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Comment by casta | Hacker News Reader

I don't know how it works in Spain, but in Italy the cost of an employee is probably much more than his/her salary.

The employer gives you a salary, then they have to pay on top of it ~30% of INAIL, INPS etc. (pension, health "insurance" including sick days and so on) and ~10% of TFR (fund you get back at the end of your career.) In the U.S. those are costs you have to remove from your salary.

So, 3000 euros a month would be 6000 euros before taxes and if you add the other employer costs, it's about 10000. Now convert it to dollars and you have a 130000 dollars a year.

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When hiring contractors the company doesn't have to pay any of these things (it's on the contractor). I'm currently contracting for a company in Italy and getting much more than 3k/mo.

You are speaking about gross salary I guess. I don't really believe that in Italy you can get much more of 3k€ net as a developer. And contracting market in Italy is really fucked up, when I was there on average contractors were paid less than permies.

So I guess you do like most freelancers: you don't have insurances nor build any pension? So if you get hit by a car, you have nothing.

Don't know about Italy, but at least in some EU countries, freelancers do build pension.

In my country, pension payments is mandatory. As well as insurance for maternity/paternity leave. I've full medical insurance. Well, as full as regular workers. The only difference is I don't have paid sick days and can't claim unemployment benefits. Which kinda makes sense when freelancing.

I think I'm eligible for disabled pension though. So if I got hit by car, I'd get free treatment. But no salary compensation. If I was rendered disabled, I may be eligible for disabled benefits based on my previous incomes. Or at least basic disabled benefits.

Makes sense, I was describing my experience as employee and just trying to explain why comparing gross salaries doesn't make much sense.

Cost of employee is always higher than salary. Bear in mind that employee have to pay (feed) himself, government, management, company revenue etc. It's simply not possible to create business value 10 000 € and get all of them into own pocket. At least not as standard employee.

True, but leaving health and pension in or out the gross salary makes a big difference if you want to compare gross salaries.

It depedns on definition of gross or super-gross salary. It may vary per country.

But...employee is always the only one who have to create value for customer who will give company his money. It doesnt matter who pay taxes (even health or social "insurance" are kind of taxes) value needs to be created and customer needs to be charged. Employer will not pay (long terrrm view) your bills and taxes from own pocket (dont consider early startup phases)

in spain is the same, the socialist fallacy.

your feeding corrupt governments in a mandatory way with out a way to get out of the system (i don't want a government pension or the so called "free" social/medical care)

in spain your pretty much putting your money in fund they may not be there by the time you retire.

so making 3k a month is peanuts there is no way you can save for retirement.

most specialist will tell you that you will need to save anything from 500k to 1M for retirement. if you have kids, 3k its probably a stretch specially if you want to give them a good education.

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