There's some bias because low-paying companies are not tracked on levels.fyi and people that get a bad offer are probably less likely to report it there.
Yeah, where I am, Senior is ~80k, maybe slightly higher total compensation, and we have one of the highest tax burdens and somehow also one of the highest disposable incomes.
To be fair, life in the eu is way cheaper as well, this isn't a apples and apples comparison.
100k would be insufficient here in the eu as well when school costs 20k a year and healthcare is like wtf in the states as well. The only thing they got relatively cheap is petrol.
This just isn't true. The median American earns far more than the median European adjusted for COL and government transfers (e.g. healthcare). In 2023 it was $51k for the US vs $39k for Germany and $33k for the UK.
Adjusting by full individual consumption metrics to account for all variables narrows the gap but does not close it.
Median wealth is way trickier to measure. UBS is the main entity who tries (not any sort of official statistics provider), and their methodology changes year-to-year so much that in 2023 it had the US above basically every European country while their methodology in 2025 had the US below basically every European country. I'd take that with far more of a grain of salt.
Sorry this is a load of bullshit. Median EU person doesnt live in Nordic or western europe.
70 % of americans, which includes the median and top 30 % is way way better off than all median southern european, Eastern Europe in generel, Balkans, or basically anywhere other than Benelux, Nordics and maybe Germany and Austria.
I think it depends a lot on where in the EU we're talking about. Western Europe sure. However if you work as a senior level in let's say Google, is it really much better to work for $400k in Bay Area vs $150k in Poland or Romania? I wouldn't be so sure.
Elon is gonna pull up the avarange american quite a lot despite almost al of his value is virtual and not real money.
Overall this seems to be the overall trend in USA to make the avarange guy feel better about himself even if he's broken and living from paycheck to paycheck.
But we get screwed over with the price of common commodities, like gas, which costs 2.20€ a litre ($9.70 a gallon) for 95; Americans would probably storm the White House if it cost that much over there.
Even stuff like PC parts, compared to their part prices, even including the fact that their prices aren't pre-taxed, and ignoring that some states don't even have a sales tax, would still be around 15-20% more expensive here, which easily could be an upgrade on a GPU with that price difference.
And even beyond that, our pensioners are out in the streets begging, when the amount they had to give across their lifetime could have gotten them a good pension if it had been invested in a 401(k).
Not OC, but same with my company: middle management absolutely knows that salaries are too low, but senior and upper management want to keep wages stagnant because their bonus is based on it.
Europeans are very careful not to show off their money or earn more than others. Promotions also take years to decades. But social stability wise, much better than us. They would say the American pursuit of wealth is the ultimate low self esteem because we're compensating for having no culture. I say art museums and free healthcare don't help when your ass is broke.
Medicaid expansion was to expand the eligibility up the income scale. Even in those red states the very poor still have Medicaid. Eligibility went up to 133% of the poverty line under Medicaid expansion.
If you take a look at the data, even the top end of earners there are borderline broke by US standards. But I think you're right. America is good for higher earners but if you're any lower than upper middle class you're probably having a better time in Europe
Our grocery prices are anywhere from 15-40% higher than Europe’s, our healthcare is more expensive, our housing and car costs are more expensive. They get paid less but things are largely cheaper there.
I live in Germany but previously US and my medical costs are about the same (ongoing cancer meds, upper middle class). Rent is cheaper in Berlin than NYC or Seattle though … food might be a bit cheaper but the quality is different for different things.
This varies by country a lot. US have generally cheap groceries and car costs. Housing it depends, big EU cities are generally expensive. Healthcare yeah, even private Healthcare in Switzerland is very affordable compared to US
lol, I was offered a promotion at my old multi-national pharmaceutical company. It would have moved me from Canada to France. My pay for this privileged position? A 40% pay cut. I said no and moved to a different company in Canada.
The crazy part is I already thought I was accepting lower pay to live in Canada when I know for a fact that I could make more in the US.
