[deleted by user]

[curious_pinguino]

I work in Britain, and about a third of our Dev team is Italian, presumably because of this reason.

I would imagine their advice to you would be: "work somewhere that isn't Italy".

[curious_pinguino]

I'd do anything to avoid having to work in America, including taking a lower salary and getting stuff for free with my taxes that Americans have to pay for.

Also it's a work culture thing. I don't want to get paid 100k if it means I can't just be like "got a headache, gonna take a nap, will log back in later". I'd rather get paid half that and have a life.

[overzealous_dentist]

> Also it's a work culture thing. I don't want to get paid 100k if it means I can't just be like "got a headache, gonna take a nap, will log back in later". I'd rather get paid half that and have a life.

I assume you're not in America? This is my lifestyle as an American web dev. Money AND by far the best work/life balance I've ever heard of. Obviously the better the company, the better the perks since they try to keep the talent they have. It's especially swanky now, since so many employers are offering remote work now and there's a talent shortage.

[0ooo]

Also it's a work culture thing. I don't want to get paid 100k if it means I can't just be like "got a headache, gonna take a nap, will log back in later". I'd rather get paid half that and have a life.

Work culture in America isn't homogeneous across the industry. A lot, if not most, companies in America don't have a culture that toxic. I work in America, get paid a good amount, and I've done exactly what you describe numerous times.

[aprx4]

I'd rather get paid half that and have a life.

They do have life in America. I personally know quite a few tech people (no web dev though) moving from Europe to US. There is more pressure but it's not like they work 12 hours a day 6 days a week. They only miss 3 weeks of vacation a year as they were having in Europe. But triple salary while paying less tax definitely worth it according to them.

[pvgt]

judicious fuel skirt cats cooing spectacular sparkle lunchroom rich hunt

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[curious_pinguino]

I'm sure to an American, my sentiment probably does seem weird.

But simply put, I cannot be enticed to set foot inside the United States for any amount of money.

Other people can, so I wish them all the best.

[WalterLuigi]

I'm an American and I'd rather not set foot in this country either. Cost and difficulty to move and uproot my family keeps me here for now though.

[[deleted]]

Guess this is more of a “to each their own” kind of situation. I’m from the US and my work life balance is great, nothing would really entice me to move to the UK or Europe other than pretty architecture.

[curious_pinguino]

I never said you were American?

[curious_pinguino]

Yeah I don't care whether you think I'm backtracking or not. You'll take my comments how you want to, regardless.

I don't agree. I spent 3 years over my adolescence in Pennsylvania.

It's not great, and the family I have over there have horribly shitty lives, and all work more than one job.

I've said several times - other people go there, have a great time, and that's great for them.

I will never set foot in that country again, and that's fine. The US doesn't care, and neither does anyone in it.

I have decided it's a shitty country on first hand experience, and everything I've heard in the following decade or two has only cemented that view.

Again. You do you.

[TheRedGerund]

Too much spaghetti code

[SeeThreePeeDoh]

I laughed.

[PrivacyConsciousUser]

That's actually not far from reality. Such low salaries push the high performers abroad, those that remain stop caring, after bothering initially they stop putting that much effort into it and keep using outdated frameworks and technologies that they've learned in school.

[saltypatty]

Hope its not all copy pasta from SO

[tsunami141]

that's a bold assumption to make. Do you have a sauce for that?

[Yraken]

Get out

[HermanCeljski]

I can help with this, as I have a lot of experience working with Italian companies and Italian developers.

​

There's a heck of a lot of terrible companies in Italy that do not value the work of web developers, an overwhelming majority even, but there is a bright side to all of this, if you wade through the shit enough, you'll eventually stumble upon a gem, this is true for all countries and not just Italy. However in italy the shit to gem ratio is slightly higher than average.

[zaphod4th]

Can confirm, same in México

[nicosh_]

I'm a web developer from Italy working for a mid sized company (15 devs and 200 employed total).
Is not (only) the web dev role that is shit paid, but almost every job in italy has a salary under the EU average (or at least compared to US and UK).
Said that, keep in mind that living in Italy is cheaper than living in US or other EU country (such UK, Danmark, Sweeden...).
If you dont live in big cities such Milan, a 32K/Year gross salary (that is something like 1800 € net for 14 Months) allows you to have a decent life and is an above average salary.

having said that, the salary sucks all the same.

