
Ask HN: Reality for the Average Developer Outside Silicon Valley/Big US Markets? - frfl
Hi HN,<p>Big US markets, especially Silicon Valley, get a lot of attention. I would imagine it distorts the view of what it&#x27;s really like outside these big markets. So what&#x27;s the situation like for the average developer outside the big US markets in terms of ease of getting a job (or switching jobs), perks, salary, quality of work?<p>I ask as an average grad entering the industry in a non-top-tier, non-US city.
======
raquo
> non-top-tier, non-US city

Up your relevant demonstrable skills enough to work remotely for a company in
a big US city.

Alternatively, immigrate either to US or to a country from where it's easier
to work for US (hello Canada).

Maybe move to a bigger city in your country and work for its Google or
Microsoft office if there is one and if it pays well.

An average nondescript town is not a good place to be a software developer.
Low wages, uninteresting, unchallenging work (hello agency work, drupal
websites, 15 year old enterprise java codebases), working in an IT dept that
is a cost center rather than revenue driver, etc. We can't possibly know what
exactly it's like where you are (better ask on a local forum) but that's what
it's like more often than not. It might certainly be better than other careers
locally, but it's worse than you can have if you're willing to make the
effort.

~~~
frfl
I am in Canada, but is there still not an issue with taxes and other things
that makes a lot of companies not consider Canadian remote workers? Dont you
have to work out a consultant/contract type deal with US remote companies?
What companies do you know that do hire remote workers from Canada, let alone
remote junior developers :P

~~~
raquo
Junior remote is hard, which is why I'm saying get the skills first. This is
not just a one year journey, you should be planning your path for the next
5-10 years. Optimize for skills and learning first, then go for maximizing
income (as much as you can afford this delay). Always keep interestingness and
quality of life up high in priorities.

Get a local internship / job first either in your town or in a bigger town
like Vancouver / Montreal / Toronto. Learn the trade, best practices, best
technologies, get an open source presence, etc. All of this will require a
genuine interest in the field and hard work on your own time. You will of
course also progress your skills on the job, but relying solely on that you
will grow much slower, and will be strictly capped by the quality of your
workplace dev culture. You can start your growth before even getting a job
btw.

In Canada, lots of companies hire juniors, both big and small. Look at your
peers and know how to stand out. Did you build a simple app, put it on github
and host in somewhere? Congrats, you have demonstrated more skills than 90% of
your peers, and you haven't even interviewed yet. Google your way into finding
these companies – see angel.co, many lists of companies hiring remotely, local
job fairs, etc.

As for cross border contracting – yes, working for US you will most likely be
a contractor unless the company is big enough to have a Canadian office.
Better that they don't, then they will be less likely to offer you a Canadian
salary. Being a long term contractor is not really a problem as long as you
have the skills you advertised. Taxes are easy for contractors. There are
legal things you need to know, and you will know after you do proper research
on this, but there are no showstoppers there. If you want to take the most
from this career, you don't let some paperwork or the illusion of job security
get in the way. You work hard to become the best developer you can be, and
allow the highest bidder that you're interested in working for pay you for
your work.

\---

This might sound very... effortless and maybe pompous and out of reach but
it's entirely doable. Knowing who you want to be, being interested in your
work, and spending a lot of effort on becoming a better developer year after
year is really all it takes. It's a long path but thousands of people have
walked it.

~~~
frfl
Thanks for the detailed write up, raquo. I truly appreciate it.

------
a-saleh
I Work in Czech republic.

So far switching jobs was not a problem. Nor getting a job.

Around 7 years as a developer on some form or other. Currently 2500$/Month
with a 4 day work-week. Interesting work. Up to additional 500-1000$ a month
for my on-call duties. No additional variable compensation. Some possibility
to get pre-IPO share of the startup. No sick-days. 20 day vacation. Vacation
is auto-approved :)

Previously similar compensation for a 5 day work-week as a QA/Internal tooling
dev at US corp with local presence. Accumulated ~20K$ stock over, but only
half of it vested as I was leaving :P 5 days of no-questions-asked sick-days.
25 days of vacation. 15% of additional variable compensation.

Around 30% tax/social-security (there are additional employee taxes on top of
my salary, but custom is to pretend that this is the employers problem :) Some
opt for self-employment scheme (you can half your tax if you have good
accountant), that can be sometimes in a grey legal area, if you are billed by
a single large corporation.

Started at 800$ with 4 hours a day 7 years ago.

Currently around 500$/month recurring life expenses (I own my flat, so mostly
utilities, insurance, phone bills, e.t.c., if I rented, it might be additional
300$ for 2 bedroom flat?), around 10$ price of dinner at a pub. And feeding a
family of three is more expensive than I'd like :)

