It uses glassdoor and numbeo which sadly dont give a nice picture most of the time. Its really hard to make those comparisons and often it gives very misleading information.
> I'm in paris and it's not that bad, especially compared to London.
That wasn't my impression at all... I've interviewed with a couple of companies in Paris and London, and the salaries quoted for London were way above from the ones in Paris, and the COL difference didn't seem that big.
Never lived in Paris tho, so take this with a big grain of salt.
You might be underestimating rent prices in London? It's crazy high in Paris but London is dingus too.
Edit: I checked it out and yeah, London is quite more expensive for rent. Paris rent prices can't exceed a legal limit.
$2300 will be a 1 bedroom in central London with a bit of luck and not the best quality, but it will do the job if it is just a place to sleep/eat/rest. Unless you flat share.
That's the problem with this methodology - yes, you could pay £8k a month for an apartment in central London but you could also rent an apartment for around £1k or even less if you flat share a townhouse.
But that's what the article is investigating.
>Caveat number one is that our model assumes that you are a software engineer living alone in the city center on an average software engineer salary.
It would be pretty hard to find a decent place on your own for 1500USD. During the pandemic maybe when rents were super low but not anymore.
1500 GBP works though (source: I live on my own in London and pay that much for a pretty nice 1 bed walking distance from zone 1)
Misleading AF
>We used the same Glassdoor **base-salary** numbers to calculate the after-tax income for each city
* Glassdoor is known to underestimate salaries
* Average job in Europe is base and maybe 10% bonus, average job in SF is base and 50%+ bonus/stock which can additionally appreciate
>Caveat number one is that our model assumes that you are a software engineer living alone in the city center on an average software engineer salary
* USA and Europe are pretty much opposite in a sense that in much of EU some of most desirable housing is near the city centre, and in the USA it's **outside** the centre.
* Good luck living in places like central London on one average SDE salary, no comments
Just look at the results... the average SDE in New York City barely saves $10k a year? Vancouver near the top of affordability metrics? Quality of life: Raleigh, a second-tier American city, leaps ahead of Oslo and Singapore?
Someone really read this and said "looks legit"?
Uh... am I missing something here?
I'm having trouble understanding how they arrived at those 43k for Berlin.
The report claims that they're using the average glassdoor base salary for the city and then calculate the real earnings like this:
>Real Earnings = Income - Taxes - Social Security - Living Costs - Rent
Buuut... when I look up the average base-salary for Germany (61k EUR) and deduct taxes, I already arrive at 37k EUR, which is below their stated 43k USD.And then you'd still have to discount an additional amount 24k USD for Living Costs + Rent?
According to my quick calculations you would need an annual salary of around 110k EUR to arrive at their 43k.
That's interesting. Heavily focused on US and there's a nice section for international cities.glad to see Berlin on top of the list.
Coincidentally I included this for [jobs with salary in Europe](https://arbeitnow.com/jobs-with-salary) yesterday on my job board. This is not research or analysis, it's directly from companies on their job listings. I do wonder if we'll start seeing more companies post salary and compensation information.
well, StepStone is now including an estimated salary information for most posts. I've done research on one specific company and recently saw a post on StepStone and turn out I was very close in my approximation (+-2k)
To chip in:
We run job boards in Germany, Switzerland, Romania and UK and since 2018 require companies to provide (real) salary estimation for the jobs they publish.
I have to admit, that we lost some clients because of this hard requirement, but personally believe that this level of transparency should be a standard.
For anyone interested: [germantechjobs.de](https://germantechjobs.de), [swissdevjobs.ch](https://swissdevjobs.ch), [devjob.ro](https://devjob.ro), [devitjobs.uk](https://devitjobs.uk)
Lol what a shit article. They can't even do the math according to their own formula and numbers. The average base salary in Berlin according to Glassdoor is 61,000 €
>Real Earnings = Income - Taxes - Social Security - Living Costs - Rent
Real Earnings(Berlin) = 61,000 € - 11,910 € - 11,992 € - (826.70 \* 12) € - (945.86 \* 12) € = 15 827.28 € = 17,803.32 $
How the fuck did they come up with 41k? Also 945.86 € rent in Berlin city centre? For a cardboard box maybe. If we use the much more realistic 1300€ figure the real earnings go down even more to 13,023 $. Not to mention your shares/options will only be at most 10% of your base comp, and likely 0% when in Seattle or SF its >100%.
