible but it's not right
| to claim that the west has a higher tax burden either the
| numbers are dangerously close in many cases.
| digianarchist wrote:
| There can be huge tax advantages in the US compared to Canada
| or the EU. My effective rate in California is 24% because I
| can file my taxes jointly which isn't possible elsewhere.
| cdavid wrote:
| It depends on the country. In France, you definitely gets
| lots of tax advantage getting married, and in many cases 1
| person earning X is not so different than 2 people getting
| x/2 after tax.
|
| That is definitely not true in the UK, at least when I was
| working there from 2011 to 2017.
| ido wrote:
| It may not be possible _everywhere_ but it's certainly
| possible _elsewhere_ (my wife and I also file jointly in
| Germany).
| odiroot wrote:
| The difference between UK and some of the Western-EU countries
| is already significant enough. No need to go straight to USA.
| nivenkos wrote:
| Not so sure, as a junior in the UK I got a raise moving to
| Spain of all places... from London.
| vultour wrote:
| Standard contract rate in London is ~500GBP per day, which
| is incredibly high compared to most of Europe.
| bjornsing wrote:
| 62.50 GBP = 75.7 USD per hour is "incredibly high"...?
| vultour wrote:
| Yes. If your country does not have one of the tech
| companies mentioned in the article then $75 per hour is a
| fever dream.
| yrgulation wrote:
| Probably because you are at a senior level in that market.
| Few eu countries can compete with the uk in terms of pay
| and modern tech.
| kayoone wrote:
| Working in Berlin tech, I found London salaries not that
| interesting considering the cost of living is easily 2x
| of Berlin.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| The money in London is in contracting.
| 202206241203 wrote:
| That is when you manage to find a flat to rent in Berlin
| after queueing with 100 other people?
| yrgulation wrote:
| Well to be honest london is not an ideal place to live
| in. But thanks to remote contracting and london rates,
| the uk market can be quite attractive.
| seibelj wrote:
| A common criticism is that "but you get so much more for your
| taxes in Europe".
|
| I have a counterpoint - you get the choice of what you want to
| buy in the US. I'd rather keep more of my take-home pay and do
| without certain services, or better yet choose the provider
| (and quality / expense) of such services if I want them.
|
| Somehow the bureaucracy in the US is still massive, so I can
| only imagine what far higher tax rates in Europe enable.
| djvdq wrote:
| Let's say that I want to have better train infrastructure.
| How much will it cost me to build that, according to your
| thinking?
| seibelj wrote:
| I would rather a private company build it, or in a public /
| private partnership, so we at least have some semblance of
| breaking-even if not a small profit.
|
| Our current train systems are so woefully wasteful,
| inefficient, prone to breaking down, and so on that simply
| giving the same corruption more money would be extremely
| unwise.
| BossingAround wrote:
| I see no real reason why public transport must be
| necessarily profitable. It's a common good that tax
| payers enjoy. You'll have profitable legs, but you'll
| also have legs that are used by a few folks from a
| village who need to get to the city once a week, and
| those will never be profitable. A private company would
| probably not build there.
| ceeplusplus wrote:
| Because without the need to be profitable, you get gross
| incompetence, corruption, and waste. See: California HSR,
| BART expansion, NYC subway expansion.
|
| The power of the market forces private businesses to
| offer quality service. A privately run subway would never
| allow drug addicts and thieves run rampant on the train
| like they're allowed to in NYC and the Bay.
|
| Pro tip: if I feel scared for my life or property at any
| point during a transit, you've already lost against a
| car.
| Tepix wrote:
| Better than Germany? Not much... it's a train wreck (ha!)
| stetrain wrote:
| How many choices do I have in the US where I can live, shop,
| eat, travel, etc. without owning, insuring, maintaining, and
| fueling a car?
