Where to Look for Salary in Europe?
During the interviews, it is good to know the salary range of a company. However, not every company puts them in the job listing. Also, the candidate must assess themselves and possess information on the current salary in the industry. It helps you to answer the most common question in the interview, “What is your salary expectation? “. You don’t have to give an exact number, but it signals that you’ve done some research and know your worth. Always let the interviewer share the range first, but if they try to dodge, you can give them a salary range to break the deadlock.
Note: This is not a ranking or sponsorship post. I came across them and found them beneficial during my interviews. Public users like you and me share data on these platforms. Hence, there could be inaccuracies or stale data points. I would recommend using your judgement in making decisions.
The following platforms have helped me in judging what a company might offer.
Glassdoor 🔗
I have used this platform extensively to learn about the company from the employees’ perspective. It has helped me dodge a couple of bad companies. The salary data section gives you information about base pay and additional bonuses. Using the average pay indicator, you can see the outliers.
Tip: Some months ago, when visiting glassdoor.com, it only displayed the salary data from the USA. It would not show any data from other countries despite previously showing the data for those countries. Upon speaking with customer service, they said it’s an update in the feature. So I had to use a hacky search method on google, which would show the appropriate data on glassdoor.
Search Query: Company Name Location site: glassdoor.com
Levels.fyi 🔗
Levels.fyi provides much more details such as total experience, years at the company, RSU and bonus apart from base salary. The wide range of attributes, when combined with data from other websites discussed here, provides more data points to assess the total compensation of a company.
Techpays.eu 🔗
The site offers data from only 6 EU countries as of writing. If the data found here were accurate, considering the location, role and position (not the team). I felt I was losing 10-15% of my base salary. The reasons could vary, and I cannot assume or judge without the complete information. But having this data with me was very useful.
Payscale 🔗
I have used this website to get the entry-level salary scale for a location. When I was planning to relocate from Ireland to a different country in the EU, I used it to know the starting salary for a software engineer with Node.js as a primary skill and four years of industry experience. Outside of this, I haven’t found it useful for me.