8 ms·
Ask HN: How much do developers earn in Europe?
- gfiorav 9y agoThere's an app for that: https://www.glassdoor.com https://www.glassdoor.com
- kowdermeister 9y agoSalary questions should require a currency suggestion.
- LusoTycoon 9y agoIndeed, please edit the survey so the data becomes more readable.
- ciaoben 9y agoI edited, any other suggestion? I will publish polished results when will end data gathering
- BrandoElFollito 9y agoIt would be great to have a reference currency (EUR probably) so that the comparison is easier.
- ciaoben 9y agoAdded! Specified in the question to insert in € or otherwise specify.
- dmitriid 9y ago"Annual gross salary": Euro? Dollars? Swedish/Norwegian/Danish crowns? British pounds? Swiss franks? Was this survey created by an American? ;)
- flipp3r 9y agoYou couldn't tell from being asked your gender?
- __warlord__ 9y agoMost probably :P
- ciaoben 9y agoSorry! you are right, fixed it now. BTW, not american :D, italian.
- staticelf 9y agoIs this going to be published somewhere? I wrote in the salary in the currency of my country which was probably not the intended thing to do.
- thriftwy 9y agoInteresting definition of Europe that includes UK but doesn't include Serbia not to mention Russia.
- izacus 9y agoThat's probably the current "European Union" definition of Europe.
- bhaak 9y agoIt's missing Norway and Switzerland as well. Seems to be only targetting EU countries, not European countries.
- simonkamronn 9y agoSerbia, sure, UK definitely, but Russia?
- jpmonette 9y agoData is impossible to read - seems like some people are converting their salary to USD, some others leave it in their home currency and a rare few provide the accurate currency. Interesting initiative though - would love to see this in a better format :)
- ciaoben 9y agoWhy do you say this? Can you give an example of someone who has converted their salary to USD? At the end I plan to polish the results and publish them
- atmosx 9y agoI am European and live in Europe but I've always been paid in USD and my salary is negotiated in USD, so I am not sure what parent means or why does currency matter.
- seszett 9y agoWell currency matters if you want to compare all answers. Also, the question specifically says "in €, otherwise specify" (edit: ok, I see it was added later). It's weird that you are paid in USD in Europe, isn't it? How comes?
- Palmik 9y agoDoes not include Switzerland. Also, what about bonuses and stock (options) which often make sizable portion of income?
- briandear 9y agoOptions are not income and are worthless unless it’s a public company or there is a liquidity event. Considering options as a part of income is the same as if your company paid you in lottery tickets.
- AstralStorm 9y agoTax codes agree and defer the actual taxation to the time you execute the options - then they become income.
- schrodinger 9y agoExercised options in a private company still aren't liquid, or usable income.
- anindha 9y agoEarly employees at Uber had an opportunity to sell stock at a funding round. Not sure exactly how many people, but believe it was first 1000.
- Palmik 9y agoThe form also does not let you specify regularly vesting stock for publicly traded companies.
- walshemj 9y agobut for example uk share shaves are zero risk and can have very high tax free payouts.
- ciaoben 9y agoAdded Switzerland, sorry! About stock options, I don't want to make a chart of the best companies (who offer more, etc..), I am interested in becoming more aware of the salary situation in Europe, to understand how this profession is seen.
- pbosko 9y agoWhy did you focus on EU only? What about Norway, Switzerland, Iceland, Serbia, FYROM, Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina?
- drinchev 9y agoSuper cool initiative. For those complaining about formatting issues ( me as well ). I think someone should fork and re-format the sheet later today and release it back to this thread.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- eoin_murphy 9y agoI don't think you're going to get a great response as that's a lot of identifying information you're asking for. Country, Area (optional), years of experience, gross salary and extras is what you really want.
- ciaoben 9y agoLot of info are optional..Until now I am pretty happy with the number of responses
- s3nnyy 9y agoSwitzerland, Zurich is the only place in Europe where you can earn Bay Area salaries; I am a software engineer/tech recruiter hiring on behalf of a handful of Swiss companies. If you look for a job (https://coderfit.com/openedjobs/ https://coderfit.com/openedjobs/), or know some engineeres who are, please reach out to me. You find my email in my HN-handle. (From an employee's perspective, Switzerland can be counted "as an EU country" since you can work here with an EU passport.)
