France is really terrible in terms of SWE compensation. I think I know why. I've had some traineeship / internship requests from French students and their mentality seems so much more like "engineering" career trajectory than "hacker".
Engineer: "yes, of course it is normal to be a trainee for 2 years, then a junior for 5, then a medior for 5 and of I'm really good I'll be a senior. I would be really thankful if you consider hiring me." With this mindset you don't expect high wages.
Hacker: I am a ninja rockstar, I don't need any certifications and you should be happy if I decide to work for you because I should actually be working at FAANG.
Well... just because a developer claims to be a senior engineer (with only 2 years experience) it doesn't actually make them a senior engineer, it makes them a bullsh*ter :D
Just like the fresh out of school CTOs and Principal Engineers in the US. Of course you get a fancy title, you're one of the founders in the company - it doesn't mean you know anything though =)
I've worked with quite a few people who had "15 years of experience" which would be better described as "one year of experience practiced 15 times".
The main thing that such an internship-apprenticeship system guarantees is that the newer generation is well-versed in the ways of the old generation, and will likely have a similar record.
In a conservative industry, such as civil engineers building bridges, roads and buildings, and electrical engineers building high-voltage electrical distribution systems, this is what you want -- those industries have converged on good safety records. You want a few people who innovate, but otherwise much prefer to delay the future by 10-20 years than to the potential risks of bringing it sooner.
If the same was prevalent in software, we'd likely still be coding in COBOL on IBM mainframes.
Tesla is a very interesting case study - actually managing to bring the future sooner (with relatively small accumulated damage so far) in a field where being conservative is considered a virtue.
If you'd rather work with the apprenticed person, this model still exists in banks, who are willing to pay big bucks to maintain their cobol backends.
I didn't refer to the apprenticeship model. I referred to the bullshitting 'hacker' type referring to themselves as a ninja and acting like the work he's doing is beneath them. I wouldn't want to work with that guy.
And it taking 5 years of work experience for you to call yourself an experienced engineer does not mean we'd be stuck with COBOL. It usually takes that long where I work and it's not a bank. You're very likely to use our products right now.
In Ukraine, however, the reality is that most of the engineers are employed as PE (private entrepreneurs) with some additional things included, like a decent insurance. And the overall tax for this scheme is just 5% so far. No other benefits or bonuses usually. So, NET almost always equals GROSS here. In absolute numbers it is something like USD 25K - 70K per year for junior - senior/TL range.
That's still insanely low. With all these people reporting low salaries in constantly thinking where on earth are you when a European startup is hiring talent :D
You can play with the numbers here [1] for France. You're right that beginners can be around 30k€ before taxes (although that's a little low), which gives less than 2000€/month after taxes.
I am honestly surprised. Even a bottom of the barrel public entry level job with worse compensation than private industry pays at least 2k€ (after taxes) here and that's in a place where you can get an apartment for 500€ per month.
He said net salary. I know a lot of engineers from C schools in mid-size towns in France who are paid less than 2k euro net.