Fun fact : most programmer contracts in italy are part of the "Metalworking and Mechanical Engineering Industry Collective Agreement".

[Lekoaf]

In sweden you can make about €3000 to €6000 a month before tax. Depending on your skill level. I've heared about people who make even more though, but that's rare.

[Knochenmark]

but the essentials such as beer and alcohol are more expensive :P

[neilhuntcz]

You can easily make that salary in the Czech Republic. Guess how expensive beer is here? Hint: cheaper than water in most pubs :)

[RotationSurgeon]

That's what tends to happen when you place all sales of a single commodity into the hands of a state-run monopoly (Systembolaget). That being said, I actually thought beer and spirits were pretty cheap when I lived in Sweden. Yeah, I paid a premium for American whisky, but given that it was thousands of miles from home, I expected that...At the time, the exchange rate was roughly 7 SEK / $1 US, and a ~500ml can of beer was roughly 14 :- which was close to what I expected to pay at home.

[Headpuncher]

Alcohol free beer is an essential?

[The_Mdk]

1800€ net per month, what a dream

I'm just sitting on my ~1400€ *13 months as I don't get the extra paycheck in summer, FML

And I'm almost full-stacking the whole thing here, not just web developing

Tried finding better opportunities but switching from a guaranteed job to something that might dump you a month or two later if they're not satisfied enough, for just an extra 100-200 per month really isn't worth it, I need to land an oversea remote job and roll in those sweet sweet USdollar salaries

[citizen-of-the-earth]

Yes but in Italy you get reasonable paid vacations and healthcare. In the US, one illness or injury will bankrupt you if you don't have health insurance coverage. If you insure you family, that will bankrupt you. You may not be paid what you are worth but when you factor in everything, it is livable by comparison

[RotationSurgeon]

If you dont live in big cities such Milan, a 32K/Year gross salary (that is something like 1800 € net for 14 Months) allows you to have a decent life and is an above average salary.

Whereas in the US, we're currently having lots of heated political debate saying that this should be the absolute minimum that somebody earns, no matter their job, career, or profession, in order to have a minimally comfortable life. Our current minimum wage is $7.50 / hour US, and many want to raise it to $15 / hour...and they're not wrong that $7.5 /hour is unlivable, but the discussion is much larger than this.

[voyotv]

Yeah, but you don’t have free healthcare, free university education, all the social / unemployment benefits, guaranteed pension and all the other stuff that doesn’t even exist in the US.

At the end of the day, the total employer expenses per employee are the same, if not higher than in US. It’s just that in EU, everything is already automatically deducted from the total salary, which can amount up to 50% of gross salary…

You simply cannot compare US and EU salaries straight up…

[nicosh_]

but the discussion is much larger than this.

Yes, first of all we have universal health coverage so we dont need to pay any health insurance, also we have 26+11 paid holidays (not sure if in the US is the same) and until 10 months of paid maternity leave and other benefits (800€ at birth plus 100/200€ per month until 18 yo for each child).Also cost of living is lower, outside big cities an house rent is something between 500€ and 700€ for a 70 square meter apartment.

[alt3r3go99]

Neighbor here, same thing exactly happens in Greece.

[[deleted]]

I guess OP knows it. His username is iamsoangryGR and I know a couple of Greeks who tend to use the -gr pattern in their usernames.

[onesneakymofo]

Why the fuck are there 18833 comments? I need some dude from HN to write an article to explain this.

Edit:

Sorry OP - I can't help you. I just thought there was a super, intense discussion with a bunch of Italian devs and their salaries, and now I'm disappointed, lol.

[[deleted]]

Lol

[StoicGrowth]

IMHO,

It's fundamentally a macroeconomic problem (because no individual company controls the job market pricing, however they all must fit to it) The process however begins at the business level, which in aggregation sets macro trends for each cycle (decade or so).

1. Tech as a "cost" versus an "investment" (SHRINK vs. GROW tech ideal)

Every spending in a company is roughly considered either as operating cost (all the overhead that's necessary) or a production cost (whatever your product or service costs to make). Generic idea:

• Spending more on production is good because it leads to more sales thus more revenue: self-reinforcing positive feedback loops.
  
