Slashdot Mirror
IT Salary Comparisons Worldwide
Bagpiper asks: "The combination of a recent /. comment, as well as my wife's desire to live overseas, started my pondering about what my pay (mid-Atlantic US software/firmware engineer w/ 9 yrs exp.) would compare to that of a similar job in another country? Several sources tell me what I'd be making in The Valley or Seattle, but none tell me what I'd make if I moved to Ireland, or to Germany, or to Taiwan (you get the idea)? A related question is what kind of standard of living would I expect in another country on the expected salary? (And just in case my current employers or headhunters see this, I'm not currently looking! I'm just curious."
and this from Johnath: ""The more I look at places like monster.com (and it's Canadian Counterpart) the more I see "Salary: TBD" or "Please submit salary expectations with your resume and cover letter" or other equally vague phrases. As someone in the last year or two of his university education, this gets a little disturbing since I can't really tell what my salary expectations are without some reference for comparison. Normally, I'd get that by looking at the job postings themselves, but of course, they've all taken to being painfully cryptic. So what I want to know is - what's a geek cost these days? What kind of money do Slashdotters make in the various Computing and IT related fields.
What are the broader ranges - do network guys/gals get paid more than code monkeys? How does the pay of the web design team compare to the network admin that keeps the site running (and if they're the same person, how much better is the pay?"
You can look for anything between $50 and $130 an hour. As a contractor you need to incorporate and then you are responsible for your own pay/taxes etc. Get legal advice on this.
Standard of living varies across Europe, as does facilities etc. London is an expensive place to live, Brussels is a good place for transient living (flats rented by the day, good restaurants etc) etc etc
A good place to look for work is www.jobserve.com
The downsides of contracting? You can be isolated from the main life of the company you work for, you have to deal with agents who are often the scum of the earth and you can't really take a sneaky sick day or holiday without suffering cash flow qualms.
This was considered 'good' by my friends & family - I'm 19 now (was 18 when I started), have next-to-no formal qualifications (a single A-Level in Computing), and my only work experience was being a system builder/tech guy for a small (4-person) computer shop.
(Incidentally, I was on just over 6k at the computer shop - I was getting raped big-time. My friends doing part-time shelf-stacking were getting more ph than I was. But I couldn't ask for any more because the shop wasn't doing too well, and in fact ended up closing down making me redundant. Anyway.)
Since that though, my job has changed a lot - I'm now 'Internet [DNS, Firewall, router etc] and E-mail [Exchange] Administrator and Tech Support", plus network maint, some netware and unix admin stuff, plus I get to flex my C muscles every now and then for a project.
I've got a feeling that I should be on more than 12k.
My employer has paid for me to do the MS Exchange MCP course, and I paid for the exam, and is currently paying for a BSc Computing evening course too, which kinda ties me down.
This is the 'lower end' of the scale, I think. As far as I can tell, my wage started off about right for my age & exp and the job type, but hasn't grown at the same rates.
I know people my age in other (skilled) careers that don't earn as much as me, though, so I can't be too badly off..
(ramble ramble. Not AC, but feel uneasy giving out salary details in a public forum..)
Salaries in the UK vary by region.
In the City typical rates are:
Graduate (fresh from college): £27k + package
3-5 years App Developer : £30 - £40k + package
5 years+ App Development/PM: £50 - £80k + package
5 years+ (Management - lose skills) : £60 - £150k + package
===============
Contract Rates:
===============
Network Analysts : £20 - £40 ph
Sybase DBA : £50 - £80 ph (£90 - £155k pa)
OO/C++/Java/CORBA + Business Knowledge £50 - £90 ph (£90 - £160k pa)
Web Dev : £20 - £80 ph (depending on experience).
VB/Delphi : £40 - £60 ph : (£75 - £115k pa)
Project Manager : £70 - £100 ph (£130 - £190k pa)
Use 1.56 as an exchange rate for US$
We're about to get stuffed by a wonderful piece of legislation called IR35, which disadvantages contractors (more tax to pay).
Cost of living in London:
2 bed flat (purchase) £100 - £200k (ok you can go more expensive if you want)
Equiv. £400 - £800 per month
Renting - expect approx £1000 per month for a nice flat.
Shopping Bill (for two) : £60 - £100 per week.
Eating out : £6 (MacDonalds) - £500. You can get a nice meal for two with good wine for about £60 - £100.
Travel : £65 per month for a zone 2 pass - if you go further out rent goes down (generally) proportionatly
And, some companies offer it in lieu of pay. You might want to think twice about that. I've been screwed 4 (yes, FOUR!) times already working for companies for stock options. By taking options as a replacement for pitiful pay, or in one case as entire pay, I've gotten screwed. I was paid almost 150K/year in Comp-U-Card stock. The problem was that I couldn't sell it before 750 days had past. In that time, they merged with another company and became Cendant. Before I could sell the stock, it went from $80+ per share down to almost $12 per share. I watched 85% of my pay for a 25 month period simply dissappear. So fellow slashdotters, pay attention to the minimum time you have to keep the stock you are offered. Often times, it's an eternity relative to how long the company has been around.
I've also been screwed on further stock sale-outs. If you read the fine-print, you'll notice that typically the employees will own at most 1-10% of a company. One company I worked for dump 8% of the company stock as a bonus to 5 executives. They sold their stock quickly, and my stock was suddenly worth less than half of what it was before. It's simple supply and demand. You own N shares out of M outstanding. If the company decides to create more M, then your N is worth less. (that' worth {space} less, not worthless).
I don't know if this goes without saying, but never take stock in a private company as payment unless you really trust the majority ownership. I've been screwed-out twice that way. There is no SEC and a set of laws to protect your ownership. In both cases, the majority owners voted to sell the company to themselves for $1. I was left with nothing, except lawsuits because the old company didn't pay all of thier outstanding bills.
Rather than trying to win the lottery with stock options, you might want to ask for something different, like health insurance or a dental or vision plan. From a college electrical engineering alumni meeting I attended, we had an anonymous survey passed around. All of us graduated from 1977-81 in EE. Of those, only about 30% were still in the engineering field (sad!). Of those that were, not a single one, who didn't work for the governement, had what they considered good health insurance.
In Montreal, right out from the university,
graduates start at $40K and above. I know a good
student that was offered $50K.
Taxes are high, but they are not 50%. If you
do $40K, you will probably keep $28K in your pockets. Lets not forget that the 50% tax
rate applies only on the extra dollar you earn
after a certain level (somewhere around $55K
$60K)
And Canadians do not go to the States because
of lower taxes. This is the biggest lies of all.
What you gain in taxes in the US, you lose it
in living cost. People go to the States because
the are paid in $US which is around 50%
worth more than $CDN. Also, they go south
because of the adventure. They want to
try something new.
Personnaly, I am considering a contract either
in Florida or Paris. Adventure has a big part
in my decision.
If it was only for taxes, I would be working
in Ottawa. But Montreal is too much fun to
leave for Ottawa, and many Montreal programers
have the same feeling. I never heard of anybody
moving because of taxes.
Regards,
Hans Deragon
Currently starting salaries in HK for a programmer are around US$16K to US$20K per year. However they go up fast. At 9 years of experience it's unlikely you will be working as a programmer, more likely you will be an SA or manager. If you're reasonably good you could be earning between US$50K to US$100K per year. The range is pretty large and depends on what kind of company and position you have. Small/Medium sized local companies pay at the low end, larger multinationals tend to pay at the higher end. Problem is the cost of living is real high. Forget about living on your own on the starting salary. Rent alone could cost between US$12K to US$25K per year, depending on location and size. And that is at the low- to middle of the market! If you think you're a Yuppie prepare to pay US$50K per year for rent for an upper-middle class area.
Mine cost me nothing, though I'd guess that she probably got somewhere in the neighborhood of $14,000 from the company I got placed at. Unfortunately the headhunter I dealt with has since retired. I got lucky with finding her however, I used to get a lot of calls from headhunters that annoyed me. She called me up and said 'so are you tired of working for *name of CEO* yet?' Instantly I knew that she had done enough research to understand why I'd want to leave.
I have two years of full-time experience. 1 1/2 as a SysAd, 1/2 as a software engineer. I work near Philly and currently make around $70K + stock options + education + good medical, etc. Of course the first job I got out of school paid less than I would've liked and was utterly horrible to work in, but it taught me a lot of the things to watch for in future employment. Now I'm exceedingly happy in my job, have enough variety in my job to keep it interesting and the pay, while not amazing, pays the bills nicely. I really suggest finding a GOOD headhunter. While it's hard to find a good one, I found one that I described what I liked about my last job, what I didn't, and she quickly found me a bevy of positions to choose from all of which were well-suited to my desires.
Here's a handy little perspective for you: I work for a univeristy (UW Madison to be precise - the biggest in the state and one of the Big 10 in the US) and I have 9 years of experience (1st job was to setup a bunch of SPARC1 and 2 boxes in 1990.) Since then I've worked for various university departments, small businesses, and large businesses (including fortune 500.)
Let me tell you: the universities don't compensate well at all. I get about $40K. Sad huh? For 9 years of experience?
Why in god's name would I work for anybody for that low rate? Well, money-wise, what you do is ofcourse, contract directly on the side. There I charge $63/hour. That works fine, but it takes the effort of having to find customers and manage your own business. The university though is the most chill work environment you could possibly have - access to equipment and knowledge like you wouldn't believe, and comes with an amazing benefits package that is topped by few private companies.
Thats not to say university enviroments don't have pressure. Let me assure you, when dealing with the technical details of moving a decent-sized mainframe database to a unix-based client-server environment, there's plenty of pressure. But thats the stuff we sysadmins and project managers love, eh?
I suppose you could find that type of work environment in smaller cutting-edge geek-shops where they know how to take care of us types... but those are in short supply here in the mid-west.
Time to move to Chicago. :)
Is it possible/easy for US citizens to get IT jobs in Canada? I think it would be a cool (no pun intended) place to live.
I recently visited a friend in Edmonton, who payed $450CDN/month for a nice apartment in downtown.
Hi,
:-)
How easy would it be for an American programmer (UNIX/Perl/C++/PHP) to get a visa for a job in a Latin American country?
I'd *really* like to live there a while to improve my Spanish. About any where in Central or South America or Mexico would be fine.
Of course, if you're down there and need someone, you can drop me a line... micah@myhome.net...
- A.P. (who makes enough, even as a student)
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Quite a lot of people are coming to Ireland from the UK to work at the moment. Salaries are slightly higher here, but tax cripples that down to a lower net income.
I think standard of living and quality of life
have to be looked at. Britain is a highly industrialised nation with a huge population.
Ireland is an extremely underpopulated country with lots of cheap land.
Many people come to Ireland to work outside of Dublin. They can buy land a build a house for half the price in the UK and have quite a high 'quality' of life.
But maybe it's only for the tree hugging hippie type.
-- hjw http://puzl.info/
Ditto for the Portland, OR area as well...
:)
It's easier to find an IT job around here paying $15/hr or better than it is to find a job at McDonalds....
But don't come up here, heh.. I'm too busy liquidating the IT sector myself to deal with any competition.
-Erik-
It all depends on where you live.
:)
For instance, a decent perl jockey here in Portland, OR, can make anywhere from $30-$60/hr (more often than not salary).
However, less than 100 miles away in Salem, OR, I was working as Tech Support making minimum wage (that ended quickly), and the sysadmin there (who is a contributer to both the kernel and gzip) was making $12/hr.
Moral of the story? He moved to SV, I moved to portland. The more demand for IT the higher the wage.
SO MOVE SOMEWHERE WITH A LOT OF PIPING AND ELECTRIC COMPANIES.
-Erik-
When I moved from NC to France (Paris) back in '95 I got about the same salary, low-40s. But the US was coming out of a slump and being a native english speaker helps in France.
I got a small raise when I moved from France to the Alps (Grenoble), but that was because they needed a liason to the US ASAP. But the dollar was stronger, so I was making less than $40k. Don't exchange rates suck?
I moved back to North Carolina at the start of the year, and nearly doubled my previous salary.
Not only is the software industry booming in the US, France has can't-fire laws, so companies are less likely to want to hire. They just outsource everything, so there is less pressure for salaries to go up.
In defense of France, the cash is lower, but there are a lot more perks. 5+ weeks of vacation, cheeper medical bills (at least for the routine stuff), nicer day care system, etc, etc. Don't let cash alone regulate your life.
If anyone is interested in France, starting (fresh out) salaries in the Alps last year were about 150kf ($30k). A few years of experience and you'll be upto 180-200kf ($38-40k). There are too many folks who want to work in the Alps. If you are interested in Paris, add 50% or so to those numbers. Then remember the cost of living too. Paris is expensive.
Avoid SSIIs (service companies & contract shops) as they want low ball salaries. I guess that's true everywhere.
It should be noted that a single person can expect to pay about 50% of his gross income in taxes and social security. Married couples can pool and split their income for taxation, non-working partners are covered by most social security services for free, and there is a choice of tax credits or direct support for children. Social security includes fairly good medical support, unemployment insurance, and a retirement income that may or may not be sufficient to live on in the future.
Salaries are for a fixed amount of time (35-40 hours per week, with 40 hours being more common in IT-related branches), more work is paid separatly.
Also included are about 28-30 days of paid vacation (plus a lot of religous and national holidays).
Stephan
VB/SQL/DBA in NY financial institution = $100K + bonuses.
And I'm quitting my job, so if anyone is interested...
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The first blank on your questionaire is GPA and major and you dropped out of school yourself to start this business? You've got to be kidding. Seriously though, this is probably the most important thing the article misses. Salaries really depend a lot of your GPA and education.
well its not as bad as Sweden - there you get hit badly by taxes and the Beers mega-expensive too :-(
Not so bad. I started at my company 8 years ago, in shipping & receiving, at roughly $11k/yr - it was a software company. I had dropped out of Art school due to lack of funds. I ressurected my old, forgotten love of computers from High School, and learned DOS and Netware, and graduated to testing hardware (we bundled some hardware with our products), and from there to Tech Support, where I got a raise up to $22k. Now I'm a senior Tech Support rep, and am making $65k, plus 401k, excellent health insurance, and other goodies, plus I have vested stock options worth in excess of a quarter million $ US. Probably worth half a million this time next year if current trends continue. Doesn't matter much to me, that's all icing on the cake.
Not bad for an art school dropout.
Though my company has been merged and squished and bought several times, and I ended up moving 2000 miles to keep my job (and those stock options), I'm still working for the same company, and definately not locked into a 5-7% raise structure. (though when I get increases, they're generally in the 2-5% range, the big increases have been from internal promotions).
I can't help but wonder what some of the coders are making at this company. I've actually spent some time trying to learn C on my own, but I've found that though I was great at self-paced learning in HS, I suck at it now, with family responsibilities competing for my time, so I'm finally going back to school, this time to get an engineering degree.
I don't know quite whom to thank for this life, but I gotta say, in retrospect, it's been great so far.
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
From a Yank who's been to England (one week training stint).
Housing:
The vast majority of US houses built in the 80's are like what you said, far better than their UK counterparts, for the money. But increasingly, new houses in the states are being built on much smaller plots of land. Even very, very large luxurious houses have these tiny tiny yards. Don't bother owning a large dog if you plan on buying a newer house. In California (at least around where I live), generally, older houses don't have basements, or screens on the windows (no bugs out here anyway). In Illinois though (where I came from) you're darn toonin' right you have screens on the windows. Bugs bugs bugs! And when there's no bugs, freezing rain.
Fuel:
You poor bastards. That's all I have to say.
Although, around London, I'd have to say you DO have a fabulous set of alternatives to driving. Best public transportation I've seen ANYWHERE, and I've been to MANY US cities, major and minor. Between the Great Western, and the Underground, you guys have it so nice. Back when I was in Illinois, they had trains and busses from the burbs into Chicago, but they were noisy, uncomfortable, and expensive as hell. Travelling by Great Western train in the London suburbs was luxurious, and pleasant. (what, I'm sure as hell not going to hire a car and hope I don't forget what side of the street to drive on - I nearly got killed several times as a pedestrian! Luckily, your works people are smart and painted "LOOK RIGHT" on the street by all pedestrian crossings - otherwise, I'd likely be dead now).
People:
No arguments there - but you can't make a blanket statement about US people. It varies widely by region. It's a big honkin country.
Computers:
You poor bastards!
Health service:
You poor bastards. Clinton almost had us in a similar mess. Thank goodness that didn't come to pass.
Other things -
Food: If you like food, England is NOT a nice place to live. Very little fruit is to be had, meat is often tough and fatty, and overcooked, although vegetables are often good quality. Lots of strange customary foods like blood pudding, and meat pies, etc. Luckily, American culture has somewhat infested the areas I was in, so there was some fallback to what I could eat.
Beauty:
I'll agree. England is stark-raving beautiful as a country. It's architecture, and countryside are second to none. It's music and culture are as rich as any in the world. But dentistry is obviously a hundred years behind the US. Not just an "Austin Powers" joke. It's true. BRUSH AND FLOSS DAILY!!!
But for the hottest chicks anywhere, listen to the Beach Boys song; you gotta come to California. The only problem is, they're a rare commodity in Northern California. SV guys should take weekend raids down to LA and import the hot chicks back to the Bay Area. They're wasted in Hollywood, where beauty can be bought cheaply.
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
A contract job in the Philippines actually sounds like fun. I might be looking into that in a few months.
Sorry but you're completely off base with those figures (mostly at the low end) - perhaps if you go right to a merchant bank in London you might hit the top of that scale here, but for the most part a graduate can expect around 14 up to 24 depending on location - the further north you get expect it to be lower (the UK's wonderful north/south divide is alive and well thanks to Maggie!).
Graduate salaries aside - a good IT worker here can expect to top out about 35-40k (according to the latest offerings in computer weekly - a trade mag) without going contracting. This is because the UK still is stuck in the 1970's with regard to who should get higher pay - management (big bosses can earn silly money here). On the contracting side of things it's much rosier. Expect low end to be around 25/h (although all contractor segments have been badly hit of late with a market slump prior to Y2K) and upper end can be anything really - I've seen/known people charging 100/hour or more for the right skills.
My advice: Go it alone, either contracting or your own business. IR35 has been killed for a while (do a net search to find out what that's about) and the contract market is looking up again. Also the Chancellor keeps announcing excellent measures for small businesses.
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
Try Scotland's central belt too. We don't have the beer (you have to like Malt Whiskey if you want a good local drink here) but I'd be willing to bet we come close in our wonderful rain factor. My brollie's never been out so much since moving.
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
On the subject of not needing air-con, yes, that's true - you don't need it. It does get hot though. We've just had terrible summers lately. Lest ye forget the summer of 1995 when temperatures in London soared to 40 degrees (and I was stuck in a bedsit in Acton with a window that didn't open).
I don't mind too much about not using my car (I get the train to work every day) - but really there's little valid alternative yet. Our trains are appalling and expensive. Our buses are better but badly maintained and not nice to travel on. Try another country to see what I mean.
And what I really take issue with is "you'll get emergency care quickly and free". Free yes. Quickly, no. Not unless you're bleeding to death. My last trip to the ER was a couple of months ago my wife woke up in agony with pain in her severe womb region. I took her to the ER. It took her 4 hours to be seen. For 2 of those hours we were the only people in the ER (this was now about 3am). There were no emergencies that night blocking us - we were simply waiting - and my wife's pain didn't pass all that time (it was an ovarian cyst, for what it's worth). She wasn't given any pain killers until 6am. Nice health service. I have many similar stories but they aren't exactly slashdot fodder.
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
Maybe it is time to leave the UK? Let's see.
Maybe, but i doubt it. Just get a good accountant. Most contractor accountants have already figured out the ways around the bill - I know mine has. Need a good accountant? I can recommend mine www.jonesandco.co.uk
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
Here's my perspective on the UK vs the US/Canada (my wife is Canadian and I know a lot of friends out in the US).
:)
:)
First thing is that salary is really irrelevant - you just can't compare dollars for pounds. I earn much more than some of the Canadian people I know, but they have more. Let's break that down:
Housing
The average house in the UK simply pales into comparison with our stateside friends. The problem here being LAND. We don't have much of it. Canadian houses I've seen (and US ones too) have much larger plots, have 3 levels (we don't have basements - at least not in new houses - only in houses > 75 years old), air conditioning, larger rooms, larger garages, and better facilities. UK houses are small, have very little land, and often you're lucky to get a garage. Air con is unheard of in a house. We don't have screens on our windows so expect to enjoy bugs in the summer. And expect to feel cramped - your house will probably be sandwiched on an estate with several hundred others, or in a terrace (OK, so that's not true for everyone, but you get the picture).
Fuel
Our govt doesn't like us driving. Current fuel tax is something like 85%. Yes, you read correctly. That makes petrol extortionately expensive compared to the US. And the price also varies vastly throughout the country (e.g. London: 66.9p per litre, A1 road outside of Edinburgh: 81.9p per litre). And there are plans to increase this price to discourage people from driving (eco friendly government - only they dont provide a valid alternative to driving).
People
People in London are miserable gits who don't speak to you unless they're drunk and asking for money. People in Yorkshire or Wales will speak to you whether you like it or not.
