
Best countries to work and live in as a developer - sebkomianos
http://blog.splinter.me/best-countries-to-work-and-live-in-as-a-developer/
======
jbaiter
I think those values are really skewed... According to their graph, average
monthly net income in Germany is over $4000, I don't know any developer here
who earns that much. I guess a lot of folks entered their income before taxes,
which is more realistic. If you earn $4000 before taxes in Germany, you get to
take home roughly half of that after taxes and the mandatory social security
and health insurance payments.

~~~
egeozcan
Well, in Germany, you are always talking about income before taxes (brutto)
because net income (netto) changes depending on many factors. You probably
already know but, there's even a calculator for that [0]

[0]: [http://www.brutto-netto-rechner.info/](http://www.brutto-netto-
rechner.info/)

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shubb
I can tell you the UK values are screwed up. No one I know earns that kind of
money, and it's not just me (see here [1]).

Reading HackerNews makes me feel like there is a subset of very well paid
developers. I am curious what makes them different from normal ones.

In London, the differentiator may be working in finance. I recall applying for
a job at an investment bank a while ago (which I didn't get because I had
'good technical skills, but no experience of finance' apparently. Rarrr),
which told me it would pay about double my current level. Conversely, I
interviewed at Sony, building the web application behind the PS4, and was
offered at a similar level to my current pay (now in the mid 20ks, started
rather lower). This was for midlevel.

If you are reading this, and are in the 'lucky' group, how did you make that
luck?

I write this because I think there is some network effect here - I am sure
there are high and low paid lawyers, but I have no idea what differentiates
them. Similarly, whithin my subset of software, I know people skills, landing
clients, and raw programming ability are differentiators, but I wouldn't know
what differentiator explains this wage cliff.

[http://imgiseverything.co.uk/articles/junior-web-
developer-s...](http://imgiseverything.co.uk/articles/junior-web-developer-
salary/)

~~~
peteretep
Their numbers, converted in to yearly salary, GBP, and with tax taken in to
account:

    
    
      Senior: $5,500 - £58,000
      Mid: $4,300 - £43,000
      Junior: $3,300 - £32,000
    

These don't sound unreasonable to me. Did you convert wrong, did I convert
wrong, or do you think those numbers are too high, even when converted?

~~~
shubb
I did not convert, sorry. Those actually sound about right.

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andyjohnson0
Where "best" is based only on size of salary.

What about: cost of living, number of startups, number of large employers,
housing costs, quality of life?

Edit: Changed "life quality" to "quality of life".

~~~
yummyfajitas
From the article: _...dividing the average salary by the index of living
costs._

Presumably this includes "housing costs". What does "life quality" even mean?

~~~
unwind
There are ways to try and capture that, often using various surveys.

Here's one:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercer_Quality_of_Living_Survey](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercer_Quality_of_Living_Survey),
but for cities rather than countries.

~~~
arethuza
I love how inconsistent these kinds of surveys are - the only UK city listed
is London. However, a survey of cities _in_ the UK gives Bristol and Edinburgh
as the top two and London in 7th place.

[http://www.scotsman.com/news/scotland/top-
stories/edinburgh-...](http://www.scotsman.com/news/scotland/top-
stories/edinburgh-named-second-best-place-to-live-in-uk-1-3149764)

[I must declare my blatant, but understandable, bias in favour of Edinburgh]

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mikegriff
Gah! Another site that throws up an overlay to get yout email address when
you're trying to read the article. It made me leave straight away without
finishing it.

Why do that? Does it really have that good a return?

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midhir
Seriously surprised Ireland doesn't figure anywhere on this.

Salary inflation here is creating a national gravity well in Dublin/Leinster,
where several multinational tech companies have their EU HQs (Google,
Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Paypal) amongst a nation of just 6m
people. Several of these have got together to run a rest-of-Europe campaign to
fill 3000+ positions in Ireland. (Can't find link now, will ref later).

~~~
Kurtz79
I'm definitely interested, please post if you can.

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thetxef
I guess this survey does not have enough data points for all countries? There
is no way Spain has a bigger avg salary than France for devs.

~~~
josu
Which really intrigues me is the "Differences among salaries for Developers by
level" [0] Why is Spain's data inverted, meaning that the junior developers
make more money than Senior ones.