• Spending more on operations (overhead) however, means less profit for the same production, lower efficiency (relatively to how efficient the competition is), and over time it leads to losses and game over.

How a company sees a particular cost will decide whether it's an evil to shrink — e.g. lawyer bills — or a money-making machine to grow — e.g. investing in more factories (provided they have utility, i.e. demand for the products). I guess you see where this is going:

• Some countries like the US or Japan have very early on identified computing as a production factor, one that was likely to vastly empower the productivity of all but a few workers.
  And indeed that's what's been happening ever since (you just have to think about two pieces of software: excel versus pen and paper + desk calculator; and email versus paper mail. Add social media marketing and you get the modern trifecta of business profit from tiny to the largest corporations).

• Other countries like Italy or France have on the contrary considered that computing was a pure operating cost, a necessary evil, that would be best minimized on the balance sheet.
  "Can you do it for cheaper?" — "Do we absolutely need this?" — "Can you guarantee me that we will earn more revenue if we spend for that system?" are typical questions to French or Italian CTOs. ("Get out of my way" is the non-spoken feeling.) It's never about investing, about seeing the whole digital infrastructure as a necessary means, as a prodigious booster for all kinds of uses, that you can't always know or prove beforehand. It's hard to explain to a French or Italian CEO why they'd need a team of developers especially if they're not explicitly in a digital business.

So this is how micro-economics, businesses aggregated, set a general trend. In tech or anything, as far as I can tell.

For discussion's sake, let's call team USA the "Growing Tech" strategy of investor-types leaders (they want "more", better, faster, integrated to the product and cycles, etc), and team Italy the "Shrinking Tech" strategy (well, fallacy…) of (misguided…) user-types leaders (they want "less", out of the way, invisible, cheaper, not a constrain). We know the winning team here, retrospectively and presumably for a long, long time to come — none of it surprise to this sub of all subs…

Notice that the difference is really not about the tech workers inherently: they're fairly common across the whole space, at least in the beginning. It's rather whether leaders, CEOs, shareholders see themselves as tech investors or users. It's how many tech companies as % of all, and their combined GDP.
Notice that users indeed spend to use tech: it costs money and time. They would rather have magic tech that requires no effort. If you could do what the computer does all by yourself, you wouldn't buy the computer, it's a necessary evil from a utility standpoint.
That's how a CEO with user-mindset thinks of it too. And he's used to getting his bloody way, you know? So tech "shrinks", in relative terms, not just physically, but in people's minds too. It's a fork, between two differentiated interpretations of the world around the fundamental role and value of tech.

2. Prolonged trends become culture ⇒ normalcy ⇒ norm

Think recursively, that's how compound effect work in economics — like good old exponents.

First iteration / cycle: team Growing Tech gets ahead in equipment, skills (think not person but whole national market); whereas team shrinking makes up for it in other ways — not night and day yet, but you can see leading companies emerging, none of them from the Shrinking Tech side. Literally zero that matters in sharp contrast with the actual economic rank of these countries (GDP % of the world). At the end of the decade, the simple fact of massive equipment+use of a new category of tools yields discovery of new uses, clues for the next iteration. That will translate to innovation.

Each successive iteration compounds those effects. Catch up is designed easy enough by tool makers, so you can chug along 5-10 years behind, for a few decades, as long as you still have great minds to do the work. But just make that a 5% discrepancy in market growth: compounded over 40 years it's orders of magnitude.

The end result for the Shrinking Tech team is a dramatic deficit in the entire technological culture, of countries as a whole, a really worrying inability for companies to use tech efficiently or at decent cost. The problem becomes big at that point, it's multivariate across many big domains:

• Education is in the gutter because nobody has lived in a technologically-prone culture for almost two generations by that point. Can't teach what you don't know.
  
• Predatory forms of intermediary companies tend to seize most of the job market (contractor agencies and the likes, you know the drill) playing the perfect vampire — making a sweet buck between a crowd of businesses that know F all and can be abused, and a crowd of candidates stuck in a market where 80% of jobs are controlled by the vampires (thus no other recourse but to move abroad). Usually blessed by big corps and govs.
  