Seriously though - people here are friendly, but not outwardly friendly. What I mean by that is you shouldn't expect the "customer is always right" attitude you're used to in America. Oh no. Most definitely the salesperson is always right, and by god you'd better not trifle with them. Thankfully this is changing. Slowly. There is one good thing: Salespeople (except car salespeople, but that's another story) don't approach you unless you look approachable. I like this - especially as I have been acosted in Canada by a salesperson in a lingerie store (buying for my wife, not me!) - somewhere I'd rather just be discreet and leave as soon as possible!
Computers
This is the worst - and most likely to scare you off. It's got me thinking about leaving for the US or Canada...
We have no DSL yet (some trials perhaps). We have very little cable internet yet. High speed internet access is a myth here. Unless you live in Guildford apparently. A T1 is about 20k pounds per year. Even ISDN is extortionate. We pay by the minute for internet access - my bill is about 150 pounds per month.
Health service
Our health service is free (You pay a small percentage tax from your salary for it). And it SUCKS. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise - if they try to they've either never had a serious illness, or they don't know any better. I've got nothing good to say about the health service here - except that the people who work for it are angels - the quality of the service is not their fault, it's financial. Our NHS doctors work something like 80hrs/week (would you want someone that tired working on you?) and our nurses work longer. I could relay some horror stories about the NHS here but I'll not waste my time.
OK, now that I've scared you off, I'll say that England is beautiful. It's a stunning country with huge amounts of history and lovely people. For that alone it's worth living here. And the pay rate for IT contractors means you'll have a big house, a nice car, and be able to pay for private health care. You still won't get high speed internet access though
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
Your knowledge of security rules you out of most jobs in the UK, especially Universities, Research Labs, etc.
I -can- tell you that the figures for salaries covers the private sector. Public sector employees can expect 1/2 of that, if they're lucky. Also, the phenominal VAT that the oh-so-generous Conservative Government left England with eats your pay like nothing else.
(Translation for Americans: VAT is the UK version of sales tax. When I left England, it was at 17.5%.)
Oh, also, if you smoke, drink lots, or like to drive large cars, don't bother going to England. Tobacco, alchohol and petrol are taxed through the nose.
In other words, gross salary (other than being literally gross, in England) isn't everything you need to consider. There's the cost of living, too.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Nick (who can't wait for his mountaineering trip in France/Switzerland/Italy this summer.)
-- "It's a sad day for American capitalism when a man can't fly a midget on a kite over Central Park" - Jim Moran
I'm a Montrealer in exile in Mountain View (we could get a beer sometime!)
/., who, if they moved to Montreal, would find it practically impossible to register in an English school. The abolition of the parochial school boards doesn't change that.
:^)
When I lived on the Plateau (five years ago), it's true that $500 would get you good housing on the Plateau - $300 in Villeray and even less in ParkEx or NDG. (I won't speak of that awful place known as Cote-des-Neiges.) I just went back and found rents were much higher. $800 is a slightly high estimate. I found apts on Rachel between St Laurent and St Denis running in the $700-$900 range. On De Lorimier, it was a couple hundred cheaper. It seems times are good on the Plateau - rents are as high there as in Outremont.
Cheap housing is still to be found in NDG. Monkland Ave is apparently where poor artists live these days.
Only people who have attended an English school in Canada, or whose parents or siblings did, can register in English schools in Quebec. (That's not Bill 101 either - it's the same for French schools outside of Quebec. Turns out this silliness is actually in the constitution.) I intended that for the non-Canadians on
Personally, that doesn't bother me, I'd like to see my kids in French school - I used to date one of the teachers at the Ecole International. Chus ben et bel bilingue, moe'! But, I can see how it might be a turn off for Americans.
I have a couple more stock disbursements coming, and since company competes directly with Microsoft, I figure the anti-trust case has to do our stock some good. Once I see that cash, and pay off the rest of my debts, I'm going to circulate my CV in Montreal. I figure somebody must be hiring UNIX techs, and I'll take the lower pay. I miss the place too - I spent a week there with my fiancee in September and she fell in love with the place. She hasn't seen it in winter yet, but what's life without some surprises?
God, I could kill for a smoked meat sandwich with poutine and a brio. I guess it must be lunchtime.
You know MS Office? Can you write macros in VB? If so, you are now an experienced VB programmer. Written a web page? You are an experienced web engineer, with a background in cross-browser compliant development. Ever worked in an office with both UNIX and NT? You have experience in highly hetrogenous networked environments.
Your background isn't in help desks, it's in end-user assistance. SW/HW testing, advanced software technologies, ISP management (how many users? A few thousand maybe? That'll impress them.)
Use more buzzwords! Use more abbreviations! Remember, you're an engineer!! (I hear all you guys who actually got engineering degrees snickering in the background. So what? None of you are HR people.)
Operating Systems: MacOS v6-9, Solaris/SunOS 1.x-2.x, Windows3.1, 95 and NT.
Productivity systems: MS Office, Applix, CorelOffice (name some more - if you've never used them, go to a software store and play with the demos)
Hardware: Macintosh - 680x0 and PPC-based systems, PC's - 386-Pentium III, Sun SPARC and UltraSPARC. Various high-end computing platforms.
Networking systems: Server administration of: e-mail systems, AppleTalk, NetBIOS, TCP/IP, NFS, FTP and web servers...
Apply for jobs that you're not qualified for. Apply actively - posting your resume on Monster won't do it.
Don't push it too much, apply for jobs where you're pretty sure you can acquire the skills you need. Then, with a buzzword compliant resume to get you in the door, tell them at the interview that you're sure you learn quickly and expect to be on the ball in short order. Remember, it's their job to tell you you're not qualified, not yours.
It took me about a year, going through four jobs, to jump from $8/hr to about $40, and that's most of what I did. Now, at each job, I did actually learn the skills I set out to acquire there. In that year I learned to code and I learned UNIX. By the time I quit a job, I was always qualified for it.
My mother and brother live in Winnipeg, but I hate the place - okay, I'm biased. :^)
Vacation time in Silicon Valley: if you're a contractor (as many are) there is no paid vacation time. Any unpaid time you take off is by negociation between you and your employer. At my company, you get ten paid days off, and a free paid week between Christmas and New Years. Ten paid days is the standard here, plus the official holidays.
Saskatchewan, ewww! I don't think I could take Newfoundland either, although I gather you can buy a house for under $5000 there.
I came to the US the first time when I was 9. My father was in graduate school on a student visa. Three years later, he had a Master's and had finished classwork for his PhD when he got a job offer from a public college in New Jersey. We applied for green cards.
The first year, his university and the college agreed to call his employment part of his PhD training, so he could stay on his student visa and get paid. Legally, they could only do that for a year. The second year, they gave him a loan to cover his salary, and agreed to write it off at the end of the year. I'm pretty sure that's illegal - but hey, who am I to complain. I don't know the details of the loophole they used.
The third year, about mid way through, we got our green cards. Now, this was a public college, the state dept of Ed was pressuring the INS all the way or it would have taken twice as long. This was in the middle of the Reagan years - the INS was notoriously slow.
Immigrating to Canada: I expect to go back to Canada with my soon to be wife, and American. I am told it takes about 4 months to process that kind of application and I get to do it through Employment and Immigration Canada rather than Quebec. Quebec only handles economic migration - family unification and refugees are still handled by the feds.
If you immigrate to Quebec, you have to stay in Quebec until you're a landed immigrant. You can change jobs while you wait - even if you're sponsored I think - but if you spend too much time unemployed, they kick you out.
Landed status still takes a couple of years. Quebec also usually favours French speaking immigrants, but there are exceptions, especially for those in technology.
Welcome to Canada! The winters suck, but the rest is worth it.
In Silicon Valley, relatively inexperienced computer techs can easily pull in over US$60,000 a year. Skilled people can get $100,000 or more with fairly little trouble. (My fiancee who hasn't even finished her BA in German translation makes $53/hr as an intranet contractor here.) Regular empolyees also benifit usually from significant bonuses in stock and options.
:^) Except for Ontario, public universities are far less expensive than state schools in the United States, and quality of education is higher than the US average.
This is certainly a lot of money in an America where median household incomes are about US$38,000/yr and most people have no significant assets. (This is only slightly better than 1979 household medians.)
However, rent here will kill you. A two bedroom apt on the Peninsula starts at $1500/mo in Mountain View or Sunnyvale and goes up to $3000 in Palo Alto or Menlo Park. Studios start at $1000. Services - like eating in a restaurant - are fairly expensive. Gas is relatively expensive compared to the rest of the US ($1.60 a gallon isn't unheard of). Car insurance can be high. And commuting to work is horrible. There is no public transit worth a damn. Buses and light rail in Santa Clara county cost $1.25, $2.00 in San Mateo or to get over the Dumbarton Bridge, and $1.25 in Alameda. BART and Caltrain cost between $1.10 and $8.00 each way depending on how far you're going.
Trust me, that high salary doesn't go nearly as far as you might hope, and quality of life suffers in a lot of unexpected ways.
Entertainment in Silicon Valley: there is none. There are a few movie theatres owned by a quasi-monopoly called Century Theatres. Ticket prices are roughly US$8.50. There is a little bit of high-brow culture in the south bay, but not much and prices are high. San Francisco is better, but you can't drive there very easily and parking is a nightmare. After the first few attempts, you'll stop trying.
Fry's Electronics is perhaps the most entertaining place in the bay area.
Cable modems are available in many areas, starting at US$50/mo with US$150 to install. DSL runs around $400 to install, and about $80/mo for decent bandwidth.
If you work in tech as a regular employee, life, disability and medical insurance is usually included, and usually included a PPO option that is far better than the HMO plans that the peasants get. If you are a contractor, expect to pay a lot for an HMO plan and get poor service.
Now, Canadian tech incomes are lower, but in general no more than 20 or 30% lower. Usually, a tech job in Canada pays the same number of dollers as a comparable job in the US, but Canadian dollars are worth 23% less.
Cost of a movie ticket in Montreal is about CAN$10 (US$6.70). Rent on a two bedroom apartment in Montreal on the Plateau (artsy, yuppie area) is about CAN$800 (US$540). Montreal and Toronto offer comprehensive and rapid public transit. In Montreal a ticket costs CAN$1.25 ($US0.85) and a pass cost less that CAN$50/mo. Most Canadian cities offer at the very least comprehensive, regular bus service. In Toronto, as I understand it, prices are higher than in Montreal, and in Ottawa they are lower. Gasoline in Canada is about the same price as in California.
Quality of life issues: even Winnipeg (Canada's version of hell) has more cultural options than San Jose. Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto compare favourably with many European capitals in this respect. And you can get at least as many channels on cable in Canada as in California.
Cable modems and DSL in Canada cost about CAN$40/mo (US$27) and are available in nearly all core metropolitan areas. Restaurant prices in Montreal are roughly half (yes, 50%) of Silicon Valley prices.
Although many Canadians complain about their socialised medical services (and there are some genuine problems), they remain superior to the American HMOs I've had, and you keep your benefits even if unemployed. There is basically no paperwork when you see a physician, and you can see any doctor you choose. Most tech companies offer some form of supplimental medical insurance as a benefit - usually covering prescription and dental care which are outside normal medical coverage.
Schools in Canada are generally excellent (at least by comparison to the California public school system), and private and religious education is partially or wholly subsidised in most of Canada. Naturally, if you plan to move to Quebec, the only schools you can send your children to are in French - la vie est dure.
Taxes in Canada are somewhat higher than in the US, but not excessively so for those in middle income brackets. There are fewer convienient loopholes, but equivalents of the IRA and 401k are available. Taxes are considerably lower than in the UK or Ireland. (If you plan to be a billionaire, forget Canada - Bermuda is a much better choice.)
As I understand it, prices in New York and Boston are comparable to those in Silicon Valley, but Austin, Provo, Boise, Ann Arbor, Chicago and Atlanta (supposedly where the new tech companies are going) are generally much cheaper. I don't know from personal experience - I have lived in some of those places, but only many years ago. In other parts of the US, there are real bargains. A tech income in Omaha, Memphis, Houston or somewhere else well off the beaten track will probably enable you to live like a king, but I can't stand most of those places. If you can, by all means go for it.
As for me, as soon as my debts are paid off, I'm going back to Canada.
I have had some trouble with finding places to list my resume. Anyone have any experience with European firms and what job sites they look at?
In a note to firms: I graduate with a BS in CS this May. I have close family ties to the Netherlands and am ready for work in May of 2000. Check out my resume if you would like to.
I just went through all of this same stuff myself being a recent college grad. I pretty much looked at the large consulting companies. It seems that most companies will start coders at $42,000 range with a signing bonus of ~$2000. The is the "middle ground" though. I have seen some start at $55,000 with a $5,000 bonus (in NYC) to salaries as low as $37,500 + $1500 bonus (in RI where the cost of living is a bit lower)
These figures would be for a entry level job into some type of large consulting company. AS far as startups go, you can probably squeeze more money out of them if you have "mad skills."
Now salary is very important, but there are also many other factors to look at when choosing a company that will effect your finances. Other important factors are out of pocket expenses for medical, dental and vision. How much will your company match for a 401k plan? How many years until you are vested?? If you go away for business will they pay to put your pets in a kennel?? (It can get expensive!) Is there a profit share/stock option plan. These "fringe" benefits can add up to be a lot of extra money.
You're getting screwed. Email me. If you really know your stuff, I can double that /easy/.
-- Slashdot sucks.
Email me. Degrees don't mean jack in this day and age.
-- Slashdot sucks.
So what's the Irish punt worth these days? I seem to remember it being about $1.40. Those prices seem quite high, but like my wife said, with the weather and prices, it's not much different than Seattle. So are the housing prices somewhat even across the nation or are you just quoting Dublin prices?
The weather doesn't bother me much. I suppose if I can live where the temps range from -30 to 43C during the year and can be bone dry one year and downright soggy the next, I should be able to handle Ireland. I don't drink, so beer & pubs are not a concern. Extremely non ethnically diverse. Depending on your point of view, that can be good or bad....I personally rather have that than a place where anything and everything becomes a racial issue whether is really is or not.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Now there is a joke for you. The upper limit is around $30K for for the IT Manager at a mid sized company ( 50 to 200 employees ).
Cost of living is higher than in the US since everything costs more. Most things have draconian import duty ( charged on retail value ). fortunately Computer stuff is exempt from import duty so you can save a bundle by buying off EBay etc...
If you like nice even, warm weather and you should come here though.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
i only make $8 an hour for doing PC/LAN support and simple system admin tasks
im up for a raise in two months...but it wont be more than $2 an hour.
i live in the DC metro area...
someone kill me. =P
or give me a better job. PLLEEAASSSE!
Global warming is good for you!
Goto www.telejob.ch and get a job ...
Tobi
I am a software developer-contractor with $100/hour rate. I am toying with the idea of spending summer in UK, is it possible to get 3-4mo contract there ? If yes, what kind of rate can I expect ? Well, the bottom has pretty much dropped out of the UK contract market at the moment. Mine expires in 3 weeks, and there's almost nothing available. Everyone's waiting until post-Y2K before even considering taking on new contractors. There's a few short term contracts available, and I'll probably have to take one until the market picks up again (which people seem to think will be around March). I even saw a one week contract as a Linux trainer :-) Rates are depressingly low at the moment -- around £40/hour, although I'm hoping they'll pick up again. If you go for financial institutions in the City of London, you're looking more at £55 to £75 per hour. 3-4 month contracts are very common, although you may need to check about work permits and the like.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Ignore the salaries listed there. They usually only list the lower end of the spectrum. You can certainly get 60k+ in the City, and 45k elsewhere in London. I'm not saying it's common, and you need a certain amount of experience to get that sort of money, but it doesn't top out at the 35/40k you're quoting.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
FWIW, I'm currently on £50/hour in London, and am looking for more Unix contract work. I'd consider a permanent position, but not for less than £50,000 a year, and even then, I'd have to think twice about it. I like the freedom of contracting.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
The going rate in the Netherlands would be about US$39.000 per year. Entered your information on http://www.intermediair.nl/ using the following information:
- College-degree,
- >4yrs experience in IT,
- 31-35 yrs old
Most of Europe has the same shortage in IT-staff as the US, pushing up the rates.
No. Atlanta is just hot. The real action is in Tulsa, the networking capitol of the US, home to WorldCom and Williams Communications. The cost of living here is extremely low and salaries are quite competative.
I will be going to DC this Summer with a salary of $60,000 right out of college. The DC market is very hot.
-- Solaris Central - http://w
Actually most companies are now having you sign away your brain and various other rights during the hiring process. It doesn't violate the Bill of Rights if you sign your rights away.
Of course it doesn't help any that all the forms have something along the lines of ("Employment conditional on acceptance of these terms.")
OTOH a law that outright prohibits people talking about their salaries would probably fall into your above case.
Vermifax
Vermifax
Logout
we have better beer!
So long, and thanks for all the Phish
"Please submit salary expectations"
One thing I would suggest is to never give them your salary expectations. That gives them a leg up on the negotiations. Let them offer you what they think your are worth after interviewing you.
Personally I don't apply for jobs that say things like "Salary history required to apply". They can take a hike. And if they want to know what I expect I say that salary is negotiable (which ougt to go w/o saying but it is a nice way to put it).
You might want to check out Linuxmall in Denver. http://www.linuxmall.com I heard that they are looking for a technical writer.
Walter
UNIX doesn't have a monopoly on Good Ideas, it just owns most of them. --Alan Cox
A bachelor's is an undergraduate degree. A graduate degree depends on the field, but is generally called a master's or PhD. A polytechnic degree is usually called a technical or associate's degree.
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Quine "quine?
Technically I'm under a 1-year noncompete and 2-year IP ownership thing, which is part of how this company controls its employees; they made very strong implications when I was interviewing with them that there wasn't such an agreement, and of course, after spending a few thousand dollars to get my sorry self out here, they give me this very anti-freedom contract to sign - what was I going to do, say "I can't take this job" and be homeless/penniless? It wasn't an option, especially since I had dragged two of my friends out here with me. Fortunately, the contract is phrased in such a way that it's only really valid in Virginia, and if they ever try to take me to court, I'd have a very strong argument that they coerced me into signing it to begin with (which they did; when I was simply dumbfounded by the contract, the company president spent half an hour basically brainwashing me into thinking that the contract was for my good and not the company's - complete bullshit, of course). They also coerced me into taciturnly giving up potential rights to quite a few graphics-related algorithms I developed in college which would have been very useful for them. Fortunately I managed to avoid making it possible for them to claim I'd even thought about any of them at work, which I hadn't.
Regardless, I think going to grad school is right for me, and your response to my post was very helpful in solidifying that notion. Many thanks. :)
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Quine "quine?
I'm leaving Virginia, but I already left the company a couple months ago. It was a small company, however, and they're competent - well, enough to be dangerous, anyway. But again, aside from what I put down on my 'prior inventions' page on the contract (which they simply threw out anyway, part of their coersion tactics), I never divulged any information to them on any algorithms I came up with on my own time, and I made a concsious (and successful) effort to not come up with anything new and useful while working for them.
As far as which grad school, I don't feel that I really need to go to a university with an extreme specialization in VR or graphics. The university I'm going back to has enough to make me happy; the department is small, but very diverse, but not so diverse that it's incredibly fragmented and spread thin. :)
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Quine "quine?
For me, happiness requires an academic setting. It's just the way I am. I meant nothing controversial by my last statement, which was, I believe, originally directed specifically towards academically-minded individuals such as myself. :)
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Quine "quine?
And I'm in northern Virginia, as I think I said elsewhere. Fairfax. though it looks like I'll be out of here as soon as next Friday.
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Quine "quine?
For the off-topic bit: I have come to realize that the industry isn't for me. Academia is where I belong. I'm not a mercenary programmer. So of course, after a few months of living relatively large (figuring I'd be gainfully employed for a long time) I'm having my world kinda crash down around me, financially anyway. It doesn't help at all that I incurred some debt in moving out here which I, very stupidly, put off paying back. All in all, I'd have about broken even for the whole experience were it not for the various tech toys I suddenly found myself able to buy... Even though I rationally know that grad school is best for me, and emotionally know it as well, it just doesn't help to have all you mercenary types rubbing my nose in what kinds of salary I'm giving up. :)
I've never been into computing and programming for the money, except for a brief period of time when I was graduating college and I got suckered into putting off my happiness for the promises of getting to keep doing the cool stuff while also making enough money to live very comfortably. Of course, those promises never panned out, and the company I got hired by turned out to be nothing more than a pair of two-bit swindlers doing whatever they could to control spineless employees who didn't know better and weren't at liberty to leave for a variety of reasons.
I need to give some advice to academic types who might be reading this thread: which do you prefer, money or happiness?
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Quine "quine?
Apparently, the fact that salaries and money matters are usually discussed less openly in Europe, and esp. in France, leads to the job market being less open about it, and the salaries to be actually LESSER. Tax also have something to do with it, but all considered ...
Working as a sysadmin / developer / head tech. person for a small web company, I make about $40k a year. That's rather good here compared to what's OFFERED usually. Note the emphasis on OFFERED ... that means that if you blindly accept the initial offer on a job interview, you'll get much less than that ... however you're going to be extremely surprised to notice that, as you tell them to "fuck off" and get up to leave, they quickly apologize and timidly ask you to stay and offer something better.
Also the policy on stock options around here (France) is not exactly clear, and actually the law on it isn't clear.