[0] [http://blog.splinter.me/wp-
content/uploads/2013/11/Developer...](http://blog.splinter.me/wp-
content/uploads/2013/11/Developers-Salaries-by-Level-and-
Country-e1385455410451.png)

~~~
loup-vaillant
France doesn't even have any data for senior devs. I hope for my sake this
doesn't reflect reality…

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egeozcan
Well, interesting data but the author should really give
[http://tabcloseddidntread.com](http://tabcloseddidntread.com) a visit.

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bowlofpetunias
It's corrected for cost of living, but when you look at the source for that
data ([http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-
living/rankings_by_country.jsp](http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-
living/rankings_by_country.jsp)), you may notice that many of the countries
that have a very high cost of living are also the ones known for a very high
_quality_ of living. Some countries give back considerable more in exchange
for those costs.

In places like the UK you should really distinguish between London and the
rest of the UK. Or SV and the rest of the US.

Also, more than half of the countries listed are inside the EU, which for
developers is definitely a single market with few barriers.

------
DominikR
The problem with this chart is that it doesn't consider quality of life.
(safety, environment, education, social system)

Canada for example has good salaries while having a quality of life that is
comparable to western european countries, yet it is nowhere to be found on
this chart.

I am living in Vienna, Austria which tops most quality of life surveys, but I
wouldn't consider moving to Egypt (which is on that list) even if I could earn
there 10x as much.

What's the point in being a millionaire when you have to live in constant fear
of being abducted or killed.

~~~
linux_devil
I agree. I would prefer Switzerland over U.S when it comes to long term
capital gains tax for my stocks and other taxes as well as quality of life.

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guard-of-terra
Why is it solely about money? It does account for purchasing power (fixed) but
what about quality of life? It's a multi-parameter equation.

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inDigiNeous
US of A is the Best!

Seriously though. There is more to life than how much money you make. Quality
of living, nature, clean water, clean air, amount of cars and so on.

I once wanted to work in Silicon Valley, and I have worked there for a while.
But considering the politics of USA, like basically you are being watched
everywhere, I wouldn't want anymore.

~~~
nagrom

       Quality of living, nature, clean water, clean air, amount of cars
    

One of these things is not like the others! It can be argued that for most
people not having any cars at all correlates to a higher quality of life - the
biggest drag to an individual's regular, everyday happiness is often found to
be their commute. Once I moved closer to work and started to walk to the
office, I became a lot more relaxed.

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Uberphallus
That's not accurate at all. I left Spain and arrived to France for a dramatic
salary increase, close to 50% more. Even more impressive taking into account
I've done it from a big city to a small city (in Paris this would be closer to
a 100% increase).

Yet in the graph they are pretty much around the same, with Spain listed
higher.

~~~
Kurtz79
I work in Spain, how much were you getting here (roughly), if you can share ?

In my experience there are huge differences beetween salaries here in the tech
sector, depending on work experience, company, field...

I also have some doubts about the accuracy of the data (according to which,
salaries DECREASE with experience in Spain... not realistic at all).

~~~
Uberphallus
It was around 24 thousand/year.

~~~
Kurtz79
Thanks. As I said I think it varies wildly, but I agree with you that the data
seems inaccurate.

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MetaCosm
Self-selected online survey... _yawn_

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meira
Replying based mainly in the post title, Brazil is probably one of the worst
ranked countries on the list. The average salary is low and everything is
expensive right now.

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3pt14159
Garbage data. Canada isn't even on the list.

~~~
ggambetta
Nor Switzerland. Hard to beat Switzerland in terms of quality of life,
purchasing power, or salaries.

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bruno2
Portugal sucks in every way, not only for developers. Only consider coming
here for vacation, this country is really on its kneels.

~~~
munchor
Plus the number of interesting startups and companies is really small, it's
mostly huge companies looking for code monkeys. That's what annoys me the most
here.

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TeamMCS
I'd love to see this with a wider set of results. Also it would be good to
include freelance/contract staff also.

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ohwp
Note: ~1600 datapoints from around the world.

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qwerta
Article totally ignores remote work. If you leave out local salary the best
criteria would probably be:

* weather

* local people

* how expensive the country is

* connectivity speed

* proximity to good airport

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duiker101
5k average for the uk? no.