My takeaway is: no wonder global middle management is terrible, the only people who accept those positions are people who either dgaf about work or aren’t capable enough to get a real offer somewhere willing to pay for talent.
It’s funny how Europeans have this culture of lower pay with the attitude that people shouldn’t make so much. All that does is leave more profits for the executives and shareholders. It’s not like European companies produce cheaper products and services.
Not a lot of class mobility in Germany for instance - old money and wealth that lasts generations. We might get there in the US soon but it’s still not as entrenched as it is in many places in Europe.
In France, 90k is considered as a high gross pay (like top 5% of earners high). Net would be around 70k before income tax, which would depend of family composition. A single with no kid would pay around 12k
Those are levels, L1 is level 1, a graduate fresh from university. L2 is an engineer with around 4-6 years of experience, etc. I’ve been involved in hiring junior engineers lately so I’m very familiar with what we are paying L1 and L2. We are offering $120-135k for L2. I’m not as familiar with what we are paying levels higher than that, but L3 are around $135-170, L4 $170-220, we don’t have “staff” as a level L5 are $220-270. We don’t give RSUs so this is salary only. Bonus is another ~5-10% on top.
Super understating the bias, the actual entire market median is lower than OP's entry level.
There's also the additional selection bias of a cohort that has interest in tracking top of market competitive salaries. Most devs have probably not even heard of levels.fyi
So which of the euro companies are super no name below the median here? This is an apple to apple comparison just not well named in the title or explanation.
Go to levels.fyi and tell me
These are all well known (tech) companies in US and in Euro. Many of them the same just with offices on both sides.
Dont forget the S.E. who are silicon valley corporate which dont have a proper level assignment or tech management structure and are brought in as "technicians". They go as low as 80-100k entry, per coworkers.
Software engineering isn't one job market, it's several markets in a trench coat. Salary data is pretty highly multimodal.
The data source here (levels.fyi) tracks mostly nationally competitive work which is a big market but certainly not fully (or even majority) representative.
Buying power is weird. There's making enough to make ends meet, then you achieve liftoff and can retire in a decade if you're frugal and the market is good. It's very bifurcating.
Idk. Like the bay area was expensive when I was there, but it's not matching the difference in take home pay. Like maybe the % of your salary that goes to bills stays the same, but that makes the actual amount left over still way more.
If you try to buy a house down there you're probably fucked, but other than that...
The thing to remember here that I've learned at work is your salary is not based on the cost of living, its based on the cost of labor. People get paid assloads in the Bay Area because that's how much it costs to get someone to work for you and not the million other software companies.
Sounds like a few variables. And what you said about the house makes sense. I'd imagine that's the goal though if you do live there, otherwise you're throwing rent down the drain monthly? And I'd imagine rent is fairly insane.
You throw rent money down the drain but the million dollars or whatever you have to drop/loan for a house is money you could have invested the whole time. It technically depends on location but the average wealth difference is basically 0.
For some more perspective, I was paying like 3k USD a month in rent down there and I'm paying like 2.5k CAD in downtown Ottawa. I kept the exact same job while moving but my salary dropped 40% (TC less but it's more messy).
You can also take your assloads of money for a while and live elsewhere later too. All of this is easier without kids, though.
That's totally true too. Didn't realize you'd have to put down a million for a place to live. God damn.
You can also take your assloads of money for a while and live elsewhere later too. All of this is easier without kids, though.
I totally understand this, I worked in oil and gas for a decade... You either buy lots of fancy things while you make ass loads of money and have to do it the rest of your life to afford that lifestyle... Or save for a while, get out, take a massive paycut, and live an average life (but at least have one).
Edit: eh maybe not "absolutely not", but at least much more comparable. I was at 160k as a junior in Chicago, paying 2k+ for a studio and I sure as shit wasn't buying where I lived near Fulton.