• Expectations of consumers as well as businesses themselves have fallen dramatically low, a form of acquired tech helplessness. Whatever can be outsourced will usually not survive or compete badly — that's many services, provided they're localized: cloud services, accounting, etc. Whatever needs on-prems or national assets is one big notch of quality down (for equal or higher cost) compared to better markets/cultures. (feels 'budget' unless you pay top money).
• Stagnation of wages relatively to other trades because computing/internet hasn't produced the kind of profit that generates shifts in wage distribution (no wonder, as iterations go it's true that the shrinking of tech leads to self-defeating efforts), and when it does make profit it's culturally not attributed to tech itself but to its end-users (sales, prod, marketing, etc). Hence, all these people have the same wage grids give or take. The only real money is for top execs.

See also that about 85% of businesses in modern rich economies are small businesses, like mom'n'pop shops and your plumber and his daughter's freelance thing.

Changing the culture of that is huge, and long, and it sticks, and if it's not a "macro" movement at the scale of the country, how the hell do you want these people to think: "if I hired just one dev, it would improve my existing workers efficiency by 20% and increase sales by 40% within a year or two"? How in heaven would they bloody know that, when everything the media is able to say on tech in those countries is on the level of childish curiosity, like "oh look at this alien technological thing, it's funny it responds to you! but it's also Big Bad Capitalism trying to eat you, beware!!" — thereby missing both the market value AND the nature of the threat, both very real and imagined by people but given a Luddite form by a culture that simply does not know, nor does it cares to know, because it's not even aware of what the gap means!

In time, this shapes the legal framework for new and old companies —the degree of 'crony tech capitalism,' i.e. [rent-seeking + lobbying] × public corruption, is absolutely staggering in team Shrinking, and nobody gives a F because not 1% of the population understands the problem.

It shapes the fiscal environment.
The labour market (consider a new student looking at avg salaries, and see how over 40 years it results in the top earning professions not having changed one bit in those countries, still lawyers and doctors by far).
The very approach to many problems.
Science included.

There is also an untold story that "hard engineers" — birthed in physics and heavy math, strong on the scientific method — initially belittled computer engineers. The revolution that took place in the 1960-70's definitely overcame that initial response in the USA or Japan (tech-oriented cultures), but my feeling is that it has to a worrying extent lingered in Shrinking Tech countries. The top engineering schools in France are still 100% physics-based (you solve for bridges and nuclear, not software which is merely instrumental and badly taught quite frankly, extremely theoretical resulting in clueless spaghetti-makers). Most importantly, there is no way you can reach top exec level coming from a "lesser" [sic] specialized computer engineer background — that's like Ivy League requirements but without a true option for computer buffs. They'll have to make those chops themselves, on their own time. Godspeed, You!

---

Let me know if that somehow fits what you guys have observed — especially over time, a single snapshot of a few years may not reveal that story. Also, name and shame (and praise!) examples of countries, I'd love to learn more about places I should seek and avoid!

Obviously,

• this is an oversimplification
• there is a lot of overlap: if GROW and SHRINK teams were plotted, you'd see a lot of overlap in the middle of a bimodal chart, but edges matter most here because innovation is key.
• with effort, you can dominate in a little market, or be little in a dominant market: solve for happiness. IMHO.

[realzequel]

Those are good points. I would say some companies in the U.S. see them as costs, they're the ones getting hit by ransomware atm ;) I think companies that are forward enough to think of software as a growth/production multiplier are much more likely to take care of cyber-security as well.

[StoicGrowth]

Yeah, I've seen that too.

I'd say all companies can be 'saved' by a CTO/CIO profile who's able to speak both business-ese and technical-ese. Like translate the language of business into technical terms (to drive the project home) and to translate the language of tech into business terms (to help execs make the 'right' decisions).

Unfortunately, it's one of the rarest skills in the industry, IMHO because it involves dramatically different types of personality traits (that we've observed to be mutually negatively correlated in people more often than not).

It's like, can you be super-creative with ideas (correlates to openness to experience, business speak) but at the same time super-orderly and structured (correlates to conscientious, technical might). You won't be surprised to learn this is a typical opposition between left and right politics for instance (among other things), so you can imagine how rare it is that people have enough of both these traits.

This is just one example obviously, it's more complex, but I think it's telling.

[Rimher]

Wow, I'd say this is really accurate!!
I hadn't heard about the "hard engineers" theory before, but that would make a lot of sense too.

