
Ask HN: Anyone making 200k as a software engineer outside the US? - ilcavallo
Best salaries I have seen in Switzerland&#x2F;London are around 140K CHF or £120k as permanent or 650-700 per day as contractor. That is around 155k USD permie and roughly the same considering 10 months employment as contractor. This is a quite rare and top salary in both market but seems a fairly common salary in Bay Area&#x2F;NYC. Never seen anything above that here in Europe.<p>Also the big bonus&#x2F;shares culture is not as prevalent in Europe.<p>Anyone here making more than that or knows anyone that does?
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dusted
Earning around 75000 usd/year as a software dev in Denmark. Very relaxed work,
fun days, flexible time, no education, paid house and car in cash, never
loaned, still got more money into my account each month than I know what to do
with, it just accumulates, live a very comfortable life, never looks at prices
when shopping, never in need of anything. Profoundly confused why one would
focus on obtaining such excessive salary.

~~~
allendoerfer
It gives you the freedom to do what you want. If you had unlimited amounts of
money, would you still work at your current job, or would you do something
else?

~~~
dusted
Earning 200k vs 75k won't give me any measurable increase in freedom to do
what I want. Earning 2M for a while might. Earning 200M once would definitely.

Freedom to do what you want does not increase linearly with income.

For example, one step is "Not affording any car" Now, affording any car allows
way more freedom than not affording any car. A used, but good condition car
can be a major improvement from a less reliable car, but it's not as major an
improvement than car vs no car, but it comes with only a slight increase in
income. A brand new car presents even less relative improvement from a good-
condition used car, but requires a significant increase in income. A brand new
exotic sports car is at the other end of the spectrum from "any car at all",
an order of magnitude higher price for no practical value at all, but some
increase in some kind of personal fulfillment or measure of success.
Diminishing returns indeed. This applies to homes, goods, leisure activities.

So, unless you can get to the point of being "fuck you" rich, salary does not
really matter.

It's not like 200k would grant me significantly more leisure time, probably
quite the opposite, I'd be expected to work more and harder, for what? being
able to buy the luxury car instead of just a normal car? Nah.

~~~
whttheuuu
200K will allow you to work almost 3X less in the long run

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Foobar8568
As contractor you should be easily reach 900 -1000chf a day, especially in
Zürich area. 650-700 a day is more or less what you can get in Paris but in
euro without too much a problem.

Moreover, I have seen eastern Europe nearshore at these rates. I believe that
outside of finance and middle management you'll have a hard time to breach
150kCHF.

Myself, I don't have much skills, basically no degree, French side of
Switzerland in an easy going consultancy firm and earning 120k I think I could
get 130 but not much more than this without freelancing...

As long as I can see myself sitting on the bench 2-3months without being
fired, I don't see a point ot leave.

~~~
scawf
700€ in Paris as a contractor is possible, but it's equivalent to about 400€
as an employee..

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weishigoname
Come to Shenzhen, you will see, salaries like Tencent, alibaba, can offer are
much higher than SV, in the conditions of you should be expertise in some
technical area, and good background, like google, facebook, etc working
experience. what they offer can be at least double companies, like google,
facebook, can offer in the same technical level.

~~~
yughurt
You're also working twice the hours, no thanks. 996? No one is actually
productive when you're working for that long.

~~~
adnanazadsg
This is unfortunately a common phenomenon where people from countries in the
west see negative press about another country and assume its a universal
issue. Often thats not true - companies like Alibaba, Tencent, and many others
are willing to bend over backwards to get the best talent.

There's a lot of other companies that want their employees to work overtime,
but thats probably true in a lot of countries - probably even in the US.

I wish there was some way of balancing the news coming out of countries -
without resorting to censorship. It would remove a lot of prejudice,

~~~
rak00n
Jack Ma of Alibaba endorsed 996 -
[https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/04/15/busi...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/04/15/business/jack-
ma-996-china/index.html).

~~~
adnanazadsg
"If we find things we like, 996 is not a problem," Ma said in a blog post
Sunday on Chinese social media site Weibo. "If you don't like [your work],
every minute is torture," he added.

I agree with this sentiment, I happen to work 996 on my own stuff mainly
because I love it. I know a lot of people who have jobs and pour themselves
into it because they love what they do as well.

I'd say its only an issue once you are being punished for not working 996.

~~~
rak00n
You missed the other part.

"I personally think that 996 is a huge blessing," he said. "How do you achieve
the success you want without paying extra effort and time?"

