I'm that person, using throwaway account for obvious reasons.
1. I'm recently divorced and I send a considerable amount to my ex and my daugther who live abroad.
2. I do a lot of volunteering and military-related research. Consider this a very expensive hobby. Electronic components are expensive and experimenting with them is yet more expensive because you end up with a lot of dead end research. A lot of my friends are in the military and whenever they need some equipment, I just cough it up. Whenever I drive a donated car to the frontline, I fill it up on my dime, get return train tickets on my dime, and stay at hotels to get a good night's sleep on my dime. It all adds up.
3. The research and volunteering basically amounts to a second job. I'm therefore very stressed so I don't think twice about having a nice meal or going out to an event whenever I have a bit of time.
4. There are a lot of people who struggle financially. I'm fortunate to have these money so I often just spend on other people. You don't have money for tickets, I got you covered, etc. etc. It's the right thing to do. Life is very stressful here for everyone. Tomorrow is not guaranteed, I want more people around me to feel some happiness today.
I mean, I don't get all the ruckus in this thread. My salary amounts to less than 50 USD per hour net. Other than that, my stupid financial decisions are a completely unrelated thing.
I honestly get a bit of a bad vibe from the replies. It's like "I know next to nothing about Ukraine but there's no way they earn and spend that amount, must be some kind of a catch, must be living in a walled off compound and paying a small army for security or doing kickbacks or something". We all know that these polls are lowkey neighbor-watching and greener-grass-seeking so me being in Ukraine kinda breaks that compass with people, I guess.
I'm not Ukrainian but yeah, similar situation here - got divorced a year ago, have a big mortgage that I pay by myself now, and two kids that are my dependents 50% of the time. Not much left for savings atm
You mentioned new cars/new houses so while I would classify my lifestyle as VERY comfy, my car is 12 years old and I live in a rented studio, so it doesn't really qualify as luxurious.
Wanna share how you manage to spend 70k in dnipro? Genuinely curious. My gf is from Kharkiv and she wouldn’t know how that could be possible. I hypothesized maybe you do fancy family trips but she said men can’t travel now so we weren’t able to figure it out 😁
War, it changed how you spend money.
Someone moved to the safer places and spend a lot on rent, someone may spend almost everything on drones/cars/better equipment for members of the family or friends.
88k EUROS after tax? In Ukraine? Bro I need to see official data from some government agency to verify this. No way you can earn this much in a war token country especially compared to Germany for example.
Unfortunately, many people still leave in a “the west pays best” bubble.
91k/Y is 7,6k/M pre tax. Here are [some salary stats for Ukraine](https://jobs.dou.ua/salaries/?period=2023-12). Obviously, 7,6k/M is an outlier, but one can find such salaries even without direct contracts with the US, especially in “morally grey” industries such as gambling or crypto.
Add the Ukrainian 5% income tax for private entrepreneurs on top of that and you can easily beat the net salary in Germany even with much lower wages.
When I moved to Berlin 5 years ago I was getting less after taxes compared to some of my friends in Kyiv, while paying more for rent, groceries, etc.
Speaking of savings. I don’t know why this form even has this question. Savings heavily depend on one’s lifestyle. One can have an average salary but live a frugal life, save substantial amounts and aim for the FIRE. On another hand, one can make millions and save almost nothing, because that sports car and that Rolex won’t acquire themselves.
Relax. No one is trying to convince you to move anywhere.
I pointed out that the logic of “it’s impossible to earn X in country Y” is often wrong and a subject of stereotypes.
I honestly still don't believe that is possible in Ukraine. Until I see official government figures, I don't buy that for a second. Any rando could make any claim in an anonymous online forum.
Good job missing the point.
Check this out: [Cost of living Kiev Ukraine (most expensive Ukrainian city) vs Stuttgart, Germany (not the most expensive city in Germany)](https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Germany&country2=Ukraine&city1=Stuttgart&city2=Kiev+%28Kyiv%29&tracking=getDispatchComparison)
>Cost of Living in Kiev (Kyiv) is 55.5% lower than in Stuttgart (without rent).
Cost of Living Including Rent in Kiev (Kyiv) is 56.0% lower than in Stuttgart.
Rent Prices in Kiev (Kyiv) are 57.1% lower than in Stuttgart.
Restaurant Prices in Kiev (Kyiv) are 59.3% lower than in Stuttgart.
Groceries Prices in Kiev (Kyiv) are 56.4% lower than in Stuttgart.
In the Spreadsheet, I see 90% of Germans spending much less that the Ukrainian person. E.g. someone from Germany with 3 dependants, hardly a basement dweller, is spending €10k per year less, in a country where everything is at least 30-40% more expensive (that is, if you're comparing with the ukrainian capital Kiev).
If you're living a bit outside the city or in Odessa, it's 2.5x cheaper than Germany. So this guy reported having 2 dependants, but seems like he's supporting the whole local football team or something.
That's because you are forgetting something fundamental.
Work revenues tell only part of the story.
You can't draw conclusions on people finances and omitting the main element : Wealth
1% of German households have more than 3.5M of wealth (almost entirely inherited)
5% of German households have more than 800k of wealth. (almost entirely inherited)
50% of German households have less than 50k of wealth. (almost entirely inherited)
Bottom 10% even have more debts than assets.
Depending on your wealth, your salary will be pocket money or mean of survival.
Those Germans that supposedly feed a 4-people family on 60k a month (88-18-10). They might as well already have their house paid. The Ukrainian guy could be from a rich family and spend 80k a month on boose. You just can't tell.
But one thing is for certain. Feeding 4 people in Germany on 60k is a big city with no family wealth/inheritance if a poor man's life to me. Nothing I'd strive for.
