The salaries are based on self-reported data from software engineers on https://www.levels.fyi/. While not official, they provide a useful insight on earnings and it might give an interesting perspective.
Visualization with [https://app.datawrapper.de/](https://app.datawrapper.de/) and some own Python scripting.
Shouldn’t the darker parts of these types of graphs represent the “strong” side? For a moment I thought Turkey had the highest salary 🙂
Me: living in Poland, earning like in Iceland (before tax). Taxes: 12% + $420 for ZUS. Just a single full-time, fully-remote job, good WLB, private medical insurance. Almost 12 years of SWE experience. Not FAANG, never been in one.
Life is good. But I feel like my income could be even more if I spend more time interviewing / marketing myself. I could never market myself properly. Because of this, I decided to start a pet project that I might be able to monetize and then maybe grow an entire business out of it. Working two jobs is unsustainable.
The salaries on display are terrifying to me. If you have a roof over the head and access to basic meals then 20-30k euro doesn’t look bad but if you have to pay for it then I have no idea how people can sustain on this. Are engineers downshifting much? Coding from literal caves? I’d actually appreciate this living style, we all started humble. But not when you’re in mid 30s, with some health problems from sitting too much.
As an immigrant, I was terrified how much more money you could spend on rental in Warsaw vs Moscow. Previously I had a $400/mo 52m2 apartment. Here it’s like $1500/mo for 60m2, not counting utilities. Expensive neighbourhood for sure but man, still 30-40 minutes on metro to get to the center. For this money you could rent out a 4-room (80m2+) walking distance to metro, 5 minute to center of the city in Moscow.
I’m still testing out the job safety aspect of it but the most important metric to me is how much money I can save per month of employment to cover for unemployment. Back when I lived in Khimki it was 1 month of work = savings for 3 months of unemployment. Here it’s like this: 1 month of work = 1/3 months of unemployment. That’s why I’m scared. I’m entering the 2025 and I managed to save for just over 2-3 months of unemployment since 2023. I see that quite a few people in the company doing some side-projects though.
On YT there are videos of people claiming you can survive for just a bit over $1000 a month in Warsaw. But I guess very poor standards of living: literally hand to mouth. With my skills and knowledge, I don’t feel like downshifting. I feel like creating opportunities for people and advancing Polish economy. I’m really thankful that I was given a chance to immigrate here on PBH visa and I don’t want to be a low-paid, unskilled worker. I’d like to work better and spend more here. It feels like a good country to start your life over, with decent politics and taxes for entrepreneurs. My other option was to stay with a risk to end up on a battlefront. And I’d rather improve other country economy.
One last thing, it might feel like I’m complaining. If my data is correct, I’m in top 1-5% earners across even Warsaw, so I have nothing to worry about, right? It feels like so, but math and ability to save money says otherwise. Even if we move to low-cost city it wouldn’t really solve the money problem. It would take 5-10 years before I could even afford mortgage: at least 30-40% down payment and 12-18 months of financial cushion, and then I’d be looking at 20-30 years of working. This doesn’t feel good at all. Just basic roof over your head costs you 20-30 years of mortgage. That’s ridiculous. That’s messed up.
Switzerland has higher pay AND lower taxes? Damn….
Answer: not much compared to how much they make in the US
Cool to see this, and great work compiling the data. We created an interactive version of this heatmap on our site too over here: https://levels.fyi/heatmap/europe/
Lmao where the fuck are you finding Engineer jobs averaging 100k in the UK? You’ll be very lucky to land one at 50k even with 10 years experience and in London.
If u ever wondered why’s the European tech sector a joke compared to the US or China, this is why.
This is probably the first time I’ve looked closely at a map of Europe. Why Norway, Sweden and Finland look like a dick
Id be really interested in seeing that heatmap for a range of other industries too, I’d guess Irish legal or trade salaries are no better than EU average, which highlights the skew caused by us multinationals
Seems very high for the Netherlands. Making more than 100k is rare here, so no way almost 90k is the average or median here.
I’d guess it’s about 60-80k.
Interesting data but not “beautiful” as I’d expect in this sub.
Not really beautiful. There’s so many pages and nothing is easy to digest.
16 comments
The salaries are based on self-reported data from software engineers on https://www.levels.fyi/. While not official, they provide a useful insight on earnings and it might give an interesting perspective.
Visualization with [https://app.datawrapper.de/](https://app.datawrapper.de/) and some own Python scripting.
