
Ask HN: Those in Europe making €100K+ annually, what is your job like? - aalhour
For those who make €100K+ annually in Europe, where are you based? Where do you work? What is your position? And what is your job like?
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jasonkester
€100K is not really setting the bar all that high. It's a shame to see so many
replies here that consider it to be impossible.

Personally, since living in Europe, I've done it two ways. I worked remotely
for an American company for several years, at my butt-in-seat Bay Area rate.
And I've bootstrapped my own SaaS product business (letting it grow in the
background while working for that US company).

Another option would be to find a software company here and actually negotiate
a market rate for one's self.

It's really expensive to live here, compared to the 'states. I don't see how
anybody does it on the $35k/year salaries we see reported for software guys.

~~~
superplussed
"Welp, €100K is not setting the bar that high folks. I can prove that by
demonstrating two different examples where I didn't pull a salary of €100K
from a European company."

~~~
jasonkester
This is an attitude that I see a lot when developers talk about salary, and it
is baffling. It's as though you are so determined to win your point that you
would prefer to spend an entire lifetime making a less than market rate out of
spite, rather than accept that the market pays as well as it does.

It only takes one example to prove that something is possible. What you do
once you know something is possible is up to you.

~~~
vanderreeah
I like your blog posts and you're certainly an inspiring example, but really
it's odd that you can't see that, given the large number of people _not_ in
your position (as evidenced by the replies here and elsewhere in similar
threads on HN), logic dictates that "one example" only proves that you are
either lucky, talented, clever, or whatever (I'm not trying to analyse the
reasons for your success or detract from it). But it's got nothing to do with
a determination to win a point: it's just statistics, and they show that your
personal experience, while interesting, has zero bearing on or significance
for the experience of most people.

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b__d
It doesn't make any sense to compare salaries solely by numbers and without
comparing the buying power related to the salary in the given country.
Escpascially (!) not in the EU, since it's so diverse. This is most basic
economic understanding. It just does not work out, no matter what you take in
account to "justify" the the higher or the lower salary.

I live in Austria (big corp) and make 1x € a year.

My brother lives in Swizerland (big corp too) and he makes 3x € a year. It's a
usualy saying here, that you make around 3 times the money in Switzerland
compared to Austria, independently of what you work.

BUT:

In proportion to buying power and minus cost of living he has just about 1,5x
€ more money to blow (or to safe). Not 3x

AND,

he also says quality of life is 10x better in Austria: Do you live to work or
work to live?

Spoiler: He's moving back to Austria in 1-2 years.

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Boothroid
I was on this a few years back. Contracting in oil and gas but far fewer well
paid gigs in that sector these days I believe. Job was demanding - pressure to
keep services running, massively complex environment, everything constantly
changing, tricky problems ranging across technical, organisational, political.
I didn't last long but even so still managed to pay off a decent chunk of the
mortgage! Permie for the moment but always keeping my eye open for that next
juicy contract, and building up my skills in the meantime in preparation.

I discovered after being there a few months that I was on one of the lower
contractor rates!

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kisstheblade
Where I live (a nordic country) the median for architect level positions is
about 4000-5000e/month (we don't talk about yearly salaries here). After taxes
you get about 3000-3500e per month.

All tax information is public here and the magazines publish yearly lists of
people earning over 100000eur (salary+possible capital gains). The lists
usually never contain anybody doing "low level" work (ie. not CEO level etc.).
And actually very few people earn that in salary alone.

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neoham
Senior/Lead UX designer at a big corp in London: making ~£115k/yr (~€130 at
mythical exchange rates), salaried, before tax.

Actually took a pay cut, used to be a contractor with a day rate ranging from
£600-750 which had me averaging approx £150k/yr and paying much less tax.
Considering going back to that soon, although a bit worried about Brexit
uncertainty, but right now I'm seeing plenty of contractor roles offering that
much, a few up to £1k/day.

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throwaway_ldn42
In London:

    
    
      - Management or technology consultants with maybe 6-7 years+ experience (particularly the more well known firms)
      - Many roles in accounting and law firms, approx. similar experience as above
      - B2B sales (if they're any good) particularly in finance or enterprise tech
      - Almost anyone working in a hedge fund
      - Front Office IB roles (quant, trading, business management, sales, et al.) after perhaps 3-5 years
      - Other IB/banking roles at mid management and above levels (varies by bank)
      - Most any decent technical or business contractor
      - Technical architects and dev team leads for large projects
      - Some recruiters / "headhunters"
    

Source: I have been a consultant and contractor, and worked with/hired for the
majority of these roles at £>100k

Some of these roles are hard, in cut-throat industries and involve long hours.
Plenty are not; get yourself in a middle/back office mid management role in an
IB and if you're reasonably intelligent you can take home 100k (and the rest)
whilst working from home 1-2 days a week and rarely staying in the office
after 5:30. I'm not saying you'll find it satisfying, but it isn't difficult.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Any IBs or hedge funds you'd recommend?

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kken
The salary scale for jobs paid according to tariff in the electronic (IG
Metall) or chemical industry in Germany ends at around 100k€. This can be
reached if you stay at the same company for a reasonably long time and don't
fuck up. This is far from entry level salary though and most people only reach
this in their 30ier or 40ies.

Senior technical expert and management positions are usually paid above
tariff, starting at around 100k€.

There are plenty of positions in the big tech companies and software that are
paid above 100k€. It's just very unlikely to get there if you are straight
from school. Also, you won't have much luck finding >100k€ positions in the
eastern part of Germany.

------
scottmcdot
I have worked in Vienna 2014/2015 (meteorological company) and Melbourne (big
4 bank) present. Vienna annual salary was 34k Euro. Melbourne annual salary is
67k Euro. Europe pay sucks.