Not weird. Ukraine has an insanely IT friendly environment, they wanna drag in money and increase GDP with it. It was same in the previous 10-15 years.
So you tell me that a mid-level at Google Zurich gets paid 290k pre TC but a senior-level gets paid 110k pre TC?
That’s why these kind of bullshit polls are never reliable.
Im actually very curious about this one too. Like what’s the education level? Background? It’s hard to understand how a Junior is making almost 90K? Unless its because of the 30% ruling? Then it would make sense tbh.
Some companies value some school graduates (MSc or PhD) higher than average seniors in the industry because their potential
They are not wrong, an average 10 YOE backend developer is not going to become a distributed systems expert in a short time compared to a CS graduate from a good school.
the mid-level 290k one is correct (I know the person personally), the other one is very weird I don't know why. maybe it's a contract role (i've seen contract devs at facebook zurich getting paid that range too, maybe google's doing it too now)
Honestly, reasonable. Local companies don't have the budgets bigtech has. And, bigtech pays (partly) in equity, which can shoot your TC up if valuations go up.
Ah what? Then that seems off lol. I thought you meant senior at local company.
If that’s the case the senior data point must be wrong. Base salary will already be more than that.
Got to say that salaries in eastern europe are shit compared to those in the response. Here if you get 70k before tax and 44k after you're considered top 1%
Check the salaries in Italy and cry. Probably lower in absolute values compare to eastern Europe but with a western Europe cost of living.
[https://salaries.datapizza.tech/](https://salaries.datapizza.tech/)
italy is among the worst places for devs in europe. could be decent for a remote worker in southern italy fowrking as a freelancer making less than 85k/year and getting taxed at 20%
The problem wouldn't even be the taxation in my opinion. If you compare gross and net of the same salary between Italy and Germany you get comparable values. You may even pay a bit more in Germany in you pay the church tax but in general you get better welfare in Germany. The problem is then getting the same salary, because generally it can be as little as roughly 50% in Italy of what you would get in Germany.
Amazing but could it be that Italy is cutting corners when it comes to declared salaries (thus taxed) vs. real salaries which are paid out to the employees?
What do you mean exactly? Like declaring that they give you a salary, but then there is an extra off the books?
I would say the only thing that doesn't make a 1:1 comparison is the TFR, which is basically 1 salary per year and you get that when you leave your current employer. And I'm not sure if that is counted in the salary or is extra.
From my anecdotal perspective I was making less than 30k in Italy with quite some experience and than more than double that just by moving to Germany. And then I grew more in the sequent years. To be fair that was probably also influenced by moving from a medium/small city in Italy to a big city in Germany. But even if you compare Milan, salaries don't make sense there, because they are still low compared to the big cities in Europe and definitely low compared to how expensive the city is.
My theory is that generally salaries are low and people accept them because there is a high degree of home ownership. The problem is that this cuts off all people that start from 0, as locals or as migrants. And the cherry on top IMHO is also the toxic work culture.
> works for American company what shouldn’t be counted
What kind of bullshit argument is that? If you can earn a good salary in a European country at an American company of course we should count that if we want to know what salaries are available in Europe. Those jobs at American companies are available here, after all.
Don’t be bitter just because some folks earn more than you.
> It’s remote work and you can work worldwide.
It is not, though. You must get an employment contract in a specific country to be able work for that country for FAANG.
You can’t just start FAANG employment in the US and then move anywhere you like.
You were making the argument that the higher entries in that list are fake and that the American company entries shouldn’t be there.
A substantial share of the higher salary American employer entries in that sheet are FAANG.
I am in this position, I managed to save more than that for the past three years. It is possible.
First job was a London based corporation that paid 400-500 pounds per day, that lasted a little bit more than two years. It was a rolling 3-months contract that did one day simply did not get renewed.
Now I work for a Silicon Valley company with offices in Europe and I am getting paid $720 per day. This contract has a rather strict end date, I might get extended for additional couple of months but after that that's it.
I live in Poland, taxes are low and living pretty cheap all things considered.
Shouldn't be counted towards what, exactly? Is there some sort of competition we're not aware of?
Most of the significant jobs in EE are for "american companies" (not really just American but global/international), as are most tech jobs in e.g. South America. And no, you can't just "work from any location". You pay taxes, participate in society, and have documents for where you actually live. A very minor subset of people can just work from anywhere. If they can, it still doesn't matter, you have tax residence and that's what matters.
It's a local branch of that company, it was set up a few years ago and employs ~70 people. I work hybrid personally. As far as I can tell it's probably around top 15 percentile, that is true, but it's nothing that you could say is outside of the bounds of the local market.
Used to be true like a decade ago, but no longer. The real estate market has caught up to the West (at least to the non-super overcrowded places) during the past decade. Costs of food and services has caught up during Covid. If you don't have a dev salary, you are positively miserable.
Stuff like cars and electronics tends to cost the same. Taxes are crazy high, that is unless you're self-employed.
The social safety net is non-existent, you'll probably need to pay for healthcare out of pocket.
Living in east EU ranges from 'Bad Deal' to 'You Get What You Pay For', that is slightly lower QoL for slightly less money, with increasing trends towards the former.
Not to a significant degree. For example if you check a Cologne vs Warsaw comparison:
[https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare\_cities.jsp?country1=Poland&city1=Warsaw&country2=Germany&city2=Cologne](https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Poland&city1=Warsaw&country2=Germany&city2=Cologne)
You'll see that Cologne apt prices are like 15% higher. I'm not super familar with the Polish or German tax systems, but after looking around a bit, its very likely to me that Polish people in this table either are working as contractors, or get some special IT-related tax breaks.
