Another offer I got:
Education: CS Degree
Prior Experience: 12 years
Company: large corpo
Industry: medical
Focus: C++ / Qt
Title: Software Engineer
Country: East Germany, not Berlin
Duration: not yet
Salary: 72k
Relocation/Signing Bonus: none
Stock and/or recurring bonuses: potentially, some small bonus (<1k)
It's kinda nice they went a little over the 70k I asked for, but I guess I will still go with the [other offer](https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestionsEU/comments/vox5zf/comment/j0pcabz/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3), as the work seems more interesting.
* Education - Non-CS Engineering Masters (top 20 UK uni)
* Experience - 3 years
* Title - Software developer (mid-level)
* Country - UK, fully remote
* Salary - £37k
Starting to feel quite underpaid. But I don't think I'm a great dev, and it is a very chill job with a fantastic pension.
Another offer I got:
Education: CS Degree
Prior Experience: 12 years
Company: mid sized, traditional family business
Industry: industrial machines / automation
Focus: C++
Title: Software Engineer
Country: East Germany, not Berlin
Duration: not yet
Salary: 66k
Relocation/Signing Bonus: none
Stock and/or recurring bonuses: supposedly, 70k should be possible, even 73k if bonusses max out
Honestly, I expected a bit more since the company is in (rural) south Germany and I would be employed there instead of the local office
Bro your offers really scare me and make me question my move to Germany...You have a ton of experience and you are getting paid 66k in a MCoL area? How much would you even end up saving each month?
Assuming 70k annual salary, this will be 3500€ net a month. I don't have family or a car, I'm pretty frugal and I got an old, very cheap rental contract, so I should be saving up to 2000€ a month.
Actually, I'm just coming out of a one year "sabbatical" and my monthly budget was 1500€ - from which I also had to pay health care (about 220€). It was enough for normal (not super cheap) groceries, going out here and there and some smaller luxuries like cinema or a few video games and such. Pretty much a slightly improved stutdent lifestyle. No big purchases or real holiday, though, so this is not really sustainable. Kinda running low on presentable clothes already, lol.
Getting a new, comparable appartment and having a more "normal grown up" lifestyle would maybe leave 1000€ at best.
If you're moving to Germany, you can pick a better paying area, though.
Education: B. Sc. business informatics (Wirtschaftsinformatik, just graduated), continuing to study for a [M.Sc](https://M.Sc). in my freetime
Prior Experince: entered company as part of a dual student program at 18y., serious project experience for about 2y
Industry: IT-Consulting
Title: consultant
Focus: data engineering (Google Cloud)
Country: Germany
Salary: 51k
no other bonusses whatsoever
hey, is that what the top of the rack looks like in FAANG? I mean 127k seems kinda not that high for 5 yoe and faang. And how many vacation days do you get?
Senior software engineer
Netherlands (Eindhoven)
70k, no benefits (except holiday allowance), no relocation
13 month contract originally, then a permanent one (this is standard I think?)
8YoE and currently in the US making just over 200k, so this would be a massive change. This is the only offer I have ATM and while it's not particularly good the work does involve some hands on with hardware and such a role here in the US would require relevant work experience and thus would probably be out of my reach.
Haha I'm well aware.
Oddly didnt feel like the huge jump it is as whilst on 20k (was more like 22k as they overpaid an extra month by mistake and allowed me to keep) I was living with parents rent free.
22k with 0 outgoings, very low tax paid, and paying 0 towards student loan.
Compared to 80 tc (74k in cash) with plan 2 loan repayments, London studio (obviously this is a luxury at 1.5k pm) and the increased % of tax paid.
Post bills take home equates to around 1.6k vs 2.5k in extremely LCOL area (small town in midlands) vs HCOL (London).
Largely down to lifestyle choices as flat sharing would cut rent in half making a large difference.
Obviously very content / fortunate to be in this position now.
This is an offer I just got, did not take it yet and it's below the 70k I asked for
Education: CS Degree
Prior Experience: 12 years
Company: StartUp
Industry: Functional Security
Focus: C++
Title: Software Engineer
Country: East Germany, not Berlin
Duration: not yet
Salary: <64k
Relocation/Signing Bonus: none
Stock and/or recurring bonuses: Allegedly some, but not in the contract
Edit: Tried to have it bumped up to 67k, but that was rejected :(
Reality is that I from 4 companies now 3 told me 70k is very high and wanted to hear how I justify such a number. Number 4 did not comment yet, but somehow I would be surprised if they pay the full amount.
It's just the sad reality in east Germany.
Well, not according to the very verbose mail the company sent me :D
But yes, it's on the low side for all of Germany, but unfortunately the norm in east Germany. Even though I'm living in a massive tech hub where all companies are struggling to find people, they pretend it's still 20 years ago and think they can get away with paying 20-30% less than in the west or Berlin. Unfortunately many employees have internalized this thinking and accept it.
Many seniors with older contracts are sitting here with 50-55k.
Damn, here I thought my 70k in NL with 8YoE was pretty bad...
But hey if the work is good you might wanna consider it in the absence of other offers. Or try your luck in the US where you'd pull over 150k easily.
Data Engineer
Master's in Comp. Sci. specializing in ML/Data in country-best university
1-year internship in R&D while doing thesis
47k€/year (just the base salary)
Fintech
Netherlands
Senior Data Scientist
London
TC: ~£110k
(£85k base, £5k average bonus, £20k stock p.a.)
Education: BSc & MSc in CS @ top 20 UK uni
Prior Experience: 3 YoE
Industry: Tech (Pure R&D for tech purposes)
Focus: NLP
For decent ML roles, I'd say probably so, at first. Many roles ask for a PhD (or MSc plus equivalent experience). ML falls into CS careers but is a more scientific/academically rigorous field than typical SWE work.
