That's what I was thinking. I moved to Europe and my salary was halved. I'm making 70K euros. After three years of scratching this "living in Europe" itch, I'm ready to move back to the U.S. An entry level developer should be making no less than 90K in the land of the free.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 8 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Yep. Few people where I live envy the US, but if you're a developer the money is no joke. You have to expect that eventually all those big American tech companies will start offshoring, given the crazy money they could save.

[–] elbarto777@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago

That's what I tell fellow devs around here. Try the U.S. for one or two years, especially if they offer shares. Then move back. Profit!

[–] dan@upvote.au 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I moved from Australia to the USA since salaries for developers are so much higher here. I live in Silicon Valley which helps too. If you're a senior developer (say 5+ years of experience) then a lot of the large companies here pay $200-300k/year salary plus $100-200k/year in company stock plus a bonus that's 10-20% of salary if you get a good performance review.

[–] Doxatek@mander.xyz 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Ugh. Holy shit I went into the wrong field 🥲 I was just a kid. I didn't know better

[–] dan@upvote.au 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I got lucky since I've been into computers and programming since I was 8 years old (late 90s). My first job when I was at school was a part-time developer at a tiny IT company that did consulting work. Since then, all my jobs have been software development jobs.

The fact that it pays well in places like Silicon Valley was a great bonus. I moved here 10 years ago (when I was 23) after I got a job offer, and the starting salary was literally double what I was getting paid in Australia at the time.

The job changes a bit as you get more senior - there's more mentoring of junior devs, project planning, deciding what your team should focus on, etc. I still spend a lot of my time writing code though, and still enjoy it. :)

There's some downsides to living in Silicon Valley. A lot of stuff is expensive (that applies for California in general, but especially here). Housing is extremely expensive too.

[–] dafo@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago (2 children)

€70k as a developer? That's a middled aged EM salary here in Sweden

[–] L4rr@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Unfortunately I have to ask, what's the meaning of EM?

[–] dafo@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

Engineering manager, the one responsible for a team

[–] elbarto777@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

I bet. I'm assuming taxes are way higher up there too.