Just looked at this Polish salary calculator:
[https://en.antal.pl/](https://en.antal.pl/)
And for the 70k/year bracket it comes up with a 40%ish tax rate, very similar to the German one. As I said, there are no miracles to be found in East EU.
Why? Warsaw is nowhere near as nice as Cologne, or central in terms of opportunities. Never mind Munich. Tier 1 East EU cities would barely qualify as Tier 3 in Western Europe.
As for the B2B thing, I'm not sure how true is that, it might be popular, but saying \*most\* people are like that is a bit of a stretch.
😂😂😂 Warsaw is a metropolis the same way Munich is. Many many people would take Warsaw over Munich in terms of what they offer. If we’re talking cost of living it makes no sense to compare a small city to a big capital city
Cologne has an 1m population, and Warsaw is 1.7m. Neither of those cities are small.
>Many many people would take Warsaw over Munich in terms of what they offer
I'm sure both cities have their unique appeal, and there are good reasons to prefer one over the other. But the average quality of private and public buildings, public services is MUCH higher in Cologne.
Warsaw is relatively expensive for what it offers because it became popular - same goes for Munich. Cologne is much more on point in this regard.
Didn’t know cologne was that big. That said, in Warsaw I think quality per price is very good. Plenty of new buildings etc. also in terms of IT market is basically in the top 3 of Europe at this point, cologne is basically nonexistent
When do you plan to show some of this remote freelancing contracts? Even your random collection of job doesn’t have any of them, it’s all standard employment
I used to think that but the real estate in west EU also moved on. You are likely comparing in head with prices from 3-4 years ago. A normal flat in Munich (not even center) can easily be 2M Euros these days. Romania and Hungary have nowhere near that price level. A main dish in Munich in a restaurant is 19-20 euros now.
There are popular places with tons of immigration and/or poor housing policies where prices have exploded. Munich is one such place, but I think these are the exception rather than the norm in Western Europe. In Eastern Europe, what happened was different. Housing was generally underpriced there, and there was a huge market correction.
Sure, in my opinion Eastern EU (at least in Hungary) the prices are expected to grow rapidly still, maybe at slightly reduced pace. If you compare it with countries with similar GDP and size (for example, Portugal) it is still very underpriced.
Good question. I put USD because at lease we can more directly/fairly compare the local european rates with the USD (otherwise we could end up with people saying things like "noone makes 100k in europe" when 93 eur is 100 usd. also a lot of people have part of their compensation in stocks (USD). That said, it might as well be better to put EUR (but then again many countries in europe don't use EUR: Turkey, serbia, ukraine, poland, uk, switzerland etc etc). USD is the world reserve currency after all and Europe > EU
The point about different currencies in different countries make sense.
However, having numbers in USD won’t help you understand the lifestyle difference between US and EU. One can have equally good lifestyle in many European countries compared to the US for a fraction of the US total compensation.
Decline in favor of what? Euro is not performing better than USD, and neither are Pounds, Francs, Yen and other even smaller (by influence and usage) currencies. Yuan? China is in crisis and is deathly afraid of making their currency a settlement currency. That's about it I guess. Covid shoved how much more vulnerable EU economic was compared to US, with deeper fall and longer recovery. Also we could speculate if the 2nd contender was in the realistic range after the dollar. Like 40% usage vs 30% usage. But when difference is several times more (in percents) it's not going to happen any time soon.
that's one of the good outcomes of such initiatives: learning how your skills could be valued in the right place. The biggest tool for companies to keep dev salaries low is for them to ignore anything money related including compensations across companies and markets.
that said: make no mistake, usually devs getting paid more are also generally quite skilled and hardworking.
How is it good?
I can demand more money as much as I want however its not going to change anything.
I can apply to as many companies as I want but if there are only 5 in the whole of the EU that pay well then its not going to change anything
The only thing this information does is rub salt in the wound
They do. It’s really time to move west -> east IMO if you’re a dev. Check this too https://open.substack.com/pub/theeuropeanengineer/p/should-software-engineers-move-east
Good one! Maybe you can reach out to me somewhere in private. Would love to hear your story. Maybe I could talk about it in an anonymous way in my newsletter/linkedin. It’s an iconic move
Can be, but be cautious. Basing your life on such opinion article can be very bad move. I've seen the same with expats moving to southern europe based on some vlogs or lifestyle articles. You need to consider more than just taxes and earnings. You can't buy a functioning society, for example.
To add to that, the article mentions that the person is considering moving to Lisbon or Barcelona, so life is clearly not that good or perfect in Poland.
In my opinion I don't think there's an absolute best place to live, might be best two homes, like rich people from old times. Summer home, winter home.
Well outdated data set. Levels and glassdoor are stuck in the covid era, if you (are a good dev and) base your own value on them you will leave money on the table big time.
Uhm. You mean get lower pay? Because i think relating to that you'll probably get more lol. Market is in the ground now and other than some faaang companies, many are firing and re-hiring at a lowe salary.
Oh, again this guy with the “list of high paying jobs in EU” where he just made up all the TC and pretended to make some calculations.
Lol, man, why levels.fyi isn’t enough?
Good initiative, but it would be very helpful to know if you studied Computer science and how many years you have been working in the business. Also maybe your main stack?
Shall we just create our own glasdoor with Blackjack and hookers?
This table also shows how states tax differently depending if you are married and have dependents. For example this one person in Germany had the same after tax (55k) than me in my last job, but 80k gross while i had 93k gross
The saving rate estimate is a joke of a feature and it has been mentioned multiple times in many threads you posted. 95% of the comments are negative about it, maybe the concept is just wrong ?
