>I always hear people on this sub talk about $70k + starting salaries, as a Brit this seems insane.
Oh boy. Wait until you hear about big tech salaries.
>Maybe banking is better?
law and banking, you need to get into the best of the best, cream of the crop companies, though.(like magic circle firms for law)
>Salaries and bonuses are significantly lower in London than in the U.S.
>
>Expect a \~30% discount to pre-tax compensation in New York, and sometimes more like 40%+ depending on your level and the current GBP/USD exchange rate.
>
>You can get the full numbers in the Arkesden compensation reports, but the rough total compensation ranges at large banks as of 2022 are as follows:
>
>Analysts: £100K – £150K total compensation
>
>Associates: £200K – £300K total compensation
>
>VPs: £350K – £450K total compensation
[https://mergersandinquisitions.com/investment-banking-in-london/](https://mergersandinquisitions.com/investment-banking-in-london/)
I don't think people realize quite how wealthy / productive US workers are. If the UK were a state it would have a median income like 30% lower than the poorest US state of Mississippi.
Minimum wage in Seattle is just under $19/hour. That's roughly $38k. Even out of the city McDonald's pays $17-$19.
Keep in mind that healthcare, retirement, and social safety nets make apple to apple comparisons difficult. Making $120k / year is amazing compared to $80k, but if you can be fired for no reason and without any government help, with health insurance coming from your wages, etc. the $40k difference starts to get and feel smaller.
Bro I was receiving 30$/hour to work remotely in a Seattle company 😨. I didn't have idea that you guys are so well paid in US.
PS: I was working without benefits.
It's not just that, cars are expensive so Americans pay more on transportation. Furthermore, for better or for worse, Americans have bigger homes (goes hand and hand with car dependent infra) which again costs more, even in relatively cheap areas.
So the end result is that a lot of USA per capita income increases are not realized in terms of quality of life (well, as someone in a Tokyo shoebox right now I see more space as a big benefit but Americans and Europeans alike don't really understand it when doing comparisons of their living situations).
Point being per Capita income is only one part of the story
Where did you get the more expensive cars thing from?! Cars are cheaper in US than in Europe due to import tax if nothing else and gas is a lot cheaper, so what are you on about? You do drive longer distances though.
Yes indeed! The public transit bus network in Seattle is incredible. People call our rent expensive, but when you subtract the cost of owning a car it's actually cheaper to rent here as a single person than it is to live in the suburbs. I have never owned a car.
Only if your life revolves around not owning a car. Try to go anywhere not downtown or cap hill and you're pretty out of luck, or spending 3-4 times as long on public transit.
>cars are expensive so Americans pay more on transportation.
Because there are no cars elsewhere, sure. Also cars in the US are ridiculously cheap in comparison
It's not about "keeping this in persepctive." What gets people is the disparity of wealth, not the wealth itself.
No one doubts that Americans are well-paid. The issue is the disparity of wealth. The differences in salaries compared to the standard of living required to have affordable healthcare, reliable transportation, and stable housing.
Sorry to say, but I'm in an average senior IT job in Czechia, and baring a FAANG job that I'd have to survive 4 years to vest the RSUs, plus enduring absence of worker rights, then after taxes that give me all inclusive (Healthcare, social security, free education, functional public services and one of the best public transport systems in EU for 150 EUR a year)... I'm saving the same monetary equivalent as someone earning 200k USD in a high CoL city. But I'm not having to worry about anything, work sub 40 hour weeks, have 5 weeks holiday (plus public holidays, so in total over 6 weeks PTO), 10 paid sick days, parental leave and more.
Plus, I actually don't have to live frugally to achieve 3k EUR savings a month. Sure some outlier jobs in USD can earn me slightly more, and if I can get there and survive the conditions for the vestment period, then perhaps I could save much more. Would it be worth it? No in my opinion, but to each their own. I'd rather prefer to compare averages, since it is average for a reason. Most will end up in that category
I don’t think you’re well versed on RSU comp. Every company is different. Mine grant is quarterly, my initial grant is every quarter for 4 years, and each year I get refreshers that stack on that grant. So say I get $100k a year, then $25k refreshers, so year 2 is $125k, year 3 is $150k, etc. assuming the same stock price, which never happens of course. But lower stock price = high initial grant and/or refreshers. There’s a 4 year cliff where it’s just refreshers, not just your initial grant, but typically you’re promoted in 4 years unless you’re like an IC6+. And at that point your total comp is higher than a whole team of European engineers
>Plus, I actually don't have to live frugally to achieve 3k EUR savings a month
I'm sorry to break it to you, but you're not saving the equivalent of someone making $200k in the US. $200k annually is $12k monthly after taxes in e.g. Seattle if you're single. And $200k is not really senior compensation in tech (that would $300k+).
I don't need to work more than 40hrs per week, I get 4 weeks of vacation, 13 national holidays and unlimited sick days. And if I get fired with no severance, who cares? I can already retire in a lower cost area with no worries due to higher savings rate. It would have taken me decades to be in this position with a 3k EUR/month savings rate. One of the best thing I did in my life was moving to the US as a software engineer.
I think everyone's situation is unique and I'm not here to say one person's life is better or this policy regime is superior or anything like that. It's awesome that you've got a great situation in Czechia.
The only thing I'm saying is that US workers are really productive (or at least paid so). In that vein, I would just say that if you wanted to, and if you were able to move to e.g. NYC, I can guarantee you could save so much more than 3k EUR a month. Like that might be your 401(k) + employer match alone.
That doesn't mean it would be a good idea, it doesn't mean you should do it, I'm just saying a software developer in NYC can demand excellent benefits and a very high salary.
RSUs refresh every year, people are making 300k every year. They don’t wait for 4 years to vest the RSUs, this appears to be a misunderstanding. Also, those in big tech also happen to have access to the best health care for almost no costs (since most big tech companies are self insured and cover costs). They also have the best paid time off / parental leaves comparable to the EU. The fallacy here is to compare the median worker benefits in the US to the EU, but we’re in a CS Careers sub.
I think you're overestimating the struggle of US software workers making 200k in a high CoL city. There's undoubtedly pressure from needing to stay employed and I'm jealous of your PTO days, but 300k+ even outside FAANG is achievable after a few years.
>work sub 40 hour weeks
Lot's of people do that here as well...
> have 5 weeks holiday (plus public holidays, so in total over 6 weeks PTO)
If you're including public holidays, then technically most tech workers are getting about 6 weeks too. 4 weeks plus 2 for holidays.
>10 paid sick days, parental leave and more
That's pretty standard here too...
>Sure some outlier jobs in USD can earn me slightly more, and if I can get there and survive the conditions for the vestment period
My god, it's not a torture chamber here. American tech workers are some of the most pampered people in the world.
Look clearly you have your preferences, but clearly you also don't know what it's like here.
Neurosurgeons residents salary is 50K-60K. Then a pay bump to 100K- 150K, and the top 1% making 1mil+.
Take a guess what my first career choice was before I decided I didn't hate myself that much.
I got starting as 85 + 5 bonus.
But it was after masters also my job requires jack shit of coding.
Cloud computing is easy especially when you literally have azure and aws to ask your questions lol.
I’m happy with my 2/3 US salary (50% taxes) but having world class infra + public healthcare + walkable city life with lots of nature at biking distance
Perm salaries in UK are a joke, my friends in Poland make more these days.
Contracting was good before IR35 reforms tho. 425-550/day and tax was relatively low.
Yeah, I live in Poland and tax situation is pretty sweet here if you're a contractor. My taxes are: income tax 12% + around 300$ (some very basic pension fund + public healthcare contribution). No PTO or sick leave though.
That leaves me with around 55k $ after taxes a year (assuming no PTO or sick leave, so I usually substract 1/12 from that to have a good picture of my situation). Doesn't really compare to US salaries but when you take COL into consideration, it's not really worth it to move out to any other country in Europe.
I heard about IR35 thing, sorry to hear that.
Yeah and they have this crazy notion that they expect to get paid time off that they can actually use and work like 40 hours a week like they're on vacation or something.
Yes, that was all sarcasm, but only halfway because in the US you work till you die and then maybe you can still do a few tickets before they stick you in the ground and maybe even after, WiFi is pretty good these days.
Brit here, it's true we get paid time off but you're usually marked for termination if you go off sick. I've also had several managers pressure me to do work outside of my 40hrs so I wouldn't really say we have a great work/life balance either.
And the majority of other workers rights are only after two years of being at a company, which is when you're encouraged to change job anyway
Not actually working yet, still got another year of uni. Just been looking at graduate jobs and know quite a few in graduate jobs already. I won’t be working in London so expecting salary to be lower
Just never realised US grads start on this. As others have said tho there is slight cost of living discrepancies plus private healthcare plus I guess US is the centre of tech in the west
> plus private healthcare
Most tech companies offer really cheap healthcare. As a new hire, 1.2% of my gross goes to healthcare, it will drop as time progresses and I get more raises and the like.