~~~
frfl
Thanks for sharing your experience. Are 4 days work weeks common in Europe? I
worked on a team that had a UK office where some of the people were on a 4-day
agreement (although the agreement was in place before the UK office was bought
by my employer). Seems like it's very uncommon to find someone working 4-day
weeks in North America or even part time as a developer (but, of course my
experience is very very limited)

~~~
a-saleh
Not common at all. Unless you are a college student (most people I knew went
intern->part-time->full-time)

But most employers are open to them. I used it as a negotiating tactic, where
they offered 15% more than I had, and I countered with 20% less time :)

------
clusmore
Here's my experience working as a SWE in Australia for about 4.5yrs, mostly in
Brisbane and recently in Melbourne. I don't know what is "normal" for SV/SFBA
so I'll just list everything I can think of. The first three points are
mandated by law in Australia.

* Maximum of 38hrs per week + breaks (~40hrs). I have never worked or been pressured to work overtime, paid or otherwise. I happily do my 9-5 and everything outside those hours is my personal life, especially the weekend.

* 20 days paid-time-off (annual leave) per year. Never tried negotiating for more.

* 9.5% on top of base salary contributed by employer to your superannuation (similar to 401k). I believe 17% if you work for government.

* Comfortable salary. Definitely not SFBA rates but comfortable for CoL. Fresh grad would be ~$40-60k/yr, going up about $10k/yr for the first few years until you reach a point where years of experience becomes less relevant than the type of experience (~5yrs). Some regional variance to account for CoL. I stupidly started low, but then pushed for more until I felt comfortable that I'm paid average market rates. My history was $40k, at ~6mo $55k, at ~1.5yr $70k, at ~2.5yr $77.5k, at ~3yr $90k, at ~4yr (job change and BNE->MEL) $110k. This is plenty to live off and save for the future, especially if your SO makes similar.

* Somewhat flexible working conditions. Some companies are butts-in-seats 9-5 from the office, most will allow some WFH and variance in hours (7-3, 11-7, etc.), some allow full WFH/remote and your own hours.

* Pretty easy to find a new job. Each time I've tried interviewing I've received multiple offers within about 1 month.

* Sane interview processes. Most places will do a 15-30min phone screen so you can decide if you want to proceed, a take-home technical test that takes 1-2hrs, and then a 1hr onsite, before making an offer.

* Offices are mostly open-plan.

* Some companies offer small perks on top of all this, e.g. retail discounts, device allowance, phone allowance, personal development allowance, etc.

~~~
frfl
I don't have a whole lot of knowledge about the Australian industry, but I
would think it would be similar in compensation to Canada (relative to US). So
$110K seems quite high after ~4 years.

What allowed you to get to this point? Was there a general pattern that you
noticed that helped you go from 40 to 110 in just 4 years? It's quite
impressive actually. Was it being in the right place at the right time,
professional growth from what you worked on, personal projects, negotiating
hard when the offer was made?

~~~
clusmore
Happy to go into a bit more detail on this. As I said in my first post, I
shouldn't have accepted 40 to start with. I had received an offer for 55 at
another company that fell through when they had a hiring freeze, so I was
getting a bit desperate when I accepted 40. The early raise to 55 after about
6 months made me feel a lot more comfortable.

The way the raise process worked at that company, I was never present, never
given an opportunity to negotiate or even suggest a number, but I was lucky
enough to have a great boss who valued what I did, fought for what he thought
he could get for me, and told me to let him know if I was unhappy. I tried to
keep an eye on the market (just follow a few recruiters on LinkedIn and it's
not too hard), and when I went from 70-77.5 at about 2.5yrs I felt I could get
more elsewhere.

I was also at a point where I felt like the growth potential there was running
out (it was a _very_ small engineering dept.), when I was offered another role
internally reporting to the same boss (was a SWE, new role was Product
Manager, again very small company though) so I took it and pushed for a raise
to go with it. At the same time, I interviewed at a few other companies and
ended up getting offers at 75, 80, 85 and 95. The raise came through at 90 so
I decided I was comfortable where I was. This is at about the 3yr mark. Note:
These were all quite small companies by global standards, but normal for a
small city like Brisbane (50-500 employee range, not FAANG etc.).

Stayed in that role for about a year until I decided to move interstate. I
could have kept my position and worked from our office in the new city, but
decided it was time to move on. Being a new market that I hadn't been paying
much attention to, I wasn't really sure what was fair, but felt I should take
my current salary, add about 10% for another year's experience, and then
another 10% for increased CoL. I interviewed at a few companies and asked for
110, and got two offers at 95 and 110. I had already decided on the company
that offered 110 so was happy to accept it.

I'm not sure I would call this advice, as I don't know how widely applicable
it is, but what worked for me was knowing what the market will pay, being
confident that you're worth it, then find somebody willing to pay it. If any
of this breaks down, fix it. At your current employer, the first step is to
get your boss to value you, and my suggestion for this is to understand their
job, their pain-points, the things that they're accountable for, and then fix
those for them, even if it's not in your job description. Try to get to a
point where you are seamlessly interchangeable for them in meetings/dealings
with other parts of the business, and actually find opportunities to do this.
If they're on your side and the business just can't afford you, as much as it
sucks for your boss, it's probably faster to look elsewhere. Hope that helps.

------
cyrilbenson47
I'm from SEA (Philippines) and work here remotely under a US consulting
company. What I hate is it's like a stigma that because we're from a low-cost
country we're paid much lower vs those from the West (around 50-70% less)
considering I have the same set of skills for a 10yr Software Engineer. I
think it shouldn't matter where you're from as long as you're doing a great
job, money shouldn't matter.