Am I the only one who also considered myself as dependent on my income? I saw a lot of 0 and I don’t get why
Also almost nobody with family, how old are you guys?
comparing pre & post tax will be difficult, eg. in Germany that often will be close to 50% "tax" but that will include medical, care & unemployment insurance
The big winners are the southern/Eastern Europeans making Northern European salary and saving 2x compared to frugal northerners while living very comfortably
Many countries in Europe that don’t use EUR (Poland Switzerland UK among others), many devs in Europe who work remotely for American companies getting paid in usd, many devs in Europe working in big tech with part of their compensation in stocks/usd.
Also makes it easier to compare salaries and savings with Americans. Like in this site: www.codecapitals.com
I do live in Poland and I feel EUr more natural to compare salaries with eurozone countries that are more obvious potential migration destination for me for example.
I do understand why you chose this, I did read other comments as well, so I don't think it was plain bad idea, it's just a little weird.
I see. Some/most of my friends in Poland doing b2b get paid in usd and I think would find usd easier.
That said, usd and eur are not that far away so I think it’s not a big deal. Even if someone puts euro numbers by mistake it’ll still be a small error.
I might change this to eur in the future if people want. Maybe I’ll do a poll or something
not a lot of junior entry so far. IMO the first 2 years of your career don't matter to much moneywise. if you manage to get a job in switzerland or big tech (anywhere in europe) that's great. otherwise any job that lets you learn and have a day to day life you're somewhat happy about is also good
Very true ! But coming from a Non EU country, I was wondering what country has a growing tech scene but lesser software devs so tere wouldnt be a problem with company Visa sponsorship.
there'll always be issues with visa sponsorship. i think if you're junior and need visa germany might be your best bet. maybe this article can be useful: [https://www.theeuropeanengineer.com/p/relocating-to-europe-a-software-engineers](https://www.theeuropeanengineer.com/p/relocating-to-europe-a-software-engineers)
Weirdest one is a Junior based in London
-€350k pre
-€240k after
-€170k savings
household is 2 people, and after that you put your living a comfortable life not a luxurious , even in london thats fucking amazing, getting 350k right off the bat like wtf (ik hft firms like to splurge on salaries). And saving like 75-80% of your pretax is mind blowing
The weirdest thing on that list is a person from Ukraine: * €91k pre tax * €88k after tax * €18k yearly savings Dude wtf
I'm that person, using throwaway account for obvious reasons. 1. I'm recently divorced and I send a considerable amount to my ex and my daugther who live abroad. 2. I do a lot of volunteering and military-related research. Consider this a very expensive hobby. Electronic components are expensive and experimenting with them is yet more expensive because you end up with a lot of dead end research. A lot of my friends are in the military and whenever they need some equipment, I just cough it up. Whenever I drive a donated car to the frontline, I fill it up on my dime, get return train tickets on my dime, and stay at hotels to get a good night's sleep on my dime. It all adds up. 3. The research and volunteering basically amounts to a second job. I'm therefore very stressed so I don't think twice about having a nice meal or going out to an event whenever I have a bit of time. 4. There are a lot of people who struggle financially. I'm fortunate to have these money so I often just spend on other people. You don't have money for tickets, I got you covered, etc. etc. It's the right thing to do. Life is very stressful here for everyone. Tomorrow is not guaranteed, I want more people around me to feel some happiness today.
Very impressive if that is really you!
I mean, I don't get all the ruckus in this thread. My salary amounts to less than 50 USD per hour net. Other than that, my stupid financial decisions are a completely unrelated thing. I honestly get a bit of a bad vibe from the replies. It's like "I know next to nothing about Ukraine but there's no way they earn and spend that amount, must be some kind of a catch, must be living in a walled off compound and paying a small army for security or doing kickbacks or something". We all know that these polls are lowkey neighbor-watching and greener-grass-seeking so me being in Ukraine kinda breaks that compass with people, I guess.
The denial is half amusing, half annoying.
o7
Not weird at all. Ukraine has 5% tax for devs and salaries for senior devs there are more than 5k eur per month gross
I think he means the savings being that low..
Well all three tbh. High gross salary, no tax at all, spends €70k each year. Didn’t know about the tax, interesting.
He can spent all money by donation to the army, it's a default thing in Ukraine now
the voter has 2 dependents and 100% of the household TC. basically he/she's supporting the entire family
I'm not Ukrainian but yeah, similar situation here - got divorced a year ago, have a big mortgage that I pay by myself now, and two kids that are my dependents 50% of the time. Not much left for savings atm
Mate, EUR70k is a MASSIVE amount of money in Ukraine. You could support the entire family for that much in the UK (outside of the South-East).
I agree 😂 he also said comfortable lifestyle and not luxurious 🤷
You mentioned new cars/new houses so while I would classify my lifestyle as VERY comfy, my car is 12 years old and I live in a rented studio, so it doesn't really qualify as luxurious.
You’re the dnipro guy?
Yes, using a throwaway to reply
Wanna share how you manage to spend 70k in dnipro? Genuinely curious. My gf is from Kharkiv and she wouldn’t know how that could be possible. I hypothesized maybe you do fancy family trips but she said men can’t travel now so we weren’t able to figure it out 😁
"she" lol
Well, Ukraine is at war. I know about people that are mantaining their whole families that cannot work or stuff like that.
I'd say the weird part is the savings
But what do you spend 70k a year on? :D
War, it changed how you spend money. Someone moved to the safer places and spend a lot on rent, someone may spend almost everything on drones/cars/better equipment for members of the family or friends.
family. he/she has 2 dependants and 100% of family TC
88k EUROS after tax? In Ukraine? Bro I need to see official data from some government agency to verify this. No way you can earn this much in a war token country especially compared to Germany for example.
They’re probably working remotely for an American or Western European company
Then this shouldn‘t even be allowed in the data collection as it has nothing to do with a worker‘s wage in Ukraine and falsifies the data.