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| Taxes in EU can be high or low depending on where you leave
| and whether you're employed or work through your own
| business.
|
| Tax rates can go from 5% (Maltese company + Portuguese NHR
| scheme) to 60% (high earning employees).
|
| High tax Europe doesn't make any sense if you ask me, you're
| not getting much for it.
|
| Infrastructure (roads, public departments, police) and public
| healthcare are terrible in most of EU for the average high
| earner. Nordic countries are way better in that regards but
| it's too cold for me to even consider those places.
|
| USA healthcare is comparable to the best private healthcare
| available in EU.
| ido wrote:
| Tax rates at the higher taxed states in the US (like
| California) are actually not lower than in western europe
| while still not providing you with all the services western
| european governments do.
| seibelj wrote:
| I live in Massachusetts, and somehow we actually have
| fairly low taxation (5.25% flat tax) despite our reputation
| and being deep blue politically.
|
| I average about 30% total taxation in a high tax bracket.
| If I was trying to avoid taxes on real wealth I would move
| to Florida for 6 months and do the other 6 in Boston (as
| have many friends of mine).
|
| Why people keep paying California / NYC tax rates in
| software dev jobs makes no sense anymore.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Meanwhile WA has no state income tax at all, so it's even
| better for high earners.
|
| Advantages for the bay area are its weather and much
| larger tech ecosystem. Main advantage for NYC is being a
| 'real' big city with all that entails (night life, better
| transit/walkability, other urban amenities).
| nerdponx wrote:
| I think MA is probably the state with the best "bang for
| buck" in terms of what the government provides per dollar
| of taxes paid.
|
| NY is comparatively insulting to reside in, because the
| government is so wasteful/corrupt there and is therefore
| capable of providing so much less (not to mention its
| legendary ability to stall legislation indefinitely).
| I_AM_A_SMURF wrote:
| For high earners it's still higher in EU, about 50% vs 40%
| but yeah it's not _that_ significant.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Be aware that those 50% in the EU usually include social
| security, unemployment, health care and taxes, not just
| taxes on your salary. Also, it's less than 50% in praxis,
| 50% are just easier to calculate in your head.
| pedrosorio wrote:
| Those 40% in California also include:
|
| - Medicare (65+ healthcare), social security (retirement)
|
| - California taxes: disability, unemployment, and for low
| income people, Medi-Cal covers healthcare as well
| sealeck wrote:
| Even if (which it almost certainly isn't) what you claim is
| true, the point of paying taxes is not just about what you
| immediately, materially gain but (a) to support people on
| lower incomes and (b) to fund things like R&D projects (e.g.
| the www is a result of state-funded CERN) and infrastructure
| which would be too expensive to build personally (e.g. roads,
| railway tracks to ship goods to ones house), etc
| nerdponx wrote:
| The biggest US government expenses are the military and
| overcomplicated inefficient social programs (Medicare, food
| stamps, Social Security).
|
| Moreover, the logical extreme of this argument is to just not
| have a government at all. I don't need bridges because I
| don't drive. I don't need the fire department because I am
| careful. Etc. It doesn't make sense, and the truth is that
| some things either best administered centrally, at scale, and
| protected from market forces, and/or the inefficiencies of
| central planning are still better for society as a whole
| (even if not for you) than the alternative outcomes that
| would arise if you rely on various market-like systems.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| > I don't need bridges because I don't drive
|
| Why should you pay for it? Let those who need it or stand
| to make money out of it to pay.
|
| There are alternative systems, we never had the freedom to
| try them outside of emperors / feudal kings / governments
| coercion:
| http://daviddfriedman.com/The_Machinery_of_Freedom_.pdf
| nerdponx wrote:
| This book has about the same information content as _The
| Conquest of Bread_ : a lot of interesting ideas and
| idealistic speculation, and not a lot in the way of
| practical instructions for organizing a robust large-
| scale society.
|
| Edit: It's worth remembering that the earliest highways
| in the USA were privately-owned toll roads. And that the
| first mass transit systems were privately owned
| railroads. There is a lot to be said for free markets and
| the price system! But there is also a reason that these
| pieces of infrastructure ended up under the government
| umbrella.
| seibelj wrote:
| The brightest minds don't go into government bureaucracies
| - they don't get respect, don't get paid, can't get shit
| done, and a myriad of reasons why they go private instead.
| The best-staffed departments are those that have a
| symbiotic relationship with the private sector, like the
| SEC, where doing a government stint raises your value in
| the private sector significantly.