- eoin_murphy 9y agoPlease correct me if I'm wrong, but while salaries are high and taxes are relatively low, general living costs are quite high. Particularly if you have kids and so want a bigger house and good schools. I've looked at this and the benefits we get from staying in Germany outweigh the extra income earned.
- izacus 9y agoThe living costs are high, but still noticeably lower than the craziness of US tech hubs.
- eoin_murphy 9y agoTrue, they're not that crazy, but when I looked at the higher salary Vs the higher costs it was financially better to stay put. Of course money isn't the only deciding factor but it's not the land of massive opportunity it's sometimes presented as. That said, if you've got no dependents and you want to stay in mainland Europe, then it's probably a very good choice.
- Mortiffer 9y agoDo your own cost of living estimate. Last year my Junior Software Developer (with ETH Masters) balance sheet looked as follows : Income:8650 Taxes :1640 (income, social etc. ) Food/Drink/Dates: 1560 HealthInsurrance : 346 Rent : 1640 (2 rooms 64sqm) downtown nice part of town Other : 400 So i end up saving 3k per month But i don't have kids that would be >2.5k per kind for daycare.
- iofiiiiiiiii 9y agoCurrency, come on.
- kornakiewicz 9y agoIt always bug me, when developers, people whose main task is passing different data to and fro, are unable to provide information in format that is unequivocal for recipient. Do you really, for example, in systems you create, store or send money data without currency information?
- ciaoben 9y agoYou are right, horrible mistake. Fixed now, sorry.
- pmlnr 9y agoOn the currency debate: I'd always assume local currency. I doubt any of these are in USD, unless stated; the default, in this case, is EUR - or indicate.
- ciaoben 9y agoThis is what naively I thought when creating it. Anyway, now it's clear. My bad!
- shanwang 9y agoCan't open the doc because it's blocked by my employer. But generally the developer wage is very low in Europe compared with US(Bay area). AFAIK London have the highest salary among european countries, usually handed out by Investment banks and other financial service companies. In London a tier 1 bank's VP developer will typically get £90k-110k base, plus 15-40% bonus. If you work for a hedge fund, the base is typically 10% higher with 10-20% more bonus. To get a VP job in a bank you usually need 7 year+ experience after graduation. In contrast the big tech companies in london pays about 10-20% less base salary than banks, far less cash bonus. But depends on which one you are working for, the RSU could be either similar to the states side or a bit less. The signon bonus is usually quite low as well. Startups in London have very low pay, typically 50-60% of your market value in a bank. So if you are a top developer with 15 years+ experience, works for a top hedge fund in London, you'll most likely take home < £200k, which is like $260, that's only about average wage for a google senior developer.
- pmlnr 9y ago> But generally the developer wage is very low in Europe compared with US(Bay area). Because it usually comes with built-in social security and nationwide health insurance. > AFAIK London have the highest salary among european countries, Nope. Scandinavia.
- shanwang 9y agoso what are those numbers look like in Scandinavia
- dagw 9y agoIn Sweden ~50-55k eur. a year pre-tax is a good salary for a developer with a few years experience. Norway and Denmark pays a bit more.
- kowdermeister 9y ago> Because it usually comes with built-in social security and nationwide health insurance. That's not the case. Health insurance plays very little role in this. I can go to a private doctor for peanuts. Salaries are low, because companies are "broke" and don't have million dollar funding and you can have a great lifestyle with fifth/tenth of a SV salary. > Nope. Scandinavia. Nope, Switzerland.
- lowry 9y agoIn many EU countries, seasoned developers become fre lancers. Achieving higher revenue is impossible otherwise.
- ciaoben 9y agoThis is sad. I mean, I think that numbers that we see in Silicon Valley are ridiculous, but it seems to me that here in Europe this profession it is not recognized for the value it delivers.
- paublyrne 9y agoI think it's less to do with recognition as much there just not being as much money in European businesses, particularly startups.
- atmosx 9y agoIndeed. On the other hand EU scene doesn't look like a bubble with insane valuations.