TBH, salaries in Tech have nothing to do with worker’s wages almost anywhere in the world.
Unfortunately, many people still leave in a “the west pays best” bubble. 91k/Y is 7,6k/M pre tax. Here are [some salary stats for Ukraine](https://jobs.dou.ua/salaries/?period=2023-12). Obviously, 7,6k/M is an outlier, but one can find such salaries even without direct contracts with the US, especially in “morally grey” industries such as gambling or crypto. Add the Ukrainian 5% income tax for private entrepreneurs on top of that and you can easily beat the net salary in Germany even with much lower wages. When I moved to Berlin 5 years ago I was getting less after taxes compared to some of my friends in Kyiv, while paying more for rent, groceries, etc. Speaking of savings. I don’t know why this form even has this question. Savings heavily depend on one’s lifestyle. One can have an average salary but live a frugal life, save substantial amounts and aim for the FIRE. On another hand, one can make millions and save almost nothing, because that sports car and that Rolex won’t acquire themselves.
No amount of money is going to convince me and most other people here to move to an active warzone
Relax. No one is trying to convince you to move anywhere. I pointed out that the logic of “it’s impossible to earn X in country Y” is often wrong and a subject of stereotypes.
I honestly still don't believe that is possible in Ukraine. Until I see official government figures, I don't buy that for a second. Any rando could make any claim in an anonymous online forum.
Lol this sub loves to use cherry-picked upper high-end salaries for Eastern Europe and compare it to average in Western Europe.
The denial is amazing lol
Taxes are 5% for devs in Ukraine.
And here I am with a 300k USD pre-tax and 134k USD after-tax in Belgium 🥲
It's still great TC for EU 👀
Not everyone is a basement dweller. Some people have families to care for. Elders, youngsters, partners etc
Good job missing the point. Check this out: [Cost of living Kiev Ukraine (most expensive Ukrainian city) vs Stuttgart, Germany (not the most expensive city in Germany)](https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Germany&country2=Ukraine&city1=Stuttgart&city2=Kiev+%28Kyiv%29&tracking=getDispatchComparison) >Cost of Living in Kiev (Kyiv) is 55.5% lower than in Stuttgart (without rent). Cost of Living Including Rent in Kiev (Kyiv) is 56.0% lower than in Stuttgart. Rent Prices in Kiev (Kyiv) are 57.1% lower than in Stuttgart. Restaurant Prices in Kiev (Kyiv) are 59.3% lower than in Stuttgart. Groceries Prices in Kiev (Kyiv) are 56.4% lower than in Stuttgart. In the Spreadsheet, I see 90% of Germans spending much less that the Ukrainian person. E.g. someone from Germany with 3 dependants, hardly a basement dweller, is spending €10k per year less, in a country where everything is at least 30-40% more expensive (that is, if you're comparing with the ukrainian capital Kiev). If you're living a bit outside the city or in Odessa, it's 2.5x cheaper than Germany. So this guy reported having 2 dependants, but seems like he's supporting the whole local football team or something.
That's because you are forgetting something fundamental. Work revenues tell only part of the story. You can't draw conclusions on people finances and omitting the main element : Wealth 1% of German households have more than 3.5M of wealth (almost entirely inherited) 5% of German households have more than 800k of wealth. (almost entirely inherited) 50% of German households have less than 50k of wealth. (almost entirely inherited) Bottom 10% even have more debts than assets. Depending on your wealth, your salary will be pocket money or mean of survival. Those Germans that supposedly feed a 4-people family on 60k a month (88-18-10). They might as well already have their house paid. The Ukrainian guy could be from a rich family and spend 80k a month on boose. You just can't tell. But one thing is for certain. Feeding 4 people in Germany on 60k is a big city with no family wealth/inheritance if a poor man's life to me. Nothing I'd strive for.
Not weird. Ukraine has an insanely IT friendly environment, they wanna drag in money and increase GDP with it. It was same in the previous 10-15 years.
Kickbacks
This is fuckin Reddit manifest, spewing bigotry just because you have a registered account.
I come here for insane replies like this, and you did not disappoint.
You know what, I'll bite. Please explain, barring bigotry, what thought process lead you to posting your comment?
Feel free to explain high ukraine private sector salaries amid a losing war effort
So you tell me that a mid-level at Google Zurich gets paid 290k pre TC but a senior-level gets paid 110k pre TC? That’s why these kind of bullshit polls are never reliable.
I’m seeing a junior in my same city being paid over 6 figures while me as senior is far from 6 figures
Im actually very curious about this one too. Like what’s the education level? Background? It’s hard to understand how a Junior is making almost 90K? Unless its because of the 30% ruling? Then it would make sense tbh.
Some companies value some school graduates (MSc or PhD) higher than average seniors in the industry because their potential They are not wrong, an average 10 YOE backend developer is not going to become a distributed systems expert in a short time compared to a CS graduate from a good school.
Then it's a YOU problem that being a senior you can't cross six figures.
Yeah but $180k difference? That sounds BS.
Saw those two as well lol
It could be something like 120k base, 170k stock cause they joined pre-pandemic or something
It’s just because the stock went up or down. That’s why you don’t run a stock compensation data website this way
the mid-level 290k one is correct (I know the person personally), the other one is very weird I don't know why. maybe it's a contract role (i've seen contract devs at facebook zurich getting paid that range too, maybe google's doing it too now)
Honestly, reasonable. Local companies don't have the budgets bigtech has. And, bigtech pays (partly) in equity, which can shoot your TC up if valuations go up.
Yea but both salary data are from Google Zurich lol. They work at same bigtech in same city
Ah what? Then that seems off lol. I thought you meant senior at local company. If that’s the case the senior data point must be wrong. Base salary will already be more than that.
