The 2021 Talent .io salary report is out. These reports work with the data they have, and it's clear that high-paying tech companies don't use "Europe's largest tech recruitment platform" at all, resulting in data that is off from reality.
A thread on why these reports are off:
1. Access to data. Looking at the Amsterdam data distribution, Adyen, Booking, Uber etc all don't have their data here. They all pay €90K+ for seniors in *base salary* - we'll talk about the rest. Uber and Booking €110K & above:
2. Total compensation vs salary. These reports focus on salary, but the highest paying companies often pay a lot more than just salary. E.g. at Uber I had years when my stock vesting that year was above my €100K+ salary. My bonus target was €22K as a senior engineer.
3. This report confirms what I have been saying: there are ranges invisible to most recruitment companies and employees on Tier 2, and especially Tier 3 ranges:
4. So where do you get better data? You ask around people you know. Go on Blind (the app). Check out levels.fyi. And I'm building techpays.eu that already has over 500 Netherlands/Amsterdam data points.
5. My next newsletter issue will be about how to find your next opportunity as a software engineer/engineering manager, including a list of (within inner circles) known companies that pay towards the top of the market.
These reports are good at showcasing #1 (Tier 1) compensation. They don't tell you *anything* about Tier 2 and Tier 3. Those companies use in-house recruiters and don't recruit through these platforms (or don't share their data at least).
Clearly they put a lot of effort writing the survey: but be very, very, very wary on basing compensation on this. You won’t be competitive even in Tier 1 if you do. Even the Tier 1 market has moved up the past months.
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Stack Overflow Jobs is shutting down spring 2022. Existing clients have been briefed: public comms is not yet out. There will likely be another product following from SO: stay tuned.
In the meantime, here are other job boards you can consider posting engineering positions:
Yes. No company with a good engineering culture has the title “junior”. Entry-level software engineers are called Software Engineer. Entry-level PMs: Product Manager.
“Junior” levels signal a hierarchical organisation where it sends the message “we don’t take you seriously”.
A short story: what happens when you drop “junior”. At Uber we rewrote the $50B/year payments system. Over 6 months, a core team of ~10 engineers emerged as goto people.
2 of these engineers were software engineers with 1-3 YOE. A “Junior” title would have made this impossible.
“Junior” makes people starting out self-conscious. It also makes others take them less seriously.
It’s a way for status-based people to feel good about themselves (“My juniors handle this: it’s trivial”). It’s a perfect way to cripple innovation often coming from these people.
Hot take: what is holding back most companies in becoming better at tech is that their leaders - CEOs, CTOs, VP Engs - have never worked on high-performing software teams as an engineer.
Their understanding of "best in class software teams" will always lag behind reality.
Look to tech companies who are nailing it and their leaders.
"What is your take on 'US software engineering culture' vs other cultures (like Scandinavian, Eastern EU etc)?"
A loaded question but here goes:
1. US-founded tech companies dominate global markets. Not understanding how and why they succeed is ignorance at its finest.
2. Some universal truths are starting to surface in sw engineering. Like iterating faster is (usually) more nimble to progress. Transparency (usually) helps the team. Micromanaging (usually) kills innovation.
These are dependent on context. Understand them, and their context.
3. There are cultures that are far more hierarchical and process-driven than others, and this reflects in the day-to-day. I'd run a company with only Hungarian engineers slightly differently than one with all Dutch, or all US ones.
My biggest “internet GDP increase” contribution so far is this article.
Got so many messages from engineers switching jobs once they realised there are “tiers” that pay a lot more. And several companies increased compensation after debating the contents:
Even now, this article is in C-level meetings at companies who all assumed they are closer to the top of the market because Radford or Mercer data tells the so.
But they’re not, because they never realised (till now) how Tier 2 and 3 companies don’t show up in those datasets.
The most surprising outcome of this article for me: the recruiter messages.
“I never realised why I don’t get responses from devs in certain companies despite telling them we pay ‘competitive’. I now see we are ‘Tier 1’. Over 10 years & never knew other, higher tiers existed…”