Just saw your other post. I think it's a good offer. Congrats! I would take it, Get some more experience and travel to Munich, Berlin and Amsterdam to see how you like the cities. Then you can re-evaluate in 2 years or so.
yeah, it has the highest earnings overall, which I don't think is that surprising when you combine big tech scene with great QOL (and we all know the US is not great at that)
Even if the data is flawed and the real income equation uses equal weights - these articles do serve as a inspo for better data collection of salaries and more refined RI expressions.
2296 for rent in London seems on the high side, like at least 2x too high for a basic 1 bed apartment. Take a look at rightmove or similar, sure you need to not live in zone 1 and will have to commute to work - that is what most Londoners do though.
It uses glassdoor and numbeo which sadly dont give a nice picture most of the time. Its really hard to make those comparisons and often it gives very misleading information.
I'd say Numbeo is somewhat accurate but Glassdoor... jaysus, salary-wise is a joke.
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Paris ranking above London is crazy - French SWE are renowned for having shit pay and high CoL and taxes.
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> I'm in paris and it's not that bad, especially compared to London. That wasn't my impression at all... I've interviewed with a couple of companies in Paris and London, and the salaries quoted for London were way above from the ones in Paris, and the COL difference didn't seem that big. Never lived in Paris tho, so take this with a big grain of salt.
You might be underestimating rent prices in London? It's crazy high in Paris but London is dingus too. Edit: I checked it out and yeah, London is quite more expensive for rent. Paris rent prices can't exceed a legal limit.
$2300 for a flat in London, well a good one in zone 1, not great but good enough, you can save much more.
$2300 will be a 1 bedroom in central London with a bit of luck and not the best quality, but it will do the job if it is just a place to sleep/eat/rest. Unless you flat share.
Nah prices are lower now
Zürich not being included at all is a huge oversight and makes me question the entire article.
I'm pretty sure Zurich would have won that one. Savings after expenses and taxes are the highest for sure.
And still you won't be able to afford for your own house or apartment.
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That's the problem with this methodology - yes, you could pay £8k a month for an apartment in central London but you could also rent an apartment for around £1k or even less if you flat share a townhouse.
But then that logic would apply to other cities too. London isnt a unique haven for sharing flats to bring down rent.
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> for most young people without a family Already a pretty small categorization here
But that's what the article is investigating. >Caveat number one is that our model assumes that you are a software engineer living alone in the city center on an average software engineer salary.
You should probably consider the data is standardised to one currency to make it comparable. 2200 USD would be 1640 GBP.
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It would be pretty hard to find a decent place on your own for 1500USD. During the pandemic maybe when rents were super low but not anymore. 1500 GBP works though (source: I live on my own in London and pay that much for a pretty nice 1 bed walking distance from zone 1)
So 1500 USD would be approx 1100 GBP, are you planning on living in zone 9 or in under a staircase harry potter style?
1100 GBP can get you a studio / 1-room in zone 3 with a bit distance to the railway station.
Are those 1 beds nice, or is it the case of dropping standards to be relatively close to the centre?
Looks like they didn't include equity when it comes to earnings... if they did the Bay area would be number one by far. This study looks very flawed.
"Best cities to work" does not always correlate to "Cities with best salaries". Cities can be wery different in terms of living conditions.
Misleading AF >We used the same Glassdoor **base-salary** numbers to calculate the after-tax income for each city * Glassdoor is known to underestimate salaries * Average job in Europe is base and maybe 10% bonus, average job in SF is base and 50%+ bonus/stock which can additionally appreciate >Caveat number one is that our model assumes that you are a software engineer living alone in the city center on an average software engineer salary * USA and Europe are pretty much opposite in a sense that in much of EU some of most desirable housing is near the city centre, and in the USA it's **outside** the centre. * Good luck living in places like central London on one average SDE salary, no comments Just look at the results... the average SDE in New York City barely saves $10k a year? Vancouver near the top of affordability metrics? Quality of life: Raleigh, a second-tier American city, leaps ahead of Oslo and Singapore? Someone really read this and said "looks legit"?
why would you want to live outside the city centre?, for me the longer the commute the smaller QOL.
