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Comment by Heliosmaster | Hacker News Reader

For those companies involved in semiconductor industry, where machines cost 100M usd EACH... People are just a rounding error. Should we hire 100 more? 1000 more? Whatever

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Keep in mind that for a high-profile engineer or lead who expects to make 400k at least per year, the company would actually have to pay him 800k to make that much net. Labor cost in Germany is sky high. That times a thousand is not insignificant.

According to [1] if you make 400k a year your employer has to pay 413k in total

[1] https://www.brutto-netto-rechner.info/gehalt/gehaltsrechner-...

no engineer makes 400k a year in Germany. This is not the US, sadly.

Yes, if you get 400k gross, your employer has to pay 413k, but you only get 221k net after deduction of taxes and obligatory insurances (according to that very same calculator).

I assume they mean 400k net, if the employer pays 413k you only get 206k after tax. While the tax burden seems huge in this case, it's not that different in the US, though. For example you'd get around 225k in California (with no deductions).

"net" is the keyword here.

sure, but that's an unfair comparison then, when people say they make 400k they mean before taxes

And that 800 is what you see on your paycheck. The company pays around double that in total.

No, there are only very little payments beyond the pay check. The employee does of course only get payed out a large part of the pay check, the rest goes to taxes and social insurances.

Huh, I may have (wrongly) assumed it'd be the same in Germany as in Austria.

I don't know where you get the 400k number for an engineer, typical salaries are rather about 100k, somewhat more, a lot less.

400K in Germany is upper management level, not C-suites, but most certainly not engineering either.

To be precise: 400k or higher is a salary only paid at the top 30 (Dax companies) to C-Level executives.

If you own the business there are other tiers of compensation available, but employees in Germany very rarely make more than 150k in any position. CEOs of medium sized businesses up to 500 employees would likely not be compensated more than 200k. Other C-level even less.

That‘s different from the US how exactly?

$800k/year in San Francisco as a single is $436k/year net. In Germany that’s $431k/year net.

You should argue with lower (more realistic) salaries. Social insurance (including health insurance, pension) is capped, meaning if you earn above a certain level you won’t have to pay any more. This means that those aspects play a diminutive role (about $15k) at your named salary level.

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