~~~
adnanazadsg
I'm not necessarily disagreeing with the point you're trying to make regarding
how Jack Ma might be part of the problem.

But its not really a "China" problem. There's a lot of startups and mature
companies in the US that have similarly aggressive personalities at the helm
who demand a lot from their employees.

My main point was the notion that people are assuming that its universal in
China, when its not always true (whether its more prevalent than in the US or
not - i dont know).

The only reason I'm even making this point was because how grandparent to my
comment made a simple comment about how companies in Shenzen pay a lot, and
the response to that was a blanket "but 996" when that might not be true.

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shakkhar
Why does it matter though? The absolute number without taking cost-of-living
into account doesn't really mean anything.

~~~
betaby
Once you include "luxury" consumption countries with "low" COL stop being low
COL. For example cars, iphones, laptops are way more expensive in Eastern
Europe than US.

~~~
bkovacev
In Eastern Europe a 2018 car that costs around 30k euroes which is a
Passat/Superb goes for about 400$ a month. If you're only pulling in 100k,
that won't hit you hard at all.

1-1,5k for high end apartment's rent (which is waaaay too much anyway), 400
for the car and 1k for other necessities.

If taxes were 33%, you'd be left with 66k.

66k - 12x(1.5k+400+1k+100) = 30k. That's still a lot more money left than if
the person was in NYC without a lease/finance and with rent that's twice as
much.

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s3nnyy
In Zurich you can make 800 CHF - 1000 CHF per day as a contractor.

Senior full time employees usually earn 120-130k CHF. Taxes are lower than
anywhere in the US on top of this.

Ping me at iwan@gulenko.ch if you want to work in Switzerland and hold a EU-28
citizenship. (Otherwise work visa is impossible.) I run a local recruitment
consultancy.

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dilyevsky
Google Zurich was handing out higher offers than head office until at least a
few years ago and maybe still does.

~~~
tdhoot
Only if you don't count stock.

~~~
dilyevsky
hm i thought they had stock too. Either way it should be well in excess of
100k even for jr roles and 200k for experienced and also with one of the
lowest tax in the developed world.

~~~
tdhoot
They have stock, but you typically get more in MTV.

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bartimus
It seems many European companies are still stuck in the traditional line-
management model where development is considered the executionary role of
ideas thought up by people with no engineering background.

This is further strengthened by our educational system which promises "sexy
jobs" in the tech sector that don't require a technical background.

We also don't have places like hacker news which has a friendly healthy
unionizing effect.

I believe this is the primary cause we're not seeing such high salaries in
Europe. I think it's also the reason we're not seeing as much innovation
happening in Europe.

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salarythrow250
I have colleagues that work in the UK office of my US headquartered employer
that are making £200k+ ($260k+) having worked there for ~10 years.

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yughurt
My Dad makes more than that in Australia. He is a software scientist though,
he makes prototype physics simulation software. I think he's underpaid when
considering the amount of value he creates (in 5 months made a better version
of one simulation technology than a team of about a dozen working in it for
3-4 yesterday) but then again my dad doesn't care much for money. He likes
working on interesting problems.

~~~
NamTaf
It's worth noting that AUD$1 = USD$0.71, and that the cost of living here is
substantially higher than most of the US (though the Valley is probably much
more even-run). Having said that, AUD$200k is certainly not unheard of as you
get on in experience.

I agree that if you were a specialist consultant and found an exploitable
niche, you could pull USD$200k equivalent here.

~~~
austhrwy
I make 165kAUD+ super, typical web dev full stack role. This is high for
Sydney but some companies here are smart enough to throw an extra 30k into the
offer to make sure they build a good team. To get to this from 100k a few
years ago I just realised you increase your standard and wait longer to get a
job.

OTOH this salary doesn’t go far in terms of lifestyle in Sydney. It is
expensive, it’s probably enough to live off but I’m not sticking half my
salary into the stock market like you American developer like to do.

200k US in Sydney means either get great at kernel level code or multithreaded
c++ and help the poker players make more money from the stock market. Or
forget technical and become a senior scrum master or project manager for CBA.
I think rural doctors and phsyciatrists rake it in, and geologists during the
next mining boom. Install air conditioning is another way or any kind of trade
where the labour component can be marked up extortionately and where some “tax
planning” can be utilised.

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And1
In Montreal, we have a large contracting scene for banking and near-shore
consulting in general. For a contractor with ~10 years of experience, it's
pretty common to see 175k as a contract worker, with contracts renewed yearly
(if you decide not to move somewhere else).

In the last 5 years SV companies have started to open offices in Montreal
(google has been here for a while, fb came semi recently), and that sweet
sweet USD + venture funding gives them a real edge in what they can pay
people. FTEs with a US base can make 150k+ which is quite a jump above Canada
based firms. From what I've seen those tend to be around 100k for someone with
~10 years experience, and anything higher is considered quite good.

