The average salary for a Software Engineer is $66K per year in Germany (~61% less).
Source: indeed and payscale.
I always find a bit funny when US devs in HN talk about getting salaries above $200K/year... when the average US dev gets half of that. (I find it funny because everybody here thinks we are above the average dev level and can get a job at Facebook/Google/Amazon/etc... which is statistically incorrect).
Well, yeah, luck certainly can factor in. There was a year I made around 1.35 million in total comp due to luck like this. Nowadays I mostly make around 150k.
I'm sure you can join one of the FAANGs and get, at least, $300k/year easily.
If I have a few millions in my bank, I'd definitely join an interesting startup with no regard to compensation.
1.3m/year definitely has some luck involved. 500k/year is probably less luck. Just joined one of the hot tech companies and stay for 4 years. You have to be unlucky to not get to 500k/year.
It's much easier to achieve 500k/year in Bay Area than in Europe.
500k/year can be achieved by being a senior engineer at one of the successful companies for a few years. The stock growth should take care of that, easily. There are probably like 100 of successful companies in Bay Area between 2010 to 2020.
There are thousands of people achieving this in Bay Area.
In Europe, the base salary is lower. The stock comp is also lower. If you are a regular IC, these 2 always go together. You would need a much higher stock growth. This level of compensation is rarely heard of that it seems impossible.
thousands ? out of how many ? seems like a tiny fraction
Way more attainable.
- number of software engineers in the US: X - number of software engineers in HN: Y - number of software engineers working for FAANG-like companies: N
Where X >>>> Y >> N. So, yes, I also think that everyone here can't get a job paying 300K or higher not because we are not skilled enough but by simple math.