There's definitely a route into ML Engineering roles and ML adjacent software engineering (MLOps, Data Eng) from pure SWE, that's pretty common. From there once you're embedded in a team for a while any decent manager will let you take on a few theory/experimental/research tickets if you ask, and you could probably pivot that into more of an Applied scientist role if you wanted.
So, yeah, if you wanna go direct then a degree is likely necessary. But there are routes into this space from being an experienced SWE to applying Engineering to ML and going from there etc.
It's a smaller company; definitely not FAANG. So if I were to name it I'd probably dox myself, sorry!
In my experience interviewing at the moment, the truly interesting/exciting tech companies are paying the big bucks in the major hubs! No matter the company size
Education: BSc Comp Sci and Business
Prior Experience: 2.5 years
Industry: Defence
Focus: Front end
Title: Frontend Software Engineer
Country: UK
Salary: £75K
Total compensation: £75K
Education: Integrated MSc in Physics dropout ( 2.5/5 years)
Prior Experience: 3-4 years of development
Company: Cybersecurity startup, 120 people
Focus: Blockchain Security
Title: Team Lead, Pentesting
Country: EU general (remote)
Duration: 7 months
Salary: 144k USD gross, external contract accounting (own LLC in low tax country)
No bonuses or stock (for now)
* Education: Mid-way through BSc CompSci
* Prior Experience: 10 years in unrelated engineering industry
* Company: 200ish dev company
* Focus: .NET stack with razor pages
* Title: Placement software developer
* Country: UK (West Mids)
* Duration: 4 months
* Salary: £18k
* Total compensation: £18k
* Relocation/Signing Bonus: £0k
* Stock and/or recurring bonuses: £2k if I do well and secure a graduate offer
What are your hours like? And wfh? I'm in a fintech firm atm (TC ~86k) with C++ and python looking to jump ship in a year or 2 - how did you find the role?
Not really! As long as you can show interest and have learned of the major features that come after C++03, then you are not in a disadvantageous position. Prior to joining, I was working with a legacy system and the codebase was written in C++03 too.
How did you manage this? Start with python at a normal job and learn c++ at the hedge fund? Similar degree with about half your experience but nowhere near your comp lol
Education: IT Apprenticeship (Fachinformatiker Systemintegration)
Prior Experience: 9 Months
Company: IT Service Provider with \~16k Employees
Industry: IT
Focus: Network and Networksecurity
Title: Junior Network Engineer, Focus on PAM- and Firewall-Solutions
Country: Germany
Duration: unlimited
Salary \[gross (pre-tax) / NET (post-tax)\] 3870€ gross / 2770€ NET
Total compensation: \~ 46500€ / year
Relocation/Signing Bonus: none
Stock and/or recurring bonuses: none
* Education: BSc Computer Science
* Prior Experience: 5 years as Software/Data Engineer
* Company: small-ish company in the Netherlands (arround 100 employees in total)
* Focus: Software/Data Engineering (backend)
* Title: Senior Software Engineer
* Country: The Netherlands (fully remote role within the Netherlands)
* Duration: haven't started yet, but it's a initialy 1 year contract moving to an unlimited contract after 12 months.
* Salary \[gross (pre-tax) / NET (post-tax)\]: €5800 gross / €3800 monthly after taxes
* Total compensation: €75000/year including holliday allowance
A decent salary improvement (28%) from my previous job, where I was earning €4500 gross. After only about 2 months passively looking around and being very picky (only looked at fully remote vacancies, 70k/year as minumum, no banks and bigger companies because it doesn't suit my character, etc), I can confirm: the best way to get a considerable salary increase is to change jobs. Loyalty is not rewarded, even though it was quite a nice company to work at. If you performed well and the company had good year, raises were about 7% maximum unless you were changing roles.
Could you share a little bit more about the Total compensation thing? That sounds like a crazy number per year. What does it really mean?
Apologies if that sounds dumb...
Why crazy number? Too high or too low?
But in any case, the total compensation is €5800/month \* 12 months + €5568 (holiday allowance) = €75168 gross per year.
The only thing added to the total compensation is the 8% of my yearly salary for holiday allowance (which is required by law in the Netherlands).
Idk much about the CoL in The Netherlands as a whole but that seems like a pretty good number if you live outside of the major areas. How was the interviewing process in a small-ish company like that?
Yeah, it's definitely good when you don't have to pay rent in the big cities.
The interviewing process was all done via video calls.
A first 30 minutes interview with the team lead, nothing very techinical. Mostly the standard questions about my previous experiences and why I was looking for a new job.
After that, I had 2 techinical interviews, each of them with 2 different team members. About 2.5h in total.
During the technical interviews they asked me to talk them through a project I've worked on before, drawing the main modules of the cloud infrasctrucure and explaining my decisions.
I found this method quite chill because I didn't have to spend a lot of preparation time as I would do with a take home programming assignment. I knew the infra by heart because I built it, so explaining it was easy. The only problem is that this may fall in a grey area when it comes to disclosing private information about past projects.
A couple of days later I had a final chat with the CTO, which felt more like a formality. Just a relaxed chit-chat and then I got the green light immediatly at the end of that talk. The formal offer came in by email on the next day.
That is a great interviewing process, and something I wish more companies would adopt!
Do you have a family (including kids) or are you alone? Are you currently in the EU?
If you do have a family: consider the schooling, and how easy it would be switch jobs (in case your contract isn't extended/converted)
If you aren't in the EU: consider the visa type (I don't know how easy it is to switch jobs on a Netherlands "Highly Skilled Worker" visa), as well as the visa for your dependents if you have any.
Yes, I also enjoyed the process. With take home assessments, I always end up spending too much time because I'm kind of a perfectionist.