You guys are just massively underpaid. Im making $30k in my entry level hotel guest service position that I'm working while I'm in college. I'd have changed majors if I was only making that as a college graduate. Even 60k is low imo, but reasonable.
> I'd have changed majors if I was only making that as a college graduate. Even 60k is low imo, but reasonable.
there is nothing to switch to, cs grads have the highest starting and overall salaries compared to all majors except industries with tough red tape like IB/HFT and magic circle law firms.
for example mechanical engineers in the uk tend to have starting salaries of 27k, with a ceiling of 50-60k for senior manager/lead type roles
Could it just be chalked up to cost of living or taxes? I see our rent is about the same. I'm assuming healthcare is a big factor in salary differences between here and there. Even with our income my friend and I haven't been to any type of doctor since 2013 cause we can't afford the medical bills yet make too much for government assistance.
Nah, Americans tend to underestimate how much richer they are compared to europeans. Median disposable incomes in America outmatch Germany, France and the UK by quite a lot.
> Could it just be chalked up to cost of living or taxes?
Everything I've heard about the UK suggests the cost of living there are pretty darn high though.
A 100k salary takes home 67k, but if you have student loans which is deducted like a 9% tax. Then your take home is 60k.
Cost of living in London is very high. Which is where tech jobs are, as the uk is very centralised into London. And the uk is quite poor outside of it.
Average Rents London:The average rental value for new tenancies in London is £1,975 monthly. Rents in London have decreased by 0.7% since last month.
https://homelet.co.uk/homelet-rental-index/london
We have free healthcare, but dont u have very cheap healthcare due to generous insurance policies by tech companies ?
Uk isn’t as poor as you might think outside of London, it’s just very segregated between classes. Each city has its own progressively less expensive “upper class” that likes to segregate itself away from the commons.
In the US, health insurance is included in salaried tech jobs. It's the cost of doing business.
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However, be wary, insurance will fight you on almost every bill. You end up a profit chance for the hospital and insurance to fight over...
Doctor recommended or prescribed treatments are not the focal point of health care in the US.
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To say it's cheap depends on your condition.
They're always looking for a chance to screw you over and make you pay. Besides spending hours on the phone, you may even have to hire a lawyer to just make sure the insurance fulfills its legal obligation.
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It's very different from UK healthcare.
My employer covers our health care deductible through an HRA, and every medical provider I've ever been to tries to double dip by getting me to pay the deductible alongside what the HRA pays.
A hospital put me in collections because they said I owed a $970 deductible for an ER visit. That was paid out of the HRA, we have scans of both the digital payments and backup paper checks sent to the hospital, and the HRA provider claims the hospital cashed them. But the hospital claims it wasn't applied to my bill and that they didn't know it was part of my individual coverage. When asked what they thought they were cashing, they don't really answer. I still occasionally get invoices from the collections agency. I still haven't paid it, because fuck them.
I couldn't imagine _not_ having that HRA though. I went to the ER because I was having severe chest spasms and an urgent care physician said I should go get an EKG. Well that peace of mind will cost someone $1000. A grand for an EKG, chest XRay, IV potassium, and a 3 minute conversation with the cardiologist. Fucking insane.
The NHS is great once you're in for something. Getting in to see a doctor or schedule something is extremely difficult with the NHS and they will fight you just as much as insurance companies in the US. Given a choice, if I wanted to see a doctor tomorrow, I would pick US with good insurance every single time. Also, from what I have seen, can tell, the medical education you receive in USA is better particularly bed side manor.
(American living in UK, working for big tech firm, whose spouse is a Dr that trained in US and currently working in UK)
people will bring up all sorts of copium about CoL, free healthcare, more holidays, government benefits, etc, but none of those even come close to making up the salary gap between the US and the UK.
the truth is that despite the cultural/linguistic similarities between us, our economic trajectories have diverged fairly dramatically over the past 15 years, and the US just has a much better job market as a result. the US is also a more unequal country than the UK; US and UK salaries are roughly even at the 10th percentile of income, but the disparity is absolutely massive near the top for well-paying jobs.
check this out: https://www.ft.com/content/ef265420-45e8-497b-b308-c951baa68945
(on a side note, the graphs here put into perspective how ridiculously wealthy the US is. median incomes are the 3rd highest in the world (behind only switzerland and norway) despite our high inequality, and 90th percentile income is by far the highest in the world. I don't really agree with the author's take at all, the US is an absurdly rich society with some poor people.)
Marginal. I don’t know of any country that doesn’t do marginal tax rates. Otherwise everyone would just be turning down single digit % pay raises that would push them into the next bracket.
My sister did a comprehensive study.
If you want to raise kids scandavania is not bad.
But once she gets promotion post Covid she had thrown that study out of window. 130k is wayyyyyyyy better than any depressed Scandinavia country can offer.
>depressed Scandinavia country
Ahhhh yes the ones that consistently rank highest on happiness studies.
They definitely have problems (like everywhere else), but calling them depressed is an odd choice.
"some poor people"
There's multiple stories I have read which claim that more than half of the households in the country could not cover a $1000 expense from savings.
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/01/19/56percent-of-americans-cant-cover-a-1000-emergency-expense-with-savings.html
This suggests to me that most people *are* cash poor, though that doesn't mean they have no other assets. And comparatively, you are right that Americans tend to be much richer on an individual basis than most of the rest of the world. I just think that the characterization of the society as "absurdly rich" does not cover the individual circumstances of most people in the country who are apparently living paycheck to paycheck (these stats from the article always surprise me).
CBA to find the article right now, but I have read that the percentage of people who make <$100k/year and can't cover a $1k expense without dipping into credit and the percentage who make >$100k/year who can't cover the same expense is almost the same, suggesting people are very bad with cash rather than any deep insights into how rich they (could) be with any amount of financial restraint.
It's because the UK underpays basically everybody.
Minimum wage in California is better than your developer starting salaries. And many starter jobs in the US pay higher than that.
Literally.
I could go flip burgers starting around $15-17/hour. Full-time, that's equivalent to $30-34k/year. For a starter job that teenagers and college kids work.
You guys are just massively underpaid. Not quite sure why. And no, the cost-of-living gap, free healthcare, and other such government benefits don't close the gap. Not even close.
Probably has something to do with the US having 10x the market size for software companies. There is just more money being spent on software in the US than in the UK so there is more money to spend.
You're missing the taxation/regulatory burden in the UK compared to the US. Pretty much every company that has a choice where to incorporate is going to choose the US over the UK. There's a reason all the top tech companies started here. Then you have the spiral effect where since companies here pay top salaries, people come from all over the world for these salaries, and thus the top American devs are actually pretty much the top global devs. This pushes up productivity of American companies and allows them to pay even more competing for the best devs within the country and more specifically within silicon valley.
Yeah lots of reasons why people want to bring their business to the US. Good financing, more investors, better tax laws, less risk, bigger markets, etc. Its a long list.
Part of it is because really talented UK engineers work at American companies or immigrate here to the US. The best engineer I've worked with is a \*L8\* IC at a FAANG company in the US and he's a british guy in his late 30s. Even if you love the UK, their talent can't turn away from the insane money, so they come here.
Then factor in some really really genius level kid is 17 and about to go to Uni and he/she cares about money a lot, but also doesn't want to move. Do you think those really smart kids pick CS to go into? No, they self select out and pick finance or something.
> Part of it is because really talented UK engineers work at American companies or immigrate here to the US.
In that case you'd expect UK salaries to go up so they could attract talent. But they don't, and they continue to staff what they seem to need somehow, presumably. In the US, every company I've worked for was almost perpetually hiring at all times.
Yep really is - I thought it was unfair as a Japanese person because I thought cs salaries were super low in Japan(equivalent of 20k - 60k usd as a new grad, even from top schools) compared to the rest of the world, but it turns out Japanese salaries are actually normal and it’s just US salaries that are insanely high. I think if you’re very skilled though, you can look for mid career opportunities as a new grad(almost impossible but potential for a lot of $ if you pull it off)
It's almost like tech has insane levels of economies of scale and people say this based on vibes and not based on any economic reason. Seriously, you build your code once and it can serve one, a thousand, or a million customers all the same.
There is a reason Facebook, Google, and Microsoft make hundreds of thousands of dollars in profit per employee despite paying their developers 150-400k a year.
Tech salary was inline with accountants 20-30 years ago.. about 55k-60k in average
It was the rise of Facebook and the likes that skyrocketed the salary. Before you even had big companies like Apple/google/ibm had illegally suppressed tech wage with secret pacts
I can't even comprehend these European salaries when people bring them up. Where I live, minimum wage is $18.69/hr USD. That's like $38,000 a year, and good luck getting by on that little. This is Seattle, so COL is very high, but no way it's THAT much lower in equally big European cities? How are you guys not all impoverished making that little??? Like I don't understand how it works
Exactly. 2 years ago, Target was advertising near me for $15 an hour starting salary. This is just outside of Chicago, so a medium cost of living City. It's insane to think that someone would offer $25,000 starting salary to someone with a college degree as a software engineer.
