Salaries in the US are so bonkers. Everywhere else outside of the US, $300,000 is an outlandish high salary. To call it "mid to high" is insane.

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swiftcoder 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Even in the states, it’s more a distortion caused by the big tech centres. A software engineer in Ohio doesn’t command that kind of salary, but in San Francisco or Seattle that’ll buy you a moderately-senior engineer.

And while academic salaries are generally not great, tenured professors at big universities tend to make a fair bit (plus a lot more vacation time and perks than is normal in the US)

	▲	justin66 an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> A software engineer in Ohio doesn’t command that kind of salary, but in San Francisco or Seattle that’ll buy you a moderately-senior engineer. On the other hand, a CEO of a well-known nonprofit might command that kind of salary in Ohio. People often underestimate how much the leaders of nonprofits pay themselves.
	▲	philipallstar 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		It's also caused by progressive tax rates. People take harder jobs based on net wage, not gross wage, so gross wage has to compensate.

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ZpJuUuNaQ5 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>Salaries in the US are so bonkers.

Sure, but the cost of living there is significantly higher as well. Anyway, I can hardly even comprehend these kinds of sums, though I am a bit of an outlier, as I earn around $27,700 as an SWE in Europe, which is low even by the standards of companies in my own country.

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segmondy 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Everyone outside the US doesn't deal with USD. Your comment is bonkers. Read up on purchasing power. All locations are not equal.

	▲	jltsiren an hour ago \| parent [-]
		The traditional definition of high income starts at 2x the median. Looking the US as a whole, anything above $125k should be considered high income. But it doesn't feel like that, because median wages are unusually low in the US relative to mean wages. Upper middle class salaries, on the other hand, have grown very high, and they have distorted people's perceptions. Even now, we are debating whether almost 5x the median should be considered high income.

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ryukoposting 36 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Silicon Valley is the only place in the United States where $300K is even close to the "middle" of anything.

I just moved to SV a few months ago from the Midwest (and not a particularly cheap part of it). Telling my coworkers who aren't from the US what a house costs in Wisconsin, you'd have thought I was the one who moved from a foreign country.

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0x3f 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Not everywhere. Switzerland exists. Also cost of living is a thing so if anything US/CH just ramp up to match that. The rest of Europe has high CoL but terrible salaries. Asia has bad salaries but low CoL (on average).

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mort96 4 hours ago | parent [-]

According to swissdevjobs.ch[1], the top 10% salary for a senior software developer in Switzerland is 135,000 swiss franc; that's roughly $170,000 per year.

So if this is correct, then even in Switzerland, it seems like $300,000 per year would be an obscenely high salary for a senior developer.

[1]: https://swissdevjobs.ch/salaries/all/all/Senior

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0x3f 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Well first of all it's a CEO position, not an SWE :)

Even if we scope it to SWE, I don't think that's far off the US percentiles.

In London I imagine the top 10% SWE is not even 100k GBP. In Germany even worse.

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mort96 4 hours ago | parent [-]

I responded to the idea that $300,000/year is a "mid-to-high engineering salary". CEO salaries are absurdly high everywhere.

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0x3f 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Oh right, well it depends on CoL doesn't it? You can reframe European salaries as 'obscene' by world standards too. Both the US and Europe have totally broken and unaffordable housing markets, for example, but at least the Bay Area compensates with salary. I would say that relative to costs it's more that other salaries are obscenely low, if anything. People in Europe should be rioting, but unfortunately only the home owners are politically active.

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swiftcoder an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> Oh right, well it depends on CoL doesn't it?

To some extent, maybe, but often not. For example, London has similar cost of living to the Bay Area, and when I was at Meta experienced folks like Dan Abramov over in London were making about the same as fresh college hires in Menlo Park...

	▲	0x3f an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah I was talking more about the definition of obscene. Like is it obscene to make 300k if housing is so expensive? I say no, and that London salaries are just bad. Although it would be preferable to fix the housing market. To be fair though, Dan specifically is kind of notorious for messing up his comp negotiation. Did you not see the Twitter pile on at the time?