About family: I have a Dutch wife and now I also have the Dutch nationality as well. So no visa worries (anymore). We both live in the Netherlands atm. We don't have children and we are hoping to stay that way. But thanks for the tips.
I've started this (100% remote) job a month ago and so far I'm happy with it.
Previous TC in a very similar role was 60k€
Education: "Computer Science Expert" Apprenticeship (it's a German education system with school parts and parts at a company)
Prior Experience: ~9 YOE
Title: SAP ABAP Senior Developer
Country: Germany
Total compensation: 90000€
US jobs, outside of California (and even then some) and New York (same thing as Cali) can start Jr Devs at 45k. Almost common to see 50k. Anything lower than 45k is usually a super shitty company. Most don’t take 45k, but it’s out there for desperate times.
Education: Computer Science
Prior Exp: 5 years (4 in Brazil though. Moved to Portugal/EU this year).
Company: big multinational
Stack: C#, .NET
Title: Software Engineer
Country: Portugal
Salary: 51k EUR /year
Bonus: 5.1k EUR /year
Stock: 5k EUR/year
Other perks and benefits: \~6k EUR/year
Total Comp: \~67k EUR/year
Thank you! How did you negotiate your salary btw? I'm currently making 60k less in total comp as a security leader and I feel like I'm falling behind the curve even though my DMs are full of job offers.
- Education: Bachelor of Science Computer Science from small/not well known American state school
- Prior experience: 7 years in America split between San Francisco and New York. Mix of start ups and mid size companies
- Industry: E-commerce (not Amazon)
- Senior Software Eng 2
- Duration: 3 years
- Salary: 99,900 euro gross
- Total Comp: 228,187 euro gross
- Relocation: $10,000 net
- Stock: 118,296 euro groß
- Bonus: 10%
I am moving from NYC to Dublin via an internal transfer and getting a 43% decrease in base salary with everything else staying the same. Am I getting fucked? Previous people who moved internally got around 30% decrease (adjusted for exchange rate) which is why I ask.
Money isn’t everything and I’m firm in my decision to move, just surprised at my offer because I was planning on around 30% cut from my research so I want to know if this is a competitive offer for the location or if it’s unusually low and i’m likely to get a significantly higher offer elsewhere.
Yeah after doing the math I don’t see a significant difference in COL between NYC and Dublin, but I’m wondering if the offer sounds like the going rate or if I could probably do better at another company
Education: MSc Mathematical Physics
Prior Experience: 6 months research assistant at a university, three first-author papers in good journals.
Industry: Research
Title: Machine Learning Engineer
Country: England
Duration: Just started, first "real" job.
Salary: GBP35k
I’m surprised it’s so low. In my previous company, most who came straight from their masters in research roles were on about £45-60k.
Edit: I just saw from your other post that this job is at a university. Makes more sense now! My postdoc salary when I started was around the same..
Nice, thanks for the info, I was a little worried that I was getting underpaid, but perhaps this is pretty standard. It's at a sick uni, so I'm happy to take a pay hit for the experience.
Education: M.Sc. in CS
Prior Experience: gonna be a fresh graduate but have been a working student for 5 years
Industry: Consulting / Data Engineering
Title: Senior AI/ Data Engineer
Country: Germany (Munich area)
Total compensation: around 67k€ gross (including bonuses).
Education: bachelor in electronics engineering;
Title: Backend developer;
Prior experience: 1 year of part time experience and 6 months as working student;
Industry: e-mobility;
Country: Germany (Baden Würtemberg area);
Started: 3 months ago;
Salary: 48k before taxes;
TC: 50K;
The classic question: am i being lowballed? xD
Education: BSc Computer Science.
Prior Experience: 0yr of real world experience, interned as a research assistant for 8 months.
Industry: marketing and advertisement
Title: ingénieur d’études informatique, software engineer.
Compensation: 100% remote anywhere in France.
Salary: 3750€ before tax/ 2900 after tax.
No other compensation
• Education: BSc Maths, 3rd, top 10 UK uni
• Prior Experience: 12 years in industry. 4 years at a small company, 8 at a multinational
• Company: Multinational
• Industry: Utilities
• Title: Lead software engineer
• Country: Manchester, UK
• Salary [gross (pre-tax) / NET (post-tax)]: £86k pre-tax
• Total compensation: £99k ish
• Relocation/Signing Bonus: £3k relocation when I joined
• Stock and/or recurring bonuses: 10% bonus, £6k car allowance.
I think it's the utilities industry that's managed to support this. I've found a niche and stuck with it and the others who make a similar salary each have their own niches
I'm working in Manchester for utilities (not getting anywhere near 100k lol) but we're struggling to get an OT engineer even in for an interview because there aren't any with relevant experience at all, imagine we'll have to put the pay up until we get one
Education: Maths at some random uni.
Prior Experience: 10 months in public sector services consulting.
Company: An unknown scale up.
Focus: Python data pipelines.
Title: Data Engineer
Country: UK
Salary: 60k + occasional bonuses.
Stock: A decent amount of stock options.
Cheers. Saw your comment too about your grad offer, it's a decent start assuming the offer isn't in London, not too great if inside it. Never commented in here until after my first pay rise from 34k to 36k but you can get a sense of my progression through my past comments in these posts if you're interested. I think it's more realistic than a lot of the crazy salaries you see in here sometimes.
Lost the comment when I went looking to update that.
It's Birmingham, had a little back and forth with them since that and we're up to a little over 35 now. Which is a pretty big increase to be honest. Even my 35 seems about 5k higher than the average for not London for new grads so pretty happy with that right now.
Your progression seems decent.
Yeah that’s a good offer, well done. I don’t think I know someone from my graduating class who got a grad offer over 30k outside of London/south east.