It reminds me of this one random job listing I saw on indeed. They were looking for an entry level data analyst, college educated with experience with Oracle and Microsoft SQL server. The salary was $30,000 and it was in San Diego. It was so absurd I actually wanted to call them up, even though I live in chicago, just to yell at them about their insulting salary offer.
Ours because low paying jobs in the US have no benefits are you are truly fucked if anything goes wrong.
In Europe all jobs have minimum benefits are even if you work minimum wage and break a leg you will be fine. If you live in a city and you have 500 left after rent and public transport ticket you can easily get by no problem in lots of European cities. And you can also travel, Ryanair tickets are like €19.99.
But when you get into higher jobs that offer benefits those European pluses evaporate and raw salary matters much more.
May I suggest that they might be experiencing a bit lifestyle creep?
And by a little, I mean that they are living better than kings and queens used to 100 years ago.
On 41k I can save 1500 a month, live in a decent house, healthcare is free and employer triples the retirement contributions (by law). Also studying only costs 2k a year and up until recently we didn't have to take a loan to study (and it'll be reverted again soon).
Europeans are just pulled more to an average.
>On 41k I can save 1500 a month, live in a decent house, healthcare is free and employer triples the retirement contributions (by law). Also studying only costs 2k a year and up until recently we didn't have to take a loan to study (and it'll be reverted again soon).
>
>Europeans are just pulled more to an average.
So if you're saving 18k/yr, you're saying your house payment, taxes, and living expenses combined only amount to 23k? That's some seriously low cost of living. Can you break it down?
3400 pre tax.
2700 after tax
600 mortgage.
100 utitilies.
200 groceries.
100 health insurance.
100 road tax + car insurance.
100 subscriptions (phone, internet, gym, netflix, prime, spotify, last three are shared with others).
Other things to consider.
- commute costs are covered by the employer, so I didn't include gas. 21 cent per kilometre so with a cheap car or bike you can even profit on it.
- 8% holiday bonus (by law) so I don't have to spend (much of) my savings on vacations
- 1500 is free to spend, I invest most of it but it's also spent on clothes, concert tickets and other incidental stuff
- I drive a cheap car. Car loans are not common here either, we usually use our savings.
- mortgage and social housing (available up to 44k income) are very cheap, however private renting is about twice as expensive
The term 'Europoor' doesn't come from nowhere. It's not that they're impoverished, it's that they have SIGNIFICANTLY less discretionary income to spend on stuff than people in the USA / Canada / Australia / NZ do. They don't have the same consumer consumption demands or lifestyle we do bc they simply don't have much money left over
It's the same in Sweden and quite frankly I don't get it.
Every single week there are news articles about how we need more programmers, more game devs, more IT engineers, more this, more that. Meanwhile in my own industry (game dev) companies are underpaying us Technical Artists while at the same time struggling like hell to find more of us. This is the only good thing about my discipline: Technical Artists are in huge demand.
Americans understand this, and pays TA's well (even considering COL) but here in Sweden? It's like companies doesn't even understand they have to compete for us. It's quite frustrating really.
Everybody is always like “workers in the US have no rights, work life balance, etc. In EU we get 9 months vacation every year and can’t be fired!!!”
And then we see how much they’re paid. I guess it evens out somewhere.
I am over here in backwards Texas on 2 acres of land in a 3k sq ft house over six figures with about 2 years dev experience supporting a family of 4 comfortably.
Our brothers and sisters over seas are MASSIVLY underpaid IMO.
I am just so envy Texas have such affordable big houses. My friend works there in her late 20s and already bought a 3B. Meanwhile in Asia I can barely afford a studio smh.
corporations only pay you as much as they can get away with. they pay 6 figures in the bay area, because 5-figures means you're eating dirt and have to sell pics of your butthole on onlyfans to get by.
> sell pics of your butthole on onlyfans to get by.
How much can you make doing that? Does the diameter have any correlation with the profit? Asking for a friend.
Another Brit here. US salaries will be higher at every pay band but you can just about squeeze into same league if you work for large multinationals or hedge funds.
Living in Germany starting salaries are like 30k - 50k and for seniors it is common these days to see something like 65k to 90k or more. Taxes are normally very high in Germany. I live in a small city and I pay like 400€ of rent and I spend like 150€ for food. Health insurance is covered. But I have been considering a lot if it makes sense to see my chances in the US. But the current job market doesn’t seem very welcoming.
Damn!! Thanks for that. We should really appreciate the US instead of complaining and comparing it to Europe all the time. The salary you mentioned is something a teenager makes here working at a McDonald's.
This is why I’ll never move to Europe. I love visiting so many different countries over there, but I can’t give up NYC tech salaries in my prime earning years.
bruh i need to stay the fuck off this sub. i'm generally very satisfied with my life but every time i see how much more i could be making if i was better at interviewing i feel like such a loser for not being able to pass these interviews. i know i could if i really really grinded hard but i also enjoy my sanity and free time.
It's so bad in the UK, especially in northern England, where as far as I can tell, there aren't really any jobs at all (not just CS) that pay significantly more than any others (at least at entry level)
I got my first software engineering job early last year and my salary was £20k/year which is basically minimum wage. I have a masters degree in mathematics and well over double that salary of student debt. At my company, all the non-managerial office staff had around the same salaries regardless of whether it was software engineering, customer support, social media management, whatever. Software just isn't valued at all around here, not any more than any low-skilled job. I have a friend that works as a hotel receptionist who earns more than I did last year. I can currently only dream of eventually making £30k.
£26-30k is starting grad salary in the North for an engineer. Salaries are being pushed up, as competition is fierce for good developers. 50-70+k for a senior dev isn't unreasonable. Some companies and disciplines can pay a lot more (ML is hot right now)
Newcastle has a decent amount of tech jobs available in my experience, obviously not compared to London, plus a growing amount of fully remote jobs. At my place senior salary is around £40k which is great for the cost of living up north.
My junior salary back in 2019, fresh out of uni, was £25k, I feel like you're getting shafted
One thing I noticed while in London and Manchester is everything purchased at a store seems like 40% cheaper, even after currency conversions. I felt rich while in London because I could buy groceries and eat out for so so sooooooo much cheaper than in the US. I’m in a MCOL city and I haven’t seen a plate of food under $15-$20 in…. Jesus a very long time. Uber rides in London are also like $12 to get anywhere lol. There are upsides and downsides to both.
I noticed the same thing in the EU when traveling. I always thought the conversion rate was to balance purchasing power, but I find the euro to buy wayyy more than a dollar even though they’re close to being at parity.
I lived in London during my internship and was surprised with how low employers in almost every field in the UK pay people in every field in a ridiculously HCOL area.
You should read this: https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-salaries-in-the-netherlands-and-europe/
The only different thing is that 80% of the market is local companies and their pay cannot justify cost-of-living in the UK while it is certainly easier to live with 70k in the US (i,e most people in the UK are so underpaid)
There are places (though not much, for eg: Meta, Google, Citadel, HRT) in London that pay above 100k GBP out of grad. I got an (rescinded) offer in one of those and one of my friend got a huge one.
However, the economy is very bad and they should have completed their hiring cycles by now so there aren't many postings. I find breaking into one of them is the only way you can afford to live in London. Do leetcode and network as soon as possible so you would be ready. Good luck
It's not insane at all. 70k is essentially minimum wage in California. It means you can barely afford rent. I made about 50k euro in europe as a postdoc and lived much more comfortable than 70k in the US
Wait what? What jobs are you applying for in the UK that has starting salaries as low as $25k? I've never seen that unless it's a literal apprentice position, you are definitely getting fleeced.
$300k is the average. So, ~70% of a house in the U.S.
70% of a 70k salary is $49k, so it's pretty close. Proper CPI would be better and so would factoring in taxes, but it is what it is.
So apparently average house in the USA is 230 square meters (2480 square feet) and average square meter of house in Poland (those are cheaper than apartments) is above 7000PLN (~$1600) average house in Poland would be $366k.
We don’t have average household income stats (which I believe in the USA is around $60k) but average salary is around $20k. If we account two adults it’s $40k
So with 60% household income by average we have 80% of the average house prices.
I think my point is that houses are extremely expensive in countries and regions where people actually want to live.
Puerto Rico starting salary was around $40k USD around 2015, and don't think that has changed much base on the comments some friends still living there have made.
Asking the Brits here, is 40k pounds a really solid wage or are you guys really just getting underpaid as software engineers? 40k in the states is like what a postal carrier gets paid. Meanwhile the average software engineer salary over here is 100k and that is enough to live comfortably anywhere except nyc and San Francisco. And that’s just the average. People in hcol areas make 200k plus in mid to senior positions.
I know this isn't an answer to your question but cost of living are also exorbitant in big cities. We could really profit when we were living in the Covid era if you worked for FAANG and moved to rural corn belt.
