Glassdoor is the place you want to go for this kind of information. You're not going to get anywhere near a large enough sample from a few comments on HN.
I wrote about my bad experience at one of the company I interned for. Some PR from the company comment on my review, I knew the PR guy cuz he goes around doing it to other reviews there and create fake reviews.
Anyway, I call him out on it said he's using ad hominem for one of his tactic in the comment. Other users comment and back my report up.
After a few week glassdoor deleted my comment and the comments that back me up, they left the PR guy comment up. I wish I could have screen shot it.
Eventually they did away with the comment system.
I don't trust them at all.
There are aggregate surveys from O'Reily and stackoverflow. I think it's pretty decent. O'Reily doesn't give raw data for their data science survey so I couldn't do any survey analysis to confirm it but they release their linear regression model.
I liked the comment system we were able to have a discussion.
While the PR guy was shady, realizing other people having the same experience via rebuttal and affirming my comment via their experiences seem much better.
I usually like having a dialogue/discussion. Glassdoor is where you can give anonymous reviews, mind as well have people annoymously have a discussion about said company.
There is one major problem with glassdoor - the salaries that are collected today are grouped together with salaries that were collected 7 years ago. Which is why you always see lower salaries looking at the glassdoor.
This post is to get a (however small) current sample and it is purely to help me evaluate a couple of opportunities, no commercial interest whatsoever.
Your better bet is to post the data you're evaluating and asking for opinions. You won't collect enough data to be meaningful in a post like this, so if you're limited to anecdotes and opinions, you might as well get anecdotes and opinions that relate directly to your situation.
Here's what (I think) is important to know to help you -
Role
Your years of experience
Size/function of org, assuming you don't want to name the companies
Public, or Private (and what stage)
Base
RSU or Options w/ offer
Annual Bonus potential
I'm sure you don't want to entirely out yourself, but some of that info will help you get better answers.
The cost of living where I live in Scotland is pretty small (IMO).
I make around £40k as a developer with 11 years experience, which seems about average for my city.
My total cost of living each month is around £930. That includes my mortgage.
The company where I was working before I made ~£29k as developer, some people in that company were on as low as £21k. The average was probably around £25k.
Contracting rates can be good, I regularly get calls about contracting jobs from recruiters with rates around £400-£450 a day for a 6 month contract. But then you have the hassle of looking for a new contract every 6 months or so. That hassle is just not worth it for me.
I get emails each day from a job place with jobs. Today the jobs are
C# .net developer - £30k - £45k
C# software developer - £28k - £35k
Senior python developer - £65k
PHP Developer - £35k - £42k
.NET Developer -£38,000 DOE
.NET full stack developer - £35 - £50k
Java Developer - Upto £65k
Javascript Developer - £30-£40k
These are all for positions with many years experience. I don't know where people are seeing £100k a year salaries?
Salaries that have been <£40k for the past few are starting to look really abysmal. UK inflation is currently 3.1%. In England we have above-inflation rail fare increases, inflated rents that keep going up, potentially 5.99%/year council tax rises and not to mention utility bills and food.
The effect of price rises (council tax, travel, utilities, rent etc) combined with your salary remaining stagnant is nothing short of devastating over a period of 10-20 years.
Companies pretending that inflation doesn't exists probably contributes quite a bit to job hopping
European tech salaries are famously lower than US salaries.
Southern Europe is even worse. I was offered a role of Senior/Lead engineer (with over 10 years exp) for "maximum salary of 45k Euro". And was told by their recruiter that this is considered high for Spain.
£90k for a dev job isn't that low, even in London. Unless it's very senior, you'll be paid more than in most other sectors (probably same as in finance).
Really depends on the location within Spain like other Euro countries like the UK. In Barcelona or Madrid a Lead engineer at the right firm will be hitting around 100-110k euros.
I only have a small sample set, but the companies I've worked for always had lower salaries on Glassdoor than me and my colleagues received. I think in part because when there is limited data or for anonymity, Glassdoor fudges the numbers a bit