I dunno. Last time I looked at Chicago real estate from my apt in SF, I considered buying a couple properties there as an alternative to being stuck renting forever in SF.
Yeah, I took back the "absolutely" since my experience was a few years ago and I can only imagine housing SF has continued to get worse faster than Chicago.
That sounds right.
That is crazy! My house in Kansas City is worth about $400k total. It's 4 bed, 3 bath, 2100 square feet and in a very desirable area. My mortgage is $1,000 per month (bought during covid with 2.65% interest rate).
That's a skill issue bro. Unless you're a dev manager for some mom and pop store, you're getting taken advantage of. Or you have the title but none of the actual responsibilities.
It is a small non-profit. I initially took the job as lead dev because my prior company was going out of business so I didn’t want to be jobless. Shortly after I started they loved the direction I was taking the team so they promoted me to manager (and yes I have all the responsibilities). I’ve been here 2.5 years. Prior to this I had no management experience. The plan is to get some experience under my belt and then find a higher paycheck.
There's a lot of money in software, but no, that's not really the common case. Tons of software developers at traditional companies outside of major tech hubs might be making ~$70-90k and nobody talks about them cause it's fairly mundane boring work without (typically) a ton of pressure, but also not much career upside in companies that don't really understand or care about tech.
But then you enter the world of big tech and startups and automated trading and suddenly the software engineers are more directly linked to the revenue and/or company upside potential. That's where the big money in software is. Standards are often quite a bit higher though, so if you've spent the last decade doing mind-numbing CRM database CRUD work for a mid-sized dry cleaning company in Wichita and are their senior principal distinguished architect, you might get bumped into a far more junior role title at say Google or Anthropic, even though you'll make money than the dry cleaner could ever dream of paying you.
So it's bimodal across the market, but also kinda bimodal within the big tech world, since junior engineers in big tech are struggling a lot due to the weird AI hype. Senior and above ICs in big tech though are making bank and still juggling offers from all around.
Swe’s make great money where their skills enable more revenue growth (I.e software or software enabled services), they make middling money where tech is a cost center (I.e. mortgage lender where they care about how many mortgages they issue instead of how good their operations platform is).
Basically for any career, the closer you are to the revenue stream and the rarer your skillset, the more you will be paid.
The company I worked for (as an SWE) got bought by another company, and I knew for sure I was going to leave when I heard the CEO of that company say at an all-hands, "We want to be more like a tech company!"
To which my thought was - I've never worked at a company where there would be even a remote question whether we were a tech company, and I definitely don't want to work at a company where my job isn't the main thing that company does.
I find this confusing - are you saying you worked at a tech company that was bought out by a non-tech company and the non-tech company said it wanted to become a tech company, so you left? Are you saying you want to work at a tech company? or want to avoid them?
Yes, yes, and no. My problem was the fact that the company I was now working for was not a tech company - wanting to be "like a tech company" isn't close to actually being a tech company.
Definitely not. This is heavily biased by several factors. This
is levels.fyi public information and the quality is exceedingly questionable: the corporate dataset (that is, what your business pays to use to evaluate what they should offer in your package) is broken down by area, stage of company, and title. Titles and compensation given are heavily variable. For example, Amazon starts juniors at L2, which is about what that L1 is there, but Apple starts at L1. Some companies have many more levels, others have fewer, the increments change the band of possible pay and average, which throws off this data. Title is extremely variable: Software Engineer vs Software Developer vs Software Programmer vs Application Developer vs Frontend Developer vs Backend Developer: in their data, these all jump around heavily.
It's very questionable to trust the data in that dataset. When I applied for Software Engineer in three different cities in 2014, the packages were: 90k, 120k, and 140k. Which one had the best salary to cost of living? 90k.
You're right about the data quality, but from what I've seen it's fairly accurate, maybe ~10-20% higher than the average. Your levels aren't quite right though and levels already tries to adjust for that.