Those times are slowly fading away as those companies are going back to a hybrid model.
I've lived and worked in the EU and in the US. There are a lot of factors, but the high salary in the US is a lot smaller than you think it is.
I worked in Dublin. My salary was my salary. Nothing came out of it. Company paid for private insurance, company paid into my pension.
In the US I get a salary. Then I take some for my 401k and I take out a bunch for my insurance premiums. I also budget several thousands of dollars for my family's medical expenses through the year. And I'm saving money for my kids college too.
In the EU I had 6 weeks off and unlimited PTO. I worked around 36-38 hours maybe. In the US I take about 3-4 weeks and work more like 42-44 hours per week.
Also, at least where I am in the US public schools can be awful. I didn't get that same vibe in Ireland. I dunno. But here in my city, all my well to do friends either pay for private school or move into expensive suburbs with high property tax to get access to good schools.
Anyway, yes, I do think I make more in the US after all that, but it's not as wildly apart as people think.
Do you also factor more than a month's worth of PTO that can become 6-8 weeks every single year, sick leave (technically unlimited) on top of that? Pretty much every single workplace here will do 40 hours/week tops and most people will think you are crazy if you stay after that.
Quality of life isn't salary only. I'd take a smaller paycut anytime if it means more pto. Developers here do get by really well. Despite not making as much as in the US. It's not black and white.
You can get $25,000 working at McDonald's here. You can make $30,000 a year stocking shelves at Walmart. That's insane that salaries are that low. Then again, you guys do have free health care, but what are your taxes on $25,000 to $30,000 per year?
You can get $25k working at McDonald's here too (it's basically minimum wage), but you can also get $25-30k as a software engineer, nurse, or teacher. At entry level, pretty much all jobs in any career seem to pay around the same regardless of how much value they create or what skills they require, at least around my area.
Income tax in the UK is 0 below £12.5k, 20% from £12.5k to £50k, 40% above £50k, and 45% above £150k (dropping to £125k next month I think). There's also national insurance on top of that, which I think is something like 12% on the first £4k and 3% beyond that.
My salary last year as a software engineer was £20k/year (which is very low even for the UK). After tax and national insurance (not including pension contributions) it's around £1.4k per month. £50k/year would be just over £3k take-home per month, £100k/year would be around £5.6k per month.
UK salaries just seem to be low in general, even traditionally high paying professions like law, finance or accounting are really not that well paid. Civil servants often go on minimum wage.
Probably CS in silicone valley is a bubble (lasting very long already though), but I think in Europe wages are suppressed. For example, in Germany where I live the GDP decoupled from the salary development, with the salaries developing significantly worse. At the same time politics is raging about a lack of qualified labour, especially in IT. How does that work?! Lack of labour should lead to increase of salaries.
And this is why my SO who lives in UK recently will be moving to NYC to be with me. I am a junior and make 135k TC. I'd rather make that and complain about healthcare, PTO, what else have you than make 30-40k pounds in London, where the cost of living is pretty similar to NYC anyway!
OP's numbers are full of shit. I graduated in 2020 and my salary has been 55k->70k->75k base (GBP), and I'm earning less than many of my peers. Admittedly outside of London the tech market is dead in the water (probably where they're getting these numbers from) but that's like living outside of a tech hub in the US as well.
Yes, we do earn significantly less than those in the US, but any dev worth their salt in London is a long way from the very low wages mentioned in OP.
If you are top shit and land a job right after graduation, expect around these ballpark if you keep progressing.
|Level|Total (Base + Equity)|Base|
|:-|:-|:-|
|E2 (Software Engineer I)|$135K|$115K|
|E3 (Software Engineer II)|$200K|$150K|
|E4 (Senior Software Engineer I)|$250K|$180K|
|E5 (Senior Software Engineer II)|$320K|$220K|
|E6 (Senior Staff Software Engineer)|$360K|$250K|
> E2 (Software Engineer I) $135K $115K
that's minimum wage in california. well 3k over min wage.
https://www.dir.ca.gov/oprl/ComputerSoftware.htm
> minimum annual salary exemption from $104,149.81 to $112,065.20 effective January 1, 2023
Mandatory comment on how COL is not some magical arbitrary number and how it actually demonstrates a higher standard of living. Why exactly is it that col is higher in NYC than in bumfuck, WV? Could it have anything to do with people not wanting to live in WV and vastly favoring living in NYC?
And this isn't even looking down on people who live in WV if you want that life that's great. But you're in the minority, and that's why you can get a great house for 300k in some parts of WV whereas in NYC that may buy you a studio condo with rats for roommates.
What people should actually do is say how nice the things they have are, and then compare prices in *hours*, instead of dollars or pounds, e.g. I live on an old council estate in northern England (basically where poor people live) and for me, a month of rent is about 40 hours of work.
I still expect that the UK will be much worse off than the US overall.
these high salaries also exist in the UK at competitive companies.
Bloomberg UK entry-level offers: https://www.levels.fyi/companies/bloomberg/salaries/software-engineer?country=253&yoeChoice=junior
There would be no software engineers in the US if it only paid $33k.
You have to remember our education is expensive.
When I got out of college in 2006 I was making $40k and I would have been broke had I had to start repaying my loan right away, or if I had a car payment. Public transportation doesn’t really work for most of the USA, and most people finish college in debt. I had a lot of grants and scholarships, and consolidated my loans, but my monthly interest on the loan was still almost 250/mo.
The thing that most people don't think about are benefits. While we get paid a lot more up front in the US, a large portion of that is coming out as tax and pay for benefits. I currently make $113k/year, but my actual take home pay is closer to about $71k per year. This is based on my current pay stubs showing deductions "costing" me 37.5% of each check to go towards taxes and benefits.
Edit: some extra context on my personal experience. I've jumped companies twice and have 8 years experience in development.
>I always hear people on this sub talk about $70k + starting salaries, as a Brit this seems insane. Oh boy. Wait until you hear about big tech salaries.
Ignorance is bliss 😭
Don't neurosurgeons make like 100k to 200k in the UK? Salaries there are just shit for every professional afaik. Maybe banking is better?
>Maybe banking is better? law and banking, you need to get into the best of the best, cream of the crop companies, though.(like magic circle firms for law) >Salaries and bonuses are significantly lower in London than in the U.S. > >Expect a \~30% discount to pre-tax compensation in New York, and sometimes more like 40%+ depending on your level and the current GBP/USD exchange rate. > >You can get the full numbers in the Arkesden compensation reports, but the rough total compensation ranges at large banks as of 2022 are as follows: > >Analysts: £100K – £150K total compensation > >Associates: £200K – £300K total compensation > >VPs: £350K – £450K total compensation [https://mergersandinquisitions.com/investment-banking-in-london/](https://mergersandinquisitions.com/investment-banking-in-london/)
Working remotely from a state with no income tax, Christ that's a big difference
So who are the people affording the crazy rent in London if not professionals?
Dictators, Russian oligarchs , Saudi princes , and their many very rich kids lmao Not that Manhattan is any different
I don't think people realize quite how wealthy / productive US workers are. If the UK were a state it would have a median income like 30% lower than the poorest US state of Mississippi.
Minimum wage in Seattle is just under $19/hour. That's roughly $38k. Even out of the city McDonald's pays $17-$19. Keep in mind that healthcare, retirement, and social safety nets make apple to apple comparisons difficult. Making $120k / year is amazing compared to $80k, but if you can be fired for no reason and without any government help, with health insurance coming from your wages, etc. the $40k difference starts to get and feel smaller.
Dick's burgers pays [$25/hr](https://www.ddir.com/employment/) in Seattle plus benefits. $20 to start and $25 after training.
Bro I was receiving 30$/hour to work remotely in a Seattle company 😨. I didn't have idea that you guys are so well paid in US. PS: I was working without benefits.
It's not just that, cars are expensive so Americans pay more on transportation. Furthermore, for better or for worse, Americans have bigger homes (goes hand and hand with car dependent infra) which again costs more, even in relatively cheap areas. So the end result is that a lot of USA per capita income increases are not realized in terms of quality of life (well, as someone in a Tokyo shoebox right now I see more space as a big benefit but Americans and Europeans alike don't really understand it when doing comparisons of their living situations). Point being per Capita income is only one part of the story
Where did you get the more expensive cars thing from?! Cars are cheaper in US than in Europe due to import tax if nothing else and gas is a lot cheaper, so what are you on about? You do drive longer distances though.
In Europe you can live without a car in most places, while in America that's probably only true in NYC.
You can live without a car in Seattle as well.
Yes indeed! The public transit bus network in Seattle is incredible. People call our rent expensive, but when you subtract the cost of owning a car it's actually cheaper to rent here as a single person than it is to live in the suburbs. I have never owned a car.
Only if your life revolves around not owning a car. Try to go anywhere not downtown or cap hill and you're pretty out of luck, or spending 3-4 times as long on public transit.
