Node.js Annual Salaries by Region
From the very beginning of software development, things were established in a way that in some countries and regions, there is a concentration of top-notch companies. They, in their turn, recruit the most skilled and devoted programmers from all over the world. A Silicon Valley in California is an excellent example of such a case because, naturally, it offers the highest salaries. For its part, India is considered to be the domain of cheap labour with not that high quality of performance, so local wages are much lower.
Surely, in the context of globalization and the opportunity to work remotely, such a distribution across regions is somewhat conditional. You can find specialists of any level of qualification across the globe, but still, there are some significant differences between regions that have to be taken into account.
Although the salaries in some countries might be three times higher than in other regions, it doesn’t always mean that programmers receive the mentioned amount of money and live “high on the hog.” Such seemingly usual things as taxes, which raise in accordance with salary’s growth; the cost of living, including housing rental, utility bills, grocery, and transport costs; and social security greatly influence the sum an employee receives on the payment day.
If considering living costs, the overall picture is much different. It turns out that developers from Ukraine, Belarus, and Poland are in an advantageous position because the cost of living is relatively low in these countries. Despite comparatively similar living standards, an average programmer’s expenses from Ukraine or Belarus are 3–4 times lower than from California. So it appears that in countries like these, developers enjoy much better living than a relatively large part of the population. At the same time, in the American cities, this gap isn’t that dramatic. However, the incomes of Node.js developers around the USA, in general, are higher than the average salary in the country.
In other words, receiving multiple times lower salaries, programmers from Eastern Europe can afford to pay for better accommodations or have more prestigious cars than those who live in the US. Nevertheless, it’s quite a relative thing because the “one size fits all” approach can’t be applied in this case. In Germany, significantly, there are attractive conditions for software engineers because there is loyalty in obtaining a residence permit and a simpler approach to job search. Also, the tax rate is quite reasonable, and specialists have the opportunity to receive insurance. Although the country has high living standards, Node.js developers can easily afford to rent desirable accommodations and not worry about the money.
Let’s talk numbers. The average salary of programmers from Berlin is $67,200 per annum, and a similar employee from Chicago receives $81,725 for doing the same job. As for Kyiv and Singapore, the salaries are $36,000 and 96,000 accordingly, again, not implying that a Node.js developer from the second city is more skilled than the first. If you want to know more about software engineers’ wages, you can find them out in our article.