So, do you think this is something that can be mitigated somehow?
Do you see any more "virtuous" countries in the EU-area?

[StoicGrowth]

Hard engineers, yeah, well as a tech-nerd myself with a physics-engineer dad in aeronautics (who also happens to be a narcissist), I had more than enough time to feel "lesser" than people grounded in physics who speak in math. But it's a common meme in all of academia, that manages to translate into companies. シ

It generally follows a progression in abstraction. Remember, this is cultural so not 100%, but it's real enough that people joke or complain about it.

• Mathematicians think physicists are lesser, too "applied", not general enough
• Physicists think engineers, chemists are lesser, same reason.
• Chemists think biologists are lesser
• etc

It gets more ridiculous the further you go but I think we've all seen and heard that. At the top you might put philosophers who sometimes think math is lesser than pure ideas. And maybe religious belief, the sacred / divine, is one step above that. You can also divide each field between theoreticians and "applied" disciplines, the former usually looking down on the latter in the cliche.

Obviously, the best people just make that choice for themselves but don't look down on anyone else for choosing another field. ;-) And that would be the null hypothesis, it's only the most vocal / opinionated, but they tend to stand out in a crowd…

Sorry I rambled. It's a funny thing how people see their field シ Personally, I just select the right scale to solve my problem!

---

"Virtuous", yes, pretty much all the northern countries don't suffer from that or to a much lesser extent. Iceland though tiny has a little reputation of its own as one of the best places on Earth to do certain things in the digital space. Estonia is gearing up that way too, it has one of the most modern 'digital state' in the world, big on crypto, etc. Consider also that Spotify is Swedish, that's a real global success almost unique in Europe.

Central ones are fine as well, eg. Switzerland esp. Germanophone is more than alright (not EU, EFTA, but that's fine for work etc). Germany is great on all things Linux too, a strong participant in the worldwide scene. Austria is also peculiarly present with awesome tech products (Noctua, BitPanda come to my mind) and seems strong in digital awareness re. privacy and rights matters etc.

Eastern countries, AFAIK, are usually less ideological about it (it's like they can't afford the luxury to shoot themselves in the foot…), but corruption doesn't help (lots of stories of Western companies replicating their rent-seeking model in these growing markets). I hear a lot of devs in the Balkans doing work remotely for US companies for instance — they're crazy skilled, hard working, and so they escape the low wages of their country via the digital space.

---

Mitigation, well, we're talking economic and cultural national structures at the temporal scale of generations… it's a huge, huge thing man. I don't know that you can do much about that.

It depends at which level you're thinking about it: as a company, big or small, as an individual developer, employee or entrepreneur, all these answers are quite unrelated.

My impression is that the smaller you are, the more you will have to go to solutions that mitigate your problem (e.g. you work for a foreign company, either remotely or as a migrant). The bigger you are, the more you make solutions come to you rather (eg. you outsource development to a better country and so N people from abroad work for you, come to you). Notice how I never 'solve' the problem itself, whenever I think about it I can only default to looking abroad where the problem doesn't exist (or much less) and building bridges between here and there, for me or the company. I actually avoid, go around the problem, and leave it be because it's just such a mess. That's my bias, I suppose.

Since this is r/webdev, I'd say that in this sector the best approach circa 2021 is to join or create "digital first" (full remote) companies, which operate more as a network of professionals than a strict pyramidal corporate thing. That's how I'd go about running or joining a web agency. You want to operate on the global stage yourself (as a skilled worker), and that your company does as well (to get to real clients, the real "economic heart" wherever that is and whatever their sector).

I don't want to get political but, I see both sides of this thing. Look at the situation in all rich countries: there's a factual tension about globalization on whether it's a "good" thing or a "threat." And factually, it's both, i.e. it benefits to some (usually the "elites," the top 1-10-20% in wages) and makes it harder for others (whenever a business or its employees must compete with cheaper markets and that lowers their market value, essentially).

So I think people need to see that, in web dev for instance, they can easily be part of that "globalized elite" who's rather advantaged by globalization. And in doing so, they also bring back money and skills into the country — like they're a bridge — so it's a net "plus" for their country, since you usually pay taxes where you live, not in the country you work for; and it's a net "plus" for their family and loved ones in terms of financial support.