|
| Because we have seen endless waste and corruption in our
| central planning, I no longer want them running or planning
| anything. If there was even a single government service
| that made even a semblance of efficiency and effectiveness
| then perhaps that one could remain. But overall it's been
| an endless slide to shittiness in our public institutions.
| nerdponx wrote:
| > Because we have seen endless waste and corruption in
| our central planning, I no longer want them running or
| planning anything. If there was even a single government
| service that made even a semblance of efficiency and
| effectiveness then perhaps that one could remain. But
| overall it's been an endless slide to shittiness in our
| public institutions.
|
| Citation needed on this FUD.
|
| Any "slide" is more likely due to punitive funding cuts
| in agencies like the IRS or due to corrupt leadership
| (including some presidential appointees) at agencies like
| the FCC. If anything, the Biden administration has been
| refreshingly high-functioning in its basic capacity as
| the executive branch of the federal government,
| regardless of how you feel about his public statements or
| policy agenda.
| WJW wrote:
| I'm not saying you're not correct wherever you are, but
| it's important to recognize that there is a significant
| cultural aspect in this. In the US, you would be entirely
| correct: talented people don't go into the government and
| thus the public sector is filled with subpar employees.
| In many EU countries, the government has more prestige,
| thus it attracts more talent and so it works better and
| gets more prestige. It's a feedback loop in both
| directions.
|
| I can point to a great many effective government services
| in my own country in western Europe for example.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| Government services can work - but at what cost?
|
| We routinely had multimillions public projects to build
| crappy website for our universities.
|
| It was something the students could have done better for
| less than 100k.
|
| After you factor in all the corruption and inefficiency
| caused by not having competition, you can end up paying a
| high multiple of what is reasonable.
| ornornor wrote:
| The corollary is that you live like a king in a country where
| people could be billionaires or they could be poor,
| desperate, with untreated mental health issues, nothing to
| lose, and a loaded gun.
|
| On the global scale, I wouldn't say the US is a beacon of
| progress and happiness. It's better than many bottom tier
| countries but far from top tier countries (which aren't as
| liberal, for the most part)
| nivenkos wrote:
| What top tier countries?
|
| The US is the wealthiest country in the world by miles.
| It's had the highest GDP every single year for over 100
| years continuously.
|
| That amount of capital is phenomenal, and part of why
| Americans enjoy salaries 3-4x higher than even Western
| Europe in most professional work - Tech, Medicine, Law,
| truck driving, etc.
|
| And that money allows you to work your way up, and buy your
| own property, etc. which is almost impossible in much of
| Europe, Canada, etc.
| BossingAround wrote:
| > The US is the wealthiest country in the world by miles.
|
| True, but the point is that most of that wealth is highly
| concentrated. Hence why the US is not the beacon of
| happiness and progress.
| ornornor wrote:
| Yes on economical metrics. But in happiness, life
| expectancy, education, equality, prisoners count,
| literacy, and many other things that arguably matter more
| in life than $$$ then the US is quite lagging compared to
| other developed economies.
| nivenkos wrote:
| Yeah, and for most working professionals you get sweet FA.
|
| Like here in Sweden we pay 40% income tax, 25% sales tax and
| still have to pay about $30 for each doctor visit. Dentistry
| is not included in the state health coverage. Neither are
| annual checkups of any kind, so diagnosis can be difficult
| and slow, etc.
|
| In Sweden, those taxes are just going to those who are lucky
| enough to have first-hand subsidised apartment contracts, or
| have loads of children and live off the barnbidrag.
| Especially asylum seekers (failed or accepted) that get both
| of those for free, and never have to work or integrate with
| society.
|
| The only major benefit over the US is the semi-decent trade
| unions which mean full-time work is quite stable and with
| good vacation allowance.
| BossingAround wrote:
| I am not disputing what you're saying about your healthcare
| system, but if you get hit by a car, I would guess that
| nobody will be afraid to call an ambulance for fear of the
| cost. The same cannot be said of the US, where people with
| emergencies take ubers to the hospital.