~~~
segmondy
Right, that's what you think. Are you buying a house that's $1 million
dollars? Are you paying $80,000 in taxes? Are you paying $2400 a month for
daycare bills? Are you paying thousands for health care insurance? Are you
paying $250 for car registration? Or another $1000+ for car insurance or
transportation? There's a big SV envy going on from those in tech outside of
SV, when one reads about the high salary they command over there, their
expense is likewise accordingly.

I also think the stigma is GENERALLY true. The average 10yr software engineer
from Phillipines is not going to be anywhere as good as the average software
engineer in the Bay with 10yrs experience at these companies that pay good.
Sure, there are exceptions, but we are talking about the average. Heck, the
average 10yr software engineer in the US outside of the major tech cities
can't keep up either. There's a reason most of the innovation and tools you
are using are coming out from that side of the world. :-)

~~~
jolmg
> Are you buying a house that's $1 million dollars? Are you paying $80,000 in
> taxes? Are you paying $2400 a month for daycare bills? Are you paying
> thousands for health care insurance? Are you paying $250 for car
> registration? Or another $1000+ for car insurance or transportation?

That's not the right logic here. Are you saying that if they do those things
in the Phillipines, then they should get a similar salary? I don't think it
would be very difficult to get someone to raise the price of a house they're
selling to $1 million dollars. One can then say they're buying that house and
to give them a salary that allows them to do that. That would be extremely
silly.

What you pay someone should only depend on what you get in return, and not on
what their expenses of living are. Those are totally irrelevant. You can use
an estimate on their expenses of living to know how low you can offer to pay
them and still keep them happy, but it's not a justification, only an
indicator of a low price they would be happy with.

On your second paragraph, that might be true, but GP's comment is made on the
assumption of being equally experienced, equally as good. What justifies being
paid much less, then? The real justification is that they can't be equal
because, at the same price, it's always going to be more beneficial for a
company in country A to hire an employee in country A over one in country B.
This because it's inconvenient to have to deal with stuff like different
timezones, language barriers, cultural barriers, taxes and other legal stuff,
difficulty in physically meeting, etc. These things define the upper bound
that a company is willing to pay before preferring to instead hire local for
someone of the same skill.

As to the real price that these employment contracts should go for, it should
be somewhere between this upper bound and the lower bound of the salary that a
employee candidate can be reasonably sure to be able to obtain from their
local job market. If the real price is too close to this lower bound, it may
be because as a group they're not valuing themselves enough to push for higher
salaries, or maybe they're being offered something else that they value that
the local job market doesn't offer like remote work.

~~~
muzani
Willing buyer, willing seller. You could probably buy a mansion in these
countries with $500k. Someone else in the same country would take it. I'm
personally happy just making enough money to be in top 10% by 30 years old, so
others working remotely in the same time zone have to compete with that.

However if you're unique in a vertical, you no longer compete. Let's say
you're no longer just an app developer, you're an expert in live streaming
videos and CA/DRM for apps. Maybe there are regional/legal difficulties in
implementing this.

Now suddenly you are worth a whole lot. A company like Netflix is willing to
pay premiums like $100k for a consultant for a week maybe.

If it's a large enough niche, demand exceeds supply, and people are willing to
pay closer to what they're valued.

------
soneca
In São Paulo, Brazil (the best-paying city in Br) it goes more or less like
this:

All of these are _monthly_ salaries:

A good jr developer salary: R$4500 +- R$1500 (today, ~US$1200 +- US$400)

A good middle-level developer salary: R$7500 +- R$1500 (today, ~US$1900 +-
US$400)

A good senior developer salary: R$12000 +- R$2500 (today, ~US$3200 +- US$700)

A good tech leader developer salary: R$18000 +- R$3500 (today, ~US$4800 +-
US$900)

The highest salary for pure software development that I heard is R$30000
(today, ~U$12000). More than that only for CTO-like roles at big companies.

In terms of ease to get a job, it is ridiculously easy. A struggling startup
fired 10 developers and let the market know that they were open to offers. In
one week all of them were already working at another company. _All_ of them
and _already working_ (not just receiving an offer). We get LinkedIn messages
from recruiters all the time. The more senior ones get around 3 to 5 messages
a day from recruiters. A little bit harder for juniors, but still easy enough
compared to other professions.