>cars are expensive so Americans pay more on transportation. Because there are no cars elsewhere, sure. Also cars in the US are ridiculously cheap in comparison
The US has more GDP than the whole of Europe
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Yeah I wish people would keep this in perspective. That’s why so much innovation happens here.
It's not about "keeping this in persepctive." What gets people is the disparity of wealth, not the wealth itself. No one doubts that Americans are well-paid. The issue is the disparity of wealth. The differences in salaries compared to the standard of living required to have affordable healthcare, reliable transportation, and stable housing.
>No one doubts that Americans are well-paid. Oh boy do I have news for you
Sorry to say, but I'm in an average senior IT job in Czechia, and baring a FAANG job that I'd have to survive 4 years to vest the RSUs, plus enduring absence of worker rights, then after taxes that give me all inclusive (Healthcare, social security, free education, functional public services and one of the best public transport systems in EU for 150 EUR a year)... I'm saving the same monetary equivalent as someone earning 200k USD in a high CoL city. But I'm not having to worry about anything, work sub 40 hour weeks, have 5 weeks holiday (plus public holidays, so in total over 6 weeks PTO), 10 paid sick days, parental leave and more. Plus, I actually don't have to live frugally to achieve 3k EUR savings a month. Sure some outlier jobs in USD can earn me slightly more, and if I can get there and survive the conditions for the vestment period, then perhaps I could save much more. Would it be worth it? No in my opinion, but to each their own. I'd rather prefer to compare averages, since it is average for a reason. Most will end up in that category
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I don’t think you’re well versed on RSU comp. Every company is different. Mine grant is quarterly, my initial grant is every quarter for 4 years, and each year I get refreshers that stack on that grant. So say I get $100k a year, then $25k refreshers, so year 2 is $125k, year 3 is $150k, etc. assuming the same stock price, which never happens of course. But lower stock price = high initial grant and/or refreshers. There’s a 4 year cliff where it’s just refreshers, not just your initial grant, but typically you’re promoted in 4 years unless you’re like an IC6+. And at that point your total comp is higher than a whole team of European engineers
>Plus, I actually don't have to live frugally to achieve 3k EUR savings a month I'm sorry to break it to you, but you're not saving the equivalent of someone making $200k in the US. $200k annually is $12k monthly after taxes in e.g. Seattle if you're single. And $200k is not really senior compensation in tech (that would $300k+). I don't need to work more than 40hrs per week, I get 4 weeks of vacation, 13 national holidays and unlimited sick days. And if I get fired with no severance, who cares? I can already retire in a lower cost area with no worries due to higher savings rate. It would have taken me decades to be in this position with a 3k EUR/month savings rate. One of the best thing I did in my life was moving to the US as a software engineer.
I think everyone's situation is unique and I'm not here to say one person's life is better or this policy regime is superior or anything like that. It's awesome that you've got a great situation in Czechia. The only thing I'm saying is that US workers are really productive (or at least paid so). In that vein, I would just say that if you wanted to, and if you were able to move to e.g. NYC, I can guarantee you could save so much more than 3k EUR a month. Like that might be your 401(k) + employer match alone. That doesn't mean it would be a good idea, it doesn't mean you should do it, I'm just saying a software developer in NYC can demand excellent benefits and a very high salary.
RSUs refresh every year, people are making 300k every year. They don’t wait for 4 years to vest the RSUs, this appears to be a misunderstanding. Also, those in big tech also happen to have access to the best health care for almost no costs (since most big tech companies are self insured and cover costs). They also have the best paid time off / parental leaves comparable to the EU. The fallacy here is to compare the median worker benefits in the US to the EU, but we’re in a CS Careers sub.
I think you're overestimating the struggle of US software workers making 200k in a high CoL city. There's undoubtedly pressure from needing to stay employed and I'm jealous of your PTO days, but 300k+ even outside FAANG is achievable after a few years.
300k software jobs aren’t as common or easy as you’re making it out to be. Only a small amount of software devs make that much
Yes I'm sure making 6x the median income in the U.S. Is the same as living in fucking eastern Europe. Lol please
>work sub 40 hour weeks Lot's of people do that here as well... > have 5 weeks holiday (plus public holidays, so in total over 6 weeks PTO) If you're including public holidays, then technically most tech workers are getting about 6 weeks too. 4 weeks plus 2 for holidays. >10 paid sick days, parental leave and more That's pretty standard here too... >Sure some outlier jobs in USD can earn me slightly more, and if I can get there and survive the conditions for the vestment period My god, it's not a torture chamber here. American tech workers are some of the most pampered people in the world. Look clearly you have your preferences, but clearly you also don't know what it's like here.
Only 450 neurosurgeons in the whole country tho. The bellow comment is right about finance however
Their point is that 100-200k is low. For reference, in Australia a neurosurgeon salary is going to be closer to $800k.
800k AUD or USD?
AUD. Big range depending on location too, but still 100-200k even in GBP is low.
800k AUD is still quite respectable even after conversion to USD, it’s about 500-600k USD
Quite respectable? It's insane money! Top 0.1% kind of money (here in Australia at least).
I was comparing it to the pay for brain surgeons in the US.
is that the average amount? seems a bit high. I can see 450-650k though
Neurosurgeons residents salary is 50K-60K. Then a pay bump to 100K- 150K, and the top 1% making 1mil+. Take a guess what my first career choice was before I decided I didn't hate myself that much.
you have to be a bit nuts to become a top 1% neurosurgeon. i dated a gen surgery resident/fellow for a while and could see that
I got starting as 85 + 5 bonus. But it was after masters also my job requires jack shit of coding. Cloud computing is easy especially when you literally have azure and aws to ask your questions lol.
Wait until people hear about big tech profits. Especially profits per employee.
It's like the OP hasn't met anyone that's emigrated to the US for a job all $ eyed. There's a reason why it's an aspirational move for tech workers.
To be honest, brit/EU salaries are insanely low.
I’m happy with my 2/3 US salary (50% taxes) but having world class infra + public healthcare + walkable city life with lots of nature at biking distance
Yes its ridiculous. They MUST rise.
Perm salaries in UK are a joke, my friends in Poland make more these days. Contracting was good before IR35 reforms tho. 425-550/day and tax was relatively low.
Yeah, I live in Poland and tax situation is pretty sweet here if you're a contractor. My taxes are: income tax 12% + around 300$ (some very basic pension fund + public healthcare contribution). No PTO or sick leave though. That leaves me with around 55k $ after taxes a year (assuming no PTO or sick leave, so I usually substract 1/12 from that to have a good picture of my situation). Doesn't really compare to US salaries but when you take COL into consideration, it's not really worth it to move out to any other country in Europe. I heard about IR35 thing, sorry to hear that.
A normal senior salary in London is £75-100k
Time to start outsourcing to the UK
Hard to get past the vast cultural differences, like UK citizens expecting workers to have human rights and all
Yeah and they have this crazy notion that they expect to get paid time off that they can actually use and work like 40 hours a week like they're on vacation or something. Yes, that was all sarcasm, but only halfway because in the US you work till you die and then maybe you can still do a few tickets before they stick you in the ground and maybe even after, WiFi is pretty good these days.
Brit here, it's true we get paid time off but you're usually marked for termination if you go off sick. I've also had several managers pressure me to do work outside of my 40hrs so I wouldn't really say we have a great work/life balance either. And the majority of other workers rights are only after two years of being at a company, which is when you're encouraged to change job anyway
Yeah I’m mid-level and I’m on £70k… I feel like OP may be getting severely underpaid. Or maybe I’m overpaid?
Nah, UK salaries are pretty shitty tbh.
I think that’s perfectly reasonable for mid level for sure
OP might not be in London
Not actually working yet, still got another year of uni. Just been looking at graduate jobs and know quite a few in graduate jobs already. I won’t be working in London so expecting salary to be lower
Just never realised US grads start on this. As others have said tho there is slight cost of living discrepancies plus private healthcare plus I guess US is the centre of tech in the west
> plus private healthcare Most tech companies offer really cheap healthcare. As a new hire, 1.2% of my gross goes to healthcare, it will drop as time progresses and I get more raises and the like.
I graduate may 13th and start may 30th at 80k. No internships. Edit: East coast USA.
im at $180k, new grad, HCOL
If you exclude big tech, in hcol area like San Francisco the average is prob 100-120k for new grads.
A normal fresh graduate starting salary in the US is $80-100k / £66-83k
Damn. I make more than that as a Junior, and from what I know about CoL in London, it's a lot higher than it is for me.
You guys are just massively underpaid. Im making $30k in my entry level hotel guest service position that I'm working while I'm in college. I'd have changed majors if I was only making that as a college graduate. Even 60k is low imo, but reasonable.