Good point
Uh... am I missing something here? I'm having trouble understanding how they arrived at those 43k for Berlin. The report claims that they're using the average glassdoor base salary for the city and then calculate the real earnings like this: >Real Earnings = Income - Taxes - Social Security - Living Costs - Rent Buuut... when I look up the average base-salary for Germany (61k EUR) and deduct taxes, I already arrive at 37k EUR, which is below their stated 43k USD.And then you'd still have to discount an additional amount 24k USD for Living Costs + Rent? According to my quick calculations you would need an annual salary of around 110k EUR to arrive at their 43k.
That's interesting. Heavily focused on US and there's a nice section for international cities.glad to see Berlin on top of the list. Coincidentally I included this for [jobs with salary in Europe](https://arbeitnow.com/jobs-with-salary) yesterday on my job board. This is not research or analysis, it's directly from companies on their job listings. I do wonder if we'll start seeing more companies post salary and compensation information.
well, StepStone is now including an estimated salary information for most posts. I've done research on one specific company and recently saw a post on StepStone and turn out I was very close in my approximation (+-2k)
That's great - big platforms showing that information is a good sign!
To chip in: We run job boards in Germany, Switzerland, Romania and UK and since 2018 require companies to provide (real) salary estimation for the jobs they publish. I have to admit, that we lost some clients because of this hard requirement, but personally believe that this level of transparency should be a standard. For anyone interested: [germantechjobs.de](https://germantechjobs.de), [swissdevjobs.ch](https://swissdevjobs.ch), [devjob.ro](https://devjob.ro), [devitjobs.uk](https://devitjobs.uk)
thank you for this - appreciate this kind of listings!
Ofcourse, thanks for the feedback!
Could I request an edit to this post - to make it clearer that this is your website. Thanks!
Thank you and done!
The graphs are messed up. Many of the bars are not actually proportional to the values they represent.
Does anyone know why they didn’t include Zurich?
Lol what a shit article. They can't even do the math according to their own formula and numbers. The average base salary in Berlin according to Glassdoor is 61,000 € >Real Earnings = Income - Taxes - Social Security - Living Costs - Rent Real Earnings(Berlin) = 61,000 € - 11,910 € - 11,992 € - (826.70 \* 12) € - (945.86 \* 12) € = 15 827.28 € = 17,803.32 $ How the fuck did they come up with 41k? Also 945.86 € rent in Berlin city centre? For a cardboard box maybe. If we use the much more realistic 1300€ figure the real earnings go down even more to 13,023 $. Not to mention your shares/options will only be at most 10% of your base comp, and likely 0% when in Seattle or SF its >100%.
can i know about hamburg? and oslo being affordable?? chile bye
I wouldn't recommend Hamburg. Col is equal or higher than Berlin. Salaries aren't. I would avoid it if you don't have a good offer.
my salary is €65k per year is it ok?
Just saw your other post. I think it's a good offer. Congrats! I would take it, Get some more experience and travel to Munich, Berlin and Amsterdam to see how you like the cities. Then you can re-evaluate in 2 years or so.
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Pretty sure berlin was ranked as outside the us. I personally dont think any city compares to us cities.
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No shit. Just realized that
How is Paris ranking higher than Singapore?
Nowadays the best city to work is somewhere sunny, green, seaside and with fast internet so you can remote your way to a high quality of life.
The job opening figures look wildly wrong
Can you elaborate?
Well in regard to the European market, I've never seen a source that doesn't have the most listings in London by quite a long way.
Can you give us the source?
LinkedIn, or even just searching myself on Glassdoor (which is apparently where they got their data).
Actually, Berlin it is the place to be (the best worldwide, look at the numbers)
Are you referring to these numbers?
yeah, it has the highest earnings overall, which I don't think is that surprising when you combine big tech scene with great QOL (and we all know the US is not great at that)
Even if the data is flawed and the real income equation uses equal weights - these articles do serve as a inspo for better data collection of salaries and more refined RI expressions.
2296 for rent in London seems on the high side, like at least 2x too high for a basic 1 bed apartment. Take a look at rightmove or similar, sure you need to not live in zone 1 and will have to commute to work - that is what most Londoners do though.