Funny story: my cousin, who worked in microelectronics in the valley making good money for 18 months, came back and was looking for a short term job doing web stuff. He went to one service company, they did'nt want to discuss salary on the phone. On the spot they offered him ... $2000 a month! What a joke. He laughed at them and they seemed not to understand! "You're wasting my time", he told them, "don't you have any idea what the market is?" And indeed, he quickly found something much better paid.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Unless you are aged 18-21 and you live somewhere that doesn't allow under-21s to buy alcohol, tax or no tax. (Although other countries are better still of course.)
Tobacco is expensive, but I don't think the costs of running a car are much worse than elsewhere in Europe. (IIRC Germany has the most large cars of any European country, the UK is second.)
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
... Compared to Silly Valley. I am currently looking at houses in the Valley from DC and I am doing all that I can to get my new boss to let me tele-commute. They could pay me less and fly me out there weekly for less than I would want to live out there and it looks like that is what they are going to do.
... Now if I could just get them to hire the entire team out here...
Anyway, Salary is the topic so: I have the best of both worlds. I am getting a Silly Valley salary and live near DC. Out far enough that the cost of living is reasonable but close enough to be able to enjoy the ammenities of a large city.
Suburbia RULES!!
Summary: $80-100k or somewhere in between.
This is not the sig you are looking for...
Factor into this the superb health care, education, transport infrastructure and the fact that Switzerland is simply the most beautiful place on the planet and I'd work there for free...
Well, where does the money come from to buy ski-passes?
But seriously, Switzerland is one of the countries that is quite serious about not letting just about anybody into the country "for good".
Fine if you come skiing, fine if you come and deliver some (big) machine and need to fine-tune it for a week. Not fine if you want to come and just work for a Swiss company, and see how long you can stay.
Roger.
I would have said a little more than that. I started on 16K, straight from Uni. Although I have a fair amount of experience in Unix. Maybe a Windows only techie wouldn't get quite so much. Not sure myself, as I never looked at any non-Unix jobs ;)
Cost of living has a lot to do with variations in salary between places. Of course, not putting salaries on the job description... I can't figure out why they're doing that, unless they want to possibly get you for less than what they would have gotten you for if they had given a price.
In the Northeastern US (New York City surrounding area) the avg salary for a UNIX admin with a few years experience is anywhere from US$65k-US$100k/year. It can go into the US$140+ if they also know alot about Databases as well, or Network Security.
... many other things too) with only 4 yrs in tech, and a University degree in Political Science!! and make about US$57k (CDN$83,836.00) before bonuses and stock options, with full medical benefits and insurance. Guess what, though, my wife is pregnant and not working, and we live in a 4 room apartment b/c we can't afford the downpayment on a house. The housing in this area is very expensive (for decent property and a nice house in a nice town at least US$200k-US$350k), and if you move into cheaper Eastern Penn. or Southern NY state, you have to drive far to work, b/c there aren't many tech jobs in the STIX yet.
....it's all relative.
I Admin our UNIX and NT test servers, run a QA computer lab here, do website security and web work, admin our FTP box, help with disaster recovery planning (etc
So,
==============================
Windows NT has crashed,
I am the Blue Screen of Death,
With 20k a year you can get along quite nicely...
hope this helps
I'm in Norway. :)
I've actually no formal education but still get paid well...
With well, I'm thinking in the line of $30-35000 a year.
Very well paid is ofcourse the double
Well, it's quite similar to the US in that way.
A company can hire someone from overseas if they can show that the vacancy can't be filled locally. Special expertise, company sponsorship for a special visa, that sort of thing. You'd need contacts.
We don't seem to have the same level of companies scamming for overseas contractors to pay low rates. Mind you, I'm not claiming virtue for our companies. I don't think our rates are as good as the US ones, so there's less cause.
I do see Americans here, but mostly they work for US companies & are on assignment. I've met a lot from CSC, for example.
No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up.
In the Philadelphia area programmers not long out of college seem to be starting somewhere around 50K, but it really varies.
If you can talk to business people and solve their problems salaries climb very fast and seem to level out in the 75-85K range. If you are a C coder working as the lowest rung in a big team, it will take longer to get there. If you are a risk taker and go for contract work you can make twice (or half) of that.
If you are primarily interested in money, I think that Business application programming is the easiest way to get there. Especially if you know the ins and outs of a big system that a big company has made a multi-million dollar bet on (Oracle, Domino, SAP, etc.) It is gratifying to see how your work can truly raise productivity (and this is why you will be well rewarded), but it sure isn't sexy.
--Tim
http://www.ignite.net.au
Specifically, see the lifestyle implications section under Careers.
Enjoy,
Ralf
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.
-Bertrand Russel
Check these sites out to investigate variations in COS (Cost of Living). I work in expensive Boulder, CO and I still need to make $4400 more to live in Pasadena, CA. Ouch!
Salary Calculator (includes foreign countries)
Versus Year
Various Sources
Compare cities side-by-side
A short article with a cost of living index list
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
Richard von Weizs
Whilst I love Bristol, I found it impossible
;-)
to get a job in the Bristol area on more than
40K permenent. I'm now moving to Austin, Texas
as this will effectively triple my salary.
Contracting in Bristol tops out at about 60K -
not really worth it, especially considering
that 150 miles away in London 100K is easy
to get as a _permi_ let alone a contractor
(London is a horrible place to live..I did
6 months in the square mile - never again!)
The cost of living is higher if you live in
Clifton (Bristol), but you do get to get
blasted in the Corry Tap
The biggest problem I see in the job market in the
UK is differentiating yourself from the scum
who lie on their CVs. I've seen CVs claiming
8 years experience in Java (!). Managers also
don't seem to understand the value of certain
skills in the computing area.
Job agencies also seem to always overquote
salary, and hassle you continually with naff
jobs...
I personally would never pay a recent graduate
a large salary as I believe experience is
incredibly important in computing. A few years
of making mistakes can do the world of good...
More mad ramblings
Asmo
...stock options. Some companies offer options up front, in lieu of a higher salary. Granted, this is a gamble in a lot of cases, but with a competitive IT field and a raging stock market, it's nonetheless becoming more and more prevalent.
Sorry, but you are getting screwed. I got a similar job (Perl/CGI scripting, HTML, etc) at the U of Minnesota a year ago, starting at $10/hour. Since then I've had an offer for $13/hour and one for $15/hour. And that's with less than a year of part-time work experience.
I don't know what the job situation at your school is, but here they are desperate for people who know anything about Unix, Perl, web programming, systems administration, etc. I'd guess that you could easily get a lot more than that out of them.
Being a geek sure is nice. I almost feel guilty when my non-geek friends mention their crappy $7/hour jobs. And those jobs are at things like answering telephones that don't give them any useful work experience.
Where would one look to find information on living in the Netherlands, as an American?
I am a senior object oriented software architect with five years experiencence in Java, C++, Eiffel, Python, and Tcl.
What are the possibilities of my moving there and starting an IT consulting business? Are there restrictions on foreigners starting new businesses, or would I be in the clear?
If consulting isn't the way to go, what are the chances I might find a job in Amsterdam as an American? I've heard that if you're not an EU citizen you're screwed.
--Xar
That's about right for Canada. I've mostly seen between $38k and $48k CAD.
But salary's only a part of your compensation. Comparing benefits packages is much more difficult. What do their retirement benefits look like? Stock options? Discounted stock?
/peter
Wow... Graduates??? I'm only on £25K after 7 years....
The difference is probably because I'm in the North??
Tony
"Looking through all your comments I find this quite surprising. I thought that you guys/gals in the US were all on $80-$100K, but it seems that that isn't the case. It makes me feel slightly happier about my situation here in the UK."
Don't forget that this is a big country. Cost of living and salaries vary everywhere. For the record I live in Northern Virginia and it is quite typical to find programmers making between $80-$100k.
However, in June I just paid $300,000 for a house here. Don't get me wrong, this is a big house. But if I moved out to South Dakota or something I probably couldn't buy a house for that much if I wanted to. I doubt they make them big enough; the cost of living there is much lower. They also don't make as much though.
What I would be interested in seeing is a national or global chart of ratios of cost of living vs. average income. This would be very telling.
For example, supposedly Fairfax County, VA and Orange County, CA keep swapping places for highest average income. However, based on my limited research, the cost of living here in Fairface County is much lower.
The ratios would be very telling.
-Paul
Edu. sig-line: Choose rhymes with lose. Chose rhymes with goes. Loose rhymes with goose.
Comparing? THEN use THAN.
I see all of you guys griping about wages, or at least wishing for more pay on this thread and I just HAD to say something. My company (of which I am a senior engineer) is actively recruiting software engineers who can code (in order of preference) perl,c,java. We are most interested in proven ability, not some stupid CS degree, so if you are in Vancouver and want to work in XML Search engine / E-Business development, and make more than 40K, go to www.xmlglobal.com and check out our HR material. We are also looking for kick-ass linux/unix sysadmins.
--------- Matt
*snort*
:)
--------- Matt
Information Technology
W
Huh? Tax is less than 30 per cent till about USD 25k - 30k (the tax rate vavies slightly depending on where you live). Then there's the sales tax (add 25 per cent to the non taxed prices), but here's what throws a lot of people off track -- the sales tax is included in the advertised price, in the US the tax is added when you pay. The taxation systems also tax different things, in the US the property tax is about five times higher than in Sweden! In the EU healthcare is included in the tax. Bottom line is: I like it back home, some things are a little more expensive, but not much, and while the beer is a lot more expensive -- at least it's real beer :-)
Has it ever occurred to you that God might be a committee?
Has it ever occurred to you that God might be a committee?
--- Jubal Harshaw
Uhm, If you're going to compare the total cost of an employee to what that person get's after all 'taxes' are paid for different countries you'll have to add a lot of things to the 'tax' a person in the US pays.
Has it ever occurred to you that God might be a committee?
Has it ever occurred to you that God might be a committee?
--- Jubal Harshaw
This is the Salary Calculator that Money magazine links to in their tools section. It works pretty well. Helps to compute the "real" dollar amount of that large salary offer with relo is worth....
Caveat: I've found that it
So, YMMV. But at least it's a start :)
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
MOO;IANAL.
There used to be a picture linked here.
General consensus around here is that they're all freaky!
Scott (former tech writer)
Slashdot: Liberal News for Nerds. Liberal Stuff that Matters.
Between .nl and .us, I've heard that $1=NLG1 when talking about salaries. I've worked in Germany and Switzerland as well, and strangely enough that holds there, too (more or less): $1 = DEM 1 = SFR 1 = NLG 1, if you ask around 100.000 of the local things you have a nice salary to live off...
OBTW: if you're a Java coder and want to try out Dutch fringe benefits, mail me.
I am looking for a city with lots of bandwidth, decent nightlife, friendly people, and money.
San Diego, CA sounds nice to me right now... anyone know of any other cities?
- Hugh Buchanan
- Userfriendly.com
>Huh? Tax is less than 30 per cent till about USD
>25k - 30k (the tax rate vavies slightly
>depending on where you live).
The trick is that the ~30% income tax (and at higher salaries, 1+% federal income tax) are not the only taxes paid. I'm a freelancing consultant and I know more precisely how my income is taxed. My accountant has advised me to set aside to 3/4 of my income for taxes and fees.
That is a problem, since employers need to take all the taxes and fees into account. The taxes scale so that if you (as an employee) have a salary of sek 30k/month (a fair-to-good salary for an IT proffesional in Sweden) and get a raise of 3k, the employer needs to pay at least some sek 6k extra per month (to pay your raise plus taxes and fees). Then you pay federal and county taxes on the income raise and end up with at most sek 1.5k extra per month.
Stock options are not a viable alternative as a bonus in Sweden, due to the tax rules. They go something like this: first the value of the stock options are taxed as if they were salary. When you sell the vested stock you get the joy of paying another flat 30% tax on the yield (sell value minus initial value, before the first taxation).
Then we have the 25% VAT and extra taxes well above 50% on tobacco, alcohol, gasoline. And extra taxation of electricity, homes, you name it. Sigh.
For the salary comparison: I charge SEK 600/hour (about US$75), after I've paid _all_ taxes (which include, school for me and my children, a cheap pension plan, medical care for everyone I know and a few others, etc) this leaves me with some SEK 24k (US$ 3k) if i have full time work. My one room apartment costs about SEK 2.3k (US$288) per month (living downtown is usually more expensive, I inherited some money and got rid of about half of my loan for buying the apartment). I'm paid well by Swedish standards, am fluent in at least 5 computer languages and two human languages. No degree yet, but I'm still working on my Master of CS/Maths.
A significant number of UK geeks are self employed and hire themselves out on contracts of 3 months or more - this may be about to change as the government attempts to change the tax laws.
:-)
;->. Employee protection is better than that of America, and with a Labour government in power this is increasing, but less rapidly than some people feared.
Banking & Finance related computing posts in London are probably the best paid, with contract rates of 3000UK+ pounds ($5000) per week being rumoured if you have 5 or more years experience. More typical rates are around 1000-2000UK pounds per week, again with about 5 years experience. The figures I've quoted are gross and do not take into account the fact that being self employed you do not get
* holiday entitlements,
* company pensions/ health insurance
* cars
* social club memberships
* training etc
unless you set them up yourself.
I can't comment on graduate salaries, but I suspect that a graduate geek will earn around 17-25,000UKP ($27-40,000) per annum. Higher salaries again may apply in the SE/London area, and lower the further away from London you get. My starting salary in 1985 was 7800UKP ($12000) as a graduate working for a major defence avionics company!
Although the UK is small compared to the US, there's a huge regional range in salaries, especially London/SE England compared to the rest of the country.
Cost of living in England is quite high, according to most opinions, with petrol, motor cars, beer, tobacco and electronic equipment either attracting a lot of tax or being more highly priced than the rest of the EU. London itself can be a very expensive place to live. On the plus side we do have a reasonable National Health Service, although if you would like to be operated on within two years you are well advised to back that up with health insurance
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
I work for a small (under 50) s/w company in the SF bay area. A short time back we made an offer to a fresh CS grad from UC Berkeley. We offered him around US$60K. I was amazed, I thought that was more than generous. Well, he wound up taking another offer for $78K !! This is a 22-year-old grad with NO experience! Ah well...
Wow.. Keep looking for those 75k/year jobs.. My recent research into salary surveys shows that 75k is just about right.. I work down near wall street as an admin of ~8 Linux boxes, pull down 55k/year, expect a 10% bonus, and have a paid for ISDN line and soon 2Mb SDSL.. So I do alright with benefits, but I have the suspicion that my skill set is good enough to get all those things _and_ 75k..
Keep looking!
You are getting screwed. Starting sysadmins here in the midwest (a moderate to low cost of living area) are getting at least $40k. Experienced sysadmins are getting $50k-$65k. Sysadmin managers are getting $60-$75k.
Given what you are doing, you should be making at least double what you currently are.
What? In the midwest starting sysadmins make $40K? I wish.
Yep, around here they do. In Chicago they make more, but the cost of living is closer to east coast levels. The cost of living around here is probably fairly similar to Madison.
I work for a univeristy
Here is your mistake. Universities pay poorly. It is very difficult to make decent money in a college town due to the glut of people who will work for dirt. I used to work for a university (about 30 miles from where I live now), about 10 years ago, I then lived for a short time in the SF bay area, when I came back to the midwest I moved to a larger non-university town where I basically doubled what I was making at the University. In the past 10 years I have tripled my income as one would expect with experience.
(UW Madison to be precise - the biggest in the state and one of the Big 10 in the US)
A friend of mine who lives in Milwaukee makes considerably higher than that as a sysadmin with similar years of experience to yours. I should ask him what entry level people are making where he works.
The university though is the most chill work environment you could possibly have - access to equipment and knowledge like you wouldn't believe, and comes with an amazing benefits package that is topped by few private companies.
The benefits at universities are only good if they will give you a full time job. When I worked for a university, I worked full time hours, but wasn't considered full time, and I got no benefits at all. In fact that had a lot to do with my decision to get the hell out of there.
I've worked at small, mid sized and currently work for a large (Fortune 100 sized) company. Access to equipment and knowledge is good at a university, but don't knock the private sector until you've tried it.
A friend of mine still works as a sysadmin at the same university I used to work for. He has been there for over 10 years now, and he makes only about 1/2 what I do. I've tried to get him to move down here, because I could easily find a job for him making considerably more than what he gets now, but he won't budge. Its kinda sad, because he has a degree in Com Sci with a 3.9 something GPA. I never finished college, and I make twice the money.
I suppose you could find that type of work environment in smaller cutting-edge geek-shops where they know how to take care of us types... but those are in short supply here in the mid-west.
Not around here they aren't. Lots of opportunities here in that sort of shop. Lots of opportunities in general, as unemployment around here is currently at record low levels (like 2.5% or something). I recently turned down a C/C++ programmer job that paid in the 60's.
I think you'd find the situation similar in other midwestern cities like Minneapolis, Kansas City, Omaha, etc.
The town I live in is only about 300K people, however the only colleges here are a small private university and some even smaller private colleges, so they have no noticeable impact on the wage situation, especially since none of them are technically orriented and they turn out very few Com Sci students.
:-)
Another bad thing about Madison (which is also true of the town I live in, unfortunately) is that it is the state capitol. The state governments pay poorly also, albiet in general not any worse than a public university does. Luckily the town I live in is really mostly dominated by insurance and financial companies as far as the job market goes.
As for moving to Chicago, you would see dramatically better salaries there, but as I noted before, the cost of living in the Chicagoland area is nearly as high as the east coast. If you can hack the weather, I'd consider the twin cities instead, or for warmer weather I'd look at Kansas City, Omaha or perhaps even St Louis.
For the sake of not appearing biased and the fact that if you like Madison, you'd probably be bored to death here, I am not recommending the town I live in.
Go back and read the entire list of postings.
Then call the headhunters who post.
********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
A friend of mine was hired by a large German ISP last year, on entry level, no university degree (but a 2-year technical degree) to do general network and cgi-bin (perl) programming.
;-)
He was offered 36000 DM pre-tax a year, which would be re-nogiated after a year (he hoped to make 45000 pre tax after one year). He took the job.
I'm not going to disclose what I earn, sorry, but it IS more than my parents makes after 30 years of work experience.
I get overtime as 1:1 additional days off... works for me.
Your friend made the mistake to start at 2/3 of a normal salary I think.
I can confirm this. I'm a Student Worker (that's right, I have no degree yet), I have no formal IT education, and I do exactly the same as Bartmoss' friend; i.e. a little Perl (CGI and web-site maint.) and the company I'm working for is paying me DM 36 / hour.
Of course I'd already acquired a little experience with their web-site working for one of their contracters; Still, keep in mind I'm not even a CS student (Linguistics) so my 'only' qualification is that I don't run screaming when I see a command line (Thank you Linux!) and that I picked up some Perl in my spare time (Thank you Larry!)
Chris
San Francisco values: compassion, tolerance, respect, intelligence
I used to work in Venezuela and I was getting $28K/year. I'm currently in the US but I'm going back to my home country now that they will pay me $40K with a $10K bonus at the end of the year. (The company pays the taxes for me, so I get the full amount). The cost of living is ok, the women are beautiful... I'm just tired of people on the subway yelling "Go back to your F%!%#ing country".... so I guess I'll do just that :)
a T1 cost between $350-$600/mo depending upon location. ISDN arrived 2 years ago. but that's irrelevant since the bandwidth off-island is $20k/mo/E1.
housing for a 1BR is about $1000/mo for "on the beach in the tourist town" and $600/mo for someplace safe enough for a machine rack. a car is a requirement (and costs $1500-$2000 to ship each way), and scuba gear is strongly recommended.
the people are amazingly friendly and slightly quirky as a bonus; i guess you would have to be if you regularly shrugged off typhoons, earthquakes, and airplane crashes.
For the non-merkins here, let me add another angle to the discussion.
:-)
Canadian immigration procedures seem to be a lot faster, more predictable, and more fair than the US ones.
Using mainstream cases (employment-based, no "exceptional performance" or other "fast" special cases in US green card process) I have the following (Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer or a statistician or an immigration specialist, other than about my own case. If you find important errors in the information below do a good deed and let us all know, and please talk to a lawyer before you act):
US green card: Best case start-to-finish is 2 years, assuming you've got that much left in your H-1B to go for consular processing. If you go for adjustment of status right now you'll be in a black hole for an unknown number of years. The INS has stopped processing employment based AOS since last March or so. Remember that during GC processing, you must stay with the sponsoring employer.
Canadian PR: My lawyer claims 5-6 months if no interview is required, 11-12 if an interview is required. Very interested to hear about other peoples' experiences. When applying as an independent immigrant there's no "sponsoring employer".
US GC: Employment-based GC means you make a commitment to stay with sponsoring employer "indefinitely". That means that at the time you get the green card you have that intention, although obviously unexpected changes in circumstances would explain you leaving your sponsoring employer. Again, see a lawyer. But don't think that your company's HR and your boss don't know about this one.
Canadian PR: You're a free agent as soon as you land. Some restrictions do apply re: Quebec vs. non-Quebec residence and you do need to continue to be a professional geek if that's what you promised you'd be. But you wouldn't have a problem with that, would you? Again, see a lawyer for real legal advice.
It was a hard decision and I do love the Bay Area, but I've had it with being an (admittedly well-paid) indentured servant. Freedom is indeed worth quite a bit of money, so if all goes well, next year, Hello Vancouver (or Toronto).