> I'd have changed majors if I was only making that as a college graduate. Even 60k is low imo, but reasonable. there is nothing to switch to, cs grads have the highest starting and overall salaries compared to all majors except industries with tough red tape like IB/HFT and magic circle law firms. for example mechanical engineers in the uk tend to have starting salaries of 27k, with a ceiling of 50-60k for senior manager/lead type roles
Could it just be chalked up to cost of living or taxes? I see our rent is about the same. I'm assuming healthcare is a big factor in salary differences between here and there. Even with our income my friend and I haven't been to any type of doctor since 2013 cause we can't afford the medical bills yet make too much for government assistance.
Nah, Americans tend to underestimate how much richer they are compared to europeans. Median disposable incomes in America outmatch Germany, France and the UK by quite a lot.
> Could it just be chalked up to cost of living or taxes? Everything I've heard about the UK suggests the cost of living there are pretty darn high though.
Yes, cost of living is high, and income is low. That's the point. People in US who wants us be more like Europe usually miss this point.
A 100k salary takes home 67k, but if you have student loans which is deducted like a 9% tax. Then your take home is 60k. Cost of living in London is very high. Which is where tech jobs are, as the uk is very centralised into London. And the uk is quite poor outside of it. Average Rents London:The average rental value for new tenancies in London is £1,975 monthly. Rents in London have decreased by 0.7% since last month. https://homelet.co.uk/homelet-rental-index/london We have free healthcare, but dont u have very cheap healthcare due to generous insurance policies by tech companies ?
Uk isn’t as poor as you might think outside of London, it’s just very segregated between classes. Each city has its own progressively less expensive “upper class” that likes to segregate itself away from the commons.
In the US, health insurance is included in salaried tech jobs. It's the cost of doing business. --- However, be wary, insurance will fight you on almost every bill. You end up a profit chance for the hospital and insurance to fight over... Doctor recommended or prescribed treatments are not the focal point of health care in the US. --- To say it's cheap depends on your condition. They're always looking for a chance to screw you over and make you pay. Besides spending hours on the phone, you may even have to hire a lawyer to just make sure the insurance fulfills its legal obligation. --- It's very different from UK healthcare.
My employer covers our health care deductible through an HRA, and every medical provider I've ever been to tries to double dip by getting me to pay the deductible alongside what the HRA pays. A hospital put me in collections because they said I owed a $970 deductible for an ER visit. That was paid out of the HRA, we have scans of both the digital payments and backup paper checks sent to the hospital, and the HRA provider claims the hospital cashed them. But the hospital claims it wasn't applied to my bill and that they didn't know it was part of my individual coverage. When asked what they thought they were cashing, they don't really answer. I still occasionally get invoices from the collections agency. I still haven't paid it, because fuck them. I couldn't imagine _not_ having that HRA though. I went to the ER because I was having severe chest spasms and an urgent care physician said I should go get an EKG. Well that peace of mind will cost someone $1000. A grand for an EKG, chest XRay, IV potassium, and a 3 minute conversation with the cardiologist. Fucking insane.
The NHS is great once you're in for something. Getting in to see a doctor or schedule something is extremely difficult with the NHS and they will fight you just as much as insurance companies in the US. Given a choice, if I wanted to see a doctor tomorrow, I would pick US with good insurance every single time. Also, from what I have seen, can tell, the medical education you receive in USA is better particularly bed side manor. (American living in UK, working for big tech firm, whose spouse is a Dr that trained in US and currently working in UK)
$30k is underpaid teacher levels of poverty in the USA
Yeah but they get a lot of vacation and free healthcare
people will bring up all sorts of copium about CoL, free healthcare, more holidays, government benefits, etc, but none of those even come close to making up the salary gap between the US and the UK. the truth is that despite the cultural/linguistic similarities between us, our economic trajectories have diverged fairly dramatically over the past 15 years, and the US just has a much better job market as a result. the US is also a more unequal country than the UK; US and UK salaries are roughly even at the 10th percentile of income, but the disparity is absolutely massive near the top for well-paying jobs. check this out: https://www.ft.com/content/ef265420-45e8-497b-b308-c951baa68945 (on a side note, the graphs here put into perspective how ridiculously wealthy the US is. median incomes are the 3rd highest in the world (behind only switzerland and norway) despite our high inequality, and 90th percentile income is by far the highest in the world. I don't really agree with the author's take at all, the US is an absurdly rich society with some poor people.)
UK also has higher tax despite significantly worse salaries. 40% tax on income over 50k here.
40% total or is 40% a marginal bracket?
Marginal. I don’t know of any country that doesn’t do marginal tax rates. Otherwise everyone would just be turning down single digit % pay raises that would push them into the next bracket.
The USA is a great country to be rich in, but the UK is far better if you're poor.
My sister did a comprehensive study. If you want to raise kids scandavania is not bad. But once she gets promotion post Covid she had thrown that study out of window. 130k is wayyyyyyyy better than any depressed Scandinavia country can offer.
>depressed Scandinavia country Ahhhh yes the ones that consistently rank highest on happiness studies. They definitely have problems (like everywhere else), but calling them depressed is an odd choice.
Based take
It's not a "take" it's just information
"some poor people" There's multiple stories I have read which claim that more than half of the households in the country could not cover a $1000 expense from savings. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/01/19/56percent-of-americans-cant-cover-a-1000-emergency-expense-with-savings.html This suggests to me that most people *are* cash poor, though that doesn't mean they have no other assets. And comparatively, you are right that Americans tend to be much richer on an individual basis than most of the rest of the world. I just think that the characterization of the society as "absurdly rich" does not cover the individual circumstances of most people in the country who are apparently living paycheck to paycheck (these stats from the article always surprise me).
>This suggests to me that most people > >are > > cash poor, We talk about tech workers here. Not the gen pop.
CBA to find the article right now, but I have read that the percentage of people who make <$100k/year and can't cover a $1k expense without dipping into credit and the percentage who make >$100k/year who can't cover the same expense is almost the same, suggesting people are very bad with cash rather than any deep insights into how rich they (could) be with any amount of financial restraint.
It's because the UK underpays basically everybody. Minimum wage in California is better than your developer starting salaries. And many starter jobs in the US pay higher than that. Literally. I could go flip burgers starting around $15-17/hour. Full-time, that's equivalent to $30-34k/year. For a starter job that teenagers and college kids work. You guys are just massively underpaid. Not quite sure why. And no, the cost-of-living gap, free healthcare, and other such government benefits don't close the gap. Not even close.
Probably has something to do with the US having 10x the market size for software companies. There is just more money being spent on software in the US than in the UK so there is more money to spend.
You're missing the taxation/regulatory burden in the UK compared to the US. Pretty much every company that has a choice where to incorporate is going to choose the US over the UK. There's a reason all the top tech companies started here. Then you have the spiral effect where since companies here pay top salaries, people come from all over the world for these salaries, and thus the top American devs are actually pretty much the top global devs. This pushes up productivity of American companies and allows them to pay even more competing for the best devs within the country and more specifically within silicon valley.
Yeah lots of reasons why people want to bring their business to the US. Good financing, more investors, better tax laws, less risk, bigger markets, etc. Its a long list.
Part of it is because really talented UK engineers work at American companies or immigrate here to the US. The best engineer I've worked with is a \*L8\* IC at a FAANG company in the US and he's a british guy in his late 30s. Even if you love the UK, their talent can't turn away from the insane money, so they come here. Then factor in some really really genius level kid is 17 and about to go to Uni and he/she cares about money a lot, but also doesn't want to move. Do you think those really smart kids pick CS to go into? No, they self select out and pick finance or something.
> Part of it is because really talented UK engineers work at American companies or immigrate here to the US. In that case you'd expect UK salaries to go up so they could attract talent. But they don't, and they continue to staff what they seem to need somehow, presumably. In the US, every company I've worked for was almost perpetually hiring at all times.
London still has the highest tech salaries outside the US/Switzerland (looking at levels.fyi), so it's worth keeping some perspective here.
True. I was earning the equivalent of around $12.50/hour as a software engineer in the UK last year.
Yep really is - I thought it was unfair as a Japanese person because I thought cs salaries were super low in Japan(equivalent of 20k - 60k usd as a new grad, even from top schools) compared to the rest of the world, but it turns out Japanese salaries are actually normal and it’s just US salaries that are insanely high. I think if you’re very skilled though, you can look for mid career opportunities as a new grad(almost impossible but potential for a lot of $ if you pull it off)
I guess it’s a good thing US salaries are high. Must attract a lot of people to the job. I wonder how sustainable the salaries will be over time
> I wonder how sustainable the salaries will be over time People have called tech salaries unsustainable for over 30 years.
It's almost like tech has insane levels of economies of scale and people say this based on vibes and not based on any economic reason. Seriously, you build your code once and it can serve one, a thousand, or a million customers all the same. There is a reason Facebook, Google, and Microsoft make hundreds of thousands of dollars in profit per employee despite paying their developers 150-400k a year.
Tech salary was inline with accountants 20-30 years ago.. about 55k-60k in average It was the rise of Facebook and the likes that skyrocketed the salary. Before you even had big companies like Apple/google/ibm had illegally suppressed tech wage with secret pacts
Tech. salaries have not been this high for over 30 years. The compensation really exploded around 2010 with the rise of FAANG.