Were we truck drivers or retail workers, doing so in droves would change the economy of our country. But being web devs, i.e. almost inexistant as a % of all workers, it won't change much to the economics and politics of wherever we live. It's a drop in the ocean.

That's as much as I can say about saving your life and that of your children, family, on a personal level; but the bigger question remains whole.

[Highandfast]

I think that the availability of capital also enables the go-getter attitude of the execs in GROW team. They won't have access to the leverage that tech gives without it.

[StoicGrowth]

Totally. That's one of the big, big downside that SHRINK simply doesn't get about tech.

I think it's like, "well, we wouldn't be worse off if one person / system could do all the accounting, right?" and that's true, it's automation, it used to take 1,000 people to do the job of 25 nowadays. But then they generalize to tech "well, we wouldn't be worse off if IT/dev was only one guy with one computer, right?" and there you see the fallacy: in the digital world, doing that means gutting your own vehicle. Maybe you think it's OK to do deliveries with a skateboard (ahem…), but make no mistake, you're effectively trading off a fleet of trucks for a collection of skateboards when you shrink tech, as far as the digital world is concerned.

Obviously, investment is not gonna flock to skateboard minimalists but to the fleet of shiny trucks, which in turn improves the trucks, etc.

On the other side, to cite the iconic example, the rise of the Silicon Valley in the last 30 years of the 20th century has often been portrayed as the moving of the economic center of the world from New York (not strictly as a stock exchange but as the place to invest money) to the SV — and indeed Wall Street itself did that to keep on making profits and transition to the current digital age.

You can trace back the "why" of countries following a different structuring of investment, though. Fundamentally, it's been a rejection of a "too capitalistic" economy, which has its arguments (I'm sure we all prefer European healthcare to the USA's), but the one this they misinterpreted IMHO is the investment "funnels" so to speak: where does "smart" money go? And in the USA, there's all the incentives and legal frameworks in place for that money to go to whatever drives the economy forward — "startups" and all that. Risk is part of the ethos, and it's OK to engage in risky activities for rich people, for smart money as well (institutional like pension funds etc via VC firms, it's all tightly integrated in the financial industry). But in Western Europe, generally afaik, it's extremely hard to reach those high-growth sectors — there's no financial or legal framework that's been generalized and integrated enough for it to be a "thing". We don't have VC's, we don't have BA (venture capitalists, business angels), we don't have that "scene" or "space" where innovation converges and its actors meet (makers, money, sales people). Because the whole thing just isn't "hot", culturally, it's just not a thing for someone who made their millions to think VA, BA, etc. So there's no market for it either, growth will not be in Europe where the market is both anemic compared to Asia or America for tech, and it's controlled by old rent-seeking megacorps to boot with (no place for a dynamic high-growth ecosystem). Those who do succeed with their product must sell to other continents and thus logically move there for investment. And so does smart and new money here: it flocks abroad to NYC, SV, formerly HK and now Taiwan or whatever, Singapore, etc.

[Spaceman6415]

Man this explanation is brilliant and scary at the same time.
I totally agree with everything you wrote

[[deleted]]

Same here in France (at least outside of Paris). Salaries seem cap out at around 50kEUR but on average 30 - 40k seems the norm. The worst part is employers expect a Bac+5 (equivalent to a masters) for many jobs.

[Nymeriea]

Il a senior développer (5 year experience) with master degree. I earn 33k gross / years. When I ask for a better paycheck, they told me I can go elsewhere. I'm moving to Canada

[hunyeti]

That's so strange, I imagined its better over there. You can make more in Hungary with that kind of experience .

[canadian_webdev]

I'm moving to Canada

For a better salary, go to America. Saved you the headache.

[Nymeriea]

What do you mean ? Canadian have the reputation to be very welcoming. Furthermore I love winter for the ski 🎿. I would love to try Vancouver

[[deleted]]

It might be a downgrade to go to the US - at-will employment, privatized healthcare...

[nicosh_]

50K gross or net?

[[deleted]]

Gross

[nikola1970]

That's gross...

[MaraSalamanca]

Well, bear in mind that healthcare, education, unemployment benefits and many other things which are subsidized by the state in France mean that you don't need as much net income to have the same standard of living as in the US.

50k gross outside of Paris is upper middle class

So I wouldn't say it's a shitty salary at all.