Comments most definitely welcome, especially from Canadians offering free advice
I talked to one guy recently who just finished his PhD in physics (something completely esoteric - I think it was gravitation), and now got a job with a switch manufacturer. He gets 85kDM, which is some 40k$. This does for a rather comfortable living in southern Germany - housing is very expensive, petrol too, and taxes are medium to high.
However, he got a contract for 35 hrs/week and works 35 hrs/week! Add 5 weeks paid holidays a year, and you finally have money to spend and time to spend it!
Hurricane Application Group, Dept of Meteorology Control, Ministry of Proactive Defense
Don't forget about the life-balance thing. Geeks seem to overlook this and then complain about it, but based on the ravenous job market, there is no excuse other than inertia. If you're looking already, make sure you pick a company based on more than just $$$.
/. story about tech sweatshops. Bear that in mind when looking at employers. You can get a big salary and lots of options but it may not be worth it if you are expected to work 80 hours a week. Or, you may be expected to be on call 24/7, which is a hell of a lot more than the 45-55 hours which are typical of the industry. Asking what happens salary wise when you work 100 hours in a week can be very eye-opening. I got an answer from one employer of "nothing, you are expected to do a job, however long that takes." And guess what the hours looked like...
If you look back a few weeks(?) you will see a
Also, what about the knowledge-sharing? If you are so important, will they ever let you take a vacation and leave you alone? The geeky analogy is clustering - you don't want to be a single point of failure or the pointy-haired ones will never want to let you out of their sight, much less out of town for a week. Will you be working on Xmas eve, New year's eve? Will you get yelled at if you take a 75 minute lunch?
Ask about things like how project deadlines are set. There needs to be a process - "whenever I need it done by" isn't going to be very fair to you. You should be involved in the process of setting deadlines, or else it's always going to be based on when they want it done (yesterday), not when it is feasible to do.
If you ever want to go make friends, find/retain a significant other, and see your family, think about more than just the cash and options.
Shameless plug: I like to think I have found a great employer who pays market rate *and* has a great culture, and particularly has a core value of life balance. E-mail me if you are interested - jamie@white-mountain.org .
Advice to geeks, especially ones who haven't been in the job market for very long: Be careful not to reduce a job opportunity's value down to a dollar figure. Geeks seem to overlook this and then complain about how much their job sucks, but based on the ravenous job market, there's really no excuse other than inertia. If you're looking now, make sure you consider the qualitative properties of a job.
:)
If you look back a few weeks you will see a story about working in a tech sweatshop. Bear that in mind when looking at employers. You can get a big salary and lots of options but it may not be worth it if you are expected to work 80 hours a week. Or, you may be expected to be on call 24/7, which is a hell of a lot more than the 45-55 hours which are typical of the industry. Asking what happens salary wise when you work 100 hours in a week can be very eye-opening. I got an answer from one employer of "nothing, you are expected to do a job, however long that takes." And guess what the hours looked like...
Also, what about knowledge management? Are you doing the same work that has been done before by co-workers? How will you find someone who has done what you are doing? Yeah, trailblazing is fun and all, but rediscovering known bugs isn't especially fun. Also, there should be KM from you to the rest of the organization. Being the main tech go-to guy is dangerous. If you are so important, will they ever let you take a vacation and leave you alone? The geeky analogy is clustering - you don't want to be a single point of failure or the pointy-haired ones will never want to let you out of their sight, much less out of town for a week. Will you be working on Xmas eve, New year's eve? Will you get yelled at if you take a 75 minute lunch?
What is the technology environment? Just because you like *nix doesn't mean your boss does. Will you be forced to use something you don't want to? What is the email environment? Who makes these decisions and how binding are they on the individual? Will you be forced to run Win98 and Outlook just because the MS Exchange sales pitch to the IT manager was slick? How developed is the company intranet? What if you have something useful to post - what is the process for getting your info out there?
If you are looking at a startup, what is the non-stock risk factor? For example, is the current boss going to be replaced by a "real CEO" (answer: almost certainly). What will this CEO's vision be, if any? Will the office move to an inconvenient location? Will you be sure to get a paycheck every time, on time? Are they hiring so fast that a few (or a lot of) a-holes are bound to get in as well? Will they be identified and fired, or will they become your boss?
Ask about things like how project deadlines are set. There needs to be a process - "whenever I need it done by" isn't going to be very fair to you. You should be involved in the process of setting deadlines, or else it's always going to be based on when they want it done (yesterday), not when it is feasible to do.
Consider the commute. If you can take public transportation, that may mean that you can sell your car and save $hundreds a month, or at least you can get back productive time (laptop or magazine on the subway / bus). Plus, sitting in bumper to bumper traffic for an hour each way is a serious pain in the butt, and it doesn't ever really get better unless you move.
If you ever want to go make friends, find/retain a significant other, and see your family, think about more than just the cash and options.
Shameless plug: I like to think I have found a great employer who pays market rate *and* has a great culture, and particularly has a core value of life balance. E-mail me if you are interested - jamie.flournoy@viant.com. Include a resume if you want, of course
In Brazil, the monthly salary in the IT field ranges from R$600 (~$300) as the worst-case scenario for entry-level programmers in small companies, to R$4K to 6K (~$2000-3000) for the best technical jobs in large companies. (Managers may get a lot more than that.) Of course, you don't really want to live here; the economy is floundering, the education and healthcare systems suck majorly, corruption and crime run amok, and the government is little more than a big bloated bunch of incompetent bureaucrats. And all that the average person cares about is beach, soccer, beer and half-naked dancing women. (Oh yeah, that reminds me - none of the aforementioned half-naked dancing women are ever going to go out with you - the average Brazilian woman is a middle-aged illiterate homeless 200-pound hag with three kids who smokes too much.)
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
InforWorld does an annual salary survey. The 1999 survey is here. They do a decent job of surveys in various IT areas. They survey a wide variety of occupationas and locations from their readership so they survey isn't exactly perfect.
You might find info for the US at the the Census Bureau.
Canada is a pretty large place so you'd better watch those blanket statements about salaries in Canada. Here in the Nation's capitol (Ottawa, not Toronto), starting salaries coming out of University are around the $40k mark - it can be higher or lower depending on the company and the skill set/experience you have.
However, if you were to move to Nova Scotia, you're probably looking at $30k starting out.. but again, you have to look at the cost of living/lifestyle differences.
I'd have to honestly say that the choice to live in Canada is mostly a lifestyle choice. After taxes, that $40k salary will work out to just over $20k.. which is still quite a bit to live on in Canada.. however, the high taxes are also one one of the main reasons Canadians head south of the border.
I recently spent a lot of time in the Silicon Valley where everyone seems to be approaching the $100k (US) mark, but no one can afford to live a decent life (what I consider a decent life) unless they're a millionaire, so.. what's the point?
(all the $ values I listed above are Canadian dollars unless I specified otherwise..)
I had to laugh at some of the postings. The "expertise" requirements in some cases were absurd. One place wanted 23 years of ABAP/4 expertise. ABAP/4 wasn't even a pipe dream 23 years ago.
Reminds me of one of my buddies who went to a job interview in 1992 where they wanted someone with 10 years of NT experience. I bet they were looking for a LONG time...
Network Support Analyst £25k (=US$41K)
Network Manager £35k (=US$57.4K)
For a database on average salarys this is an useful resource - UK only though...
Incidentally I am currently looking for alternative employment in the London area. Experience of LAN/WAN connectivity using Cisco Router and Switch equipment. Good NT experience. Experience of UNIX systems. Firewall Experience and general network security knowledge. Any offers?
Looking through all your comments I find this quite surprising. I thought that you guys/gals in the US were all on $80-$100K, but it seems that that isn't the case. It makes me feel slightly happier about my situation here in the UK.
:)
:)
As for people suggesting that a graduate start of £14K is adequate, beware, especially if you are travelling down to London to start your new job. If we say you can spend 33% of your post-tax salary on rent then you will most likely be living under the charing-cross bridge with the tramps. The cost of Living in London is high, especially if you want to have a life!
I didn't get a degree and I started on £14k in 1995, in Surrey, on the border of South London, thankfully I've worked out of that situation to double the value and soon hope to be earning even more for my worth.
If an employer only offers to pay IT staff £14k then he: (a) will probably be going bust within the year, (b) will make a mint, whether it is (a) or (b) completely depends on whether he can sucker accept his measly £14k offer.
Someone mentioned the junk-IT staff that we have in most companies. Yes, they do exist, and they probably cause more problems than they solve - (I had one who disabled User access to our domain controllers today, and nobody was able to login) - but, for some, unknown reason, the managers (or suits) actually seem to like them - usually they have better social and communication skills than the gurus that have championed the tech departments for years.
Our Telephone staff earn £14 or so here, and all they do is answer the telephones!
In short, don't let the side down, get what you're worth and don't settle for less, otherwise you will be devaluing our skills and I won't be best pleased!!!
In Holland, you can expect at least fl. 3500 (before taxes) per month if you're fresh out of shool. That's about $1750. Getting a cellphone and
;-)
notebook is usually no problem.
If you start working at a big company, you can expect fl 5000 (US$ 2500) per month plus a company car. But you'd have to conform to that
company (might be hard for die-hard geeks - they tend to love Microsoft).
If you're thirty (-something) and have lots of experience, and don't mind working hard, fl 8500 or more is usually no problem. In Holland, that
kind of salary will buy you anything you want. It's about 3 times average.
If you foreigners are tempted to get a job in the Netherlands, consider the following:
Don't forget the taxes! Income tax is 38% on pay up to about Hfl 60000 ($30000), after that it's 50%! (Even higher salaries are taxed at 60%). Your company car is considered income; you pay around Hfl 4500 in income taxes for your "free" company car. Companies generally pay your fuel though (even for personal use fo your car), and at Hfl 2,25 a litre ($4 a gallon) that is a sweet deal.
Foreigners may be disappointed by the housing in Holland: cramped & expensive. Rents start at about Hfl 1000 unfurnished; you can buy a 3-room apartment for Hfl 250000 and up (if you are lucky). Amsterdam is much, much more expensive.
That said, Holland is a good place to live, and the American and British ex-pats in our company are having a great time here.
Besides, we have legalized soft drugs
I know, other AC...
Finland sux, man. Been in Helsinki for 15 months and all I want is to LEAVE! Ppl really suck and you won't make a dime here... Top coder in top company... $20K/year...and 35% tax on it...
Forget it.
-- It's always darker before it goes pitch black.
Anyone need a network and unix/nt sysadmin in Baltimore for about ~$50K (it's a university job)? Email me for contact information. Need to be well-versed in NT, Linux, IRIX, and firewalls of some sort. Experience with cisco cat 5509's a plus.
-Chris
I am a Canadian citizen moving back to Vancouver after working in Silicon Valley for 3 years, I had previously worked in Vancouver at computer positions, but nothing that paid really well (ie, a startup internet cafe). Now that I am returning, I will be looking for Jr - Mid level SA work in Vancouver (strictly SA, not coding other than basic scripts and HTML). I have 2 years of experience with IRIX and SGI hardware, and have a previous 3 years of experience with other unix flavours and Windows (95/98/NT). My question is, what type of salary can I expect to get for my skills in Vancouver ?
I saw that an AC posted he was a SA with 5 years of experience in Vancouver and making $65k (which seems quite high for Vancouver, but then I do not have any expereince at the pay rates in this field in Vancouver, I am making around $50k in the states right now and I figure even with the exchange rate, I would be making less than that.
Could all the AC (or whoever else) that posted about Canada (specifically Vancouver) salaries, please send me e-mail, so that I could ask you some more questions and get some advice on the best ways (web sites, etc) to be looking for SA jobs in Vancouver. My address for this is:
meerkat@squeep.com
I'm pretty fly for a white guy
I know there are salary surveys out there. But I have to agree that a lot of times the surveys are kinda vauge, leaving you to interpret the results as best you can. If you don't exactly match then you have to start guessing how it could effect you.
It would probably be interesting to see a site where you could fill out a form of where you live, what you do etc. Then add in your last raise, bonuses, and your actual salary. Then based on some mystical calculation involving the number i a set of numbers come back describing what you should make. It takes you numbers and puts them into the database to update the values appropriately.
Of course this could already exist as far as I know. If it does where?
-cpd
Just to reinforce some other comments here - I'm a programmer with around 2 years commercial experience. Most of that has been Windows programming :-( but I've just got a new job near Oxford working cross platform in C++ (no MS boxes at this place :-)). I've been on £16K for my current company and am about to get £20K. Thi sis very much the right sort of wage for the South outside of London as I've had 3 other offers in the last couple of months of the same amount. There is one problem that seems to be showing through at the moment though and that is that companies are being a little cautious in their recruitment. It seems that although the tech departments are in need of more staff to cover the workload and future plans the accounts people don't want to pay for it. I'm guessing that this will change after the millenium - maybe they just don't want to risk the extra money yet. The other thing that maybe worth mentioning is that you only want to get in touch with one or two agencies and definitely don't want to put your details on a job site that forwards stuff to agencies. I did and had my cell phone voice mail crashed by the end of the day from the bulk of messages and my mail box was getting pretty well flooded too.
Out of my mind, back in five minutes
I think you'll find that the generalization of the North being paid less is due to demographic study and not a comparison of your wages against mine. Of course if the only comparison was you vs me then the North of England would come out as better paid...
Out of my mind, back in five minutes
If you're willing to work contract, you can make a lot more than that in Canada. I started at $40/hr right out of University (although I did have 2-3 years of work experience already). And really, any coder worth their beans can do my job. I'm just building web applications using DB2 and server side JavaScript.
:)
By the way, $40/hr is the minimum that you should ask for (in Toronto). I was asked how much I wanted, and I said $40. That's what I got, no questions asked... Makes me think I should have said 50 or 60 and haggled with them a bit
Figure within 5 years of any experience in the IT field your looking at 50k. I current make 55k, got 5 years of networking and unix experience. No college, doing that on the side. I get 401k, full medical/health/disability and life insurance, since the company is privatly held, they trade in some listed stocks that i get matchings from with deposits into my options and 401k plans. so in all i'm making a good deal for only being 23 years old.
It just depends.. I had a *HUGE* stock option once, company bellied over, 2 years later i sold my thousands of shares for 700.00 on the OTC market, so thats a risk you take.
Also.. If you like job hopping, you can always hop up to more cash, work here, there, get broad experience, training.. if you don't mind being busy all the time and on the road alot and no place to call home, i'd say you can easily make 80k a year...
And for those of you interested in being a systems administrator and looking at that shinny "up to 90k a year" salary, you'd better be prepaired to give up your life, and remember that a few thousand employees are *relying* on you that you gave up everything to run those servers.. its a very self gratifying position, but again, if you want to keep your marriege, deal with a lil bit less stress and simpler job and take the lower expectation salary :)
The salaries in norway really vary, but what I have come to find being very nifty is having your own small one-man business, but being sponsored by a bigger company, which hires you out to businesses across the board, as well as lets you do development work and different stuff. :)
Pays well, and the hours for a student like me is very flexible
On a sidenote, you can see anything between 80-100$ an hour doing regular network/server setups etc. I have heard of Linux/Unix people here not taking a job if it pays below 200$ an hour. And they usually get it (if you're good).
So the pay is good, but the cost of living and taxes in norway is steep. Atleast most of the social system is free of charge etc.
Well, do if you like lots of nature more than lots of money. I live in the northern half of Sweden, working as a programmer for a medium-sized (for Sweden) company. I rake in the enormous amount of 210.000 SEK/yr (~$26k). Granted, others in similar positions here make more, but then I still lack a formal education, which tend to drop you down a bit, unless you go for smaller shops.
If you stay south, you're more likely looking at somewhere around $35k, with a lot of extra pollution and other nice things that come in the bargain when you move into "big" cities. (I mean, Stockholm is HUGE, around 1 million people! ;-)
So, the salary isn't high, and most of it get mysteriously lost in taxes (~30%), but I quite like the place anyway. Though, of course, you have to be able to handle snowy winters and rainy summers, but once you get used to it, and get yourself a snow-mobile, winters are dang fun!
In living expenses, you're looking at $500/month for a three-room apartment (note; not three-bedroom, three rooms, plus kitchen and bathroom). Me and my fiance spend around $200-$300 on food every month, though we tend to eat a lot of (expensive) meat. I haven't lived down south, but I get the impression that the rent is slightly higher (or even a lot higher, if you want a central place). Gas is around a dollar per litre (I can never remember how much a gallon is...)
As far as connectivity goes, I can only speak for the city I live in (Umeå), in which most of the larger areas are getting either radio-LAN or cable modems. I have a cable modem for $30/mo. But DO bring your computer, if you buy one here, you'll get a heartattack from having to pay near twice as much as in US!!
In all, as always, it comes down to what your priorities are. If you can live with less money, but like nature, northern Sweden is lovely, especially in the winter. If you want lots of money, you're probably better off going somewhere else. Doing some quick calculations, I get $1250 each month after taxes, spend $280 (half the rent) and $100 on food, $50 on the car (I don't drive much), $40 on public transport. That leaves me with something like $750 to live on, which is plenty enough for me, since I don't need many frills.
I always thought that was BS, so I'm thrilled to see it on /.
But does anyone know what I'm talking about? Its a vauge memory from something I read somewhere...
Salaries in Vancouver are $40k, 50k and 60k for entry, mid, and senior levels respectively. That is just a general rule from a guy I know who is conducting interviews. Just few weeks ago a big company offered $58k to a fresh BCIT grad (I'm not sure whether it's degree or just a diploma, but the institution is well regarded in the industry), granted, for electrical engineering work not sw but the guy has no experience other than internship. I get $51k with 6yrs of experience doing C/C++ on UNIX as an Electrical Eng. gone SW Designer (with experience in real-time telephony, Oracle, GUI, TCP/IP etc.) which I think is low - but it didn't seem low last year as I earned $44k before that. There was a jump in salaries this year, and there was a jump a year before.
I think I saw your post, that you make like $74k as a contractor, without free time. I don't know how's contracting industry here, but I do know some people make a lot of money doing that.
The industry itself is not nearly as developed as in Toronto or Ottawa, there are less jobs, but should be no problem to find a job for a person with experience.
Beware though, there's plenty of rain, and I mean plenty. Vancouver is literally paradise on Earth during a brief summer but otherwise it's mostly rain. Our provincial government is probably among the worst in the country as well, trafic is very bad, public transit is slow and tax money goes to wrong projects (well, subject to debate). At least it's not cold. On the other hand, if you like snow sports, they are all within 1/2 hour drive and are open good portion of the year.
In Mexico, I have seen IT salaries ranging from about $3,000 to $30,000 a year (extremely under- and over-paid - it would be more real to say it goes from $7,000 to $15,000, it's much more usual).
However, that doesn't mean we are underpaid; the cost of living in Mexico is WAY under what you would expect... I have a relatively expensive way of living, and I spend about 15 dollars a day. It is not hard to live (and pretty decently) with about 5 dollars a day. In fact, the minimum wages go at US$2.2 per day - and many people live with less than that.
I think the situation you depict is quite ok. (Note however there's a big difference whether you studied university or 'hogeschool' (the official english term for that nowadays is 'university of professional education', but the salary is still lower than someone who did a 'real' university.)
I think in general the cost of living in the Netherlands is lower than in the US. (Some exceptions ofcourse, we pay more then twice as much for gas for your car.)
Greetings,
Ivo
Just one additional remark: the trend goes towards unpaid overtime. Beside that, overtime is nearly mandatory, especially if milestones/releases/whatever are ahead.
-- "Wherever you go, there you are." (Buckaroo Banzai)
If you are negotiating for your salary:
You were to low, if your opposite accepts without hesitation. This applies especially for serious interlocutors (the unserious protest always).
-- "Wherever you go, there you are." (Buckaroo Banzai)
Your friend made the mistake to start at 2/3 of a normal salary I think.
There is an arti cle in the German IT-Newspaper Computerwoche about German IT salaries. From my experience as an IT Consultant the salaries in that paper seem to be quite low, though.
A typical post-degree starter salary is 75kDM per year.
A junior consultant with some experience gets about 90kDM.
Please keep in mind that we have very high income taxes in Germany. We have progessive taxation (the percentage grows with the income), up to 53% for a high income.
The IT center of Germany is just around München (English speaking people like to mis-spell that "Munich"). For IT people in finance, Frankfurt (we call it "Bankfurt" somtimes) is the place. Smaller IT cities are Hamburg and Bremen in the north, a little bit in the Hannover area. More and more service companies are moving to Berlin now, thus there are some jobs there.
A very good starting point for searching job adverts (sorry, all in German) are the pages of the newspaper DIE ZEIT. They use a crawler to collect information from many other job sites. They have a page for international jobs too.
-- "Wherever you go, there you are." (Buckaroo Banzai)
In the Burlington Area of Vermont... Some companies will offer thirty-five thousand to someone with a few years experience...fifty-five thousand US is a good job with about five years experience. The local medical database company IDX has several top-notch programmers at over eighty thousand...
Celebrate Excellence!
For example, in Silicon Valey, you will get a high salary, but you have to pay >500k for a decent house. In other part of the world you will get lower salary, but the cost of life is much lower. So in fact you can make a better living elsewhere.
Which is why (if you're the planning ahead type), you do what I'm doing...
Get a job paying you around 6 figures, live frugally, save money, move somewhere else....
When I moved here, my rent doubled, but so did my salary.. All things considered, I'm saving twice as much (straight dollar amount) as I was before I moved west... I'll keep it up for a few years, move back to the midwest, and be able to pay cash money for a house.. Doesn't sound like such a bad deal, does it?