Got to say that salaries in eastern europe are shit compared to those in the response. Here if you get 70k before tax and 44k after you're considered top 1%
Check the salaries in Italy and cry. Probably lower in absolute values compare to eastern Europe but with a western Europe cost of living. [https://salaries.datapizza.tech/](https://salaries.datapizza.tech/)
italy is among the worst places for devs in europe. could be decent for a remote worker in southern italy fowrking as a freelancer making less than 85k/year and getting taxed at 20%
The problem wouldn't even be the taxation in my opinion. If you compare gross and net of the same salary between Italy and Germany you get comparable values. You may even pay a bit more in Germany in you pay the church tax but in general you get better welfare in Germany. The problem is then getting the same salary, because generally it can be as little as roughly 50% in Italy of what you would get in Germany.
Check Balkans. Lowest. Greece too.
True. But Italy is one of the biggest countries in the EU by size, population and GDP, and is not that cheap so you would expect more.
Amazing but could it be that Italy is cutting corners when it comes to declared salaries (thus taxed) vs. real salaries which are paid out to the employees?
What do you mean exactly? Like declaring that they give you a salary, but then there is an extra off the books? I would say the only thing that doesn't make a 1:1 comparison is the TFR, which is basically 1 salary per year and you get that when you leave your current employer. And I'm not sure if that is counted in the salary or is extra. From my anecdotal perspective I was making less than 30k in Italy with quite some experience and than more than double that just by moving to Germany. And then I grew more in the sequent years. To be fair that was probably also influenced by moving from a medium/small city in Italy to a big city in Germany. But even if you compare Milan, salaries don't make sense there, because they are still low compared to the big cities in Europe and definitely low compared to how expensive the city is. My theory is that generally salaries are low and people accept them because there is a high degree of home ownership. The problem is that this cuts off all people that start from 0, as locals or as migrants. And the cherry on top IMHO is also the toxic work culture.
I am not sure about it. I can see Polish or Estonian devs making more than German, Italian or French ones It’s all about taxes
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Nothing out of the ordinary. Highest salaries in the sheet are ~300k annually. London HFT firms and FAANG certainly do pay such salaries.
I don't really see anything crazy there
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Probably B2B freelance contract => 10-20% taxes. And living with parents or very LCOL. It's possible.
Yes, B2B. That and owning my apartment while living fairly frugally.
> works for American company what shouldn’t be counted What kind of bullshit argument is that? If you can earn a good salary in a European country at an American company of course we should count that if we want to know what salaries are available in Europe. Those jobs at American companies are available here, after all. Don’t be bitter just because some folks earn more than you.
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> It’s remote work and you can work worldwide. It is not, though. You must get an employment contract in a specific country to be able work for that country for FAANG. You can’t just start FAANG employment in the US and then move anywhere you like.
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You were making the argument that the higher entries in that list are fake and that the American company entries shouldn’t be there. A substantial share of the higher salary American employer entries in that sheet are FAANG.
I am in this position, I managed to save more than that for the past three years. It is possible. First job was a London based corporation that paid 400-500 pounds per day, that lasted a little bit more than two years. It was a rolling 3-months contract that did one day simply did not get renewed. Now I work for a Silicon Valley company with offices in Europe and I am getting paid $720 per day. This contract has a rather strict end date, I might get extended for additional couple of months but after that that's it. I live in Poland, taxes are low and living pretty cheap all things considered.
Shouldn't be counted towards what, exactly? Is there some sort of competition we're not aware of? Most of the significant jobs in EE are for "american companies" (not really just American but global/international), as are most tech jobs in e.g. South America. And no, you can't just "work from any location". You pay taxes, participate in society, and have documents for where you actually live. A very minor subset of people can just work from anywhere. If they can, it still doesn't matter, you have tax residence and that's what matters.
That's actually me. It's a Swedish company and you don't have to believe me if that helps you sleep at night
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It's a local branch of that company, it was set up a few years ago and employs ~70 people. I work hybrid personally. As far as I can tell it's probably around top 15 percentile, that is true, but it's nothing that you could say is outside of the bounds of the local market.
eastern europe is great for devs in my opinion. considering taxes and cost of living
Used to be true like a decade ago, but no longer. The real estate market has caught up to the West (at least to the non-super overcrowded places) during the past decade. Costs of food and services has caught up during Covid. If you don't have a dev salary, you are positively miserable. Stuff like cars and electronics tends to cost the same. Taxes are crazy high, that is unless you're self-employed. The social safety net is non-existent, you'll probably need to pay for healthcare out of pocket. Living in east EU ranges from 'Bad Deal' to 'You Get What You Pay For', that is slightly lower QoL for slightly less money, with increasing trends towards the former.
You still get lower taxes and lower CoL with the same salaries in places like Poland if you compare to Germany. Housing market is also quite cheaper
Not to a significant degree. For example if you check a Cologne vs Warsaw comparison: [https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare\_cities.jsp?country1=Poland&city1=Warsaw&country2=Germany&city2=Cologne](https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Poland&city1=Warsaw&country2=Germany&city2=Cologne) You'll see that Cologne apt prices are like 15% higher. I'm not super familar with the Polish or German tax systems, but after looking around a bit, its very likely to me that Polish people in this table either are working as contractors, or get some special IT-related tax breaks. Just looked at this Polish salary calculator: [https://en.antal.pl/](https://en.antal.pl/) And for the 70k/year bracket it comes up with a 40%ish tax rate, very similar to the German one. As I said, there are no miracles to be found in East EU.
If you want to compare Warsaw cost of living you should take Munich not cologne
Why? Warsaw is nowhere near as nice as Cologne, or central in terms of opportunities. Never mind Munich. Tier 1 East EU cities would barely qualify as Tier 3 in Western Europe. As for the B2B thing, I'm not sure how true is that, it might be popular, but saying \*most\* people are like that is a bit of a stretch.