|
| You might take an uber to the hospital in Sweden too, out
| of convenience, but not out of fear for being stuck with a
| $1000 bill.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| Good luck finding an ambulance in EU
|
| You often need to find your own way to the hospital
| varispeed wrote:
| > The same cannot be said of the US, where people with
| emergencies take ubers to the hospital.
|
| It's a bit ironic as a couple of months ago I had to call
| for an ambulance here in the UK when I found someone
| extremely unwell and they told me I should call an Uber
| and take that person to A&E myself, because they don't
| have free ambulances. Then at A&E they had over 3h
| waiting time for majors. You pay fortune in taxes and you
| get crap service. Often you have to go privately to see a
| specialist and you can't deduct that money from your
| taxes.
| seibelj wrote:
| The anecdotes from supposedly-superior socialized medical
| systems in Europe always throw cold water on USA leftist
| dreams. The left here has been saying it's a utopia for a
| fraction of the cost for decades. The reality is so much
| more complex.
| nivenkos wrote:
| I mean, I'm a leftist in the EU, it's just that the
| system isn't working due to cuts and mismanagement, and
| unfortunately the "left-wing" parties here are more
| concerned with identity politics and policies benefiting
| the lumpen rather than the proletariat (mass immigration,
| social housing for criminals, etc.).
|
| I support universal healthcare, but I think a lot of
| Americans don't appreciate the benefits they get from the
| sheer wealth of the USA. Salaries are so much higher, and
| health insurance covers much more at good companies, etc.
| tomtheelder wrote:
| I mean I could tell almost the exact same anecdote from
| when I had to have my appendix out in the US. The key
| difference is that I ended up with a fucking insane bill
| to pay at the end of all of it.
|
| Plus the NHS was better historically. The conservatives
| have been playing starve the beast with it, and Labor is
| about as impotent as the Dems are in the US.
|
| Either way they _still_ spend less and have better
| outcomes, so that part at least isn 't very complex.
| Joeri wrote:
| A well run government subsidized system still has choice and
| competition. In belgium I can choose what school my kids go
| to, even though all of them are subsidized to the point of
| costing very little. I can also choose what hospital to go
| to, or what doctor to see, and that visit will always be
| subsidized by the public healthcare system, while doctors
| still are self-employed and can set their own rates (higher
| rates means I pay more myself). In both systems there is
| little administration, because the system works the same way
| for everyone and is straightforward.
| wasmitnetzen wrote:
| There are things money can't buy. It's hard to list things
| without getting too political, which I don't think this is
| the right forum for, but there are fundamental differences in
| European politics vs American politics, and no salary, as
| high as it might be, can change that.
| thr0wawayf00 wrote:
| > you get the choice of what you want to buy in the US.
|
| Not really in my experience. You get to choose between
| providers in your insurance network, but I've lost count of
| the number of times my preferred provider wasn't in my
| network. On top of that, the insurance company has to sign
| off on many diagnostic tests even when my doctor wants to do
| one.
|
| I'm experiencing this right now with chronic pain associated
| with an old injury. My doctor wants to do an arthrogram, but
| my insurance won't approve it without doing a full course of
| physical therapy first and doing any kind of motion with this
| injury is excruciatingly painful. I have to literally suffer
| through 12 weeks of PT in order to get the imaging I need and
| I have what many would consider to be great insurance. I
| don't really have any (good) choices here. I can pay for the
| imaging out of pocket or continue to suffer. This is a
| uniquely American problem.
| mediascreen wrote:
| As someone who pays taxes in Sweden and don't plan on
| having children, I would probably not choose to pay for 480
| days parental leave per child, subsidised day care and
| child allowance payment to the extent they exists today if
| I had a choice.
| guenthert wrote:
| You do want to incentivize people having kids though if
| there is not sufficient immigration. After all, who's
| going to pay your retirement?
| PakistaniDenzel wrote:
| If you were in the UK you would get a PT appointment 6
| months in the future and told to rest and take painkillers
| (which you buy yourself). Or you pay out of pocket for a
| private specialist to actually get help.
| robocat wrote:
| The situation in New Zealand is similar. There is an
| infinite demand for health services, so our public health
| system is busy, so you go on a waiting list. The UK and
| NZ spend about 10% of GDP each (~$4kUSD/capita).
