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Comment by ThePawnBreak | Hacker News Reader

2700 GBP a month, plus 1000 GBP housing (for a summer). Because Europe.

She started in Krakow, Poland. 2700 GBP/month is what the prime minister of Poland makes, it's an absurdly high salary for the local market there. I've friends who work as professional C++ programmers there and they make about 1000-1500 GBP/month working for huge corporations.

She worked on something completely different in Krakow, and earned a lot less (about 1000 euro I think). The compression work was in London, where 2700 GBP doesn't go a long way at all. Rent is about 1000 GBP for a room, and 2700 GBP is about 1800 net, so that leaves 800 GBP per month to spend on food, transportation and other expenditures.

I happen to know the person in the article. I was also an intern at Google this summer in Europe.

For an intern, that is insanely good.

edit: In fact, for a lot of people, that is insanely good! Apologies if I came across as an asshole when I said "for an intern".

No it isn't, especially considering it's 30% that what Google interns earn in the US, even in cheaper places than London (Pittsburgh, Seattle).

Also, it's a lot less than what competitors pay interns in London (Bloomberg, Facebook and Palantir pay interns a LOT better, among others).

I don't know, I think you have to look at what is good for a certain area.

In Poland, ~1000EUR/4000PLN/month is more than what an accountant makes. Teachers never reach this salary, even with 30+ years of experience.

You can easily live very comfortably on that salary, if there's two of you making that money you can buy a house and pay it off within 10 years or build one.

Being paid that much as an intern is just unheard of, most people I know would trip over and faint if they heard this.

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