I feel like there's a huge disconnect between salaries, job titles, and years of experience. 6/7 years experience and you're eligible for a staff software developer position at $500K a year? I've got 15 and still on 5 figures / year. In Euros, sure, but there's a huge disconnect there.
I find it weird that these companies don't have more offices in Europe, given they can easily out-compete any local companies on salary.
A great, detailed explanation of what you are seeing: https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-sala... (and the other two parts of the series)
The most important point is that your compensation is far more sensitive to getting onto the next curve up than it is tied to your experience or your work at your current company.
This is why so many people say "Grind Leetcode, get into FAANG" as the goal in software engineering, because (at least until recently) being in FAANG even as a junior SWE pretty much guaranteed you were in the second or third curve, and once you were accepted into that curve you would generally find jobs in that same curve. With the way the software engineering job market has changed, I'm not sure that's true any more, but as recently as 2023 it was the rule of thumb.
Even in the states the average is only 133k.
https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...
A lot of people are making 80k in some small city. Lots are making 300k in NYC.
Someone will always do better, some worse
Do you work in a tech company or non-tech company?
I have a related question and answer in the FAQ page and am attaching it here:
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3. What does “best paying” mean?
Different types of company pay software engineer at different bands. The best paying companies are usually tech companies, where tech is the core competency of the business and software engineers are first class citizens who play a key role in building the core products, e.g. FAANG, Dropbox, Pinterest, etc. These companies pay top of market to attract top talents and build high quality software.
This differs from non-tech companies whose core competencies aren’t necessary tech but other areas. For example, a newspaper company like NY Times values editorial content over software, and an information provider like WebMD values medical expertise more.
Tech companies pay 2-3x more than non-tech companies for similar roles, and they are the focus of the RemoteSWE.fyi listing.
To learn more about compensation differences across the industry, Gergely Orosz’s Trimodal Nature of Tech Compensation is a great resource.
6/7 years for staff (at a FAANG) is exceptional, I have personally never seen it. From what I have seen staff eng tend to be around 10 years of experience at the low end.
> have more offices in Europe
This has been hashed a million times:
1. Time zones 2. Lack of candidates building FAANG scale systems 3. Employment laws are hostile to employers
That being said, I have seen a lot of recruitment in Poland lately. It may not be glamorous though as people in Poland are expected to work with some amount of overlap with US time zones, so you are going to have to be working until 9pm most days.
Switzerland also has some high comp, and from FAANGs
European countries that reduce some exposure to the Eurozone and have values more similar to American ones, attract American companies
Software engineering has trimodal compensation curves
Going between the curves isn’t tied to experience at all, but within the curves it moderately is. You should learn the field you are in if you want different results.
“Get paid, not played“