Shouldn’t the darker parts of these types of graphs represent the “strong” side? For a moment I thought Turkey had the highest salary 🙂
Me: living in Poland, earning like in Iceland (before tax). Taxes: 12% + $420 for ZUS. Just a single full-time, fully-remote job, good WLB, private medical insurance. Almost 12 years of SWE experience. Not FAANG, never been in one.
Life is good. But I feel like my income could be even more if I spend more time interviewing / marketing myself. I could never market myself properly. Because of this, I decided to start a pet project that I might be able to monetize and then maybe grow an entire business out of it. Working two jobs is unsustainable.
The salaries on display are terrifying to me. If you have a roof over the head and access to basic meals then 20-30k euro doesn’t look bad but if you have to pay for it then I have no idea how people can sustain on this. Are engineers downshifting much? Coding from literal caves? I’d actually appreciate this living style, we all started humble. But not when you’re in mid 30s, with some health problems from sitting too much.
As an immigrant, I was terrified how much more money you could spend on rental in Warsaw vs Moscow. Previously I had a $400/mo 52m2 apartment. Here it’s like $1500/mo for 60m2, not counting utilities. Expensive neighbourhood for sure but man, still 30-40 minutes on metro to get to the center. For this money you could rent out a 4-room (80m2+) walking distance to metro, 5 minute to center of the city in Moscow.
I’m still testing out the job safety aspect of it but the most important metric to me is how much money I can save per month of employment to cover for unemployment. Back when I lived in Khimki it was 1 month of work = savings for 3 months of unemployment. Here it’s like this: 1 month of work = 1/3 months of unemployment. That’s why I’m scared. I’m entering the 2025 and I managed to save for just over 2-3 months of unemployment since 2023. I see that quite a few people in the company doing some side-projects though.
On YT there are videos of people claiming you can survive for just a bit over $1000 a month in Warsaw. But I guess very poor standards of living: literally hand to mouth. With my skills and knowledge, I don’t feel like downshifting. I feel like creating opportunities for people and advancing Polish economy. I’m really thankful that I was given a chance to immigrate here on PBH visa and I don’t want to be a low-paid, unskilled worker. I’d like to work better and spend more here. It feels like a good country to start your life over, with decent politics and taxes for entrepreneurs. My other option was to stay with a risk to end up on a battlefront. And I’d rather improve other country economy.
One last thing, it might feel like I’m complaining. If my data is correct, I’m in top 1-5% earners across even Warsaw, so I have nothing to worry about, right? It feels like so, but math and ability to save money says otherwise. Even if we move to low-cost city it wouldn’t really solve the money problem. It would take 5-10 years before I could even afford mortgage: at least 30-40% down payment and 12-18 months of financial cushion, and then I’d be looking at 20-30 years of working. This doesn’t feel good at all. Just basic roof over your head costs you 20-30 years of mortgage. That’s ridiculous. That’s messed up.
Switzerland has higher pay AND lower taxes? Damn….
Answer: not much compared to how much they make in the US
Cool to see this, and great work compiling the data. We created an interactive version of this heatmap on our site too over here: https://levels.fyi/heatmap/europe/
We also recently released a bubble plot version in case it’s interesting for finding the city level hotspots: https://levels.fyi/bubble-plot/europe/
Lmao where the fuck are you finding Engineer jobs averaging 100k in the UK? You’ll be very lucky to land one at 50k even with 10 years experience and in London.
If u ever wondered why’s the European tech sector a joke compared to the US or China, this is why.
This is probably the first time I’ve looked closely at a map of Europe. Why Norway, Sweden and Finland look like a dick
the obligatory [https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/trimodal-nature-of-tech-compensation?ref=blog.pragmaticengineer.com](https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/trimodal-nature-of-tech-compensation?ref=blog.pragmaticengineer.com) and [https://techpays.com/](https://techpays.com/)
Thought Sweden would be higher in the ranks
That median seems high for France
Id be really interested in seeing that heatmap for a range of other industries too, I’d guess Irish legal or trade salaries are no better than EU average, which highlights the skew caused by us multinationals
Seems very high for the Netherlands. Making more than 100k is rare here, so no way almost 90k is the average or median here.
I’d guess it’s about 60-80k.
Interesting data but not “beautiful” as I’d expect in this sub.
Not really beautiful. There’s so many pages and nothing is easy to digest.
Comments are closed.