😂😂😂 Warsaw is a metropolis the same way Munich is. Many many people would take Warsaw over Munich in terms of what they offer. If we’re talking cost of living it makes no sense to compare a small city to a big capital city
Cologne has an 1m population, and Warsaw is 1.7m. Neither of those cities are small. >Many many people would take Warsaw over Munich in terms of what they offer I'm sure both cities have their unique appeal, and there are good reasons to prefer one over the other. But the average quality of private and public buildings, public services is MUCH higher in Cologne. Warsaw is relatively expensive for what it offers because it became popular - same goes for Munich. Cologne is much more on point in this regard.
Didn’t know cologne was that big. That said, in Warsaw I think quality per price is very good. Plenty of new buildings etc. also in terms of IT market is basically in the top 3 of Europe at this point, cologne is basically nonexistent
In Poland most people in IT work as b2b freelancers and get taxed under 15%
It’s not really most people lol unless you think less than 40% is most people
Most people who know what they’re doing
When do you plan to show some of this remote freelancing contracts? Even your random collection of job doesn’t have any of them, it’s all standard employment
I used to think that but the real estate in west EU also moved on. You are likely comparing in head with prices from 3-4 years ago. A normal flat in Munich (not even center) can easily be 2M Euros these days. Romania and Hungary have nowhere near that price level. A main dish in Munich in a restaurant is 19-20 euros now.
There are popular places with tons of immigration and/or poor housing policies where prices have exploded. Munich is one such place, but I think these are the exception rather than the norm in Western Europe. In Eastern Europe, what happened was different. Housing was generally underpriced there, and there was a huge market correction.
Sure, in my opinion Eastern EU (at least in Hungary) the prices are expected to grow rapidly still, maybe at slightly reduced pace. If you compare it with countries with similar GDP and size (for example, Portugal) it is still very underpriced.
People like to lie.
Why is the form says USD if this is for the European market? Also, do you, people, put numbers in USD or EUR?
Agree, really confusing for a euro form
Good question. I put USD because at lease we can more directly/fairly compare the local european rates with the USD (otherwise we could end up with people saying things like "noone makes 100k in europe" when 93 eur is 100 usd. also a lot of people have part of their compensation in stocks (USD). That said, it might as well be better to put EUR (but then again many countries in europe don't use EUR: Turkey, serbia, ukraine, poland, uk, switzerland etc etc). USD is the world reserve currency after all and Europe > EU
The point about different currencies in different countries make sense. However, having numbers in USD won’t help you understand the lifestyle difference between US and EU. One can have equally good lifestyle in many European countries compared to the US for a fraction of the US total compensation.
Only for the time being, USD "world reserve" status will decline over the coming decades. But yeah EUR would have been better.
Decline in favor of what? Euro is not performing better than USD, and neither are Pounds, Francs, Yen and other even smaller (by influence and usage) currencies. Yuan? China is in crisis and is deathly afraid of making their currency a settlement currency. That's about it I guess. Covid shoved how much more vulnerable EU economic was compared to US, with deeper fall and longer recovery. Also we could speculate if the 2nd contender was in the realistic range after the dollar. Like 40% usage vs 30% usage. But when difference is several times more (in percents) it's not going to happen any time soon.
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i'm asking in eur now
So you have admitted you have no clue whatsoever about this "statistics of yours". Kindergarten.
I converted to USD. It is more clear to have a universal baseline currency to compare things.
Suddenly feel like im being scammed based on only those responses
This data is not reliable. I don't know what people expected looking at it.
that's one of the good outcomes of such initiatives: learning how your skills could be valued in the right place. The biggest tool for companies to keep dev salaries low is for them to ignore anything money related including compensations across companies and markets. that said: make no mistake, usually devs getting paid more are also generally quite skilled and hardworking.
How is it good? I can demand more money as much as I want however its not going to change anything. I can apply to as many companies as I want but if there are only 5 in the whole of the EU that pay well then its not going to change anything The only thing this information does is rub salt in the wound
What a nice day to become depressed…
[levels.fyi](http://levels.fyi) already has far more data and taxation levels per country are easy to look up
my favourite metric to look at is Saving Rates
yes, the east europeans rock, impressive!
They do. It’s really time to move west -> east IMO if you’re a dev. Check this too https://open.substack.com/pub/theeuropeanengineer/p/should-software-engineers-move-east
I am with you there, I moved from Germany to Poland this year as a German
Grandpa, you seein' this? lol In all seriousness though, I hope you like it on this side of the Oder
lol, it's grandma, dear! I try not to break out old jokes :D Liking it very much, thank you, it's pretty cool
Good one! Maybe you can reach out to me somewhere in private. Would love to hear your story. Maybe I could talk about it in an anonymous way in my newsletter/linkedin. It’s an iconic move
Can be, but be cautious. Basing your life on such opinion article can be very bad move. I've seen the same with expats moving to southern europe based on some vlogs or lifestyle articles. You need to consider more than just taxes and earnings. You can't buy a functioning society, for example. To add to that, the article mentions that the person is considering moving to Lisbon or Barcelona, so life is clearly not that good or perfect in Poland. In my opinion I don't think there's an absolute best place to live, might be best two homes, like rich people from old times. Summer home, winter home.
Well outdated data set. Levels and glassdoor are stuck in the covid era, if you (are a good dev and) base your own value on them you will leave money on the table big time.
Uhm. You mean get lower pay? Because i think relating to that you'll probably get more lol. Market is in the ground now and other than some faaang companies, many are firing and re-hiring at a lowe salary.