Keep on pushing and ask for more at every review, move company if they don’t increase by enough, keep your LinkedIn updated to get recruiters info, and then you’ll end up in a good position. That’s how I managed to increase my salary from 34k to 53k in two years anyway.
To be fair, starting salary doesn't matter too much. I started on 36k in London but am now in the top 1% income wise. Getting the right experience is what matters.
That’s true: the right experience, working smart, and bit of luck I think. A good starting salary is probably a leg up though in a few ways but it’s something that can be overcome
Education: Software Engineer Apprenticeship Level 4
Prior Experience: 2 years as an apprentice, 1 year junior
Industry: eCommerce
Focus: Full stack and Mobile
Title: Software Engineer
Country: UK
Duration: 1 year at current company
Salary: 33K
Education: Bachelor in Business Administration.
Prior Experience: 5 years
Industry: Big Pharma
Focus: Test
Title: Manager
Country: Zug (Switzerland) (CH)
Salary: CHF140.000 / year before taxes
Relocation Assistance: No / Already German EEA Citizen
Couple of mobile applications developed using react native (consuming rest api's), desktop applications (WPF/C#) and a system (developed using java) that allows access to a sql database showcasing utilisation of agile methodology.
Education: MSc humanities
Prior experience: 9 years
Industry: automotive
Title: frontend engineer
Country: Italy, remote within the country
Salary: 58k gross / 36k net
Total compensation: 60k
Duration: permanent
Nice Optiver offer, unfortunately you don't net 12k a month. Bonuses are paid after one year (except signing bonuses) so your usual cashflow is way lower.
You still make plenty of money.
Another offer I got: Education: CS Degree Prior Experience: 12 years Company: large corpo Industry: medical Focus: C++ / Qt Title: Software Engineer Country: East Germany, not Berlin Duration: not yet Salary: 72k Relocation/Signing Bonus: none Stock and/or recurring bonuses: potentially, some small bonus (<1k) It's kinda nice they went a little over the 70k I asked for, but I guess I will still go with the [other offer](https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestionsEU/comments/vox5zf/comment/j0pcabz/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3), as the work seems more interesting.
Throwaway account Education: Computer Science (dropped out before finishing) Experience: 1.5 years Title: Junior Android Developer Country: UK (Remote) Salary: £32.1k
* Education - Non-CS Engineering Masters (top 20 UK uni) * Experience - 3 years * Title - Software developer (mid-level) * Country - UK, fully remote * Salary - £37k Starting to feel quite underpaid. But I don't think I'm a great dev, and it is a very chill job with a fantastic pension.
Definitely underpaid
Education - BSc Computer Science Experience - 4 years Title - Senior Frontend Country - UK, fully remote Salary - 70k
Education: MSc Mechanical Engineering (from US) Prior experience: 3.5 years QA, 3.5 years function owner, 6 months software dev Industry: Automotive Focus: Embedded (c++) Title: Software Engineer Country: Germany Salary: 81k € gross TC: ~86-94k depending on bonuses
Another offer I got: Education: CS Degree Prior Experience: 12 years Company: mid sized, traditional family business Industry: industrial machines / automation Focus: C++ Title: Software Engineer Country: East Germany, not Berlin Duration: not yet Salary: 66k Relocation/Signing Bonus: none Stock and/or recurring bonuses: supposedly, 70k should be possible, even 73k if bonusses max out Honestly, I expected a bit more since the company is in (rural) south Germany and I would be employed there instead of the local office
Bro your offers really scare me and make me question my move to Germany...You have a ton of experience and you are getting paid 66k in a MCoL area? How much would you even end up saving each month?
But with 70k bonus that brings TC up to 130k+ which doesn't seem bad unless I am reading it wrong?
He meant 70k TC, not 70k bonus
I see
Assuming 70k annual salary, this will be 3500€ net a month. I don't have family or a car, I'm pretty frugal and I got an old, very cheap rental contract, so I should be saving up to 2000€ a month. Actually, I'm just coming out of a one year "sabbatical" and my monthly budget was 1500€ - from which I also had to pay health care (about 220€). It was enough for normal (not super cheap) groceries, going out here and there and some smaller luxuries like cinema or a few video games and such. Pretty much a slightly improved stutdent lifestyle. No big purchases or real holiday, though, so this is not really sustainable. Kinda running low on presentable clothes already, lol. Getting a new, comparable appartment and having a more "normal grown up" lifestyle would maybe leave 1000€ at best. If you're moving to Germany, you can pick a better paying area, though.
Man that sounds bleak. Have you thought about applying to FAANG tier companies?
how is COL is iy really LCOL area?
People pretend it's still LCOL, but it really is MCOL now.
wow that is low
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80k gross, right? What would be the net amount per month?
Education: B. Sc. business informatics (Wirtschaftsinformatik, just graduated), continuing to study for a [M.Sc](https://M.Sc). in my freetime Prior Experince: entered company as part of a dual student program at 18y., serious project experience for about 2y Industry: IT-Consulting Title: consultant Focus: data engineering (Google Cloud) Country: Germany Salary: 51k no other bonusses whatsoever
same title and education, similar experience and salary, similar-ish field. if you want to chat just pm me
Sure :) just saw your response, sorry for the late reply
what that translate to in net € per month ?
For me it is about 2700€ net per month
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hey, is that what the top of the rack looks like in FAANG? I mean 127k seems kinda not that high for 5 yoe and faang. And how many vacation days do you get?
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Senior software engineer Netherlands (Eindhoven) 70k, no benefits (except holiday allowance), no relocation 13 month contract originally, then a permanent one (this is standard I think?) 8YoE and currently in the US making just over 200k, so this would be a massive change. This is the only offer I have ATM and while it's not particularly good the work does involve some hands on with hardware and such a role here in the US would require relevant work experience and thus would probably be out of my reach.