|
| The well-off pay for health insurance which will get you
| faster service, and the very well off just pay privately.
|
| The first site I looked at for a private arthrogram was
| ~USD1050 (Single joint or region Arthrogram including
| Gadolinium) https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=mri+private
| +price+list+sit...
|
| For more expensive procedures, some NZers travel to Asia
| to get medical procedures. The prices in Asia including
| flights and accomodation can be very affordable for the
| middle class, depending on what needs doing and how much
| risk you are willing to take.
| user_7832 wrote:
| Might it not be possible to have your doctor write some "PT
| not possible"/"PT may result in additional injury" note?
| Failing which, is it possible to speak with someone higher
| up at your insurance company?
|
| I do not know your background, but if you have sufficient
| resources (well, mainly money) it might be easier to
| contact an injury/similar lawyer and have them represent
| you to talk, and perhaps go to the legal dept of the
| insurance company. I am sorry for what you're having to go
| through, healthcare is unfortunately far from perfect (even
| outside the US).
| thr0wawayf00 wrote:
| My doctor conveyed my situation in his request for the
| imaging and was denied. I'm basically going to my PT
| appointments and doing nothing because the treatment is
| painful, which is wasting their time and resources. It's
| cheaper to just commit this waste than to talk to a
| lawyer because the insurance company represents its
| shareholders, not its clients.
|
| I'm not saying that healthcare is perfect outside of the
| US, but a common argument for the US system is this idea
| of "choice", which is ultimately just a set of dark
| patterns that create the illusion of choice.
| ceeplusplus wrote:
| > my insurance won't approve it without doing a full course
| of physical therapy first
|
| This is the case in socialized systems as well. For example
| I need a monoclonal antibody injection regularly (MSRP
| $1500/dose) and in European systems I would need to prove
| that topical steroids and immunosuppressants did not work
| first before trying it. Just like Europe, I pay $0 for the
| doses, because the drug company has a program to cover my
| copay ($100/month) and the insurance company "pays" for the
| rest. No way the insurance company is paying MSRP, so that
| $1500 is definitely a fake price.
|
| Also you have to consider that the US is subsidizing these
| European countries by paying for their defense. If France,
| Germany, and Italy had to pay for military expenditures
| necessary to defend against Russia then they would not have
| the budget to pay for such extravagant social benefits.
| European NATO countries have long been underfunding the
| military below NATO spending requirements.
| vimy wrote:
| How much does imaging cost without insurance?
| thr0wawayf00 wrote:
| Well, providers don't have to disclose transparent
| pricing so it's hard to say for sure, but Google says
| between $1-3K.
| varispeed wrote:
| Here in the UK chronic pain treatment is a farce. You get
| to go to meetings where they tell you to soldier on and if
| you can't, well try harder then. So there is a huge illegal
| market of opiates of all kinds and deaths are soaring. If
| people can't get prescription and can't stand the pain then
| where do they go? Dealers. Big pharma has a great grip on
| the government so things like medical cannabis are out of
| question. Fortunately it has been legalised a couple of
| years ago, but it is only available on private prescription
| after you have failed "traditional" therapy. If you are
| unlucky, you are looking at spending PS300-600 a month out
| of your own pocket.
| BossingAround wrote:
| "Competitive" is highly relative. It might not be competitive
| to you, but I'd rather have less money and save a ton on not
| having to use a car, and not paying thousands of dollars for
| each hospital visit when I had cancer.
| V-2 wrote:
| In Poland most software engineers (at least the senior ones)
| are self-employed due to fiscal reasons. It means paying either
| a 19% flat tax rate with the possibility of cost deductions, or
| outright 12% (no deductions then).
|
| You can also apply for an "intellectual property" tax relief
| (called IP Box), which is somewhat tricky, requires legal
| assistance and requires patience, but it can drive your income
| tax rate down to a mere 5%.
|
| Of course this is self-employment, so you don't get paid sick
| leave or holidays, and labor law doesn't protect you (not
| really a problem in today's IT market) - however you still have
| full access to healthcare just like on a regular job contract.
| mupuff1234 wrote:
| But on the other hand raising a family is probably a lot less
| expensive in Europe on average.
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