- atmosx 9y agoThe living cost in SV is ridiculous too. There is another thread right now with ppl claiming that 240k USD/year makes it hard to afford house + family expenses.
- kowdermeister 9y agoTrue, but not everyone loves freelancing (I don't). There's a middle ground, which is full time remote work.
- _hao 9y agoReading input from my own country it seems I'm grossly underpaid right now.... Makes me feel extremely bad. Perhaps it's time for negotiations with my boss.
- RugnirViking 9y agoIf its a couple percent it might be doable, but typically if you're underpaid the best option is move companies - even though you might like where you are right now, you can negotiate less hours for the same pay. Staying won't give you many options, and often, you can even jump right back into your company higher up the chain.
- RCa_ 9y agoHow about this: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2017#salary https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2017#salary ?
- ciaoben 9y agoInteresting, thanks!
- gokhan 9y agoPlease add Turkey.
- gressquel 9y agoTurkey is not in europe.
- dragandj 9y agoHow so? Their CAPITAL, and decent chunk of territory are on the continent called Europe. a couple tens of millions citizens live there. Just counting those would put them in the first ten-ish most populous countries in Europe.
- muro 9y agoDid they move their capital? I thought Ankara was in Asia.
- dragandj 9y agoGood catch :) I'm so accustomed to Istanbul being the center of the Turkey's economy and former Ottoman power. However, that does not change the point. Istanbul and the European chunk of Turkey (+ Izmir and Aegean coast which was in "Byzantine" zone of influence) is a huge chunk of Turkey.
- observation 9y agoIt's best to avoid the topic or we'll be encountering Scott and Daniel.
- gokhan 9y agoMy employer (one of the big three) thinks otherwise :) My manager is in UK, for example.
- arethuza 9y agoGiven that Turkey has the worlds most famous transcontinental city it does rather imply that Turkey itself is spread across more than one continent.
- RugnirViking 9y agoMight I suggest you correct 'years at experience' to 'years of experience' otherwise, interesting survey. I hope i'm not too much of an outlier here to mess with the result for uk.
- fmsf 9y agoThis survey should have a field for "total package" or "equity offered" given that has larger implications than just Salary. Free food and other perks also play a large role here.
- kevindqc 9y ago> Gender: Apache Attack Helicopter Comment: Fuck you implying anything about a wage gap stupid tranny Nice..
- lucb1e 9y agoOh dang, missed the "annual" part of that question. I have no idea, would have to calculate holiday wages and stuff... And OP has no contact info in his profile to let him know which entry to update.
- Fradow 9y agoIn case you are interested, Urban Linker (french recruitment agency) publish somewhat detailed salary stats (in French), last one is form 2016 [0]. This only covers Parisian region, but it's really interesting to see how technology affect the salary. [0] https://www.urbanlinker.com/le-webzine/etude-des-salaires-des-metiers-tech-2016-en-idf-52 https://www.urbanlinker.com/le-webzine/etude-des-salaires-de...
- yardie 9y agoThis actually lines up with what I, a mid level .Net dev was expecting. When I first arrived in Paris I thought the compensation was low, but I was educated that that was the standard. It's improved a bit but not a whole lot. Paris is still a great city to live in. We even managed to live there with child.
- johnflan 9y agoGiven this survey is targeted at engineers, the data formatting is terrible.
- eggie5 9y agothere goes booking.com ruining the std deviation in Amsterdam again! :)
- user5994461 9y agoThere is expedia in London with the same business.
- chesterc 9y agoShame on them for paying better than most other companies in Amsterdam.
- eggie5 9y agoI'm just super jealous every time I see they pay 10k over market on average.
- sashavingardt 9y agoI'm a US citizen working and living in Iceland.
- sgt 9y agoThat must be quite rare. Tell us a bit about how you ended up living in Iceland and how the IT industry is up there?
- Maultasche 9y agoI've been considering Iceland. I'd be interested in hearing about where you work and how you like Iceland. It's hard to find information about software developers in Iceland.
- Mc_Big_G 9y agoAsk I suspected based on the salary of a VERY senior developer friend in Barcelona, the pay in Spain is terrible. I make 3x+ what he does and 5x+ most of the salaries in the spreadsheet. Too bad because my wife is Spanish and I'd like to move there some day but I'll have to be retired for it to make sense.