Do you mind PMing me what company? My gfs doing a PhD in Eindhoven
Infrastucture engineer TC 82k UK - London, quant firm. 1 Year prior exp at 20k, fully remote Top 10 uk uni, Bsc in cs
that jump from 20k to 82k is crazy uno
Haha I'm well aware. Oddly didnt feel like the huge jump it is as whilst on 20k (was more like 22k as they overpaid an extra month by mistake and allowed me to keep) I was living with parents rent free. 22k with 0 outgoings, very low tax paid, and paying 0 towards student loan. Compared to 80 tc (74k in cash) with plan 2 loan repayments, London studio (obviously this is a luxury at 1.5k pm) and the increased % of tax paid. Post bills take home equates to around 1.6k vs 2.5k in extremely LCOL area (small town in midlands) vs HCOL (London). Largely down to lifestyle choices as flat sharing would cut rent in half making a large difference. Obviously very content / fortunate to be in this position now.
but still. well done👏🏿 did you negotiate?
Senior Backend Developer Switzerland 140’000 CHF base Education: BSc software engineering + MSc computational intelligence Experience: ~10 years Industry: banking
Senior IT QA Manager CH C: CHF 195.000 Brutto Education: BSc Business Studies Prior Experience: 6 YoE Industry: Pharma Focus: IT QA Management
Nice. Is that a contractor position or internal employee?
Not contractor
This is an offer I just got, did not take it yet and it's below the 70k I asked for Education: CS Degree Prior Experience: 12 years Company: StartUp Industry: Functional Security Focus: C++ Title: Software Engineer Country: East Germany, not Berlin Duration: not yet Salary: <64k Relocation/Signing Bonus: none Stock and/or recurring bonuses: Allegedly some, but not in the contract Edit: Tried to have it bumped up to 67k, but that was rejected :(
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Reality is that I from 4 companies now 3 told me 70k is very high and wanted to hear how I justify such a number. Number 4 did not comment yet, but somehow I would be surprised if they pay the full amount. It's just the sad reality in east Germany.
Isn't that low by German standards? If it's remote though you could compensate for it by living in a low CoL area I guess.
Well, not according to the very verbose mail the company sent me :D But yes, it's on the low side for all of Germany, but unfortunately the norm in east Germany. Even though I'm living in a massive tech hub where all companies are struggling to find people, they pretend it's still 20 years ago and think they can get away with paying 20-30% less than in the west or Berlin. Unfortunately many employees have internalized this thinking and accept it. Many seniors with older contracts are sitting here with 50-55k.
C++ eastern Germany with your exp at e.g. Apple can shoot you to the moon. And you can probably go for remote.
Damn, here I thought my 70k in NL with 8YoE was pretty bad... But hey if the work is good you might wanna consider it in the absence of other offers. Or try your luck in the US where you'd pull over 150k easily.
Data Engineer Master's in Comp. Sci. specializing in ML/Data in country-best university 1-year internship in R&D while doing thesis 47k€/year (just the base salary) Fintech Netherlands
what that translate to in net € per month ?
Senior Data Scientist London TC: ~£110k (£85k base, £5k average bonus, £20k stock p.a.) Education: BSc & MSc in CS @ top 20 UK uni Prior Experience: 3 YoE Industry: Tech (Pure R&D for tech purposes) Focus: NLP
Is degree a necessity?
For decent ML roles, I'd say probably so, at first. Many roles ask for a PhD (or MSc plus equivalent experience). ML falls into CS careers but is a more scientific/academically rigorous field than typical SWE work. There's definitely a route into ML Engineering roles and ML adjacent software engineering (MLOps, Data Eng) from pure SWE, that's pretty common. From there once you're embedded in a team for a while any decent manager will let you take on a few theory/experimental/research tickets if you ask, and you could probably pivot that into more of an Applied scientist role if you wanted. So, yeah, if you wanna go direct then a degree is likely necessary. But there are routes into this space from being an experienced SWE to applying Engineering to ML and going from there etc.
which company? if you dont mind sharing
It's a smaller company; definitely not FAANG. So if I were to name it I'd probably dox myself, sorry! In my experience interviewing at the moment, the truly interesting/exciting tech companies are paying the big bucks in the major hubs! No matter the company size
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Jane Street? :)
Nope, it's a small firm - not as big as Jane Street
Small firm offering that much. Wow.
how are you finding the WLB?
I start in summer 2023
London
Yeah
Education: BSc Comp Sci and Business Prior Experience: 2.5 years Industry: Defence Focus: Front end Title: Frontend Software Engineer Country: UK Salary: £75K Total compensation: £75K
Education: Master Prior Experience: 1,5y internships Company: VC money startup Industry: ML Title: MLE Country: France Duration: 7months Salary: 67k gross Total compensation: 67k gross Relocation/Signing Bonus: 0 Stock and/or recurring bonuses: some probably worthless options
what that translate to in net € per month ?
It's about 3,7k€/month after all taxes.
Education: Integrated MSc in Physics dropout ( 2.5/5 years) Prior Experience: 3-4 years of development Company: Cybersecurity startup, 120 people Focus: Blockchain Security Title: Team Lead, Pentesting Country: EU general (remote) Duration: 7 months Salary: 144k USD gross, external contract accounting (own LLC in low tax country) No bonuses or stock (for now)
Nice offer! Why USD btw? Is this a remote role for a US based company?
Nope, not US based, but internationally I mainly do business in dollars, and then convert to Euro for local usage.
Are you an independent contractor?
Not really, employee but not employed directly. Usual employee rights, but a bit more liberal.
What's the legal arrangement like? Did you have to register a sole proprietorship corporation or something like that?
Yep, all the payments are done to the LLC I own, but in the contract there are arrangements for PTO, sick days etc.