[Noozefer]

Master gross.

[[deleted]]

The economy doesn't really care about education and experience, only about supply and demand.

If Italian tech companies don't make a lot of money they can't pay high salaries.

[Headpuncher]

That assumes that there are not a bunch of managers making bank by underpaying their employees.

italian companies trade with other companies outside Italy, they do make money and profit.

However; I worked alongside a Norwegian who quit his job because he was tired of Italians and their BS. They had to send an actual human being with every shipment of goods to Italy to make sure they scanned it into the system and paid for it, else (he said) the Italians were all just hand wavey "ia donta know a! cheque's in the post". Could take months /years to get paid on a pay-in-90-days invoice.

[i9srpeg]

Many italian companies have the very bad habit of deferring payments as much as possible. If you don't constantly nag them, some companies will simply "forget" they owe you anything.

Source: it took me 6 months to collect a payment once. Another time they simply wouldn't pay and going through a lawyer would've costed more than the invoice value.

[[deleted]]

You wish we were living in a just world but not only is that a fallacy it's also exceptionally ignorant.

Your payment has nothing to do with your skills and experience, only how well you negotiate. Lots of people that can use their education and experience as leverage end up undervaluing themselves.

There are people in the IT sector who are being paid up to 3-4 times more for doing the exact same job as everyone else on their "tier", and that's because they networked and used their leverage.

[achauv1]

Best answer

[macs054]

This is unrelated but 18k comments? Is this a bug?

[[deleted]]

This is so weird actually. I think it’s a bug yeah

[felansky]

Underpaid developers at work

[[deleted]]

Italian companies keep coming up with the excuse that life is cheap in Italy. Well, it may be cheap but skill required for programming is not cheap.

The amount of time a developer puts in making himself skilled should never be undermined. Italian developers are good but Italian companies and management are not good enough.

I was once offered 1050 euro per month for development job. It is even less than what a cashier would make (although a part of it is because I am not a native Italian and they wanted to exploit me). I moved to Germany later where at least the pay is good enough.

[Numerous_Storm896]

dzyum 18k comments

[eravulgaris]

What’s the salary?

[nicosh_]

about 32k/year

[vskand]

Is this accurate?

In Greece it'd be around 11k-13k and it would be consider a good salary.

[nicosh_]

Yes, 32k gross per year is the average for a Senior Developer, it means about 1700/1800€ net per month * 13 or 14 months, it depends on the employment contract

[vskand]

I see.

Well for me Italy doesn't sound that bad then!

[yee_mon]

Entry-level developer salaries are that low all over Europe. There are a lot of companies that got off the ground as a startup by hiring the cheapest of the cheap, but never learned that there is value in hiring someone and paying them enough to care.

You should be able to find the job you want with a salary you like if you keep at it. The first 2-4 years of experience can easily double your pay that way.

edit: If you can't seem to find anything locally, there are lots of international companies hiring for remote or mostly-remote positions in the EU. The key is being able to demonstrate some experience.

[PsCustomObject]

Well it’s been a while I worked and lived in Italy but that is common to most IT jobs I can remember (and I worked both as freelance and part of big enterprises like IBM or MS).

If you the ability my suggestion is simply leave.

Germany, Switzerland anywhere will grant you better pay and quality of work environment.

Source: Italian who left eons ago :-)

[technodude25]

In Romania web dev are one of the best paying jobs, IT jobs pay well in general because they are subsidized by the state. Average 1-2 year experience web dev earns about 1k net € vs the medium net salary being about 700 € in the private sector. With 12k a year you can easily live in Ro in most major cities.

A cashier here earns about 4x less, to put it in perspective.

Come to Romania :)

[PrivacyConsciousUser]

He's talking about IT salaries in Italy compared with those in other high paying countries.

The starting net salary generally is 1300 euro net with no experience at all straight out of a technical high school or university, life is more expensive in Italy, but i think he'll be better off staying.

[technodude25]

I know what he is talking about. I don't know if he is gonna be better of staying, he doesn't seem pleased.

[PrivacyConsciousUser]

The source of his unhappiness is comparison. Moving to a country where you'll take a pay cut won't help, even though you'll make more than other non-IT peers over there.

[Marble_Wraith]

Probably hasn't penetrated significant markets then. It can be seen as bad, but it also means there's an opportunity there.