~~~
swat535
This hasn't really been my experience dealing with SV companies in Montreal..
They adjust the salary based on COL so your chances of making a USD equivalent
is fairly low

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Annatar
Yes. Have to be a contractor with 20 - 30 years of serious experience under
your belt and well, very well connected. And with _very rare exceptions_ (like
being the next Bryan Cantrill) you have to be Swiss else you better be
speaking the language near native level and be integrated into the society to
pull that kind of dough in. Then, you can get a daily rate of 1120 to 1450
CHF. But we're talking being a super nice and competent person that everyone
who's ever worked with you before would gladly do so again. That's the only
way to get your foot in the door.

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666lumberjack
You can do >200k USD TC at a FAAMG in London as a senior if you have multiple
offers and negotiate. It's fairly rare, and you'll still be earning below what
you'd get in the US, but it does happen.

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zius
I make 100K$/year with bonus and holiday allowance in Amsterdam as an medior
engineer at a medium-sized company. I pay roughly 50% tax. Expats here pay 30%
tax for the first 5 years, so their take-home pay is significantly higher. A
senior engineer at the same company earns roughly 130-160k.

Senior engineers here that work remotely for US companies can earn upward of
250k USD, but I know very few that do - and you need to enjoy remote work.
Other option would be working at a bank or insurance company.

~~~
shifto
Are you willing to share the company? I worked in AMS for a few years at
various software companies but almost never saw these kind of pays.

~~~
scawf
I guess it's [https://www.perseuss.com/](https://www.perseuss.com/) ?
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19302435](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19302435)

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wimgz
US is very different than Europe, because you pay from your own pocket for a
lot of things (eg healthcare) that are state sponsored elsewhere. Also factor
rent in NYC/SV

~~~
s_y_n_t_a_x
Employers in the US provide healthcare if you work full-time. You may pay a
premium, but it's probably similar to the taxes you paying EU, if not lower.

~~~
lm28469
Lower for who ?

[https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-
collection/health-...](https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-
collection/health-spending-u-s-compare-countries/#item-relative-size-wealth-u-
s-spends-disproportionate-amount-health)

~~~
s_y_n_t_a_x
That's what countries spend in total, I was talking about in context of
individuals with good jobs (employer provided healthcare)

Btw a large reason why the US spends more on healthcare than other countries
is research & development.

~~~
lm28469
Don't you lose your job sponsored health care after being laid off ? Or is it
expected that companies keeps you employed when you get a cancer / other high
impact health issues ?

~~~
s_y_n_t_a_x
You'll most likely fall under COBRA protection
([https://www.healthcare.gov/unemployed/cobra-
coverage/](https://www.healthcare.gov/unemployed/cobra-coverage/))

where you can keep your employer coverage for 18 months while you find a new
job.

------
walrus01
It's not absolutely impossible in Toronto, but that's at the very top end of
the scale.

~~~
betaby
At that point Toronto makes no sense - it's pointlessly expensive for the
salaries offered there.

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mrath
It is not very common, but many of my friends are close to 200K AUD(not USD)
some are above 200K in Sydney. This is not in well known tech companies, but
mostly in finance. If you are contracting, 200K or more is very common in
Sydney, Australia.

~~~
tiew9Vii
Any details on where to find these jobs?

I’m pulling in 150k (AUD) +super, 10+ years in Java, web, streaming data,
functional programming, Scala some Haskell, cloud, devops etc.

Looking at the common job listings I’m seeing 120-140k for full-time perm. I
work for a niche specialised consultancy that bills me out at $1500-2000 per
day doing Kafka work for some tier one companies but I’ve not seen any
publicly advertised jobs in that salary range advertised. Saying that some of
the tier ones in Australia I’d also not want to work for as a perm after
spending a few months at them, some are very archaic/disfunctional, so far
it’s been 50/50 on good vs bad contracts.

~~~
austhrwy
I think they are few and far between. I find that agents don’t want to help
you get them because it’s hard work. Why bother when they can place a dozen
100k c# devs for little effort.