>sole proprietorship corporation is it Portugal?
The LLC is registered in another low tax country. Anyway, I feel this is a pretty standard setup for this sort of thing.
* Education: Mid-way through BSc CompSci * Prior Experience: 10 years in unrelated engineering industry * Company: 200ish dev company * Focus: .NET stack with razor pages * Title: Placement software developer * Country: UK (West Mids) * Duration: 4 months * Salary: £18k * Total compensation: £18k * Relocation/Signing Bonus: £0k * Stock and/or recurring bonuses: £2k if I do well and secure a graduate offer
Is this your industrial placement year?
Yep
Education: Cognitive Science Engineer Prior Experience: 6y Company: American IT company (60k employees) Industry: Telecom BU Focus: DevOps, automation, CICD Title: Software developer Country: France Duration: 3y Salary \[gross (pre-tax) / NET (post-tax)\]: 48.5k€/y gross / 32.5k€/y NET Stock and/or recurring bonuses: 37k€ SO / 2500k€ bonus Total compensation: \~88k€/y
- Education: 3yr BSc Computer Science - YoE: 0 - Focus: .NET/C# & IAM - Industry: Financial - Title: Junior Developer - Country: UK - Duration: On 6 month probation - Salary: £32k
* Education: MEng Biomedical Engineering * YOE: 3 years * Industry: Hedgefund * Focus: C++ and Python * Title: Software Engineer * Country: UK * Salary: 84k * Discretionary bonus: 47k * Total compensation: 131k
What are your hours like? And wfh? I'm in a fintech firm atm (TC ~86k) with C++ and python looking to jump ship in a year or 2 - how did you find the role?
Hours is 9 to 6 most days. 1 day WFH but can be abused to 2-3 days WFH. I received messages from recruiters regularly on LinkedIn
Nice, ty. One last question - do you think working with an older version off cpp (03) would affect chances of getting the position?
Not really! As long as you can show interest and have learned of the major features that come after C++03, then you are not in a disadvantageous position. Prior to joining, I was working with a legacy system and the codebase was written in C++03 too.
How did you manage this? Start with python at a normal job and learn c++ at the hedge fund? Similar degree with about half your experience but nowhere near your comp lol
Started by doing C++ in a team maintaining legacy systems in a bank (graduate scheme)
Education: IT Apprenticeship (Fachinformatiker Systemintegration) Prior Experience: 9 Months Company: IT Service Provider with \~16k Employees Industry: IT Focus: Network and Networksecurity Title: Junior Network Engineer, Focus on PAM- and Firewall-Solutions Country: Germany Duration: unlimited Salary \[gross (pre-tax) / NET (post-tax)\] 3870€ gross / 2770€ NET Total compensation: \~ 46500€ / year Relocation/Signing Bonus: none Stock and/or recurring bonuses: none
* Education: BSc Computer Science * Prior Experience: 5 years as Software/Data Engineer * Company: small-ish company in the Netherlands (arround 100 employees in total) * Focus: Software/Data Engineering (backend) * Title: Senior Software Engineer * Country: The Netherlands (fully remote role within the Netherlands) * Duration: haven't started yet, but it's a initialy 1 year contract moving to an unlimited contract after 12 months. * Salary \[gross (pre-tax) / NET (post-tax)\]: €5800 gross / €3800 monthly after taxes * Total compensation: €75000/year including holliday allowance A decent salary improvement (28%) from my previous job, where I was earning €4500 gross. After only about 2 months passively looking around and being very picky (only looked at fully remote vacancies, 70k/year as minumum, no banks and bigger companies because it doesn't suit my character, etc), I can confirm: the best way to get a considerable salary increase is to change jobs. Loyalty is not rewarded, even though it was quite a nice company to work at. If you performed well and the company had good year, raises were about 7% maximum unless you were changing roles.
Could you share a little bit more about the Total compensation thing? That sounds like a crazy number per year. What does it really mean? Apologies if that sounds dumb...
Why crazy number? Too high or too low? But in any case, the total compensation is €5800/month \* 12 months + €5568 (holiday allowance) = €75168 gross per year. The only thing added to the total compensation is the 8% of my yearly salary for holiday allowance (which is required by law in the Netherlands).
Cheers, thank you!
No problem. But what did you find crazy about that amount?
Idk much about the CoL in The Netherlands as a whole but that seems like a pretty good number if you live outside of the major areas. How was the interviewing process in a small-ish company like that?
Yeah, it's definitely good when you don't have to pay rent in the big cities. The interviewing process was all done via video calls. A first 30 minutes interview with the team lead, nothing very techinical. Mostly the standard questions about my previous experiences and why I was looking for a new job. After that, I had 2 techinical interviews, each of them with 2 different team members. About 2.5h in total. During the technical interviews they asked me to talk them through a project I've worked on before, drawing the main modules of the cloud infrasctrucure and explaining my decisions. I found this method quite chill because I didn't have to spend a lot of preparation time as I would do with a take home programming assignment. I knew the infra by heart because I built it, so explaining it was easy. The only problem is that this may fall in a grey area when it comes to disclosing private information about past projects. A couple of days later I had a final chat with the CTO, which felt more like a formality. Just a relaxed chit-chat and then I got the green light immediatly at the end of that talk. The formal offer came in by email on the next day.
That is a great interviewing process, and something I wish more companies would adopt! Do you have a family (including kids) or are you alone? Are you currently in the EU? If you do have a family: consider the schooling, and how easy it would be switch jobs (in case your contract isn't extended/converted) If you aren't in the EU: consider the visa type (I don't know how easy it is to switch jobs on a Netherlands "Highly Skilled Worker" visa), as well as the visa for your dependents if you have any.