I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me. -- HS Thompson
Except for the part where you move back to the midwest. Yuck... :-)
test
I've known a few UK docs. I was surprised to learn from one of these that private practice exists in the UK (for those who can afford to pay). But most of the medicine is socialized. Probably not a bad way to do it. The bulk of the population is served by a reliable, but perhaps less responsive, public health service while the few who can afford private medicine are allowed to pursue that. No corporate medicine, where business and ethics can collide on so many planes.
I do hope we don't go the way of the Canadians. My doc friends in Canada tell me that private practice simply isn't allowed there. It's completely socialized. Certainly the docs are as good as anywhere else, but the waiting lists are much worse. If you have an urgent problem, you'll get timely attention. But if you've got nagging gallstones or a sore herniated disc, you may have to wait months in pain for that elective surgery. Meanwhile there is little or no wait in the states for even the poorest uninsured patient (just find your nearest friendly University hospital). More than a few Canadians can be found flying into the Mayo Clinic and elsewhere in the states for medical care they couldn't get in a timely manner or at all in Canada. Again, this is no reflection on the docs and nurses in the system, just the system.
Jobfinder.ie should have all you need to find out about IT jobs in Ireland. They have a salary survey (a year or two old) that's reasonably accurate (look under "Career Resources" on the main menu).
Due to the current nature of the economy in Ireland, expect it to take you at least eight hours to get a job in Dublin! Less if you're not fussy. We're the world's second biggest exporter of software after the US. Not bad for a country with only 3.5 million. But then we are Microsoft's distribution point for Europe.
Reasons not to come here: the weather is crap, tax is a bitch, traffic is a nightmare, the price of housing has gone up over 100% in the last few years, the weather is crap, and, in case I forgot to mention it, the weather is crap (unless you like rain).
Reasons to come here: just the chance of seeing the sun once every few years fills you with hope; the beer is good; despite the fact that we're level with Canada's Hudson Bay, it rarely gets below freezing in the winter (average temp. in January is 9C/48F, just right for some nice soft rain); tax is coming down every year; more jobs in IT than you can shake a very large stick at; we speak English (but then, so do the Dutch and the Finns but they have cold winters, it just rains here); the beer is good (well the socialising around beer is good).
Problem: work permits can be hard to come by if you don't have an EU passport. You mightn't be as free to change jobs as the locals. You could check that out somewhere else. I think they've relaxed things of late.
Oh, in case I forgot to tell you, it rains a lot, so bring an umbrella. You won't need any sun-screen.
Enjoy,
Daisy.
Jobfinder.ie should have all you need to find out about IT jobs in Ireland. They have a salary survey (a year or two old) that's reasonably accurate (look under "Career Resources" on the main menu).
Due to the current nature of the economy in Ireland, expect it to take you at least eight hours to get a job in Dublin! Less if you're not fussy. We're the world's second biggest exporter of software after the US. Not bad for a country with only 3.5 million. But then we are Microsoft's distribution point for Europe.
Reasons not to come here: the weather is crap, tax is a bitch, traffic is a nightmare, the price of housing has gone up over 100% in the last few years, the weather is crap, and, in case I forgot to mention it, the weather is crap (unless you like rain).
Reasons to come here: just the chance of seeing the sun once every few years fills you with hope; the beer is good; despite the fact that we're level with Canada's Hudson Bay, it rarely gets below freezing in the winter (average temp. in January is 9C/48F, just right for some nice soft rain); tax is coming down every year; more jobs in IT than you can shake a very large stick at; we speak English (but then, so do the Dutch and the Finns but they have cold winters, it just rains here); the beer is good (well, the socialising around beer is good).
Problem: work permits can be hard to come by if you don't have an EU passport. You mightn't be as free to change jobs as the locals. You could check that out somewhere else. I think they've relaxed things of late.
Oh, in case I forgot to tell you, it rains a lot, so bring an umbrella. You won't need any sun-screen.
Enjoy,
Daisy.
If you live in northern Sweden you can expect ;)
lower salaries...or maybe i am getting ripped off
I am working as a software engineer (has been for 2 years after completing college) developing server side applications in c++ and i am getting
about $33 k
I cant belive the salaries people get in the US... $60+ k!! i could sure use that kind of cash!
Anyone got an offer for me? =)
/Lasse
Well, I don't know what kind of welfare system you have in the States, but here in the UK it'd be practically impossible to support any kind of serious drug habit on forty quid a week. And I think you'll find that the vast majority of people on welfare are there short-term.
--
"This isn't the post you're looking for. Move along."
--
"This isn't the post you're looking for. Move along."
In my experience starting salaries tend to be around $40K CDN - or about $27K American. That's for any type of coding. Of course, rates rise with experience
Anybody want to offer more?:)
J:)
Oh well, no point in steering now.
Pick a small company in a non-computer related, slow-paced sector. Forgot getting a degree and get lots of experience instead. For preference, get some experience of the business first. Sticking with one company for as long as you can bear it helps as you can acquire seniority simply by being there.
:-)
While it might not be the sexiest work around BEING the IT department is kinda fun. Finding a small, successful company and filling that role can be a lot of fun (with the right company). There is little specialization (for me at least) but I do DBs, network sec./arch., web stuff, support (blech), and like davey said "fix pretty much anything with a plug."
They are also rather dependent on you so when you walk in after a year and ask for a 70% pay hike, they give in happily.
+&x
True, true, true... I started at 30K doing tech. support and progect management. That was six months ago, the company doesn't know how to treat its employees so I'm forced to look elseware. Problem is i HAVE to stay in the Atlanta area, for relationship reasons (plus I can't afford a move now anyway), so there's no telling what I'll be able to find.
Sux for me.
(To get that in US$, multiply by 1.64) :)
That's not bad actually: 30k+ a year
Heh, I dropped out of school and am making 35 a year in Baltimore *grin*
With the experience I've garned in that year and a half, the degree will push me up to closer to 50-55 *grin*
Oh boy are you getting screwed. Of course many small companies will try to keep the wool over your eyes because they don't want/cant pay a real salary. Of course, a certain amount of Rock Stardom helps the salary level, but I'm makeing 30% more than you are fixing desktops(primary responsibility, but I make it a point to stick my nose in everything). I do have my MCSE, but that's only a foot in the door type of thing. You might want to look for a computer services company such as IBM, EDS or Perot Systems. They get all the hot shots and pay commensurately.
What do you want? $600 a week for an internship? Lessee, last I remember, $600 a week boils down to about 30K a year, interns aren't real employees and do no real work. Ask Asok. Interns climb through air ducts so that the boss can tell where they go. Quit complaining that you make 30 G's a year without a college degree. Why don't you ask your local McDonald's employee if he or she'd like to switch places with you.
This may be construed to mean that they are somehow equivalent. They're not. For the benefit of anyone considering grad school who doesn't already know, a master's degree in a science field typically requires about two years of courses and may require a thesis and/or a comprehensive exam.
Doctoral programs often includes the master's degree along the way (that's how I got mine - didn't finish the PhD, though) and require a thesis involving original research, in addition to a comprehensive exam and an exam in one's area of research. (The thesis requirements for a masters are typically lighter - a survey of existing work, or a translation of a historical work, for example.)
I started at $8, doing system administration for a small software company (NT and OpenBSD). Of course, I was 16 at the time, so you'd never hear me complain about it. Now I'm 18, and working there part-time for $12.50 while I go to college for my BS in CS.
Still, there's a plus to be "unprofessional". I go to work, and though everyone else wears a shirt/tie business-look, I wear sneakers and sweatshirts :) When they start giving me benefits, then I'll put on a tie.
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
What is up with NOVA(North VA for the uninitaited)
every time I go there it leaves a bad taste in my
mouth. It has to be the whitest, most uptight,
anal retentive place on this earth. And the women
are all homely lookin'. Here in Richmond, VA it's
very chill. I configure and test networks for a
fortune 500 for 41K US a year. Couldn't be happier. I could be making 50-60K in NOVA, but I
wouldn't move there if someone put a gun to my head. I hate that place.
The Information Revolution will be fought on the command line.
Being in the US Military, I make $5.47 per hour here in the US... and oversees I make $5.47 per hour. Talk about needing a new line of work :-)
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
I've been using Unix since I was 19, and I'm now 31. So does this mean that I can make 110K too?
Becareful about this negotiating. It may get expensive, and the companies might see a large number of MSCE's that are cheap. And a business person (non-techie) will think "whats the difference between Unix and NT/2000. 50K for support". And then you will really be in trouble.
Steven Rostedt
Steven Rostedt
-- Nevermind
I worked in Melbourne after my graduation. I got paid around AU$35k/yr. WHich is kind of a pay for fresh grads. It allowed me to do a decent living. But I didn't stand out from the crowd :-) I was just another person on the road driving a HOnda or a Ford, Not a BMW or Lexus or Audi. :-)
:-) My salary is almost tripple. Even though living expenses are "VERY" high in bay area, I can still save more. And I like the technology I work with.
But let me tell you, I loved the company I worked for. No corporate culture. Engineers were looked aftered very well.
Seriouly, compared to US pay, Aus pay will make you laugh. But they still think you are earning a fortune.
And stock options in most companies are unheard of or peanuts.
THen I left for US
As a person worked in Singapore for a very short time, I can tell that you will very seriously dissappointed in Singapore too. Pay is poor and the people aren't that nice to you as you are used to in Aus or US. It was a strict 9-5 job.
All in all, I think Silicon Valley is the area where you are most valued at. But it could be a quick conclusion. I also heard Canada is picking up. May be some one can clarify this. And I heard Canada has a good health care system and such.
cheers
LinuxLover
You are most welcome. I have enjoyed the use of your site for years, and talk it up whenever I get the opportunity. Sorry for having 'Slashdotted' you, but it is a nice problem to have. :-)
Steve Cline http://www.clines.org, http://www.objectbap.com
I'd also encourage folks to contribute their current rates - kind of like open source for salary information!
Steve Cline http://www.clines.org, http://www.objectbap.com
I disagree about cost of living, meybe out in the sticks but here in the RandStaadt (sp?) I reckon it ends up pretty equivalent to the UK. Food/beer/eating out is much cheaper, but the cost of acommodation is hideous if you want to live in a big city, and the cost of running a car is hideous if you live in a village, The cost of owning a car and living in Amsterdam was enough to make me sell it and take the tram.
"Oops, I always forget the purpose of competition is to divide people into winners and losers." - Hobbes
The northeast is sort of a foreign country. Bandwidth is nonexistent unless you are in Boston or VERY close to New York. There are no POPs around.
Here in Rochester New York, lots of people have cable modems, is that what you mean by bandwidth? I'd have it to, but I'm moving in a few months. I don't know the availability of DSL or ISDN, though.
George
I'm not trolling, you sound underpaid for a computer professional, though paid okay for a print shop worker.
If you're looking, I'm wondering if you should underplay the Mac and pump up the PC end of things. Lots of people (HR, PHB) assume Macs are for pretty pictures, and don't even realize that you can run a decent web server on them.
I don't see many Macs jobs in the local ads, and the ones I do see are for prepress work.
George
I'm not sure what the IT situation is in Orlando, though I haven't heard much good about Florida. Are you committed to staying in Florida, or are you willing to relocate? Northern Virginia isn't too far away, and seems to need people.
You do mention working in college computer labs. Is this a big college town? That seems to be the kiss of death for salary, since your competition is hungry college students who need beer and pizza money.
You mentioned certifications, but didn't list any of the three and four letter acronyms that resume reading software and PHB's like, you know, CNA, CNE, MCP, MCSE. Do you have those, have you considered working for those?
How about networking? Do you belong to any local users groups, where you can meet someone who can get you in?
How about getting a BS? Some companies have the luxury of throwing all non-BS/BA resumes in the trash, especially if they're older/more conservative, or the labor market is tight. Tying this together with my company, some divisions won't look at you without a four year degree, others will start you at $30k+ if you know computers and are willing to work on the hotline. If you didn't know which division to apply to, you're shooting yourself in the foot.
Hope this helps.
George
Just to second the vote for NZ for lifestyle reasons. As for salary, the range can go higher - having been part of Symantec's acquisition of Ghost, we're now enjoying salary and benefits which are in line with those in the US offices, on top of being able to enjoy our relatively underpopulated countryside.
As for the H1-B's, maybe that's just a reflection of the level of pressure on INS for them. When I got hired by a Chicago firm in '92, it was literally a formality and took a couple of weeks -but I did get the impression that not all immigration laywers were equal and that my sponsor used a particularly good firm.
Staring salary in Austin is about $38,000 for C/Perl/Java people; Web design/sysadmin/database is a little lower. DBA's seem to be pulling in about $75k+ with 2 or more years experience, while software enigneers get about $65k or so with 3-4 yrs. I entered at $30 and am up to $40 in the past 10 months. COL is low compared to California or New York, but I think that might be applicable for just about anywhere else in the world. Austin is a cool town; while it doesn't have quite the IT shortage that Dallas or Houston have (thus lower salaries), it is a much more liveable place.
Staring salary in Austin is about $38,000 for C/Perl/Java people; Web design/sysadmin/database is a little lower. DBA's seem to be pulling in about $75k+ with 2 or more years experience, while software engineers get about $65k or so with 3-4 yrs. I entered at $30 and am up to $40 in the past 10 months. COL is low compared to California or New York, but I think that might be applicable for just about anywhere else in the world. Austin is a cool town; while it doesn't have quite the IT shortage that Dallas or Houston have (thus lower salaries), it is a much more liveable place.
I just interviewed at a Portland area company and was told that $45-50K was a reasonable starting salary for a CS grad fresh out of college.
Brian
It's hard to give an "average" in terms of pay simple due to the fact that it can vary tremendously depending on many things:
- Experience (length of time in field)
- Type of degree (BS, MS, PhD, etc)
- The length of time you're with the company
- Any significant achievements
Basically they take a look at everything about you, weigh out the good and the bad, then decide...For example, I worked at a consulting firm for a while...here's some average full time salaries:
Web designer (little experience): $15/hr
Web designer/ webmaster (2+ yrs exp): $25/hr
System admin (2+ yrs exp): $25/hr
Network admin (4+ yrs exp): $35/hr
Programmer (C/C++ entry level): $20/hr
Programmer (C/C++ 2+ yrs): $30/hr
Senior network eng (8-10+ yrs exp): $45/hr
Generally the longer you're out there, the more you can ask for...it all depends on your resume...anything goes...were you involved in any leadership positions? (project leader, etc)...any specially challeging projects? How good were you with the deadlines? Balance in expertise? They like to see people that can do many different things and tackle anything that gets thrown at them, but at the same time, a jack of all trades that has no special expertise can be a big minus.
For the post-college people, it also matters any relevant courses you've taken, any important research, your GPA (duh), and also the school you graduated from (not as big of a deal as many people would think...it mainly helps you get the foot in the door and also when competing for a position against other people).
If there's something about you that you truly feel puts you above the average, it's ok to ask for more, but be realistic.
Also, in many cases, not simply $$$ is enough...most of the people I know didn't pick the offer that gave the most $$$ up front...they balanced out many things such as health benefits, stock options, cost of living in the area, etc...
The one thing you wanna keep in mind though is not $$$....money in most cases is one of the least important things...the most important thing is whether you'll be happy or not at the job...would you rather make a lot of money and work at a place where they make you wear a suit, fill out tons of bogus reports and have an a**hole of a boss or at a more casual place, where maybe you'll make less, but you'll get along with the people better, etc...Getting a job isn't a "go where the money is" kind of thing...you should REALLY keep that in mind.
-dr0ne
Just as cost of living in diffrent parts of the world differs vastly, so do the tax laws and social dues.
I program Java in Germany and make aroung DM 5K/Month (divide ~2 for Dollars) before taxes and end up with about DM 2.9K. When you start really making money (as an employee) your tax+health insurance+unemployeement etc gets really close to 50%.
As far as I know, it's even worse than that in Scandinavian countries.
Cost of living is not just housing and food. There's health of course, but if you happen to have kids education can be expensive too. 30k$/year for college, if you got 3 kids going to college for some time, is quite expensive. Especially since most European country give it for free. Add to this holidays (5 and soon 7 weeks in France, 2 in US !) and taxes and comparing salaries get almost impossible.
The average starting salary for a programmer in Ohio seems to be from US$40-45K/year. I'd suggest avoiding public universities here - the pay seems to hit US$40K only after you've been there for 10 years!
I started my programming career in Arkansas working for JB Hunt Transportation doing C++ at $30K US/year in 1994, which was a very good starting rate for programmers, and an excellent rate for Arkansas. Luckily I didn't know this so I got a job in Virginia a year later at $45K. If you're stuck in NorthWest AR (not a bad situation; it's very beautiful there) try Wal Mart, Tyson, JB, ...
Now I'm working in Dallas, TX as a Java consultant making $75/hour (~$160K/year) and planning to move back to AR next year to start my own business. Life is good.
Hang in there, be willing to negotiate, and be willing to move!
You are getting screwed, but you probably already knew that.
Beyond that, I've always found contracts that don't allow you to discuss your salary to be a big red flag. Every company I've ever seen that included that sort of clause has not impressed me. Think about it...why would they stipulate that? It's almost a sort of security by obscurity...and we know how well that works.
Let me guess, they also have some stupid (and probably invalid/illegal) non-compete clause as well, right?
--GnrcMan--
The salary for you first geek job is not terribly important...you won't be keeping it for long...:)
The industry is such that they only way to get ahead is to change jobs frequently your first five years or so. Otherwise you get locked into a 5-7% raise structure, and never get anywhere.
So, forget salary, and try to land something that will expose you to skills in growing areas you can market later. The value of someone with even a year experience is so much greater than that of a college kid...that is when you want to start thinking about the dollar signs.
I started out with 300.000 DKr/Year (~42K $), when I got my first job after graduating from the University. Last month I was offered a company car as a pay-rise :)
I general the salaries are very good for the skilled programmer i Denmark. (But the taxes are high: 50-60%, depending on your income).
I would say it is time to move on. I am currently working in the public sector in the Seattle as a sys. admin. for around 45k base salary with paid O/T. I got this job with just a bit of experence & 4 MCSE tests.
£14k for a CS/IT graduate from a decent UK university is very low, regardless of where in the country you work. People from my CS course who were looking for money when they graduated last year got £22k+ in London, and some of them got nearly £30k. The strangest thing to me was to see how tolerant the vast majority of them were of awful salaries - it seems like those people who actually bothered to hunt for a decent salary got _far_ more than those who took traditional (i.e. defense industry, IT consultancy) jobs. Crap banking contractors get £30/hr for their skills (which equates to not far off £100k). I've seen DECENT banking contractors at over £100/hr.
From my experience, no matter how good you are, people just aren't going to pay a 20yr old a full consultant rate, no matter how good he is technically, or how much experience he has. You don't say where in the world you are, but if you're not in a major US IT city, $20 isn't all that bad. That said, you'll probably snag a better paid job just because of the extra experience you got while working at your current job, even if it was only for a few months. Enjoy it while it lasts, I'm sure the world will wake up soon, and coding will become a clerical level job.
http://www.ics.uci.edu/~sumitg/essays/MSvsPhd.htm
I think that the money is excellent as a Phd, so you can get both hapiness and money ! Comments welcome. Sumit
Sydney is not cheap compared to the rest of Australia - Salaries in Sydney are 10-20% higher because of cost of living than Melbourne.
Here's some salaries in Melbourne:
Graduate 30-45k $AU (50-55 if you're lucky)
Few years exp (1-3) 40-60k
10-15 years 100-200k (and up and up).
However these are going up fast. I have been offered up to 75k.
However given this cost of living your already living pretty good by this point. Money isn't everything. I stayed where I was because the conditions are very good and I am one of the initial employees of a startup so its worth my while to wait a see how things progress.
"If ignorance is bliss, then wipe the smile off my face"
the reason that you are only making 7$ is that someone convinced you that "you must have a degree to earn money." that is so untrue, a friend on mine made nearly twice that much with no degree, plus benefis -- the company gave him a computer i estimate to be worth $3000 after just one summer of working there. you might need to looke a little farther for someone who won't rip you off, but it is well worth the trouble --good luck!--
Hmm... thanks, I needed that info.. I'll finish my "stage" (work experience, I think) in 2 months.. and it's nice to know what to ask for.. especially since I got 3 joboffers. And at least 2 of those involve linux or unix. It's good to be wanted :)
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
I'll stick to the smaller ones then.. (was already planning for that anyway, and you won't catch ME in a three-piece suit :) I should at least slightly enjoy the job. And right now (I have no idea why.. maybe because I know how to read a man-file) I am considered to be the company's linux "expert". Oh well.. I don't mind :)
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
A man walks into a silicon valley pet shop and sees 3 monkeys on the shelf. He's shocked at the prices, and so calls over the assistant.
Man: "Hey, how come this monkey is $20,000!"
Assistant: "Well, he's a code monkey. Brilliant C programmer, never forgets to free(), lots of great experience and references. A real bargain!"
Man: "And what about the one next to him - that monkey is $50,000!"
Assistant: "He's even better! He's an object-oriented monkey, knows UML, can model as well as code. Word has it he was once owned by Stroustrup himself. This guy can even make C++ work in embedded. Worth his weight in gold."
Man: "Wow, the last one is $200,000 - what does he do?"
Assistant: "I'm not sure, but he says he's a contractor."