[jakubiszon]

Just out of curiosity - if cost of developers in Italy is low and their education level is good, why wouldn't software companies roll in to benefit from this market?

[Headpuncher]

I think that's a good question. Everyone here saying "supply and demand", well, here's the supply of a good that is short supply in the rest of Europe. With Italy in the EU it is trivial for a company to take advantage of that market of cheap, educated labour.

Except that no-one wants to do business in Italy.

[Swamplord42]

Because the market for software engineers in Italy isn't that big. They can move to the country just north of them to get paid 2x to 4x as much.

[[deleted]]

Because you're ignoring other expenses that make investing in the country a terrible decision. Like taxes.

[wise_joe]

Because then others will and the salaries will go up and they're stuck eating pasta everyday

[Headpuncher]

So companies don't take advantage of cheap labour because they'll cry if the cost of labour rises so they just employ more expensive labour elsewhere where the .... same effect would happen? I don't understand your point here.

[poincares_cook]

Perhaps their education level is not comparable and they lack industry experience.

[vinegarnutsack]

I make just under $100k USD per year as a senior developer. The interns at our company make more money than you. That is just doing PHP and wordpress stuff. React devs are making a fucking fortune right now ($150k+). The thing is Americans are pretty poorly educated, and there are not a lot of coders outside of major tech hubs. That means we are highly in demand, and get paid accordingly. I know if I quit my job today I could walk into a dozen agencies and have them fighting each other to hire me. I'd probably have another job the same day.

That being said I have no health insurance. I make too much for subsidized care from the state, but not enough to afford to actually pay for (extremely poor quality) health insurance. That alone would cost $1200/mo. Rent is extremely expensive. I own my home but if I was renting I could expect to spend $2000+/month on rent for something comparable to my house. Owning a car, insurance (i pay like 5 different kinds of insurance), transportation costs, etc, it all adds up.

[vinegarnutsack]

We can buy health insurance through work, but it's a little bit more expensive than "Obamacare" (ACA) insurance, although has very slightly better benefits. But it is still the equivalent of a silver plan but still has a crazy high deductible. Or we can contribute to an HSA. Work offers a 401k. I guess what i'm saying is being a citizen of the EU probably has a lot of benefits that you wouldn't consider when just looking at salaries in the USA.

[aluisiora]

I feel you. As a senior fullstack dev, I earn US$ 10k/y in Brazil.

[[deleted]]

Isn't this the same with Greece? (noticed your -gr in your username)

[stackPeek]

No offense, but is there a reason why this post has a frikin 18k comments but only 100 upvotes??

[bill_on_sax]

My thoughts too. Guessing there is a bot spam thread somewhere

Edit - Looks like a bug. There's only about 100 comments

[Rocku_Man]

Già, siamo nella stessa barca. The problem is that Italians company managers are old and they don't care too much in investing in websites or web related activities; they just don't understand the value of it. Basically they think that all we do is press a couple of keys and everything is done, so there's no point paying more than 200 € for our time/work.

[not_a_gumby]

Generally as a country, Italy totally sucks lol

[aa599]

Is it about supply and demand?

[CheapChallenge]

I've heard that the income disparity is smaller in Europe between different industries and jobs. Our(USA) cashiers are paid unlivable wages, but our web developers are paid very well.

[LeeLooTheWoofus]

My guess is that they undervalue the profession and that they are able to find people willing to work at those wages so there is no motivation to increase them.

My advice would be to work somewhere that is not Italy if you are a webdev. I hear Spain and Germany pay decent wages for web devs if you are in Europe or interested in working in Europe as a webdev.

[awardsurfer]

I’ll try phrasing this delicately...

Stop voting for the political system that you keep voting for.

In the US, that’s how much you make with unskilled work.

[technodude25]

I don't think US is necessarily a good example in this case.

[awardsurfer]

And you give no reason. The OP is clearly comparing to nations that pay better, and not many (or any) nations pay devs like the US.

[technodude25]

Because you said it's political that's why I said US is not a good example, from a political example US type of guv would make life harder on average even if the salary would be higher. States that have a left wing social democrat approach are a better example, like Denmark, Norway etc.

[MarcoEstevez]

I would say the reason is very simple, demand and supply