How Much Do Software Engineers Earn in Europe? [OC] /// Data from https://www.levels.fyi/

The salaries are based on self-reported data from software engineers on https://www.levels.fyi/. While not official, they provide a useful insight on earnings and it might give an interesting perspective.

Visualization with [https://app.datawrapper.de/](https://app.datawrapper.de/) and some own Python scripting.

Me: living in Poland, earning like in Iceland (before tax). Taxes: 12% + $420 for ZUS. Just a single full-time, fully-remote job, good WLB, private medical insurance. Almost 12 years of SWE experience. Not FAANG, never been in one.

Life is good. But I feel like my income could be even more if I spend more time interviewing / marketing myself. I could never market myself properly. Because of this, I decided to start a pet project that I might be able to monetize and then maybe grow an entire business out of it. Working two jobs is unsustainable.

The salaries on display are terrifying to me. If you have a roof over the head and access to basic meals then 20-30k euro doesn’t look bad but if you have to pay for it then I have no idea how people can sustain on this. Are engineers downshifting much? Coding from literal caves? I’d actually appreciate this living style, we all started humble. But not when you’re in mid 30s, with some health problems from sitting too much.

As an immigrant, I was terrified how much more money you could spend on rental in Warsaw vs Moscow. Previously I had a $400/mo 52m2 apartment. Here it’s like $1500/mo for 60m2, not counting utilities. Expensive neighbourhood for sure but man, still 30-40 minutes on metro to get to the center. For this money you could rent out a 4-room (80m2+) walking distance to metro, 5 minute to center of the city in Moscow.

I’m still testing out the job safety aspect of it but the most important metric to me is how much money I can save per month of employment to cover for unemployment. Back when I lived in Khimki it was 1 month of work = savings for 3 months of unemployment. Here it’s like this: 1 month of work = 1/3 months of unemployment. That’s why I’m scared. I’m entering the 2025 and I managed to save for just over 2-3 months of unemployment since 2023. I see that quite a few people in the company doing some side-projects though.

On YT there are videos of people claiming you can survive for just a bit over $1000 a month in Warsaw. But I guess very poor standards of living: literally hand to mouth. With my skills and knowledge, I don’t feel like downshifting. I feel like creating opportunities for people and advancing Polish economy. I’m really thankful that I was given a chance to immigrate here on PBH visa and I don’t want to be a low-paid, unskilled worker. I’d like to work better and spend more here. It feels like a good country to start your life over, with decent politics and taxes for entrepreneurs. My other option was to stay with a risk to end up on a battlefront. And I’d rather improve other country economy.

Answer: not much compared to how much they make in the US

Lmao where the fuck are you finding Engineer jobs averaging 100k in the UK? You’ll be very lucky to land one at 50k even with 10 years experience and in London.

This is probably the first time I’ve looked closely at a map of Europe. Why Norway, Sweden and Finland look like a dick

Thought Sweden would be higher in the ranks