The bay area is the only place I know you will actually make lots of cash, quickly. If you leave the USA, you may be disappointed. As an Australian I can tell you that salaries there allow you to live comfortably, but only because the cost of living is much lower - and you won't be much better off than say, a plumber or a successful shopkeeper. If you see a Porsche boxster in Australia, I'd put my money on the driver being in real estate or finance. I think in the bay area the cost of living is about double, but my salary is about triple - and if you're prepared to live out of the city you can save a lot of money fast, and of course we all know what stock and options can do. In Germany I understand from talking to engineers there that the situation is similar.
Benefits offered will be different. In some countries there is a real health system, and instead of offering HBO/PPO plans you will get a car + fuel provided. While there may be tax benefits to joining a private health scheme, most people don't as it's not really necessary. Australia has compulsory employer-funded superannuation, so don't worry about 401k deductions either. Four weeks is the standard vacation per year.
Finally, I don't think you will get options in many countries. I have never heard of anyone getting options as an engineer in Australia, and the Germans tell me it is also unheard of.
One possibility I have heard of is to contract in the UK. Figures of around 80 pounds per hour (BTW, this '#' means HASH, not POUND - I want to slap anyone who says "pound define") were mentioned to me when I looked into it. That's a lot of money, but living in London will cost you a packet too. No benefits as a contractor of course, and no holidays either.
The biggest thing you have to worry about is your visa/passport situation. I assume you have already looked into that and have a short list of countries that you can move to/work in? If you haven't then do that first, the USA isn't the only country with restrictions.
AND make sure you know what is like to work in some other place. I'm sitting at my bay area desk in tracksuit pants, with free brewed coffee and a free bagel. I have a 21" monitor and a nice fast laptop. Free cell phone. Card access to the building, any time. FAST internet! Freedom to manage my own computing resources. Flexible hours. Work from home. My current project is something I suggested, and I like it.
Contrast this with the Australian experience... tailored pants & shirt at all times. 15" monitor and Pentium 66. No phone, no expenses, no after hours access, strictly 9-5. Adversarial management. SLOW internet - possibly with some kind of net nanny installed. NO software other than that approved by the half-educated empire-building IT manager allowed! And they wonder why all the programmers are leaving.
A little note about Canada (and Quebec in particular, where I live): the taxes are pretty high so you could expect to loose around 40% of that to taxes (I think anything over 50K CDN is pretty much taxes at 50%). You also have to deal with 13% sales taxes.
But then education's a lot cheaper and hospitalisation's free (but you usually have a good health insurance when you get hired in the States). The cost of living is also a lot less. And social security can keep you afloat for longer in case of trouble (but that isn't very relevant in this case).
Fact is, you can get by with less than you would need in the States, even if the salaries are higher.
The way I see it, you can probably afford to live a little better with the base salary in the States than here in Canada. The difference would increase when you get more experience I think since I haven't heard of many jobs offering monstrous amounts of money around here.
The salary sounds a bit low to me, but I'll second the point about the females.
I'm a little confused here. Are you looking for a job in the six counties of Northern Ireland under UK control or are you looking for a job in the 3 counties of Ulster in the republic?
For those of you who aren't familiar with the currency rates, that translates to about 35k US $. Cost of living is only slightly higher than the US for most things (tax is higher, but we do get some cool stuff back for it like the health service), but as far as hitech products go, most manufacturers keep the figures the same regardless of whether they are charging in US $ or UK £, so this is a bad place to be buying computers, hifi equipment, etc.
Hi,
First the gross salary is just a little part of the equation. You also have to look at the cost of life.
For example, in Silicon Valey, you will get a high salary, but you have to pay >500k for a decent house. In other part of the world you will get lower salary, but the cost of life is much lower. So in fact you can make a better living elsewhere.
Now to answer your question, in Montreal the mean salary for someone who is just out of the University is 40,000$CAN.
For people with 5 years of experience it can go from 50K to 90K ($CAN). This is relative to what technologies you have experience with and how aggressive you are when negociating your salary.
That's a bit over the odds... for a graduate you'd be better off thinking in the 14-18k (21-27k US) type range... the biggest thing to consider with England though is the cost of living... compared to almost anywhere else in the world it's astronomical...
-~ Given a choice between two theories, take the one which is funnier. ~-
Come to Holland then... there are loads of tax perks here, and the cost of every day living is 1/3 of that in england...
-~ Given a choice between two theories, take the one which is funnier. ~-
I have a friend who is the same age and went into the IT industry almost 5 years ago and is now working for a small business ISP(not very small for much longer though) in Atlanta making 48k a year and is about to get seceral million in stock options when they IPO. I joined the navy a couple years before he went into the industry and I got out a year ago and have been in the IT industry for less than a year and I am making 30K a year and will have stock options in about a year with the same company. Neither one of us have a degree and the only formal traing I have is from the Navy in the medical field. The only telecom and computer related experience I have is from figuring out the network of the hospital that I was stationed at before our so-called government IT professionals could. I will probably be at about 35-40K in about a year.
Salary of Senior Programmer: around R14 000 ($2300) per month gross. Take off R4000 for tax. Salaries will be higher in Joburg, but you couldn't pay me to live there.
Other factors:
Housing, food: Cheap and good
Natural environment and weather: great!
Public transport: what's that?
Roads & highways: Adequite, under 1 hour to work from outlying suburbs.
Health care: Private health care is good, public health care is apalling
Internet: Local phone calls charged *per minute*
Crime rate: Appalling
Good geeks are steadily leaving to earh real money in the 1st world.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
Most C, C++, and Perl programmers with 0-2 years of experience that I know of living in Austin, TX make around 35-40k. Most everyone in Austin is underemployed, it seems. I know personally I could double my salary if I moved somewhere else. But it's not worth it to me to live in NYC or California.
I haven't been too terribly impressed by any of my co-workers that have CS degrees from UT. But with a school that size, it's hard to make too many generalizations, since there's always an exception.
The going rate for graduates in the South of England is anywhere from 20 to 27 KGBP per annum. Expect to get more the nearer London you get, and less in the north of England and Wales, and Scotland.
I see more and more US companies hiring students as interns or for lower than normal wages and giving them fairly major projects. I am a student and many of my student collegues have the same story. They aren't just writing snibblets but putting whole applications together and not getting paid standard wages. I think smaller comapnies are getting more savvy as to how to cut IT developement costs, especially in web developement where things are always changing and fastpaced anyhow.
You wouldn't be around Galway/Mayo would you? I'm coming home for Christmas with a view to moving back in a few years (like 2). I'd like to start scoping the situation out.
I've just come back home to NZ (after 6 years working overseas). I'm contracting (back to a company I was previously employed at for $90 NZD an hour. It's providing me with a nice lifestyle.
I live in Huntsville, AL. I'm a software engineer who's still working on a degree, with about 2 years experience (workforce) or 11 years (since I started hacking around in QBasic. :) ). I get $20/hr.
--me
This is an especially difficult problem for students, who generally have no idea what they are worth or what their options are. This was one of the primary motivating factors that contributed to my leaving school (temporarily) to start work on a company called Catalyst Recruiting. I won't give the official blurb here, but I'd like to invite anybody who's interested to come take a look. We specialize in finding alternative opportunities for students - abroad, in hi-tech startups, hedgefunds, etc.
our model is quite different from someone like Monster.com - we use a profile database (incidentally built with 100% Linux-based free and open-source software) to let companies come to candidates and not the other way around.
Ok, that's enough of a plug. Thanks for listening...
Eric Ries
CIO
Catalyst Recruiting
Can your IM do this?
http://www.pencomsi.com/industry.html
:) :)
this dynamicaly generates a report. its alright
first it'll ask u the geography, field, whatcha know, etc. I'm not sure how accurate it is tho
Housing prices:
Toronto: 300,000
Vancouver: 500,000
Saskatoon: 60,000
Calgary: 180,000
:-) The prairies may suck, but they are cheap to live in.
---
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Im based out of Geneva(Switzerland) and have been for the last 2 years. I can't comment on the rest of Europe however, regarding Geneva:
;-)
.ch it is extremely high, in fact I think the highest in Europe. Living is expensive, high tax rate (so you try to get a tax-free position with an organization like the UN)
;-)
Minimum wage in the IT industry, (for example for a junior, no experience, PC support technician or help desk) is about USD 40,000 per annum
Going up scale (eg. skilled junior software developer- max 1 year professional experience, in MS technologies - eg. VB or ASP) USD 45,000 - 55,000 per annum
Further up (eg. DB certified specialist - Oracle, MS SQL Server etc. with knowledge at least 1 development language, eg. Perl, C/C++, VB, Delphi) USD 60,000 + (assuming about 2 yrs experience)
After that it really depends on you, I don't reckon you could realistically average it out. I know a couple of guys technically down the ladder from me, working in development earning up to 55% more than I do.
If you working with *nix's or the large (non-MS) DB servers - you can usually name your own salary. I mean this!
Quality of Life in
I would recommend that you dont try and get an equivalent of your current US salary - aim for a minimum 15% higher or else you're talking a noticely drop in lifestyle
You'd probably get a better idea of things talking to your embassy over here to get an idea of the differences. I think they have some sort of professional counsel who can talk you through the various aspects of relocating to various countries in western Europe.
BTW, above are my own observations. You really would have to get a more authoritative source of info. But I doubt you'll get much definitive info.
The Big Company Myth...
Big Companies DON'T necessarily pay you more!
If your fresh out of University, expect Fl.3500, even at the Big Companies. They usually have a 2 year new recruits program like "Young Proffessional" at CapGemini. Be very careful to enter this program. Unless you're really good, they'll keep you at that level for the two years. Always negotiate!!! They'll usually bump up the amount with a several hundred guilders. Also negotiate the (size of the) company car.
If you apply for a position at a big company and you want to earn more, try to enter via a contact who works there, or apply for a specific position. Don't enter the new recruits program!
Small companies will pay more than big companies for experiene, because there's bigger demand and they need to keep you. It also invloves less negotiation. Maybe in the long run you're better of at a big company, but that's something to decide on an individual basis.
Good Luck !
I moved quite around a bit in the last 18 months, and it didn't went as well as it could have so besides your income (basically you can take it 1:1 on what you earn now) here is my advice:
Something way more important for you then the salary is your moving package when you go abroad (reads: Where you cannot drive by car).
The last two companies (first a US now a Dutch) crossed me quite well. Housing wouldn't be a problem etc.
So in the end I ended up with paying almost 50% of my income on housing.
So after moving from Germany to the US and then to the Netherlands I have decided to do it a third time: Toronto here I come. This time though I go for a big company, might not be fully my enviroment, but at least there I can be sure that they get the thing organized, I am sick of living out of a suitcase.
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
To all of you in US this may sound a dumb question. Nevermind, here I go: When you say "35K" do you mean net salary? Or pre-tax?
/.) can get from 30 to 40K taxes excluded. But the tax is about 30 to 32 % for that salary range. C and Java developers fall in that range, too. You are a bit better off doing project management. Nokia DOESN'T excell with the salaries, but the benefits are great. I personally prefere working at Nokia than some minor company that would pay better. The environment is much more friendly, with people from all around the world (then, again, if you're a racistic ass, you might not like it), which I really enjoy. The best seems to be a contractor. They get 2 to 3 times higher salaries.
OK, so I may as well add my 0.02 about finland. A UNIX admin (seems the most popular job on
Sigged!
The starting salary for coders is ~45K straight out of college. It's ~55K if you have a masters degree as well. The cost of living is actually quite low compared to the wage earnings which is why I would never want to live in California where you may make twice that money but never afford a good living condition because of the insane living expenses.
_________________________
Words of Wisdom:
_________________________
Words of Wisdom:
Never pet a burning dog.
I got my first computer 5 years ago. An AST 25MHz POS. Anyway, I got a job last year as a computer support engineer in the Research Triangle Park area of North Carolina. That job sucked as I was supposed to support 120 ppl in NC, plus another 100 so in various Islands. Wouldn't have been so bad, but I only made $23,000 and over half of the ppl there had never worked on or seen a computer before. Did I mention that the fastest machine we had was a 233 and our Unix server was a dual 100 with about .005% free disk space? Anyway, I left that crap hole about 4 months ago and now I am a Help Desk Engineer 2 with a reputable company. I now make $33,500... not including my 10% bonus and other goodies. So, if you are just sitting around doing nothing, at least get paid to surf the net and post on /. There's no job like IT... There's no job like IT.
wow. that's what i got paid in 1984 for a xerox internship.
fault-tolerant
First off, anyone who is a coder, entry level or not, should not be making less then $35k a year, anywhere in the US. If you fall in this category, leave your job immediately. They are fucking you in the ass and they know it. There is a total shortage of people in the IT field across the spectrum.
:) We need your help!
Obviously rates in the field vary by experience, as well as skill sets too. For example, an Oracle DBA is worth $100k+, where an entry level Oracle guy is probably still worth at least $50k.
From what I see in New Jersey, a typical coder with 2-3 years is worth $55-60k. In Manhattan, this rate goes up to about $65-70k.
Hope this information helps.
By the way, if there is anyone in the New York City or New Jersey area with at least two years of Oracle, PHP, MySQL, and Perl experience, please send me your resume!
Jon Niola
Director of Product Development
InfoRocket Inc. - http://www.inforocket.com
Salaries in Denmark as a new student is app 25.000 DKK. Taxes are high (min. 47%) so this leaves you with app. 13000 DKK after taxes. A nice flat in Copenhagen costs from 3500 to 6000 DKK.
As an experienced programmer you can get as much as 45.000 DKK.
Free notebooks, cellphones and other benefits are not common in my area.
Eih bennek, eih blavek
HOUSING .AU ranges from large acreage to tiny townhouses and appartments, and depends on your proximity to the city centre. It's cheaper to get the acreage, but you pay for travel costs, and lose the time it takes to travel. I live a 40 minute walk away from my work, which is approximately a 30 minute walk from the city heart (Brisbane). My apartment costs me 10% of my (net) salary.
.AU: we have *one* cable provider in the entire country, who charge 35c (.au cents are almost identical to canadian cents) per MB at the cheapest rate. We have no DSL, but it's expected ``next year some time.'' Dialup charges are all around 19c/mb, ISDN is so expensive most small businesses won't consider it (several thousand a month, plus traffic charges).. Plus we have a huge delay on technologies and software arriving. Warcraft II:platinum isn't due here until December, for example. I want to move overseas purely because the computer industry lags so much. The new laws don't help.
.uk waited several days for his, and had it burst on him, which caused complications. (My hospital treatment was totally uncharged; dental work I had done recently however incurred a charge).
Housing in
FUEL
I don't drive. I don't own a car. I don't own a license, because I don't expect to own a car for a while yet. Cars are pretty expensive over here; your average new car (barinas etc) is half my yearly gross salary. I catch the bus or walk. Catching the bus is around 3% of my salary.
PEOPLE
I can't compare to other countries, but it ranges from people who would sooner barge you over than deviate their course slightly to people who will stop and chat happily.
COMPUTERS
If you think it's bad in the UK, don't come to
HEALTH SERVICE
Our health system is excellent. It's taken out of your salary in an income tax, but our hospitals are clean and have good staff, and you can elect for private cover if you wish immediate surgery on non-critical operations. Last year I had my appendix removed, I was operated on within a few hours of arriving at the hospital. My uncle in
other points
INCOME TAX
The highest tax rate is around 50%. I'm being taxed at about 38% on my salary (which, incidentally, is $32k a year, first year out of Uni, programming job. I know I can get more, but I like where I work.) I take home a little under $2000 each month -- with a bit of saving, I can afford some shiny new toys, but things like laptops and high end processors are still out of reach.
ENVIRONMENT
I like living in Brisbane; the air is pretty clean for a city, and while the river is in a terrible state, dredging was stopped this year and it should improve. There are parks everywhere, with trees on nearly every road side. I still want to emmigrate, though.
--
bje
How much does do I get for both of these titles in a new start-up company in Los Angeles, CA area? Currently, I get about 35K a year with fringe benefits (still waiting for 401K -- supposedly end of the year)? I started almost a year ago at 30K.
:)
Is this too low, average, or what?
Thank you in advance for replies.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I forgot to mention that it is not the money, it is the fringe benefits that add to my salary. I also have a B.S. in Computer Science if that helped.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I worked for a year and three months in the IT department for a company out of Casper, Wyoming. My supervisor - the administrator of the network - was paid a measly $19,200/year when I started there, and has since been raised to $24,000. He's got over two years of experience, has MCP+I and MCSE, and has worked his tail off for that company, but they won't pay him any more. They've been pulling in millions in profit. Maybe it's just a bad company, or maybe it's just Wyoming, but IT jobs here suck. Me, I'm just a techie, so I was only paid $12,000/year, but I KNOW there are places I could go and get easily three times that. Oh well, now I'm a poor college student - one of these years I'll be up with you guys. =)
i wanted to move to sydney, but every IT job i could find on the net said for australian residents only.
do you see many foreign(american) coders there? do you know of any companies that will hire american coders/sysadmins?
Just to get the facts right: The House of Lords have just passed the IR35 bill, according to http://uk.news.yahoo.com/991110/22/awa 1.html.
Maybe it is time to leave the UK? Let's see.
Hi!
Best of both worlds- educational computing. :)
Doesn't pay as much as private sector, but I *do* get to do fun stuff, take what classes I feel like, and wear shorts to work. Not to mention the tuition break on the wife's grad school...
Happiness *is* more important than money- but there is also an available balance of the two, sometimes.
My company in the central US is currently looking to add to our staff of networking consultants. We are in need of people with NT networking experiance. With your experiance, you should be able to start out with a $40k+ salary and good benefits.
Reply to this post if you are seriously interested.
"Anyone who can't laugh at himself is not taking life seriously enough." - Larry Wall
Expect an ICQ message at some point within the next 24 hours. I'm not a recruiter, but I'll give you all the info I can.
"Anyone who can't laugh at himself is not taking life seriously enough." - Larry Wall
I e-mailed you with the information. Let me know if you don't get it, or if you have any questions.
"Anyone who can't laugh at himself is not taking life seriously enough." - Larry Wall
I recently helped interview a slew of people for a web development job focusing on Cold Fusion and everything surrounding it (light database work, html, etc.). Everyone who came in wanted 60-70k, even the people with only a year of marginal experience who could not hold a real conversation about the skills they supposedly had.
If you can back up what you have on your resume, you can definitely demand that level of salary. There are so many perpetrators out there (and headhunteres/HR people don't weed them out well, in my experience). The people will be so happy to find someone not full of BS that they will go to great lengths to get you.
We are on almost the same situation than Mexico. Salary for ITs goes from $8000 to $25.000. Right now I'm making about 18K for IT Support.
HTML is obsolete. It's time for a new, simpler and richer markup language.
I once worked at a company where this was the only way to get a promotion.
They never retailiated. They just bet that most people would be too scared to do this.
If you threaten to take another job, make sure you have another job to go to. You never know.
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." -- Albert Einstein
It's gotta get more profitable to compete. A lot of people confuse "better" with "more profitable". How can I make my hospital more profitable? Charge more. Pay the doctors less. Cut corners. Only treat rich patients who can afford to pay. Get good deals from the drug companies by recommending their treatments. Open a lot of hospitals, get a monopoly and then hike prices. Does this sound like a certain software company?
Nonsense...The same rules that apply to companies could apply to hospitals. How can I make my COMPANY more profitable? Charge more. Pay the employees less. Cut corners...etc
The consumer will benefit as long as there are choices between businesses competing for his/her money. Profit is the way to motivate the company to make their services attractive enough to lure consumers away from its competitor. BTW, corporate monopolistic behaviour is illegal.
So socialized medicine run by the gov't is not monopolistic? Who decides what treatment you get and can you get a better price for a similiar service from a competitor?
You raise an interesting point about the motivation of profit in health care. I suppose it can be abused, just like oil companies can suppress fuel efficient carburators, manufacturers can design products to need to be replaced frequently, etc. Your argument applies equally to business, in all cases the protection to consumers is knowledge. Would you go to a hospital/doctor/drug treatment knowing that its competitors treatments were healthier/cheaper?
Atlanta, GA has a huge shortage of IT workers, because there are lots of rapidly growing high-tech companies around here.
I don't even work at one of them. I work in the IT department at a major poultry company, so things are slightly different for me than they'd be if our products were technology-related.
2 years ago, I came on board with little experience and no certification, making $33k a year, doing PC support (mainly hardware). Having a college degree is important, but it doesn't necessarily have to be a CS degree-- my degree was physics.
A year later, I was transferred to systems/programming, and now I'm making $40k after programming for 1 year, and I'm also learning a hell of a lot about EDI and supply chain/inventory systems. You don't learn this kind of stuff in college, but it's very high in demand! I'm going to build up a little more experience here, and then... move on.
Keep in mind, I was given that position based on my potential (the mgmt really liked what I did in support), since I had no actual programming experience, and I'm mostly self-taught. However, I rarely work over 40 hours a week, and I'm not stressed. There's more than salary to consider!
The key, and this is very important, is that you'll get better jobs through personal contacts (people who've seen how good you are in action) than you will likely get through headhunters. Some people get lucky breaks through headhunters, of course, if they have lots of certificates and degrees listed on their resumes.
With the amount of experience that you have (5 years plus certs) you should be making above $50k by now. But if you want to make more than that, get somewhere where you can expand beyond just sys-adminning. You could get paid lots of money to design a new infrastructure for Company X, who is rolling out new offices that have to communicate with clients Y and Z.