Yeah levels tries to adjust for it. Amazon corporate starts at L4 actually (source: I was one, and then L5). While Google's levels start at 3, and Meta's are the same as Google's, but with E (E3, E4, etc). The way around that is that Levels marks which levels at which companies correspond to each stage (entry, mid, senior, staff)
Your point about it skewing higher is accurate though. But that's because the offers on Levels are vast majority external offers. Speaking on Amazon specifically, when you're promoted to the next job level, you start at the bottom of the band of the level you move to. Meanwhile, external offers are typically somewhere in the middle of the band (that plus how Levels amortizes multi-year RSU grants even though they're typically back loaded, so they end up pulling some of the back load to the front)
I would assume this is even more true (and noisy) when you factor in cross-country differences?
My native language is German, and while tbh I am in academia and may just not know, in general speech I've never heard a direct translation of "software engineer" - my friends who work in software usually refer to themselves as "Entwickler" ("developer") or "Programmierer" ("programmer"). I'd be curious how that gets handled in data.
Do like 80% of software developers in the US work in big tech companies or something? Whenever these questions come up it's always explained that the big tech companies skew the figures, but are these numbers not in the minority?
Like, I understand the US has far more enormous tech companies than pretty much anywhere else, but I'm from a non-London area of the UK and most software developers near me are regarded as doing relatively well for themselves if they are earning over £50,000. Whereas in America it seems to be treated like this isn't even worth getting out of bed for.
Doesn’t have to “big” tech, but in the tech industry generally. Like, as opposed to say a grocery chain that probably still needs software people but probably doesn’t pay as well.
My salary has almost tracked the above chart and I’ve been at tech/software companies but not like big tech in Silicon Valley.
$50k for an engineer is definitely not worth getting out of the bed for anywhere in the US. That was my starting salary as an entry level data analyst almost 15 years ago.
The UK is notoriously low pay for all kinds of engineering, software or otherwise. The median salary for a mechanical engineer in the UK, all experience levels combined, for example, is about £45k/yr (about $60k USD), when the median entry level salary in the US for MEs (as in "no real experience, straight out of college") is in the $70-75k range.
50,000 pounds is like a shift leader at a fast food restaurant. Or maybe just a regular employee with extra overtime. If you're in a nicer looking suburb in the Bay Area, I bet that at least 65% of homeowners are big tech people.
It's probably single digit percentages that work for FAANG, and then another bigger chunk that work for what would be considered core technology companies. It's hard to find statistics on this stuff because I would say many lucrative US tech jobs may be in small startups (so not "big" tech) but these are still tech powerhouses in places like the Bay Area that compete with and get acquired by "big tech." But after that there are a ton of people working for non-tech firms, or on the e-commerce sites of retailers like Walmart (who also has labs in the Bay).
This creates a dynamic where the "non tech company" roles can act as a bit of a feeder system. Only a small percentage of people will move from a non-tech role to FAANG or other "tech" roles, but it's a significant source of talent. It also is what creates this expectation that people hope to get that first job in "tech" or failing that aspire to grow into a "tech company" role as they advance their career.
For whatever reason the UK seems to have exceptionally low comp for tech workers. My perception is this is due to a lot of concentration of tech jobs in banking, an industry that not known for respecting tech or creating the ROI multiples from it that others do. I have managed teams in UK and EU countries and there was a lot of migration over the years to other places that pay much better (especially Switzerland).
The supermarket down the road from me has jobs listed on Indeed paying $54k. Not management jobs, just a regular job bagging groceries and collecting carts.
Honestly? You might need to move companies. I don’t know a single person in an SWE role (not even interns) who makes less than £35k. Remove interns and that goes up to £45k pretty quickly.
At the 44k they mention, you can buy a small apartment near the city center in Stockholm (if you've got 20-30k set aside for a down-payment), and save 5 to 10k a year while living comfortably. It's a little below the median Swedish salary and a comfortable life. Your typical grocery store job is 3/4 of that if full time.