~~~
Xoros
Well I don't know for those two countries, but I'm happy with my 'only' 50k
with "free" healthcare, schools, etc... Not going younger so I reaaaally care
about free healthcare

~~~
ojm
Free health care in Melbourne too!

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temsaheain
Define 100k+...

Is it what you get on your account in one year ? Is it what you keeps after
paying your taxes and your insurances ? Or is it the global value your
employer is paying for you ?

I assume you ask for the first one, yet the more representative one is
probably the latter.

~~~
aalhour
That's correct, I was asking about the former. I didn't understand the
difference between the former and the latter though.

~~~
temsaheain
Well, it's pretty simple, I can talk for France : you have a ~2x factor
between the former and the latter, because there is a ton of taxes and costs
in-between.

And should you compare with the US, you should also take into account health
insurance, which is handled roughly 80% by the state, so it's part of your
taxes, and 20% by insurance ( and is mandatory, part of what your employer
pays for your salary ).

So depending on the case you may compare oranges with bananas and apples,
because depending on your country what you have into your account as an
employee over one year is way different from the value you obtain from it. And
I don't even speak of cost of life itself ( the value you output from your
salary in France is way different in Paris, where you generally get 15% more
in salary compared to the rest of the France, but renting a flat is twice as
costly as pretty much anywhere else in the country, so in the end you get less
value out of those 15% more... ).

In the latter case, I'm part of this 100k+ club, with a margin, as a JS
contractor. In the former case, well, I'm not :)

You may be interested in [http://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-
living/](http://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/) and
[https://nomadlist.com](https://nomadlist.com) to compare things in a better
manner over Europe

~~~
aalhour
Well, that's good. Can you share more about your skill-set and experience? I
think a lot of JS Devs in Europe can benefit from it.

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simon83
There is no one in Europe making €100K+ annually.

Just kidding... at least I don't know anyone personally. But maybe the Head of
R&D of the company I work for could be close to that mark, at least he's
driving a Porsche.

Yeah.. not useful I know, sorry.

~~~
santaclaus
> There is no one in Europe making €100K+ annually.

Are we talking Eurozone or Europe? I know programmers in Zurich making >= 130K
Francs a year (which comes in at over €100K).

~~~
vostok
Or >= 300k CHF, but it's 1am in Zurich. Or similarly large amounts in GBP if
you don't limit yourself to the continent.

I know at least one American unicorn will pay far more than €100k in cash to
new graduates in London.

~~~
Lunar_Lamp
Even though I'm not a new graduate, I work in London so interested to know
which unicorn this is.

I've not seen new graduates hit these sorts of numbers when I've been looking
at the market. I'm sure there must be some, however I'd have assumed it was
very rare. Still it's always useful to know what sort of competition might be
out there when hiring, so genuinely interested in the details!

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helen842000
€100k is around £88k and I know of plenty of people in roles in the UK that
pay this much, both in and out of the tech industry. The examples that spring
to mind are not even in London but the Midlands and the North. Every hospital,
University, Engineering Company and bank has many of these positions.

* Mid-level management in banking

* Leadership and CEO roles in colleges

* Financial Controllers and Directors

* Pharmaceutical Sales Managers

* Surgical Consultants

* Cyber Security Consultants

* Senior Pen Testers

I would be interested to see comparable salaries for these types of roles
across the rest of Europe.

------
dabeeeenster
Good contract developers (freelancers) in London earn around £450/£500 a day
which is clear of 100k euro by quite a margin. Job depends on the client. Job
could last 3 months, could last 3 years.

Unusual for a salaried permanent developer to earn that amount in London
unless they were head of or near the top of a good dev team in a good firm.

This is all excluding finance jobs. Finance jobs its pretty easy to get to
that salary in London.