- MrBuddyCasino 9y agoIs there a way to save / export the table for sorting etc.?
- thinbeige 9y agoSlightly OT but maybe helpful: Don't focus too much on the salary. It's just one tiny part of the whole package. Your dev job pays your rent, food and savings. I assume that most dev jobs do this quite well. Beyond this, the main goal of a job is to increase your future market value, your professional network and to have fun. So. basically it's about how much you are worth in your next job and that you enjoy your time. A high salary doesn't help you if you do stuff which doesn't matter in a few years. A high salary doesn't help you if you work at an unknown company which goes bankrupt in a few months and you cannot show a finished product or that you can stay at one job longer than 12 months. A high salary doesn't help you if your coworkers are toxic or not the smartest guys or their English is on such a basic level that the communication and not the coding is your daily challenge. A high salary doesn't help you if your CTO is a passive-aggressive, clueless guy who doesn't talk. A high salary doesn't help you if you just work on some side projects nobody cares about, in a programming language you weren't hired for. A high salary doesn't help you if you are not happy.
- scarmig 9y agoHappiness is paramount. And especially early on having opportunities for growth matters. But after a couple years in the industry? A high salary goes really far. Note that "high" means different things to different people, but choosing a 300k/year job over a 200k/year job is often a good idea, even if it's to do stupid shit and not change the world. That doesn't mean you should choose misery over happiness for money, but it's rare that the choice is that stark. Most tradeoffs are ill-defined and uncertain when you're choosing the job. Salary, on the other hand, is directly comparable, and it translates to something very real and concrete.
- BrandoElFollito 9y agoWell, having had a few times the opportunity to do such a move, I stayed at my previous job. Good atmosphere, cool company (a big one), located in such a way that my 15 km bike commute is 70% in a forest, no travel, yell at my children every night so that they do their homework/wash teeth etc. What would these 100k give me? Not much - I will comfortably retire when time comes. I would consider a 500k increase as it would change my life and probably help me to retire earlier. I belive that what revenue brings in a set of plateaux. When you start every euro counts, then comes a plateau and you move up after a significant change of salary. Which brings some acceptable/bereable drawbacks.
- predskolsko 9y agoSalaries in Serbia can go up to 40-45000 on an annual basis ( taxes can be pretty insignificant). Even though that is not a lot of money, you can live lavish lifestyle of that money, since everything is super cheap ( monthy rent in the city center, 2 room apartment can be found for 300€)
- misiti3780 9y agoCan someone explain to my why the salaries in Italy are so low? 28K?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- internity 9y agoAfter seeing this i'm like i want to start crying. i'm actually a software engineer working on cryptocurrencies devops and system engineering back-end. My tasks wait for that : 1 - coordinate withe clients 2 - write code 3 - deployement 4 - testing (golang) 5 - writing specs 6 - putting down architecture in tunisia what i get per month around 700€. a ford fiesta in here cost about 13k€.
- Yaggo 9y agoIn Finland, experienced developer with relevant skills can make 60-75 k€ year brutto, translating to 40-50 k€ netto. (Though lower salaries are not uncommon.) Taxes are high and progressive, but you'll things like 4 weeks vacation, 3 weeks fully paid parental leave for dads (and partially paid for much longer), free education (incl. universities), free daycare, free healthcare, social security, etc. This is not without problems, of course, but has huge impact on stable, equal society and general safety. (Free = some nominal fees may apply, great majority of costs paid by society.)
- kilotaras 9y agoTitle should be "in EEA" instead of "in Europe."
- dhxt 9y agoCan someone filter this data and throw it into BigQuery? Grouping salaries by years of experience and location would be interesting.
- praeconium 9y agoI've tried to visualize Your data with this dashboard https://affliction123.github.io/euDevDash/ https://affliction123.github.io/euDevDash/ please let me know how to improve and what info is interesting for You to present/focus. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15109316 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15109316
- zyzyis 9y agoThe salary in EU for developers (medium and above) is already lower than developers in big cities (e.g. Beijing, Shenzhen) in China. I guess in the coming years people will try to find job in China for top pay if US is not an option.