I've been in this industry here in America for 20+ years and most software developers don't enjoy such a easy time.

Burnout is common. I personally feel like I have been in a "meat grinder" for about 22 years.

Working at Google is VERY different from working at most companies.

Cost of living is one input into cost of labor, but far from the only one. E.g. Canadian salaries are much lower for programmers than American ones, looking at comparably expensive areas.

A huge part of the reason Silicon Valley coders are expensive is that the ecosystem there has made for phenomenally successful tech companies. They have both the money and the motive to engage in a bidding war for talented developers.

Or maybe people everywhere else need to really reflect on how underpaid they are. It’s not like the revenue of tech companies is lower outside of the US, so why isn’t more of it ending up in developers’ pockets, where it should go?

Sheesh - you're better off than a lot of US-based developers I know. Not everyone lives in SF or NY, and not every developer pulls in $100k+ (many do, but not all). I know plenty of jr-mid level devs not pulling in $100k. $7k/month is more than some of them make - certainly couldn't save that much.

I don't think they are. I think salaries in the US are astronomical, and it boggles the mind how in California a 22 year old React nerd can command a salary five times higher than, say, a teacher.

It's all a matter of perspective. From my perspective, if you can sit on your sofa, build a website, and pull in €80k, you're doing just fine.

Exactly!

Even in a fairly well paid European country like Germany the salaries are a joke for high performers.

It is difficult as a dev to earn, even after a decade of experience and working incredibly hard, more than €100k/year.

But a good junior with 1-2 years of experience can earn €50k/year.

So you can’t even make double after taxes of what a junior makes. Almost no matter how hard you work.

And yet you could take it easy and have a great work life balance and after a decade be earning €80k/year.

I don't even earn a third of that, and I've been building native iOS, Android and Windows apps for more than 3 years...

The same one where a dev making $160k can't give up a job they hate because they can't afford to take a job paying $80k.

Everything is relative. To many Americans and $80k desk job is the lap of luxury. To many devs, that pay would be insulting.

In 2020 when I was looking for a senior dev position, 120k ($83K US) was considered a good salary. Though I didn't have a network or a specialization, which hurt me.

> You can make twice that if you get a job doing similar work remotely for a US company; I used to, and I meet a lot of people who do. Nobody knows how many people are doing this, but it's a lot and growing.

Any tips for how to break into the US market?

I am on the East Coast (outside of NYC, though), have been in the software business for 20+ years and know a lot of smart /accomplished people.

I don't know a single software engineer who makes more than $200K/year in a senior engineering role, as an employee. (We are comparing salaries, not consulting income or stock options here, which can disappear very quickly).

It would be nice for you to step outside of the bubble you live in SV, every now and then :-)

You know not all developers live in Silicon Valley, right? And London is just as expensive, why aren't the salaries the same there?

Bizarre post. Why would you brag about being underpaid?

*in the US.

In my country, those salaries are completely unheard of.

We're paid pretty low in Canada as well. The two devs that started at the same time I started my career had a salary of $11/hr ($7.62/hr USD), both of whom are quite talented. My salary when I stopped being doing testing directly was $52,000 at 9 years of experience. Toronto and Vancouver pay better but the cost of living there is quite high unless you already own the house you live in.

I don't think the reference point is outside of the software industry; rather, it's other organizations that pay disproportionately well. When you hear of devs at large tech companies earning $400k+ salaries, it's hard not to feel underpaid if you're earning less than half that, even when your own salary is incredibly comfortable by most other measures.

> Or at least where I live in the EU? Did the living cost in the US explode to a point where a 100k$ salary isn't enough to reasonable nicely rise a kid?

Again, this is missing the point a little, but I will add that $100k won't get you very far in San Francisco.

This is such an American story :-)

I don't think there's any other developed country where you can remain an individual contributor, a developer, and quadruple your income in 2 years. Heck, in most other developed countries the whole salary range for a profession is about 2x, from the lowliest junior developer to the highest senior developer. To make more you'd have to become a consultant, so basically start your own company, which is an entirely different kettle of fish.

This is hugely Silicon-Valley-centric. There are millions of skilled programmers outside that culture, who have never had a six-figure salary, many who have never even worked for a tech company. Just regular (white-collar) working people with the same kinds of burdens that the average American (or European, or person from any other developed country on the planet) has to deal with.

In short, this shows how much you live in a bubble and don't understand what life is like outside of it.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around why European developers earn significantly less than virtually all their American counterparts, even in high cost of living areas (like Scandinavia)

I do understand you specified you work for a startup, but even at one of the many established regional consultancies dev salaries tend to cap out at around $90K IME.

Is it the lack of lucrative VC funding, the prevailing sense of egalitarianism at all costs, the abundance of (comparatively) well paid middle managers, all of the above or something else entirely?

edit : changed wording

The compensation can be high if you work in Silicon Valley (even though the cost of living is high there). The standard corporate programming job is already paid much worse. Also in a lot of countries that are not the USA, software development is not such a well-paying job.

They most likely are being paid more, when adjusting for cost of living. You can work on a rig making $100k a year in areas where $250k buys you a very nice 3500 SQ ft home with a big backyard.

Something that would cost millions in SF, NYC, Seattle, etc.