~~~
Boothroid
Don't contracts get a bit iffy beyond 2 years? i.e. HMRC sniffing around
querying your expenses and IR35? Or perhaps that's just contractor forum
paranoia.

~~~
neoham
They do, yes. Many public sector companies (inc HMRC) are now forcing
contractors to be paid by PAYE even.

Generally though, you're safe as long as you work at the same company for less
than 24 months. Then you need to find a new contract or relocate (working at a
different physical office or taking on multiple clients can get around IR35
(if you fall within IR35 you're considered to be a disguised employee, not an
independent contractor, and must pay higher income tax).

~~~
Boothroid
It's funny really, we are supposed to have a Conservative government but you
wouldn't know it what with crackdown on buy to let and contracting. Not that
I'm looking to start an argument.

------
jonnathanson
I know more than a few quants at banks in the City of London making well north
of 100k. Finance is where the payscales jump well above the average.

------
johannkaupen
You asked when Europe was mostly at sleep. At least most of the ones doing
that much.

In Berlin this is a quite high salary. However, I do know a few people who are
doing 100+

It's mostly CEO, COO, CTOs at startups after their B rounds. It's also good
B2B Sales people. But I also know developers who make this much.

Side note: This is huge in Berlin and as some mentioned before you already
covered health care etc.

~~~
aalhour
Can you please elaborate more on the type of work these developers you are
referring to are doing?

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barrkel
Assuming software development: it's not easy to make 6 figures outside of
finance / fintech, in London or Switzerland, unless you contract / consult.
You could get there working for an SV firm, more likely if based in London /
Switzerland and competing for the same pool of talent.

~~~
aalhour
What is the entry level salary for a software developer in Fintech?

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robotresearcher
For those reaching conclusions from the lack of replies: most Europeans are
asleep at the time of posting.

~~~
tomtompl
we're busy paying for welfare state

~~~
IntelMiner
What a reasoned and discussion provoking comment

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ltgruber
100K/year after or before income taxes ? I'm almost there, but BEFORE taxes.
Data-mining & applied math researcher, working remotely from France for a
US/Chinese biotech company. Job is nice, paperwork is ok, it's mostly
automated.

~~~
aalhour
I have seen this pattern a lot, a Europe-based engineer working remotely for
US-based company. How much would you be making for say a competitor of the
same size in Europe? Let's assume identical work.

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ig1
In London €100K is roughly the ballpark I'd expect a salaried senior engineer
or data scientist to earn or more generally any VP level role at a mid-tier
startup.

If you're contracting a mid-level engineer can normally command ~500/day.

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tomtompl
Do contractors count?

£400-£500 gross per day is not that big of "achievement" here in London.

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_hrowaway8479
I agree with throwaway_ldn.

I work in the front office of an investment bank (strat) and earn 120k after 5
years base (pre bonus).

Admittedly it's the higher end of the scale vs. years experience but it's not
uncommon.

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dijit
MD at my last company earned 99,995 (although gbp), so I doubt many people who
read HN in a salaried career are earning more than 100k EUR.

Generally, Europeans don't have such high salaries.

~~~
dbbk
Bit of an odd number, how come he didn't just go for 100,000?

~~~
dijit
Likely because he could claim that he "also has a 5 figure salary"

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fvdessen
Belgium, self-employed. Full-stack engineer. Doing consulting work for various
companies & other personal projects. Job's pretty good, paperwork is hell.

~~~
NicoJuicy
Belgium also, "bijberoep" though. What dev languages are you using?

~~~
fvdessen
Python & JS :)

~~~
NicoJuicy
OpenERP/odoo? :P

~~~
fvdessen
Used to !

~~~
NicoJuicy
What now? Next Erp?

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Tade0
I guess it's not much of a thing in Europe, because here instances of places
where real estate prices are as insane as in SV are pretty rare.

~~~
tormeh
You have the causality wrong. House prices are high because wages are high,
not the other way around.

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FatalBaboon
Any freelance technical expert That is not bullshitting.

Paris/Mostly Paris/Various positions doing mostly linux stuff/Usually relaxed.

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k__
I don't, but I probably could by doing x1,5 or x2 freelance work I do right
now.

But I don't think it's worth my free time.

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sawmurai
Switzerland, php developer, chill job. I know google pays even more.

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nawre
My brother is a cardiologist, making +300K euros/y in France.

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miguelrochefort
_crickets chirp_