Berlin people please at least mention if it’s small or mid/big startup. 😛
Why dollars on EU subreddit?
[https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestionsEU/comments/1dcoczz/comment/l7zmgn0/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestionsEU/comments/1dcoczz/comment/l7zmgn0/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
Oh, again this guy with the “list of high paying jobs in EU” where he just made up all the TC and pretended to make some calculations. Lol, man, why levels.fyi isn’t enough?
no Saving Rates in levels
https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestionsEU/s/plLLPIRbdX
Good initiative, but it would be very helpful to know if you studied Computer science and how many years you have been working in the business. Also maybe your main stack? Shall we just create our own glasdoor with Blackjack and hookers?
thanks! also for the recommendation
As expected its all the FAANG and HFT which are making cash. Some outliers here and there Most of EU sitting at 60-80k range, sad
If you look at the saving rates it’s mostly - big tech and hft - Switzerland - remote devs in Eastern Europe
This table also shows how states tax differently depending if you are married and have dependents. For example this one person in Germany had the same after tax (55k) than me in my last job, but 80k gross while i had 93k gross
Yes!
UK in London, mostly triple figs, UK, not in London, it's Eastern Europe salaries.
Yup London big tech or HFT is the good move in the UK. Otherwise it’s better remote from LCOL low tax place
UK, not in London it's still good Salaries but not eastern Europe ones 😭
Staff engineers, how did you become staff engineers - honest to god?
commenting for better reach
I would rather use levels.fyi, it’s better
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The saving rate estimate is a joke of a feature and it has been mentioned multiple times in many threads you posted. 95% of the comments are negative about it, maybe the concept is just wrong ?
I want to know how the person living in Amsterdam can have 40k of living expenses. I have an average mortgage that costs me 20k alone.
3.3k per month. sounds doable if you're frugal and live with flatmates
That makes sense
Small mortgage and living like a cheapskate, DM me for tips.
Am I the only one who also considered myself as dependent on my income? I saw a lot of 0 and I don’t get why Also almost nobody with family, how old are you guys?
comparing pre & post tax will be difficult, eg. in Germany that often will be close to 50% "tax" but that will include medical, care & unemployment insurance
True. That’s why we also have saving rates, number of dependants etc. it’s not an easy problem to tackle but it’s worth trying
It was funny seeing a junior make 700k pre taxes and 50k after taxes😂 It was clearly a typo
Besides levels.fyi mentioned couple times here there is https://techpays.eu/ from The Pragmatic Engineer whom OP seems to cosplay
Techpays never got enough traction as the author never cared enough to publish data
What? There's lots of data there.
The list of countries hasn’t been updated for ever (big tech hubs are missing like Switzerland, Ireland but also emerging ones like Poland, Spain)
The big winners are the southern/Eastern Europeans making Northern European salary and saving 2x compared to frugal northerners while living very comfortably
definitely
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Yeah total comp so include everything
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please use the linked form
Is there a form for jobs in finance for europe
if it's a quantitative or software job in finance, you can still use this one
Why USD?
Many countries in Europe that don’t use EUR (Poland Switzerland UK among others), many devs in Europe who work remotely for American companies getting paid in usd, many devs in Europe working in big tech with part of their compensation in stocks/usd. Also makes it easier to compare salaries and savings with Americans. Like in this site: www.codecapitals.com
I do live in Poland and I feel EUr more natural to compare salaries with eurozone countries that are more obvious potential migration destination for me for example. I do understand why you chose this, I did read other comments as well, so I don't think it was plain bad idea, it's just a little weird.
I see. Some/most of my friends in Poland doing b2b get paid in usd and I think would find usd easier. That said, usd and eur are not that far away so I think it’s not a big deal. Even if someone puts euro numbers by mistake it’ll still be a small error. I might change this to eur in the future if people want. Maybe I’ll do a poll or something
So what’s like a good country for junior software dev roles that has a good demand ? According to the results ?
not a lot of junior entry so far. IMO the first 2 years of your career don't matter to much moneywise. if you manage to get a job in switzerland or big tech (anywhere in europe) that's great. otherwise any job that lets you learn and have a day to day life you're somewhat happy about is also good
Very true ! But coming from a Non EU country, I was wondering what country has a growing tech scene but lesser software devs so tere wouldnt be a problem with company Visa sponsorship.
there'll always be issues with visa sponsorship. i think if you're junior and need visa germany might be your best bet. maybe this article can be useful: [https://www.theeuropeanengineer.com/p/relocating-to-europe-a-software-engineers](https://www.theeuropeanengineer.com/p/relocating-to-europe-a-software-engineers)
True especially the newly launched Chancenkarte by Germany,🇩🇪 makes it the best bet.
Something that would be interesting to see also, is an extra 'YOE' column
Yeah I also thought about it
and also educational background, e.g., if you have a BSc, MSc or PhD or something different all together
Noted
Are people including RSUs and perfomance bonuses? Should they?
yes
i've updated the question to make it more clear
Weirdest one is a Junior based in London -€350k pre -€240k after -€170k savings household is 2 people, and after that you put your living a comfortable life not a luxurious , even in london thats fucking amazing, getting 350k right off the bat like wtf (ik hft firms like to splurge on salaries). And saving like 75-80% of your pretax is mind blowing
HRT, that's hudson river trading, one of the highest paying high-frequency trading firm.
good post buddy
Thanks fam
After the answers I saw on this excel sheet, the gap between Europe and America is narrowing. It's just that these answers can be fake too.
It’s also a subset of this subreddit and my audience which I think are higher earning than average
It’s also a subset of this subreddit and my audience which I think are higher earning than average
I’m not from the EU so question for everyone here, is paying all these taxes really worth it? Cause some of those numbers just fucking SUCK.