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
Ok, these answers really addressed my questions about the salaries that you geeks make.
Here is my background: I am a marketing/business type 10 years out of college, currently doing my MBA, and a closet geek. I have been playing with computers since I was 10 or so, and I am really getting into them. I have SuSE 6.1 loaded up on a homebuilt dual pentium II that I built myself, and 3 or 4 c++ programming books that I am attempting to wade through.
I'd like to switch careers, but I find that during this discussion, most entry level programmers are making 1/2 my current Marketing salary, but you all are very competitive with my salary (~50k) only 2 years or so out of school. Does anyone have any experience with career changes, or suggestions how I could migrate into the technology field and still keep >50k salary? Is it worth teaching myself C++ and PERL, and would anyone hire a self-taught programmer (as opposed to a CIS graduate) or should I just resign myself to being a business type at this point in my career and doing computers as a hobby?
Thanks.
This post brought to you by your friendly neighborhood MBA.
defence contractor. I am only half way to six figures, but for newgrads, my company pays really well...my brother w/2 years less experience than me started out real close to what I am making. If only they payed you to make the world safe for democracy.....me and my damn fool adventures.
Remember this...no eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn....(jim morrison)
Re: thanks - no sweat. It's what we professoresque types do.... ;-)
:-p
;-). Discussion of the ins and outs of grad school is a different thread, though....
Re: the non-compete, it's unlikely that it's enforceable / relevant outside of VA (maybe not even _in_ VA). The IP ownership definitely is, though, so don't play that game if you can avoid it. In the future, one of the best ways to defend yourself from this tactic (trying to steal your pre-job school-days ideas) is to publish _anywhere_. You don't have to put in every last detail if you think it's going to be marketable, but it proves prior art in one step ("as you can see, I was writing about this four years ago..."). Most CS departments have something like Technical Reports, if you don't want to try for something higher order (conference, journal or magazine) - a pretty easy place to make things a matter of record: here's what I've been working on, here's how it's going, here's where it's going, etc.
Final thought on the whole "those bastards are stealing my ideas" problem: do you really think it's likely that they'll be able to do a thing with them since you're leaving? I've had to leave code behind before and I get a big kick out of hearing from my spies about how the PHB just kind of stared at it: "Duh, what's this do?" "That's an rgbColor. You know, red, green, blue?" "Uh, yeah!" Yeah, best of luck with that, weenie boy!
Re: grad school - there's some really sweet graphics / VR / visualization schools out there these days: GA Tech is still #1 (unless I've been out of the loop long enough), Brown #2. Other examples: UNC Chapel Hill, UVA, Utah, Indiana Univ (go figure - they have a load of hardware, though, thanks to the efforts of former grad students
-- Doctor Bob
Hypothetically, my wife is enamoured with France. I decide I'm into it and start looking for a job in France. I know what the salary range is and I'm able to find some job listings in France. But what kind of visa is necessary for an American to work in France? What if neither of us speak the language? Why would a French corp. hire an American anyway? Has anyone dealt with this kind of thing?
This question has doubful useability...
I am a field tech/troubleshooter type guy in the Washington, D.C. area. We command fairly high salaries here because most of the population doesn't have a clue as to what they are doing.
Any "high tech" areas with a large percentage of people without computer skills is going to be the same way.
However, if I were to go to silicon valley or Seattle, or wherever there are a lot of really talented geeks, I wouldn't get paid squat, since my skills wouldn't be unique. Supply and demand, right?
The same goes for coders. An english-only programmer isn't going to find much work programming Malaysian software, you know? Or, a very good Malaysian tech isn't going to get a tech support job here in DC if he/she can't speak any english.
The only way to find out how much you will make is to ask. Be honest. Tell employers your story, and ask what a decent salary for a beginner should be. When you interview, ask for 20 percent more, and negotiate from there.
Computers can only simulate determinism. ~Hermetic.
To tag on the end of this thread:
Does anyone know about what it's like trying to find an IT job, say, in Ulster (NOT in Northern Ireland!)?
"The Devil does not know a lot because He's the Devil, He knows a lot because he's old." -- unknown
I mean the three counties of Ulster which are in the Republic. I'm interested specifically in Co. Donegal... But wondering what I should expect given that JobFinder.ie found all of two IT jobs there :)
If you'd like to address this in private feel free to send e-mail (lance.k.dryden@usa.net).
"The Devil does not know a lot because He's the Devil, He knows a lot because he's old." -- unknown
Why do you think I left?
"stage" is called internship :)
If you want to earn lots and lots of money, apply for a job at WorldOnline, CMG or Cap Gemini. They'll pay you fl 5k/month in the blink of an eye.
But if you're into Linux, Open Source and free software, you might want to look for a job at a smaller company (or even start your own). The salary will be less, but the job more interesting.
Private medicine = better medicine!
/. a while ago). And it's so typical for U.S. people to declaim their system the "better one".
That's a whole other discusssion (one that has been held on
In Holland, you can expect at least fl. 3500 (before taxes) per month if you're fresh out of shool. That's about $1750. Getting a cellphone and notebook is usually no problem.
;).
If you start working at a big company, you can expect fl 5000 (US$ 2500) per month plus a company car. But you'd have to conform to that company (might be hard for die-hard geeks - they tend to love Microsoft).
If you're thirty (-something) and have lots of experience, and don't mind working hard, fl 8500 or more is usually no problem. In Holland, that kind of salary will buy you anything you want. It's about 3 times average.
Big management positions (IT, IS, ITIL management) start at fl 150k/year plus all the usual bonusses.
Remember that healthcare is standard and LOTS cheaper than in the US (that goes for all European countries).
Most salaries grow 10% per year, but this can vary as well. 20% increases are starting to become more common.
Salaries are lower in remote parts of the country (provinces like Limburg or Friesland).
And there's the occasional bonus, some companies will give you up to fl 20.000,- (before taxes) (US$ 10,000) if you stay with them for a year. But those companies are often quite clueless (they think Windows NT is the *only* server OS in the world. And your job will most probably doing VB/ASP stuff, so you don't want that anyway
If you know that you are good at what you do, then the answer is to become a consultant. I'm a consultant for a Pharmaceutical near Philadelphia, 20 years old, and am making $30 an hour (that's $60,000 [USD] a year if I don't put in overtime, which I do). Plus I mostly do HTML and Photoshop work. Periodically we get something interresting like a database driven site, at which time I get to exercise my knowledge of ASP, MSSQL, and Oracle, but that doesn't usually happen too often.
The secret is to know that you are the best, and in allmost all circumstances, prove it. You have to be dedicated. When I started this position a year and a half ago, I made $10 an hour, and trippled it in under a year. If you make yourself valuable, they will not be able to afford not to pay you more. You have to take as many responsibilities as you can. If you don't, you won't be invaluable, and so you won't be worth big raises.
Of course there are downsides to being a consultant. You get kind of hammered on taxes, for one, and there are no benefits. But if you have a spouse that can cover you under their benefits package, then you're doing well. Also, if you're a consultant, take a bit of advice: DON'T DO YOUR OWN TAXES!!!!!!!! Hire an accountant. Let me say this again, hire an accountant. And I don't mean H&R Block either, go to a firm with CPA's. If you do it yourself, you will either pay too much, or if you try to not pay too much, you will end up messing up something, and then it's waiting in line at the IRS, shoebox full of receipts clutched in your sweaty shaking hand.
Another benefit to being a consultant is that a lot of companies don't want to be weighed down with the possibility of you leaving, and so they sign you up on a contract. They can't then just lay you off when it comes time for reorganization. This, of course, means that you'll be tied to them for the length of your contract, but if you've proven yourself in that time, they will be eager to renew your contract, and they will be eager to get you to stay, so up goes the ol' salary.
I don't suggest consultantism if you're not good in your field, though. Your contract probably won't be renewed at the end. If you're one of these people, my suggestion to you is to learn who knows more than you, and study what they do. Do it in your own time. Ask them for samples of their work, and study it. An example of this is that we had hired in a new consultant who knew Macromedia Director like a firecracker (which I did not), and so I went to him and got some samples, and an install for the program. A couple of days later I had working knowledge of the program, and I started producing my own work. When I hit a snag, I could ask him for help, and soon we were operating nearly on par. My indispensibility just went up a couple of points, based entirely on about two weeks of work at home.
Although this is long, I just have to say that there are three things that every consultant needs to do to get a high salary (and keep it).
1. Be dedicated, put in the hours to become the best.
2. Be the best, if someone is better than you, and they need to drop the budget for the quarter, out you go. When you're not the best, become the best by admitting that they're better than you, and then study how they work.
3. Hire an accountant. There are a lot of consultants where I work, and any of them that have not taken this advice of mine end up paying too much, or too little, and paying too little can be much much worse than paying too much.
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
Salary-wise, for mid-level fairly experienced coders I see new media companies offering around $55-70k annually, and Wall Street offering $80-90k. In my experience, DBA's make slightly more. Senior level coders make about 20% more than that. These are obviously rough estimates, and another engineer in Manhattan may have a different perspective and experience.
There are also a ton of consultants and contractors, who sort of float down Silicon Alley and Wall Street and back up again. The salaries of these folks are hard to figure, and I wouldn't want to embarrass myself by hazarding a guess as to their income.
Cheers,
psn
I hate to point this out, but 80 hrs/wk for interns isn't really that bad. Surgical interns in the US have been known to work 120 hrs in a week. It's a universal problem.
The difference is, in any civilized country, it doesn't cost you your house to pay for health care. Paying for health care effectively makes your salary much less when you realize that you have to save just in case you have a health problem (even if you have insurance, since they're notoriously reluctant to shell out anything, and certainly never immediately).
As a luser-support martyr (ISP Tech Support, lately in documentation), the going rate seems to be $20-30K to start (with annual / promotional increases, of course), higher in major metropolitan areas (the Valley, SF, NYC, Boston, &c).
Top-notch coders seem to be able to command $80K and up (six figures isn't uncommon. . . makes me wish I knew PERL!)
As with every job, having experience means you can command greater compensation. After two-plus years on the job, I've conditioned my employer to add some intangibles to the job environment: tolerance to eccentricity, a certain level of buy-in to new ideas, &c.
Just remember that the full package isn't just the bottom line on your W-2, there are health insurance, 401(k), profit sharing, and any number of other forms of additional compensation to factor in. Ask at the interview what kind of total compensation the company offers, and what kinf of tenure / vesting structure exists. Some companies give health insurance after 90 days, the potential for 401(k) after 6 months, and start vesting in various things after one, three, or five years, depending. There is so much variance with these that it never hurts to ask.
For example, my company offers discounted memberships (payroll-deductible) to the local health & wellness center and free/discounted service to employees. This doesn't show up on my pay stub every other Friday, but is worth probably $40 a month.
Just remember: no amount of financial compensation will make up for a job you don't enjoy. I can speak from experience that a good job atmosphere with interesting and enjoyable work to do makes a smaller paycheck more attractive than becoming a psychotic stress-monkey at a job that makes your gut clench the instant the alarm clock goes off in the morning.
Anyone looking to hire a slightly freaky tech writer?
Rafe
V^^^^V
Rafe
Opinions expressed by the author may not actually exist in the wild.
Occasionally I code here and there to pay for my university tuition fees. Short projects, freelance, practically without references. Pays about $50/hour. Have some friends actually chained to an IT job or *sigh* career. I come up with this:
- Free lance: $25 and up for kids designing websites, $50-75 for the more demanding stuff, $100+ for experts.
- Starting code monkey @ somecompany: $15 @ 1.0 FTE, somewhat higher if part-time, twice as high if on project base.
- Experienced IT engineer/manager: $35-$50
Note, many of the IT firms over here try to seduce you with stocks, gadgets, cars, vacations or one-time $10.000 bonuses. IT's a frenzy. Resumes are relatively irrelevant if you are starting out 2;-p. Many will take the chance and give you some time to prove yourself.
Also an important thing to consider if comparing Europe to US is that every state in Europe has a different tax system (usually higher base income-tax and many times a progressive tax system, ie higher income, higher tax rate)
It's difficult to translate the raw dollars/hour to buying power. Living expenses are typically lower in the Netherlands than in the US. But again this may differ from country to country. Sweden for example is known to be the most expensive of the northern-European countries.
Also tax deductions can have a profound influence on your buying power. Morgage deduction, investment-deduction, transportation deduction, college deduction etc.
My guess is that when your desire is to live and work on the other side of the big pool and you want an accurate estimation of your living standards, you will have to dig fairly deep in the specific laws, regulations and habits of that particular country.
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars
I started at my present company making just under a moderate amount (but attractive to be sure), and ended up at the end of my first 15 months breaking the 50k barrier. Reason being: (a phrase that people here throw around) "business sensitivity". And what any company (in corporate America) wants is someone solving business problems. ...technology is a key component, but there's a lot more involved than that. I work with HR on some projects, and I can tell you that there's a sense of reservation for hiring people who can only put technology on a resume.. they want to see people who have solved problems, and who are also competent at the specific tools that entails. Those tools exist to solve those business issues.
Almost no one pays people to sit around and hack. If you do, you will most likely not be making much $$. For the money, you'll be competing with all the MBA people. They will likely make more money out of the gate, but I can tell you for a fact that by-and-large, they are a dime a dozen. Your average geek is much brighter than your average MBA student, so use that to your advantage and help them make sense of their world.
...then your pay check will mostly reflect that, not just the efficiency of your code.
"Man has always been his own most vexing problem." --Reinhold Niebuhr, "The Nature and Destiny of Man"
I'm stuck in one of those helpdesk jobs, spinning my wheels and working a second job (college computer lab) just to keep my car running. My main job is paying US$9/hr+pizza, and making me a very bitter person at an early age...My resume here is the same one that's on monster, meta-tags and all, been viewed just 30 times in like 4 months. Any suggestions?
TIA
mcrandello@my-deja.com
rschaar{at}pegasus.cc.ucf.edu if it's important.
Dr. Dobb's Journal's Fall and Spring special Software career editions offer excellect info on IT salaries and benfifits.
t m
http://www.ddj.com/articles/1999/9913/9913toc.h
This Url is to the spring edition.
I have 5 years web design experience, 2 years strictly professional, BFA in Graphic Design. Master in Photoshop, html, Dreamweaver, others. Know unix, Win9x etc etc. In current professional job for 16 months, pay is $42,000 US (no stock or other) in DC Metro area in Virginia. How much would I make overseas as a good comparison to these skills?
Go to your College carrer office/ career center, whatever. If they are any good they will have binders full of all kinds of info on salary, that will give you a good idea of the going rate based on degree/major/job field/location/etc. You should be able to look up the national salary surveys (done by the college board I think) for the past few years and also may be able to get the survey for grads from your school as well.
Good Luck!I did this when I graduated, and took the information with me to the salary negotiation. It made it much easier to back up my demands and I ended up getting a decent number from my employer (granted that they knew me well from co-op experience and weren't out to lowball me in the first place).
-JeremyH
Why should common health care be free? Where does it say that we have some god given right to health care? Somebody has to pay for it somewhere, and one thing I really hate is being taxed to pay for handouts to people who wont go get a job.
-JeremyH
I dont know first hand what its like over on that side of the pond, but here in America there is an awful lot of abuse of social services. A lot of people get on welfare and stay there, then make no effort whatsoever to find a job. I've heard all kinds of horror stories about people who have lots of children to get more welfare money to support their drug habits and then the kids end up suffering. Its gotten to be so bad that many of our states are now adopting welfare-to-work laws (a good idea, IMHO).
I dont think that handouts are the answer to this. Im all for people helping out those in need if they so choose, what I dont like is big government making that choice for us. All that does is take away more of our freedoms, not to mention making people totally dependant on the government doing everything for them like little children.
-JeremyH
Why do you think that because visiting Americans get these perks overseas, that the locals got them too? Thats ignorant. Most of what I've heard says different:
1. I used to work for a German company (Trumpf)and the German born employees told me that the standard of living there was much lower than here. Up to 50% taxes, higher prices for gas ($3/gal), clothes (50-100 for items like jeans) and food (2-3x what it costs here). They also said that a small apartment over there cost more than a large house on a few acres of land does here.
2. I also once met a guy from Finland who told me that over there most homowners had 50-60yr morgages because the housing was so expensive.
3. I have family who live in Detroit. Out there a lot of the Canadians who live across the water (in Windsor, Canada) have jobs in the US so that they can avoid some of the Canadian taxes and get better US healthcare. Now why would they do that if the Canadian/European system was so much better?
4. Read the long comment about life in England. From what I've heard thats right on the money.
-JeremyH
Well it just makes sense to most Americans, myself included. When you have competition to drive it, it's gotta get better in order to compete!
I doubt we'll ever see the day gov't can do something (apart from national security) better than the private sector. IMO national security is about the only thing gov't should be involved in. It would lower my taxes. :)
CT
Constitutionally Correct
As a public service here's my salary history w/experience
I hope that helps at least for this part of the country. And this comes from someone who started out knowing absolutley nothing.
yea, the irish market is booming right now. i just came from the states a few months ago and i'm amazed at how much work is here. although despite all of this work i have not been able to find any software dev. work(although i havn't been looking to hard). i'm living in galway right now and would be intersted in findign out about any software companies that are actively seeking work...right now i'm only going to be her for a little longer, a month or two, but am desperatly trying to find a job that would allow me to stay longer. if you can email me at nomadlogic@graffiti.net, that would be great. cheers!
God is real, unless declared integer.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
In re: job postings which ask *you* to submit an expectation for salary - ignore it. In the interview, when it comes to money, make *them* offer *YOU*. Never, ever give them a figure first, no matter how much it seems impossible. It's like dealing with buying a car - seriously! Ask them what they feel would be fair for your skillset, or what they had in mind for the responsibilities of the position. Often companies have a set range already, and you can probably get them do disclose that if you're careful - as long as you do NOT throw out a number first! If it's not enough, feel free to counter-offer. The worst thing that could happen is they could lowball you, you ask for more and they say no - oh well, you haven't lost anything 'cos they weren't going to pay you enough anyway, and they *didn't want you that badly*. The best thing that could happen is you can get a salary that meets their expectations *and* yours. Yeah, you may get a couple of bum interviews, but it's a couple of hours of your time, and it's good experience, espeically if you're new to the job market.
:)
Re: Salary ranges - The whole "standard salary" for various positions idea is asinine. It only works for positions which have very specific roles, and usually hourly wages along with them, ie, tech support.
The more high level a job is, the more the job description is going to vary. Also, the job title means *nothing*. Network Engineer means anything from NOC monkey who has heard of TCP/IP once, to NT administrator, to the head design engineer at a telco - and salaries vary wildly depending on which you mean. If I go into a company and they want me to run their entire network single-handedly, work 12 hour days 7 days a week, and have 3 direct reports, I'm sure as hell going to want more money than if I had less responsibility, and they're likely to offer me more to begin with. It's all relative.
As to not getting ripped off, it really does depend on where you live, and it's best to ask people locally how much they're making (if that's too intolerably rude for you - you can also ask them for a range that they think is reasonable, which is a little bit less prying).
Ask people you know what they would pay for someone with *your* skills and experience - that's a much better assessment than a random sampling of coders or admins.
Yes, some people get paid a lot more than others, and it's usually due to scarcity of skillset, experience, and demand. If you're a brand new web designer with only your personal pages in your portfolio, don't expect to get any high rolling offers. But if you're a messaging expert with 8 years experience, you'll do just fine... but you knew that already.
NT Admin : $55 - 70K
UNIX Admin $65 - 85K
Oracle DBA : $65 - 120K
HTML Developer $40 - 65K
C/C++ Programmer $50 - 110K
Java Programmer $65 - 120K (very much in demand)
Network Admin : $55 - 80K
Network Design : $70 - 100K
VB Programmer $45 - 80K
PERL Programmer $45 - 75K
Project Manager $60 - 120K
Again, the range compensates for experience, and combination of skills (ie, Unix Admin with some Oracle and C knowledge would be at the 80K level) This is for full-time salaried employees. Independents or hourly types can expect anywhere from a 15-35% premium over those. These salaries are fairly valid for the Boston,DC,Phila. NYC command about 15%-30% more due to cost of living for North Jersey and NYC.
Hope this helps...
That which does not kill you, makes you stronger.
You can drop by your local office and get one (I did in Calgary, AB - CANADA) but you may want to call first to see if they have any (and so as not to swamp them with bodies). They were very friendly and if you have some experience they may offer to take you under their wing. The salaries listed in the booklet are for non-contract type positions. They have offices all over the U.S. and a few in Canada (Calgary, Mississauga, North York, Ottawa, Toronto), one in London and one in Paris.
I am not a spokesperson for them nor do I work with them but the guide they gave me was very well put together - easy to read and gives you the facts without a lot of dribble.
My pimp generated a salary treatment guide based upon this doc, the "Information Systems Compensation Survey, William M. Mercer ltd, 1997-98" and some unknown "Skills Matrix Workshop 04/99".
--Clay
I thought everyone could use a good laugh, while I cry of course. University of Georgia Salaries You thought your's was bad? Pyber_Samurai
Anyway, normal coder in Finland may receive from $20K to $40K in year without taxes and taxrate is around 20% up till 50% (which i happen to be paying from my second job)
--
yush
You might want to check out RealRates.com. It's got some good information, at least for contract work (I didn't really check out their salary survey section, but I'm sure it's OK). Not much good outside US/Canada, but there you have it.