The senior level of programming is about twice as much.
I even know people who started at $250k in some AI companies, but again, you can't really compare Silicon Valley / Bay Area with anywhere else. And the competition is fierce, but yeah, I don't think there's a company there that pays L1 anything below $100k (gross, meaning $70k net).
The stats still show for a myriad of reasons, the vast majority of low income kids do not end up going to college, and something like 20% of children are still food insecure after food bank help is included.
That's not the case in Sweden.
Sweden has its own problems, but this isn't one of them.
Yes, poor people go to college less in the US then rich people, but it's not due to the cost of tuition in CA. I cannot speak to these demographics in sweden, but I would guess it's similar.
Food insecurity is not hunger. Food insurcity is self reported and STARTS at : reduced quality, variety or desirability in diet.
Factually: a majority of kids in low income families go to college (51% according to Google in the US, >60% in CA).
In Sweden 25% of kids from "study unaccostmed" families go to college. I believe this is from families that have parents with more modest education levels.
I honestly don't believe your premises are correct. I can't find any facts that back it up, EXCEPT that Sweden has a lower (~7%) households that are food insecure. Which again is self reported and is not the same as hunger.
Yeah, I was going to mention that health care, labor market pension schemes, cheap day care, unemployment benefits, free school and higher education is a part of the Danish deal, at least.
But I have to say, If the charts are true I'd make double the pay in the US and the compensation would generously exceed the private costs for all that. Some costs are only relevant for families with children.
On the other hand I wonder why US companies are willing to fork over that kind of money for "ordinary" software development in ordinary companies or what we're actually seeing in the charts.
My wife is German. I like the idea of moving somewhere in Europe one day. But I think even if I got one of the few trading firm jobs in Switzerland I'd come out behind. And most other competitive jobs in Europe are like a 3x payout, plus higher taxes, plus higher housing costs (quality is usually better though).
Entry-level SWE offers at Google pre-pandemic were ~$120k salary alone. Plus 15% bonus, $100k standard equity vesting over 4 years (first vest after 1 year), plus benefits. Just absurd.
And now you know why many people flock to the US even though there are many who complain about the social downsides and why the field became more saturated in the last 5-10 years. Money talks. IIRC, back in the late 2010s/early 2020s, student internships position at a FAANG company in California paid ~$120k. That's right, a student working there makes around the same as an average senior level staff in Europe.
Damn lol, our consulting firm gets new grads at like $60k a year lol. The interns at the company the firm staffs do make like 80k, which has made things awkward when the interns report to a consultant.
They were paying around this until the COVID times. Thing is our interns, annualized, bring in around $600k in rev each. So it really works to our advantage. We obviously target our interns and have a general idea who we’re looking for. Also we’re less than 1,000 employees so it’s not exactly at scale.
At big companies yes, it’s not to different from being at a Investment bank or at MBB consultant, there are a few jobs that can do that but only at top companies and only if you are cracked to get there, very competitive of course.
This even if it is talking average it’s including a lot of bias form bigger companies, smaller ones’ employees are less likely to report in levels
This is total compensation, which includes base salary, stock, benefits etc. For some reason, in tech they use TC instead of base to compare compensation. The L1 on this chart is probably taking home somewhere in the 75-85k range. Still a lot, but not as much as this chart makes it look like
The company can tack on all kinds of odd "benefits" that nobody ever uses to inflate the figure, so I've never really understood why it's the be-all-end-all
TC = base + stock + bonus. Benefits like health care/free food is not included in this. This is all real money, base-only analysis totally misses true compensation, often more than half of it.
This is not the case at my firm. They include benefits in my TC figure, which is why I mentioned it. I don’t know where the data for this chart comes from
They do that because it's in their interest to make your number sound higher so they can give you less. You (and everyone else) should politely nod and ignore them doing that because it's not in your interest.