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mort96 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Does cities like San Francisco not have janitors? Waiters? Food delivery drivers? Or do those jobs command a six-figure salary too? If they can live comfortably in the city on a five-figure salary, maybe the argument that "cost of living is so high in SF that you can't live without a $300,000/year salary" is just a little bit overblown?

I can not imagine what one could possibly need $300,000 per year for unless an apartment costs like $200,000 per year.

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swiftcoder 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Does cities like San Francisco not have janitors? Waiters?

When I used to visit the Meta campus in Menlo Park, the QA folk I worked with were commuting 2 hours each way just to be able to afford housing. I've no idea how far away the janitorial staff must have lived to do the same

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throw-the-towel 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> I can not imagine what one could possibly need $300,000 per year for unless an apartment costs like $200,000 per year.

Being able to afford unpredictable expenses and not have it bankrupt you. In the US, that would include healthcare. Everywhere in the world, that would be useful if you were laid off.

	▲	mort96 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		To build an emergency fund, you just need an income that's a bit higher than your expenses. If you earn $60,000 after tax per year, and spend $50,000 per year, you have a decent $10,000 emergency fund after one year and a massive $100,000 emergency fund after a decade. You don't need $300,000 per year to save.

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0x3f 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You get by on a low salary by living with multiple people in the same apartment. Or you live far away and commute. Or both.

Not really a tenable long-term situation for a senior employee with plans to start a family. Family homes of decent size and area are literally millions of dollars.

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mort96 4 hours ago | parent [-]

I guess I don't understand why programmers somehow deserve a better life than other people. Janitors deserve to start families too, don't they?

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throw-the-towel 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Usually this kind of argument leads to punishing the programmers, not lifting up the janitors.

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mort96 2 hours ago | parent [-]

That's kind of two sides of the same coin, isn't it? The cost of living is so high in part because so many have ridiculously high salaries, isn't it?

	▲	swiftcoder 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> The cost of living is so high in part because so many have ridiculously high salaries Bigger problem in the SF area is that a bunch of folks who owned property before the gold rush have ended up real-estate-rich, and formed a voting block that actively prevents the construction of new housing (on the basis that it might devalue their accidental real estate investment)

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0x3f 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It's not about deserving, programmers just have enough market power to be able to choose to go elsewhere. Janitors and other more fungible employees do not.

Besides, I did already say that everyone else was underpaid relative to costs. But that's not unique to the Bay Area. Cost of housing relative to income is terrible in almost all of the major European cities too.

Once cities become wealthy enough to develop a home owning class, they seem to cease being able to provision adequate housing supply in general.

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groundzeros2015 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Note that you are seeing an explicit tradeoff of different economic systems.

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dev_l1x_be 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

So is the living cost. Insurance, housing, etc. A better comparison is PPP.

	▲	carlosjobim 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Living costs are similarly high in many places that have nowhere near the salaries of the US. It's still the land of opportunities. It's easier to find ways to reduce your living costs than ways to increase your salary.

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HappyPanacea 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yes the obvious play is to move human labor to cheaper countries like France (including CEO of course).

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0x3f 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The net salary in France might be low but the overall cost of hiring is quite high. Besides, why go to the middle when you can just find even cheaper places, if that's your prime metric?

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2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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renewiltord 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The reason the French can’t build these things is the same reason they shouldn’t be allowed to be in charge. It’s a preprint PDF host. Just make your own if you can run this one.

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magnio 4 hours ago | parent [-]

They do have their own: https://hal.science/

It is actually quite common to come across HAL in subfields of mathematics in my experience.

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renewiltord 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That’s great. People will use whichever one is better.

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bjourne 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

HAL is decidedly second-tier. Given the option, everyone would pick arXiv over HAL. Hence, HAL hosts lots of stuff that didn't (even) make it to arXiv => lots of subpar dredge.

	▲	Miraltar 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> HAL is decidedly second-tier. Given the option, everyone would pick arXiv over HAL. Can you elaborate on that?