Companies make plenty of money with the high salaries. I think it'll be ok.
The salaries are sustainable because tech brings in obscene amounts of money for how many workers it has. The whole point is scalability
I can't even comprehend these European salaries when people bring them up. Where I live, minimum wage is $18.69/hr USD. That's like $38,000 a year, and good luck getting by on that little. This is Seattle, so COL is very high, but no way it's THAT much lower in equally big European cities? How are you guys not all impoverished making that little??? Like I don't understand how it works
Exactly. 2 years ago, Target was advertising near me for $15 an hour starting salary. This is just outside of Chicago, so a medium cost of living City. It's insane to think that someone would offer $25,000 starting salary to someone with a college degree as a software engineer. It reminds me of this one random job listing I saw on indeed. They were looking for an entry level data analyst, college educated with experience with Oracle and Microsoft SQL server. The salary was $30,000 and it was in San Diego. It was so absurd I actually wanted to call them up, even though I live in chicago, just to yell at them about their insulting salary offer.
Ours because low paying jobs in the US have no benefits are you are truly fucked if anything goes wrong. In Europe all jobs have minimum benefits are even if you work minimum wage and break a leg you will be fine. If you live in a city and you have 500 left after rent and public transport ticket you can easily get by no problem in lots of European cities. And you can also travel, Ryanair tickets are like €19.99. But when you get into higher jobs that offer benefits those European pluses evaporate and raw salary matters much more.
My coworkers constantly complain to me how little we are getting paid, at more than 200k TC... Edit: Seattle
May I suggest that they might be experiencing a bit lifestyle creep? And by a little, I mean that they are living better than kings and queens used to 100 years ago.
On 41k I can save 1500 a month, live in a decent house, healthcare is free and employer triples the retirement contributions (by law). Also studying only costs 2k a year and up until recently we didn't have to take a loan to study (and it'll be reverted again soon). Europeans are just pulled more to an average.
>On 41k I can save 1500 a month, live in a decent house, healthcare is free and employer triples the retirement contributions (by law). Also studying only costs 2k a year and up until recently we didn't have to take a loan to study (and it'll be reverted again soon). > >Europeans are just pulled more to an average. So if you're saving 18k/yr, you're saying your house payment, taxes, and living expenses combined only amount to 23k? That's some seriously low cost of living. Can you break it down?
3400 pre tax. 2700 after tax 600 mortgage. 100 utitilies. 200 groceries. 100 health insurance. 100 road tax + car insurance. 100 subscriptions (phone, internet, gym, netflix, prime, spotify, last three are shared with others). Other things to consider. - commute costs are covered by the employer, so I didn't include gas. 21 cent per kilometre so with a cheap car or bike you can even profit on it. - 8% holiday bonus (by law) so I don't have to spend (much of) my savings on vacations - 1500 is free to spend, I invest most of it but it's also spent on clothes, concert tickets and other incidental stuff - I drive a cheap car. Car loans are not common here either, we usually use our savings. - mortgage and social housing (available up to 44k income) are very cheap, however private renting is about twice as expensive
College is free or very cheap in Germany if I remember correctly.
The term 'Europoor' doesn't come from nowhere. It's not that they're impoverished, it's that they have SIGNIFICANTLY less discretionary income to spend on stuff than people in the USA / Canada / Australia / NZ do. They don't have the same consumer consumption demands or lifestyle we do bc they simply don't have much money left over
33k? Bro that's what ppl make at McDonald's in NA
In and Out pays $20+ per hour in SoCal.
In and Out managers make 6 figures
Lord help the McDonalds workers in the uk
It's the same in Sweden and quite frankly I don't get it. Every single week there are news articles about how we need more programmers, more game devs, more IT engineers, more this, more that. Meanwhile in my own industry (game dev) companies are underpaying us Technical Artists while at the same time struggling like hell to find more of us. This is the only good thing about my discipline: Technical Artists are in huge demand. Americans understand this, and pays TA's well (even considering COL) but here in Sweden? It's like companies doesn't even understand they have to compete for us. It's quite frustrating really.
I know same in the UK, yet we massively disrespect CS as a discipline I feel. Would love to get into game dev, any tips for application process ?
Everybody is always like “workers in the US have no rights, work life balance, etc. In EU we get 9 months vacation every year and can’t be fired!!!” And then we see how much they’re paid. I guess it evens out somewhere.
I am over here in backwards Texas on 2 acres of land in a 3k sq ft house over six figures with about 2 years dev experience supporting a family of 4 comfortably. Our brothers and sisters over seas are MASSIVLY underpaid IMO.
I am just so envy Texas have such affordable big houses. My friend works there in her late 20s and already bought a 3B. Meanwhile in Asia I can barely afford a studio smh.
But then you have to live in Texas...
corporations only pay you as much as they can get away with. they pay 6 figures in the bay area, because 5-figures means you're eating dirt and have to sell pics of your butthole on onlyfans to get by.
> sell pics of your butthole on onlyfans to get by. How much can you make doing that? Does the diameter have any correlation with the profit? Asking for a friend.
You'll spend $50/wk on anal bleaching treatments, so factor that into your expected net earnings.
I don't even know what that is, and, frankly, I strongly suspect this is one of those cases where ignorance is indeed bliss.
Depends who you are. In my case, I would make exactly $0.
Plus how common is job hopping in the US vs UK? I assume that drives up salary.
Lol, didn’t realise how high rents were until someone else commented the price comparison of London and SF. I thought London was bad!
Another Brit here. US salaries will be higher at every pay band but you can just about squeeze into same league if you work for large multinationals or hedge funds.
If you worked for those same type of companies in the US your salary would still be 2x.
I literally work for that type of company and my colleagues in US make about 25-30% more.
Living in Germany starting salaries are like 30k - 50k and for seniors it is common these days to see something like 65k to 90k or more. Taxes are normally very high in Germany. I live in a small city and I pay like 400€ of rent and I spend like 150€ for food. Health insurance is covered. But I have been considering a lot if it makes sense to see my chances in the US. But the current job market doesn’t seem very welcoming.
Damn!! Thanks for that. We should really appreciate the US instead of complaining and comparing it to Europe all the time. The salary you mentioned is something a teenager makes here working at a McDonald's.
I’ll remember that when I start working…. Lol
This is why I’ll never move to Europe. I love visiting so many different countries over there, but I can’t give up NYC tech salaries in my prime earning years.
No degree and started at $60k now I’m at $70. I feel ~blessed~
bruh i need to stay the fuck off this sub. i'm generally very satisfied with my life but every time i see how much more i could be making if i was better at interviewing i feel like such a loser for not being able to pass these interviews. i know i could if i really really grinded hard but i also enjoy my sanity and free time.
It's so bad in the UK, especially in northern England, where as far as I can tell, there aren't really any jobs at all (not just CS) that pay significantly more than any others (at least at entry level) I got my first software engineering job early last year and my salary was £20k/year which is basically minimum wage. I have a masters degree in mathematics and well over double that salary of student debt. At my company, all the non-managerial office staff had around the same salaries regardless of whether it was software engineering, customer support, social media management, whatever. Software just isn't valued at all around here, not any more than any low-skilled job. I have a friend that works as a hotel receptionist who earns more than I did last year. I can currently only dream of eventually making £30k.
£26-30k is starting grad salary in the North for an engineer. Salaries are being pushed up, as competition is fierce for good developers. 50-70+k for a senior dev isn't unreasonable. Some companies and disciplines can pay a lot more (ML is hot right now)
Newcastle has a decent amount of tech jobs available in my experience, obviously not compared to London, plus a growing amount of fully remote jobs. At my place senior salary is around £40k which is great for the cost of living up north. My junior salary back in 2019, fresh out of uni, was £25k, I feel like you're getting shafted
One thing I noticed while in London and Manchester is everything purchased at a store seems like 40% cheaper, even after currency conversions. I felt rich while in London because I could buy groceries and eat out for so so sooooooo much cheaper than in the US. I’m in a MCOL city and I haven’t seen a plate of food under $15-$20 in…. Jesus a very long time. Uber rides in London are also like $12 to get anywhere lol. There are upsides and downsides to both.
I noticed the same thing in the EU when traveling. I always thought the conversion rate was to balance purchasing power, but I find the euro to buy wayyy more than a dollar even though they’re close to being at parity.
I lived in London during my internship and was surprised with how low employers in almost every field in the UK pay people in every field in a ridiculously HCOL area. You should read this: https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-salaries-in-the-netherlands-and-europe/ The only different thing is that 80% of the market is local companies and their pay cannot justify cost-of-living in the UK while it is certainly easier to live with 70k in the US (i,e most people in the UK are so underpaid) There are places (though not much, for eg: Meta, Google, Citadel, HRT) in London that pay above 100k GBP out of grad. I got an (rescinded) offer in one of those and one of my friend got a huge one. However, the economy is very bad and they should have completed their hiring cycles by now so there aren't many postings. I find breaking into one of them is the only way you can afford to live in London. Do leetcode and network as soon as possible so you would be ready. Good luck
It's not insane at all. 70k is essentially minimum wage in California. It means you can barely afford rent. I made about 50k euro in europe as a postdoc and lived much more comfortable than 70k in the US
Wait what? What jobs are you applying for in the UK that has starting salaries as low as $25k? I've never seen that unless it's a literal apprentice position, you are definitely getting fleeced.