The quality of work varies a lot. I like a lot my current work and company,
but this one is hard to generalize.

~~~
ffumarola
What are some of the top tech companies? I have to imagine the normal ones
like Google, Facebook, and Amazon. But then more local companies would be UOL,
Itau, Banco do Brasil, Bradesco, etc?

~~~
soneca
Google, Facebook and Amazon don't have as much developer positions in Brazil.
Engineering is mostly done elsewhere and the offices here are more comercial
people.

The banks indeed are good places and pay very well, but there are a few
smaller startups that are very good employers. Nubank and Creditas (the
largest fintechs), PlataformaTec (founder is the creator of elixir),
Thoughtworks has an office here.

------
dovetailcode
Having moved from one non-top-tier US city to another, look for an area that
has a lot of tech activity spread across multiple industries. If there are a
few startups in the area then that is better as well.

If there is a large downturn in the technology space, a place like Silicon
Valley is going to see more of an impact. Multiple industries like tech,
insurance, banking, biology/medicine, etc. in an area will help if there is a
downturn in the economy for a specific industry.

------
forensium
What is the "US big market"? We have developers on the East Coast, West Coast,
South Coast, North Coast and even in the middle of the country. To be fair, we
also have digital nomads, and we do not really know where they are just that
their code shows up in the repository, and they are present in the video
conference, albeit sometimes with some odd background noises. We cannot
imagine anything more of a perk than be able to work from anywhere in the
world. Compensation is based on home office where ever the programmer chooses
it to be. There are some sweat shops, some average 80/20 shops, and there are
some posh, research programming jobs. Perks, salary, and QoW very much depends
on company.

~~~
frfl
Are the digital nomads all Americans too living outside the country? I've
noticed most American companies only hire American citizens for remote work --
due to tax or similar issues.

------
DerekQ
Dublin, Ireland, senior developer with 15+ years

Very easy to jump jobs, though permie jobs have more hoops to jump through.
Most jobs are big corporate, very few startups.

Working as a contract developer (rolling 6 months) at $11,500 per month (25
days holidays factored in). A similar permie role would pay about $8,500 a
month + perks (health insurance, pernsion, etc.)

The work is generally not that challenging - a good dev with 5 years behind
them could do it.

------
CM30
As someone who works in web development in the UK (and who's writing an
article about this very topic):

1\. You're far less well paid than in Silicon Valley. Wages vary by region,
but in many European countries, developer wages are closer to standard office
worker ones than the rockstar ones at Google and Facebook.

2\. Tools are often a bit more basic/old fashioned, and design is usually the
same. In fact, I'd say the vast majority of the tech world is usually about
2-3 years behind the valley in terms of tech knowledge and tooling and best
practices, and that time gap jumps up further and further the smaller the
town/less tech savvy the company.

3\. Perks are a mixed bag. Some companies have all the ping pong tables and
arcade games and free food/drink associated with startups, some just offer you
an office environment and say get to it.

4\. Quality of work is usually less interesting. Lots of CRUD apps, small
business websites, CMS themes, etc. Very few projects that have the goal of
'changing the world'.

5\. The workforce is usually more diverse than in Silicon Valley. For all the
comments about women in tech and diversity, my experience is that it's more of
a problem with Silicon Valley unicorns than other businesses and agencies.
Probably because they're not mostly hiring graduates from a select few
universities.

6\. The ease of getting a job varies. Usually you don't have much in the way
of Google esque logic tests, but you'll probably have a few coding challenges
to prove you know what you're doing. These challenges will be extremely easy
for someone with FANG experience.

7\. There is far less interest in personal projects, side hustles, and other
such things among developers outside of Silicon Valley and other major
markets. Most devs in these places are basically salarymen, they code because
it pays the bills and spend their free time doing other stuff.

8\. This lack of interest also seems to extend to the companies themselves
when it comes to marketing their tech and culture. In fact, I suspect most
European companies are absolutely terrfied of inbound marketing, and have no
idea how to update a blog on a regular basis.

9\. Working practices are often a bit dated as well. A lot of development is
still done with the old 'have the designer create a PSD and get the developer
to turn it into a website' mentality, and waterfall style project management
methodologies haven't been replaced by agile in many of these organisations
either.

So yeah, basically the reality for the average dev outside of Silicon Valley
is working on a CRUD project with tech and design that's about 3 years behind
the cutting edge with a team that build sites as a profession rather than a
'passion'.

------
meiraleal
I'm a Brazilian working remotely. The reality is really good, specially
compared to my fellow countrymen and women.

~~~
frfl
May I ask whether you're working for an international company (US?) or a
Brazilian company? And how senior are you? Is remote work common there?