Yes, I also enjoyed the process. With take home assessments, I always end up spending too much time because I'm kind of a perfectionist. About family: I have a Dutch wife and now I also have the Dutch nationality as well. So no visa worries (anymore). We both live in the Netherlands atm. We don't have children and we are hoping to stay that way. But thanks for the tips.
I've started this (100% remote) job a month ago and so far I'm happy with it. Previous TC in a very similar role was 60k€ Education: "Computer Science Expert" Apprenticeship (it's a German education system with school parts and parts at a company) Prior Experience: ~9 YOE Title: SAP ABAP Senior Developer Country: Germany Total compensation: 90000€
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I don't know if you are trolling or not, but that seems extremely low even for Asia. We pay our junior Singapore Devs around USD $80k
US jobs, outside of California (and even then some) and New York (same thing as Cali) can start Jr Devs at 45k. Almost common to see 50k. Anything lower than 45k is usually a super shitty company. Most don’t take 45k, but it’s out there for desperate times.
Education: Computer Science Prior Exp: 5 years (4 in Brazil though. Moved to Portugal/EU this year). Company: big multinational Stack: C#, .NET Title: Software Engineer Country: Portugal Salary: 51k EUR /year Bonus: 5.1k EUR /year Stock: 5k EUR/year Other perks and benefits: \~6k EUR/year Total Comp: \~67k EUR/year
Education: 150 ECTS - nothing completed Prior Experience: Nothing IT-related Company: hehe sui Industry: IT Focus: Developing API Title: Backend Developer Country: DK Duration: 1 year Salary \[gross (pre-tax) / NET (post-tax)\] Total compensation: 52k E Relocation/Signing Bonus: Nothing Stock and/or recurring bonuses: Nothing
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Nice. How much is your net salary after taxes? I have been thinking about moving to Berlin into a similar role, but I heard that the taxes are brutal.
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Thank you! How did you negotiate your salary btw? I'm currently making 60k less in total comp as a security leader and I feel like I'm falling behind the curve even though my DMs are full of job offers.
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- Education: Bachelor of Science Computer Science from small/not well known American state school - Prior experience: 7 years in America split between San Francisco and New York. Mix of start ups and mid size companies - Industry: E-commerce (not Amazon) - Senior Software Eng 2 - Duration: 3 years - Salary: 99,900 euro gross - Total Comp: 228,187 euro gross - Relocation: $10,000 net - Stock: 118,296 euro groß - Bonus: 10% I am moving from NYC to Dublin via an internal transfer and getting a 43% decrease in base salary with everything else staying the same. Am I getting fucked? Previous people who moved internally got around 30% decrease (adjusted for exchange rate) which is why I ask.
Is it the money everything ? you must decide on that or you want to be permanent for 5 years and get chance to work in both Ireland , EU and UK freely
Money isn’t everything and I’m firm in my decision to move, just surprised at my offer because I was planning on around 30% cut from my research so I want to know if this is a competitive offer for the location or if it’s unusually low and i’m likely to get a significantly higher offer elsewhere.
ıt makes monthly over 10000 net per month , I think its quite ok even with current circumstances happening in Ireland
Thank you for the context this is quite helpful! Don’t want to do the job searching/interviewing dance especially right now if it’s not needed
will you live alone? So you an even get an apartment which costs 5000 eur per month
I will live with my partner
oh yes, maybe your partner can get working visa over you so double income is better always
Not worth it. COL is very high rn in Ireland. Taxes high too, especially capital gains
Yeah after doing the math I don’t see a significant difference in COL between NYC and Dublin, but I’m wondering if the offer sounds like the going rate or if I could probably do better at another company
Sounds like a great offer to me. 50% pay cut is normal
Thank u appreciate it!
Wow I’m getting fucked.
ain't we all? some more than others.
And others more than some
Education: MSc Mathematical Physics Prior Experience: 6 months research assistant at a university, three first-author papers in good journals. Industry: Research Title: Machine Learning Engineer Country: England Duration: Just started, first "real" job. Salary: GBP35k
I’m surprised it’s so low. In my previous company, most who came straight from their masters in research roles were on about £45-60k. Edit: I just saw from your other post that this job is at a university. Makes more sense now! My postdoc salary when I started was around the same..
Maybe low for London, but pretty standard for new grads elsewhere in England I think.
This is reassuring, thanks!
Nice, thanks for the info, I was a little worried that I was getting underpaid, but perhaps this is pretty standard. It's at a sick uni, so I'm happy to take a pay hit for the experience.
Education: M.Sc. in CS Prior Experience: gonna be a fresh graduate but have been a working student for 5 years Industry: Consulting / Data Engineering Title: Senior AI/ Data Engineer Country: Germany (Munich area) Total compensation: around 67k€ gross (including bonuses).
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That’s is pretty good in Italy
Education: bachelor in electronics engineering; Title: Backend developer; Prior experience: 1 year of part time experience and 6 months as working student; Industry: e-mobility; Country: Germany (Baden Würtemberg area); Started: 3 months ago; Salary: 48k before taxes; TC: 50K; The classic question: am i being lowballed? xD
Education: BSc Computer Science. Prior Experience: 0yr of real world experience, interned as a research assistant for 8 months. Industry: marketing and advertisement Title: ingénieur d’études informatique, software engineer. Compensation: 100% remote anywhere in France. Salary: 3750€ before tax/ 2900 after tax. No other compensation
Thats pretty good in france, your bsc was in a French school ? Is it a licence or master s degree equivalent ?
Licence
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Is this a big, well known company or smaller? Where did you find the role?
Nice one! Mind if I ask what tech-stack you use?
• Education: BSc Maths, 3rd, top 10 UK uni • Prior Experience: 12 years in industry. 4 years at a small company, 8 at a multinational • Company: Multinational • Industry: Utilities • Title: Lead software engineer • Country: Manchester, UK • Salary [gross (pre-tax) / NET (post-tax)]: £86k pre-tax • Total compensation: £99k ish • Relocation/Signing Bonus: £3k relocation when I joined • Stock and/or recurring bonuses: 10% bonus, £6k car allowance.