I’m on 165+ super and I applied directly. If i wasn’t desperate to leave a
shite job I’d probably got more.

I think the trick is to find the people who are making good money and aren’t
tight. I’ve worked for company’s flush with cash but want to pay market rates.
This is stupid in my opinion and is the “European” culture but I think slowly
some realise there is effectively a pool auction on good developer and are
willing to bid higher. Had an email about SIG 160k plus bonuses and I imagine
they’d go higher. I would work for that kind of company though.

I think the trick is to filter out companies that don’t want to pay what you
want, and wait longer. There is no correlation between pay and how stressful
or enjoyable the job is so hold out for the bucks, but of course also filter
for lifestyle considerations and career progression.

If you are in Sydney looking for a job do us all a favour and add 50k to the
highest you’ve seen and make that your baseline. Don’t tell them what you
earn.

To compensate for the higher rejection rate, increase your application rate.

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turingbook
Top level software engineers(5%-10%) in top level China Internet companies
(BAT and TMD).

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indemnity
In New Zealand, it’s possible only if you are a contractor, permanent IC roles
generally don’t pay that well.

I’m at the upper end of IC pay scale and I’m on 200-220k NZD, depending on how
bonus shakes out.

This is roughly 130-140k USD.

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airbreather
Contract/consulting engineer (as in in real engineering of kind like
electrical, control systems, rotating equipment etc) easily makes a lot more
than that in Perth Australia, but you also pay a bucketload of tax and have
very high costs for the location.

Also contractors are paid by the hour, so rarely sick (usually an amputation
is required to not attend), always do overtime and hardly ever take holidays
unless forced...

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ptidhomme
May I ask how many years of experience are related to these kind of salaries ?
(If there's a relashionship anyway).

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distantaidenn
Not engineering, but I know some product managers in Japan (working for US
tech companies) pulling that kind of salary.

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q-base
Yes. Working as a freelancer/contractor. A big part of it due to sought-after
skills in a market that values native speakers. A small part of it probably to
do with my experience and the way I conduct my work and finally a pinch of
always trying to raise my prices.

------
pjmlp
Those salaries, specially the Swiss ones, aren't that big after taxes,
insurances, and the overall cost of living.

Yes, you might get 140K CHF, but be ready to pay 20 CHF for a meal that would
be around 8 euro in neighbouring countries.

~~~
RAIN92
Let's also say 5 euros in neighbouring countries.

~~~
chefkoch
Where in Austria, Germany, italy or france do you get a meal vor 5€?

~~~
qualsiasi
In Italy it might be possible, food is quite cheap here. Usually the "lunch
voucher" we get as employees is 5,16 EUR

------
anotheryou
Someone just told me german employment is worth about double of what
contracting would be.

My employer pays part of health insurance, retirement funds, unemployment
insurance and you don't pay VAT.

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badpun
800 EUR/pd is not unheard of in continental Europe, and, assuming you're
working 225 days a year (i.e. probably less than typical US coder), this puts
you at $200k USD.

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highhedgehog
Time to get the hell out of here (Italy): making 35k/year and it's considered
a decent pay.

~~~
mirkodrummer
25/35 is the base for junior positions or you are in a company that still
underpay his employees, I do around 75K in Italy and I live like a New Yorker
would do with 200K. Cost of living + quality of life in Italy is unbeatable if
you have a good pay(at least more on average with other EU countries).

~~~
RAIN92
I agree on the last sentence.. but how do you get to 75K in Italy? can you
share your experience?

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lucozade
In London, a gross annual comp of >$200k for a software engineer is not
especially rare.

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xenospn
I heard Amazon is offering comparable salaries in Israel now.

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superflit
I would love to and I will put that as my goal.

Realistic goal for 1-3 years.

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solarengineer
Some folks do in Singapore

~~~
Donald
Are Singaporeans making that these days? In my past experience, those in that
range are generally Americans working for an Asia Pacific site office.

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vmurthy
Considering PPP, 200k USD is equivalent to about 5 million INR. Software
engineers in India with 10+ years of experience and working in companies like
Amazon , Microsoft etc make that amount quite easily. Of course, the quality
of living is a different issue altogether :-)

~~~
prnth
Technically, 200K USD is 1,39,73,500 INR. Almost 14 million.

I think that figure sounds a bit optimistic. Being an entry level developer at
a US-based Fortune-500 corporate with offices in India, I make around 17k USD,
while I heard a similar role in the US office gets paid around 85k USD.

