In my experience, it's bullshit. The author must be conflating staff positions with "senior".
I was paid 75k as an L5 engineer at Amazon, that's like intermediate senior (two levels down from Staff). So maybe one level up you'd get 100-110k?
I've never seen salaries anywhere close to that article. Even contractors might pay $150k (and then you have to pay your own taxes, insurance, etc. out of that).
The author is spot on. You just happened to be working for the scrappiest/shittiest faang that's all. Shop around, there is decent money to be made in Europe - but of course it's not as easy to walk into it as in the US today. Oh and don't forget that it's TC that matters in big public tech, not salary.
I have gone through interview rounds a few months ago at several of the companies the author mentions in the blog post and I can confirm that the range seems about right. The offers I received for their EU offices were between €120k - €170k (total comp).
But - compared to what I have heard about the US, the variance between offers is much more extreme in the EU, depending on whether these companies only compete in the local market or globally, and it is really hard to figure this out before going through the whole process. I have been surprised by a few companies that pay very competitive salaries in the US but which are barely competitive compared to some of the salaries I know from local companies here in the EU.
So yeah, it is possible to find these salaries in the EU, but they will still be considerably lower than what you can expect in the US and the bad offers are harder to weed out in the EU.
>You just happened to be working for the scrappiest/shittiest faang that's all.
You know, with this statement you've just proved his point, that good tech wages in Europe are super scarce when you need to be very picky with wich FAANG you join for good compensation. That's basically skimming the cream off the cream you just skimmed. How much are you left with now, ~1% of the total tech jobs?
Amazon is worst payer among them in the US as well. Facebook and Google pay decent money in London and Zurich, almost on par with US in the latter, London is maybe ~30% less.
> How much are you left with now, ~1% of the total tech jobs?
If you want top 1% pay, you gonna have to hunt for top 1% jobs, seems obvious, no?
>If you want top 1% pay, you gonna have to hunt for top 1% jobs, seems obvious, no?
Of course, but the discussion was about the fact that the tech job market in Europe is poor. You pointing out that the top 1% devs in Europe make really good money doesn't change that since the 99% are left with sub-paar options.
To make it clearer, a better indication would be to look at median opportunities and wages in the tech sectors, and here the wages in the EU are far lower than in the US even when adjusted for the local purchasing power and real estate prices (actually, I think this makes it even worse for Europe, as stuff cost more and real estate is more expensive).
If you remove the 1%ers like FAANGS and other US unicorns pumped with VC money form the EU tech scene, you're not left with much good local grown opportunities, the wages take a massive nose-dive, which is what the majority is earning.
Anyone getting USD75k/EUR65K/GBP55K in Europe can afford to buy an apartment in any of the major cities, including London with access to a walking lifestyle.
Add a partner’s salary to the equation and you are walking your kids to school and living the dream.
https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-sala...