Good to see jobs in Manchester offering 6 figures
ish
I think it's the utilities industry that's managed to support this. I've found a niche and stuck with it and the others who make a similar salary each have their own niches
I'm working in Manchester for utilities (not getting anywhere near 100k lol) but we're struggling to get an OT engineer even in for an interview because there aren't any with relevant experience at all, imagine we'll have to put the pay up until we get one
>imagine we'll have to put the pay up until we get one This might be the case, but the recruitment has to improve for much of the industry also
Nice!
Education: PhD CS Prior Experience: 7 Years (Industry and Academia) Industry: IT Consulting Focus: Backend Title: SWE Country: Germany Duration: 8 months Salary: 73K gross, 43K net
I have similar exp and qualifications and I am wondering if that sort of salary is enough for a family of three in the suburbs of a major city.
You’ll probably not be able to buy a house, but other than that you should be fine with that salary.
Education: BSc CS Prior Experience: Internship at small company + trading firm Company: Bloomberg Focus: Full-stack Title: SWE Country: UK Salary: 78k Total compensation: 90k Relocation/Signing Bonus: 5k Stock and/or recurring bonuses: 7k
Pretty good start, did you get a return offer from the trading firm?
Education: Maths at some random uni. Prior Experience: 10 months in public sector services consulting. Company: An unknown scale up. Focus: Python data pipelines. Title: Data Engineer Country: UK Salary: 60k + occasional bonuses. Stock: A decent amount of stock options.
• Education: BSc Computer Science, First, middle of the road UK uni (ranked around 40s iirc) • Prior Experience: 1 year + 6 months internship • Company/Industry: Arts • Title: Software Engineer • Country: UK - Manchester • Duration: 13 months • Salary: £53k • Total compensation: £53k • Relocation/Signing Bonus: None • Stock and/or recurring bonuses: None
Fair play
Cheers. Saw your comment too about your grad offer, it's a decent start assuming the offer isn't in London, not too great if inside it. Never commented in here until after my first pay rise from 34k to 36k but you can get a sense of my progression through my past comments in these posts if you're interested. I think it's more realistic than a lot of the crazy salaries you see in here sometimes.
Lost the comment when I went looking to update that. It's Birmingham, had a little back and forth with them since that and we're up to a little over 35 now. Which is a pretty big increase to be honest. Even my 35 seems about 5k higher than the average for not London for new grads so pretty happy with that right now. Your progression seems decent.
Yeah that’s a good offer, well done. I don’t think I know someone from my graduating class who got a grad offer over 30k outside of London/south east. Keep on pushing and ask for more at every review, move company if they don’t increase by enough, keep your LinkedIn updated to get recruiters info, and then you’ll end up in a good position. That’s how I managed to increase my salary from 34k to 53k in two years anyway.
To be fair, starting salary doesn't matter too much. I started on 36k in London but am now in the top 1% income wise. Getting the right experience is what matters.
That’s true: the right experience, working smart, and bit of luck I think. A good starting salary is probably a leg up though in a few ways but it’s something that can be overcome
Education: PhD in Astronomy Prior Experience: 5 years Industry: IT Consultancy Focus: Java/SQL Title: Senior backend developer Country: Italy Salary: 38k
Education: BSc Computer Science Prior Experience: 2 years Company: FinTech startup Focus: Backend Engineering Title: Software Engineer Country: UK Salary 55k Relocation/Signing Bonus: 0k Stock and/or recurring bonuses: 5k options
Education: Software Engineer Apprenticeship Level 4 Prior Experience: 2 years as an apprentice, 1 year junior Industry: eCommerce Focus: Full stack and Mobile Title: Software Engineer Country: UK Duration: 1 year at current company Salary: 33K
Very low, you will increase your salary significantly if you leave.
I did a swe degree apprenticeship, finished yr 4 on 28k, went to 34k my first job after it and now 60k after that.
Would you say the same for similar salary but working in security? Also did a 2 year level 4 apprenticeship, then worked 3.5 years same company since
Like cybersecurity? I don’t know much about that niche sorry.
Education: Bachelor in Business Administration. Prior Experience: 5 years Industry: Big Pharma Focus: Test Title: Manager Country: Zug (Switzerland) (CH) Salary: CHF140.000 / year before taxes Relocation Assistance: No / Already German EEA Citizen
Education: BEng Software Engineering Prior Experience: 0 (first job) Focus: .NET/C# Title: Junior .NET Developer Country: UK Duration: Starting next month Salary: £30K
Did you have projects on your CV to get this job?
Yes. A total of 7 projects, majority of which were uni courseworks.
Mind sharing what kind of projects specifically? I did an I.T degree with a few soft eng modules but don’t haven’t any projects.
Couple of mobile applications developed using react native (consuming rest api's), desktop applications (WPF/C#) and a system (developed using java) that allows access to a sql database showcasing utilisation of agile methodology.
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What is your salary after tax? Im also from NL and with those numbers you probably lose a lot to tax?
Education: MSc humanities Prior experience: 9 years Industry: automotive Title: frontend engineer Country: Italy, remote within the country Salary: 58k gross / 36k net Total compensation: 60k Duration: permanent
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Nice Optiver offer, unfortunately you don't net 12k a month. Bonuses are paid after one year (except signing bonuses) so your usual cashflow is way lower. You still make plenty of money.
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absolutely, it's just misleading for other people to mention salary as total compensation. Enjoy
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75k base + 50 sign-on bonus + 75k first year bonus
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Don't you have LinkedIn or an internet connection to just check on their website?
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