For every problem there is a solution which is simple, clean and wrong. -H.L. Mencken
So I bring the latest statistics from my region...I usually don't get what I want, but I get more than the initial offer.
Cheers.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
I was promised a three year commitment for $N/year. Of those three years, I would have to work my ass off for the first year to finish the system,
I paid for all of their new computer equipment (bunch of new Dell machines running Linux) out of my pocket
I really hate to dump on someone when they're down, but you're an idiot. Someone *promised* you a 3 year job -- and you didn't get it in writing? You paid for a company's computers out of your own pocket? You're fired the week after you deliver a working system?
That CEO knew exactly what you were doing, he was just screwing you out of everything he possibly could. From what you've said here, you were so busy building the system that you didn't cover your ass. That guy is still chucking at what a fool you are.
If you paid for those computers, and still have the receipts, and have not in some way transferred ownership of them to the company (ask a lawyer; who knows what little thing would count as transfer of ownership) -- go get those computers right now. They're yours; back the pickup truck to the front door and carry them out. They try to stop you, have them arrested for theft.
Well I work in Systems Administration, the only experience I had before this job was working with my own Linux and NeXTStep systems and I'm making about $32K before taxes. I'm in the Durham, NC area and oh did I mention I'm just an intern. You might want to start sending out that resume.
$7 eh? You work for a university right? I don't have a degree and I'm making more than twice that with no job experience.
I Know it's not a forgen country, but it is almost as far away. I know several recent EE, CSE and CS grads who started at about 45-50 kilo-dollers per year.
Americans might want to consider the tax exemptions that you can receive if you earn your income abroad. I think that the value of your salary increases considerably when you factor this in.
Kforce (headhunters, apparently) has a broad set of categories at:
www.kforce.com/ Kforce/salarysurvey.nsf/SalarySurvey?openForm
Select your industry. The mean of their research (not the average, but the mean) is displayed. For more detail they are willing to mail you their stuff ("free") but then you'll be on their mailing list... so how "free" is it really?
By the by, this is probably US/Canada (in $US) positions only, but they don't really say.
Your complaints about being offended offend me.
Are you actually a consultant or sysadmin? If you are actually consulting, you are actually being severely underpaid. For an experienced sysadmin, I would say that's an average salary.
There is an agreement between Holland and the U.S. wher as an American citizen you pay 5% in taxes for the first fl.70,000(45,000) then 50% after that, and you pay 15% in the US for soc. security. Also, rent is cheap, food... the employer usually pays for car + gas. So It's an _awesome_ deal.
Also healthcare is just as good as it is in the U.S., which isn't saying too much. But it is free. Wouldn't you feel godo knowing that everyone is covered, including friends+family?
How do I know all this? I'm an American engineer who lived there for a year. Your ignorance doesn't surprise me, in Europe they make fun of people like you.
You should stay in America, it is best.
2 years and no mod points. Join reddit. Because openness is good.
Dutch women = tall, blond, hot, nice.
What a great combo!
2 years and no mod points. Join reddit. Because openness is good.
A bigger factor is how long it takes to get a visa, since it determines whether companies want to hire international applicants. Work visas vary a lot from country to country both in terms of time and effort.
.au is that it has MANY companies eager to hire international candidates and they know the process.
Australia - the best anywhere. A company needs to first obtain Pre-Qualified Business Sponsor status (which takes a month), and once they have this, they can hire foreigners easily with a 2 week process per person. Most IT staffing firms have PQBS status, so effectively it takes 2 weeks to get approval for a new employee, and once they have this, the Australian consulate in your country of residence stamps the visa within a day.
The best thing about
http://www.zdnet.com.au/jobs/
http://www.jobnet.com.au/
http://employment.byron.com.au/
Canada - Has a "software pilot" program to grant visas rapidly. Like many things in Canada, this works in theory. Very few companies actually hire people on a work visa, and insist on you being a Canadian citizen/immigrant. Most companies are ignorant of the Software Pilot thingie and get scared on hearing the word "visa". To add to the problem, the time required to get the visa varies extremely - if you are residing in Australia, NZ, or South Africa and apply for this visa, it can take 2-3 months. In the US, it takes less than a week (LA consulate).
Combined with the lack of companies willing to hire on a work permit and the erratic time frame, Canada is not a good option.
try positionwatch.com for jobs.
UK - The UK has a long process requiring the employer to place ads, go thru various hurdles, etc. to get approval for the work permit. It takes about 4-6 weeks, and quite a few IT companies do hire on this basis. try jobserve.com for searches.
Netherlands, Portugal, Denmark, Belgium, Luxembourg, Spain - These countries have a "Shenghan" visa agreement, which is a business visa and takes about a week. Some companies get people over on this visa and process a long term visa once you're there, as it takes a while.
Of course, this doesn't apply to EU people, who can move freely across most of Europe. Again, jobserve.com for searches.
New Zealand - NZ has a long process which takes a month+ and few companies are willing to do this. Quite a contrast to Australia.
Switzerland - Possibly the hardest country to get a work permit in. Not a part of the EU, somewhat isolated, and it takes 3 months to get a visa. It isn't exactly a big IT hotspot either. However, business apps. software like SAP is a scarce skill.
Keep in mind that many countries have different rules for citizens of certain friendly countries, and may not require a visa at all if you're from there.
Well, hope that helps.
w/m
-- I'm not a freak show, I'm a mammal. --
I'd agree with the general trend of around fl.4000 per month or fl. 50 000 per year before taxes. Unfortunately, those eat 40% of it, unless the guys that hire you are smart enough to put you into some kind of tax plan for IT and high-skills professionals, under which you pay only 12%. This goes for most IT and telecom companies desperate to get new blood (I did not know about it and the management at my place sucks). Experience gets you more money, and a consultant job also. Ah, and as in a nice social democracy, you work 38 hours and have 2 months of holidays...
Anyway, the Netherlands is a very nice place to live. The Dutch speak English with less accent than the Irish, and you don't need to learn a new language (which is a bonus for the anglo-saxon crowd :-). The cost of living is much less than London or Paris, but decent accomodation is difficult and expensive to find.
The bad points are the omnipresent rain and the eating habits: sandwiches at lunch, potatos for dinner. As I hate rain and put food above anything else, I am bound to move again soon. ;-)
Actually, working in Europe and working in the UK is very different if you are in the ERP area: I work for a company that has offices all over Europe and America/Canada, and the UK rates are much higher than elsewhere in the world. As for your rates, I get more than that in a permanent position, and I only have 18 months experience!
Like you I am riding the SAP wave while I can, cause it ain't going to last forever...
"I am always doing things I can't do, that's how I get to do them" Picasso.
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- Shops that hire everyone they can find
- Shops that hire everyone that can do the job
If you're going into a job interview and you either get shuffled through a bunch of H.R. people or don't get challenged technically, you're most likely going to end up frustrated, bored, or both.Those are the jobs taken by people who either can't do what they claim or are just in it for the money.
Personally, I'm not happy unless I'm working in a place where I have respect for my company and coworkers.
I know this discussion is pretty much already over, but if it comes in handy, the cover story for the Nov'99 Softare Development magazine interestingly enough is "The 1999 Salary Survey". I believe its a US only survey, but it still guages salaries by region, profession, age, etc.
According to a pamphlet/newsletter I read, the average starting salary of a CS major out of the University of Texas was 48k/year last year. Unfortunately I don't know anyone with a CS degree out UT personally (or who really "knew their stuff") but... It sounds reasonable, or even a bit low, as I've had two friends in the last year get QA/light programming jobs at around 40-43k year, not counting some hefty bonuses if they stick around the company for awhile. Amazing part about that is, one of these people had no real work experience and a degree in Cellular Biology, the other had no degree had worked at IBM for a decent stint. Another friend of mine (with a Psych degree) who knew his perl and unix now makes 55k year in New York doing QA "teleworking" to his company in San Fransisco after a year. Another, who's had quite a bit of experience with all sorts of web development, and had done quite a bit of work with C++/Java, just moved on from a job making just over 60k/year (no idea what he makes now). That's what I know. From briefly perusing the other comments, it seems like all the above is fairly high in comparison. Got me.
I am a C/C++/MFC/SQL developer and I was looking into working in Ireland, but there are alot of negatives. They don't pay anything close to US or even UK salaries. Also its dosen't sound like an ethnically diverse and its expensive. I will probably go to visit soon just so I can decide for myself. The problem is that its the only place a non EU citizen can easily get a work visa in the EU.
I have been in that sort of situation in a company that could just not pay what I was worth, but I let them get away with paying me dirt while I was going to school. When I was out of school, they still treated me like they could get away with it. I left them. About two weeks after I left, I got a call from the DB Admin there that they had to shut the manufacturing facilities down becasue the network failed and they had nobody who knew how to fix it. That is just not the sort of place that I would want to work for over a long term period.
When I was sixteen I dropped out of school to go and live on my own. I did not have much of a choice. I worked framing construction in Southern California for a few years while I taught myself computer systems at home. Few ask for high school diploma. I was actually able to carefully keep the college which I attended from asking by careful manipulation. The U.S. school systems is horrid and holds no weight.
Today I am twenty-three and a SysAdmin with A+ and CNA in IntraNetWare. I am looking for MSCE before they do the Win2K updates.
You are right. Actually knowledge and having a clue keeps you the job and vaults you to new heights.
One thing you might consider is showing this message board off to your bosses.
I can think of no better amusement you would get, and you have the chance to go elsewhere now if you like.
Just be careful -- do not get cocky. Stay smart and real.
The average IT operations type job inside the Redmond Bubble is somewhere between 50K and 70K, DOE and certs., + stock and bennies. Cost of Living is not as high as the Valley or NY, but is higher than, say, the midwest (average apt. goes for $700/mo). Lots of work here too.
CHECK DICE! Lots of great jobs, easy to use. WWAAAYYY better than Monster.
Irish
When I moved from Paris to London, I nearly doubled my salary. I left behind me a highly concentrated urban chaos, its traffic jams, non smiling people, and a very polluted city.
However, I oversaw the following facts
I had left a badly paid job in a service consultancy company for a highly pay job in an investment bank,
the GBP is currently quite high compared to the Euro,
health service in France is free and doesn't suck (in fact I got so scared by the low quality of equipment and service in the UK that I go to France when I need to see a doctor !),
Paris is a real city, London is nothing else than a very small center with very large suburbs,
London hasn't got many movie theaters (at least compared to Paris)
I pay USD 1100 per month for a studio here in London - the same would give me a 2 bedroom flat in the center of Paris (althought the Paris market is waking up now after a ten years slump...)
transport infrastructure in the UK is a shame - roads are in bad conditions, the Tube (London subway) a nightmare and as for the trains, well, now there's an accident every few months. On the opposite, France hosts the most advanced train system in the world with high speed trains (they hold the world speed record), good highways, and the Paris subway (they call it the Metro) is efficient and inexpensive (but how dirty !!)
UK credit cards still don't use smart cards - smart cards have been widely used in France for nearly 20 years!
French law forces the employer to give 5 weeks holidays, and to pay minimum 50% of everyone's daily expenses (transport and lunch),
UK IR taxes are much higher than French ones (but in France, they have stupidly high hidden charges no one understands, so I guess it's the same),
net connexions in Paris are thru cable or ADSL - I use a 56K modem in London...
Altogether, I know that life is much better in Paris than in London - except for the Parisians. Londonners are nice and friendly if compared to Parisians. And no one speaks english in France ! (in fact they do but why should they make an effort ?)
Here in NYC, E-Commerce and Web Design are king. The going yearly salary hovers around 60k-70k, for someone who can do both (well). The better the performance of the site you are working on, the more you can get down the road. up2ng http://www.up2ng.com
Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion, you must set yourself on fire.
Just out of school, I got started at $45,000. Of course, you have to look at the cost of living in DC.
When you're crushing a man's windpipe with your knee, you can be sure he will attempt to bite you.
Loads and loads of Irish lassies! As far as the eye can see!
A little bit of Siobhan in my life, a little bit of Molly by my side, a little bit of Colleen all night long...
i just got a job offer in orlando. i'm in fort myers, fl now. my salary is only 40k for data/voice network administrator. i am responsible for the data/voice connectivity in house and at our four bureaus. we have 500 plus nodes ont he network. we have 600 plus phones. i am certified with nortel for their meridian line of pbx's...and i am working on my first level of cisco certification. the job offer in orlando isn't for much more than i make now. florida isn't a hot spot of tech jobs by any means... you can make ohtay money in bigger cities like tmpe, miami and orlando... but for my town... i can't get much better than this... unless i consult again.... but that can mean long hours and no benfits... where do you guys think it's really at? which state/region/city? always looking....
"Being alive is a crock of shit." --Kilgore Trout
I am a 19 years old and I live in Northern Virgina. I am working for a Temp agency and have had a variety of jobs through them. Currently I am working for a large Gas company. When I first got here they had us hand checking problem accounts, when they found out I knew alot of about databases and use to do alot of web/database stuff they had me learn access and finish a tracking system for these ~30,000 problem accounts. It assigns work to the employees and has various status. Bottom line is I'm making 10.50$ an hour and feel i should be making more. How much more is the question. I am only going to be working here for 2 more months (I am going back to school in Lawton, OK [IF ANYONE KNOWS OF ANY GOOD JOBS OUT IN OK LET ME KNOW PLEASE!]) I do alot of work with access, designing tables, queries, reports. I built an excel spreadsheet with MS Query and we run all reports from there. so PLEASE tell me what roughly i should be making if anything more! And maybe if you all know of anything good out in Oklahoma. -Brian
The going rate for a Civil Engineering graduate in Sweden is about 18 000 SEK (slightly more than US$2000) per month. This is slightly higher for computer oriented proffesions, but not always, as Swedish engineers are grossly underpayed compared to their EC and US/Canada counterparts. An expert in a highly specialized field, such as network designing or some forms of situation specific coding (such as controlprograms for the Swedish military unmaned Helo experiment) can get as much as 35 000 (about $4000) with a few (say 5) years of experience. These are the correct numbers but you have to calculate taxes and benefits into this. Income tax in Sweden ranges from 30% to 50%. Benefits are usually nonexistent, instead employees are expected to rely on the state benefits, such as fairly cheap and pretty good medical and dental care (optometrists and contacts are another matter). Companies often sponsor employees with cars, mobile phones and similar essentials, but they count as part of the salary and you have to tax for them.
Phase 1: Where do you want to go today? Phase 2: This is where you want to go today. Phase 3: You're not going any
One solution (if you can't find an Australian job - have a look at monster.com.au) is to move to Australia and do a US job (it is the internet after all
I have a recurring dream about laptop connected to a modem connected to an iridium phone - I'm such a geek
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soni bo da
Graduate salaries at Corporate IT shops ~34K Graduate Salaries at software Houses up to 40K The national average salary is about 35K. With 5 years, you could expect to be at around 55K. Most jobs over about 90K aren't advertised with a salary attached. In terms of standard of living, 1 A$ buys you more than 1 $US, particularly when you compare the big cities. In terms of my salary, I earn about 75K Aus, I've been offered 100% travel US consulting jobs for 100K+. Its not worth the disruption.
~snort~snuffle~root~
In the Philippines, developers with 2-5 yrs work experience who grok Java, C++, OOAD, RDBMS in Unix, NT, Solaris, and Linux (plus COM, CORBA, etc) get paid 4-5 time the minimum wage. Sounds big? NOT! Mininum wage is about US$125/month. So it's around US$500-US$625. With the same skill set, you can get $9000+K/month (average) in the Bay Area/Silicon Valley. But cost of living in the Bay Area is unbelievably high compared to other states. (All values are before tax)
Anyone need a guy who likes 12-15 hr days? Your getting the shaft just like I am. I'm a JR. network Geek, at a regional hospital. I'm lucky if i am going to clear 18,000 take home. Can't wait to get my 3% raise on my annual! I'd leave but theres nothing else out in the central California Valley.
The first job offer I had in the UK was 24k after I graduated from uni..
Ireland is great to live in. But, you should probably note some of this stuff first: Housing is Dublin is expensive. Like £90K($121K) for a one bed apartment / £170K($229K) for a 3 bed terrace type expensive. Cheaper outside of Dublin - my 3bed in the west would cost about £70K($95K) now. Cars in Ireland are expensive. The gov charges import duty on cars, then VAT (21%) on top of that. A Ford Mondeo 1.6l (US=Contour) costs upwards of £16K($21.5K) Tax is high. 46% over £14K PA, with a tax free allowance of £120/Week, works out to more than 1/4 of your pay. Petrol is expensive. £0.65 per litre, or over £3($4.25) per gallon. Pay is quite good. I'm admin for a 40-user network in a production environment in the west of Ireland, with no formal qualifications but 3 yrs experience, and I'm on about £24K ($32K). With an MCSE I could add £10K to that. Mind you, if anyone from the States offered...
Well, while we're on the subject of IT salaries, I was wondering what kind of scale DBAs - either in development or production support - are finding themselves on. I've heard that 45k USD is below-average (this is in Colorado Springs, CO).
Any comments would be well-appreciated!
M.
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Use what talent you possess:
the woods would be very silent if no birds sang
Use what talent you possess:
the woods would be very silent if no birds sang
except those that sang best.
If you want to leave, leave, never use another offer as leverage. Even if you do get the counter offer you want, it will just be so they have time to interview your replacement. Never put management up against a wall, they will retaliate.
Replying to johnath@no.cannedmeatsubstitute.psych.utoronto.ca The going rate for Unix Administrators with Network and Firewall Exp. is from $60-175.00 per hour. I have 11 years of various types of experience and gave up working for a salary last year. Now I'm in downtown Chicago, contracting for Bank of America and very happy. If you want to make a good living and get great experience, consider contracting yourself out. Don't know how to become a contractor? Maybe that should be an "Ask Slashdot Topic?" or just email me...
Definitly check out this site. It has real rates posted by real people. Not what the IT managers want you to think the going rate is. Definitely an eye opener. Plus there's a great bbs for consultants.
I just moved back to Ireland after 6 years in the US. 4 of those years were in the IT sector (Network Engineer). I am getting IRL £40,000 salary (this includes bonuses etc), this equates with about $55,000 USD. I came over from Tucson, AZ and actually matched my previous salary exactly but it must be noted that I passed up a raise when I left. The cost of living is also more in Dublin than Tucson. The Irish economy has sustained the highest economic growth rate of any industrialized world over the past 5 years (8%). I am amazed at the changes I have seen since I returned. Ireland has a huge growth rate in IT. Microsoft, Dell, HP, 3com and others have large facilities here. The government is pushing e-commerce as a major industry and wants us to become the e-commece capital of Europe. If you are thinking of moving to Ireland ask yourself some questions. Do you like to drink? (a yes is good here) Do you mind the rain? (it's a tad moist!) Do you mind small things? (cars, bedrooms, apartments etc) Do you like to drink? Do you want to buy a house here? (forget it, it's more expensive than Tokyo) Do you have kids? Best educational system in the world. Do you dress like a geek? (It's a bit friggin trendy!) Do you like to drink? Socially, it's excellent. Low crime, excellent clubs and pubs, a very sociable people with whom you can have stimulating conversation with for hours. And for all those who are worried about the IRA, bombs etc. There hasn't been any violence in the south (Irish republic) since 1922 and even the north is quiet these days, they've had a ceasefire for 4 years (there has never been an American killed or injured in political violence up there)
Amen to what smutt said. I bailed out of the inner Virginia suburbs almost two years ago and the outer VA suburbs ten years ago. I am never going back. It was way to uptight. DC itself was cool, but prohibitively difficult and expensive to live in. The mass transit was good, but not as convenient as NYC and owning a car was a real pain in the ass in DC. My current home (San Diego) is way chill. The pay is a bit lower and the housing ain't any cheaper; but there is always someone to play frisbee with in the park, and the weather is always warm enough to make playing frisbee with strangers practical. BTW, 60,000 for a network engineer MSCE/CCNA with minimal professional UNIX experience is pretty easy to come by in San Diego.
I've been working as developer in VB/HTML/ASP for 1,5 year I'm making about $21'-22' /Year.
I'm living in the middle of Sweden, Örebro.
Im in Australia - contracting for a type of Bank - and earning roughly 120K AUD - or $80US Im a SysEng (MCSE, CNA)late 20's - with round 5 years exp and previously middle-management/people experience. Althought - that aspect has taken the back seat for the want of technical diversity. Today's environment's CRY OUT for PEOPLE FOCUS and SERVICE (WITHOUT THE BULLSHIT-IM-A-GOD-U-JUST-WAIT-YOUR-TURN mentality) *I dont have a degree, although I started one but decided I didnt want to be a Pro-Nerd *I am people focused *I am passionate about 'Puters and how they can benefit just about every part of an Organisation and 5 years ago - I saw that both IT and Business Skills/Exp and P2P Comm's -> were becoming a single required thread. {oh I just made a new TLA! People2People Communications} LOL If your Diplomatic, got 'Relates-well-2-others' on your school report cardz - and are prepared for some potential High Stress Environments -> The Finance Sector is where to head. Speaking of where to head - what the job market like in the US Banking Sector for International SysAdm's? ie Aliens without greencardz? but with solid NT, NetWare, Messaging, Admin, Service skills - and further exp with router, bloomberg, Reuters, Triarch, Solaris Lvl 1 supp ...?