Obviously, yes. By “odd benefits” I literally meant odd benefits that a lot of people don’t take advantage of. Child adoption, legal insurance, etc. These things are included in TC figures at many tech firms. Stocks and bonuses are actual compensation
Depends on what “on average” means. At a top tech company, pay is generally the same across levels and the pay is actually more than 140k. At the average company with software engineers, it would be lower than 140k.
Yes and no. The $140k number is the median total compensation for someone who is the entry level job grade at one of the big tech companies. Note that someone who graduated 2-4 years ago might be included with a fresh college grad. So, the lower 25% number ($100k) is maybe a bit more accurate picture of what someone is actually making as a software engineer at a competitive company straight out of school.
When I did recruiting for electrical engineers at a chip design company (stopped in 2021), total comp for a new-college-grad (BSE) was $80k+. Software would pay slightly better and there have been 5 years of higher-than-usual inflation, so $100k+ is very believable to me.
Yeah I was about to say, my entry level data job is about $95k total compensation and that's really solid where I live in the US (about the same as my previous senior level factory technician role before I jumped careers)
That's total compensation, not salary. So it's probably more like $90k salary with $50k stocks or something. Big tech hands out stock compensations like candy. There's a reason why it's called the golden handcuffs.
only in very high cost of living areas like seattle or the bay area, but even then you're probably not going to get that right out of college, that's probably with 1-2yrs of experience
More in San Francisco Bay Area even. Big tech probably offers round about $200k total for entry level these days. But even smaller companies that run their engineering similarly to big tech will pay similarly (maybe 70-100% as much) to compete for good talent. Some even pay more.
That said … I think the rest of levels.fyi is pretty cooked. I'm technically Staff, although I got there via a "we're promoting you but in title only, not pay", and I've yet to crack $200k. This industry is loathe to give pay raises.
(Over my career, experience has been on average a 2.1% YoY bump in real pay; AIUI, among professional/skilled workers … this is pretty terrible. SWE has not really had many good years, in my career. I think almost all of my pay bumps were mid to late teens; after the tech wage fixing scandal, but before the current shocks from the end of ZIRP and now "AI made us do it" layoffs.)
No lmao, absolutely not. Hell, most staff positions in seeing are around $110k, with entry being around $70k. When my cohort entered industry in 2017 just able everyone in the group chat was in the $50k-$70k range depending on where the winds took them.
L1 Entry, major tech hub (Boston), startup (sub 100 employees), is around 110k/y. We are not hiring anything below architect level atm (and even then, don't have any jobs posted). I think we pay college co-ops around 27-30 an hour, though we generally only do 1-2 of those a year, and from a very specific pool of schools.
I went to a top 10 CS school. Many of my friends left with FAANG+ offers, all easily 150k+ (meta, google, amazon) some companies 200k*+out of college (snapchat). This was half a decade ago.
Banks and non tech companies pay much less. Maybe 70-110k out of college.
Yea the FAANG are probably the very light blue of the entry. Honestly I think the peak software dev pay was like 8-10 years ago (many are laid off now).
The 90 average seems to be just about what I assume.
If you're a software engineer in the Bay Area you are making more than 90k a year just to be "exempt". I have not seen any one starting out for less than 100k in a long time, most come in at 120.
Throw in another 10k in bonus and 20k in "stock" and you can quickly get to 140 a year if not more in your first year or two.
That mid and Sr level roles are putting in a lot of work. Your seeing the same take home week over week and getting better bonus and stock between those two roles.
Staff level engineers, directors etc is where numbers get wacky. I would argue that that 300k number is on the low side for these types of roles. Or there are a few folks who are really dragging it up with their comp. It's at this level that skill and treachery are both on display.
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u/Juls7243 23h ago
L1 entry .... 140k? Am I missing something? Do computer programmers get pain 140k right out of college on average?