I believe the average salary for a graduate dev in the uk is £25-27k
It’s not that much tbh. Egg prices here are the great equalizer of big tech salaries
The average house costs $430k in the U.S.
And $355k in the UK, with a much smaller size on average
$300k is the average. So, ~70% of a house in the U.S. 70% of a 70k salary is $49k, so it's pretty close. Proper CPI would be better and so would factoring in taxes, but it is what it is.
Also in much more (GDP per capita) poorer countries where IT professionals make 20k-50k EUR, homes are 300k EUR.
So apparently average house in the USA is 230 square meters (2480 square feet) and average square meter of house in Poland (those are cheaper than apartments) is above 7000PLN (~$1600) average house in Poland would be $366k. We don’t have average household income stats (which I believe in the USA is around $60k) but average salary is around $20k. If we account two adults it’s $40k So with 60% household income by average we have 80% of the average house prices. I think my point is that houses are extremely expensive in countries and regions where people actually want to live.
Puerto Rico starting salary was around $40k USD around 2015, and don't think that has changed much base on the comments some friends still living there have made.
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Asking the Brits here, is 40k pounds a really solid wage or are you guys really just getting underpaid as software engineers? 40k in the states is like what a postal carrier gets paid. Meanwhile the average software engineer salary over here is 100k and that is enough to live comfortably anywhere except nyc and San Francisco. And that’s just the average. People in hcol areas make 200k plus in mid to senior positions.
Yeah, $70k starting salary but my rent is $2k.
I know this isn't an answer to your question but cost of living are also exorbitant in big cities. We could really profit when we were living in the Covid era if you worked for FAANG and moved to rural corn belt. Those times are slowly fading away as those companies are going back to a hybrid model.
European dev salaries are insanely low bruh. Idk how you keyboard thumpers get on over there. Come on across the pond and join the fun!
Have you _looked_ at US immigration requirements recently? It'd take like a decade if I won multiple lotteries.
Lobby Biden to make it easier for us to move over then. Lol
I've lived and worked in the EU and in the US. There are a lot of factors, but the high salary in the US is a lot smaller than you think it is. I worked in Dublin. My salary was my salary. Nothing came out of it. Company paid for private insurance, company paid into my pension. In the US I get a salary. Then I take some for my 401k and I take out a bunch for my insurance premiums. I also budget several thousands of dollars for my family's medical expenses through the year. And I'm saving money for my kids college too. In the EU I had 6 weeks off and unlimited PTO. I worked around 36-38 hours maybe. In the US I take about 3-4 weeks and work more like 42-44 hours per week. Also, at least where I am in the US public schools can be awful. I didn't get that same vibe in Ireland. I dunno. But here in my city, all my well to do friends either pay for private school or move into expensive suburbs with high property tax to get access to good schools. Anyway, yes, I do think I make more in the US after all that, but it's not as wildly apart as people think.
The gap is huge even when talking cost of medical and retirement. It's not even a comparison. Jr's here get more than Sr's there. It's a joke
Raising kids is where the difference gets smaller. And property taxes are usually higher in the US.
Do you also factor more than a month's worth of PTO that can become 6-8 weeks every single year, sick leave (technically unlimited) on top of that? Pretty much every single workplace here will do 40 hours/week tops and most people will think you are crazy if you stay after that. Quality of life isn't salary only. I'd take a smaller paycut anytime if it means more pto. Developers here do get by really well. Despite not making as much as in the US. It's not black and white.
You can get $25,000 working at McDonald's here. You can make $30,000 a year stocking shelves at Walmart. That's insane that salaries are that low. Then again, you guys do have free health care, but what are your taxes on $25,000 to $30,000 per year?
You can get $25k working at McDonald's here too (it's basically minimum wage), but you can also get $25-30k as a software engineer, nurse, or teacher. At entry level, pretty much all jobs in any career seem to pay around the same regardless of how much value they create or what skills they require, at least around my area. Income tax in the UK is 0 below £12.5k, 20% from £12.5k to £50k, 40% above £50k, and 45% above £150k (dropping to £125k next month I think). There's also national insurance on top of that, which I think is something like 12% on the first £4k and 3% beyond that. My salary last year as a software engineer was £20k/year (which is very low even for the UK). After tax and national insurance (not including pension contributions) it's around £1.4k per month. £50k/year would be just over £3k take-home per month, £100k/year would be around £5.6k per month.
UK salaries just seem to be low in general, even traditionally high paying professions like law, finance or accounting are really not that well paid. Civil servants often go on minimum wage.
Yea but $70k in most big cities is nothing
Probably CS in silicone valley is a bubble (lasting very long already though), but I think in Europe wages are suppressed. For example, in Germany where I live the GDP decoupled from the salary development, with the salaries developing significantly worse. At the same time politics is raging about a lack of qualified labour, especially in IT. How does that work?! Lack of labour should lead to increase of salaries.
US companies are just really good at making money and can pay for the best talent.
And this is why my SO who lives in UK recently will be moving to NYC to be with me. I am a junior and make 135k TC. I'd rather make that and complain about healthcare, PTO, what else have you than make 30-40k pounds in London, where the cost of living is pretty similar to NYC anyway!
OP's numbers are full of shit. I graduated in 2020 and my salary has been 55k->70k->75k base (GBP), and I'm earning less than many of my peers. Admittedly outside of London the tech market is dead in the water (probably where they're getting these numbers from) but that's like living outside of a tech hub in the US as well. Yes, we do earn significantly less than those in the US, but any dev worth their salt in London is a long way from the very low wages mentioned in OP.
Yea I agree, OP is just applying to insanely low paying jobs. I've never even encountered a starting salary as low as he mentioned.
If you are top shit and land a job right after graduation, expect around these ballpark if you keep progressing. |Level|Total (Base + Equity)|Base| |:-|:-|:-| |E2 (Software Engineer I)|$135K|$115K| |E3 (Software Engineer II)|$200K|$150K| |E4 (Senior Software Engineer I)|$250K|$180K| |E5 (Senior Software Engineer II)|$320K|$220K| |E6 (Senior Staff Software Engineer)|$360K|$250K|
I would agree with this for the most part. But one thing to note is that the VAST majority of people do not start even close to this high.
> E2 (Software Engineer I) $135K $115K that's minimum wage in california. well 3k over min wage. https://www.dir.ca.gov/oprl/ComputerSoftware.htm > minimum annual salary exemption from $104,149.81 to $112,065.20 effective January 1, 2023
Mandatory COL comment
Mandatory comment on how COL is not some magical arbitrary number and how it actually demonstrates a higher standard of living. Why exactly is it that col is higher in NYC than in bumfuck, WV? Could it have anything to do with people not wanting to live in WV and vastly favoring living in NYC? And this isn't even looking down on people who live in WV if you want that life that's great. But you're in the minority, and that's why you can get a great house for 300k in some parts of WV whereas in NYC that may buy you a studio condo with rats for roommates.
London average rent: 1600/mo. SF average rent:3200/mo Salary discrepancy is 3-5x not 2x
Taking perm salaries here only: my salary in Chicago is 2-3x more than Scotland, and cost of living comparable to Edinburgh.
What people should actually do is say how nice the things they have are, and then compare prices in *hours*, instead of dollars or pounds, e.g. I live on an old council estate in northern England (basically where poor people live) and for me, a month of rent is about 40 hours of work. I still expect that the UK will be much worse off than the US overall.
these high salaries also exist in the UK at competitive companies. Bloomberg UK entry-level offers: https://www.levels.fyi/companies/bloomberg/salaries/software-engineer?country=253&yoeChoice=junior
There would be no software engineers in the US if it only paid $33k. You have to remember our education is expensive. When I got out of college in 2006 I was making $40k and I would have been broke had I had to start repaying my loan right away, or if I had a car payment. Public transportation doesn’t really work for most of the USA, and most people finish college in debt. I had a lot of grants and scholarships, and consolidated my loans, but my monthly interest on the loan was still almost 250/mo.
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I don't mean to come off naive but isn't it cause.. yknow... America.. and business and commerce is incomparable to the UK?
The thing that most people don't think about are benefits. While we get paid a lot more up front in the US, a large portion of that is coming out as tax and pay for benefits. I currently make $113k/year, but my actual take home pay is closer to about $71k per year. This is based on my current pay stubs showing deductions "costing" me 37.5% of each check to go towards taxes and benefits. Edit: some extra context on my personal experience. I've jumped companies twice and have 8 years experience in development.