White male, born and raised in the UK, lived and worked in Australia and lately, the Netherlands.
1999: Intern developer at investment bank, £1500/month
2000: Java Developer at above, £40,000/year
2004: C++ Games Developer in Australia, AU$26,000/year
2006: C++ Games Developer in UK, £27,000/year
2007: C++ Senior Software Engineer in UK, £31,000/year + pension
2011: Java Developer in Netherlands, €44,000/year + pension
2012: C# Unity Developer in Netherlands, €31,800/year
2013: Contract Frontend Developer in NL, €50/hour
2015: Frontend Developer in NL, €50,000/year
2017: Contract Frontend Developer in NL, €75/hour
2018: Contract Frontend Developer in NL, similar to above
Fairly obvious here is that I a) like working in the games industry, b) the pay is much worse in the games industry, and c) that I never ended up staying for long in the games industry...
2009: £16k - Junior dev at games company (Scotland)
2010: £23k - Junior dev at web company (London)
2011: £26k - Dev at startup (London)
2014: £32k - Senior dev at same startup
2015: £350/day - Web freelancer (London)
2017: £220/day - Unity freelancer (London)
2018: £300/day - Unity freelancer (remote)
It definitely feels like you can do a lot better as a freelancer in the UK but it's more of a headache in terms of taxes pensions etc, and obviously less secure. And also yeah, games is badly paid compared to other areas.
I'm interested in moving to Netherlands. What would you say is the salary for a Full Stack dev with 5 year of experience. I work with Java / Node and have 2 years of experience with Angular.
If you're working in the major cities like Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht, then it's fairly common to see salaries for a medior of something like 45-55k and more for a senior (I've seen upwards of 70k for some roles in finance).
Some other notes to keep in mind when considering moving here:
* There is a "30% ruling" for high demand skills workers like in IT that will reduce your income tax [1]
* But, income tax in the Netherlands is high! (~40%) [2]
* Quality of living, infrastructure, education is great though, arguably the high taxes do you give you a lot back
* Healthcare is pretty reasonable but it's a two-tier system that costs a decent amount of your paycheck and still requires you to pay for mandatory insurance
Dutch income taxes should be closer to 30% than 40%. This however depends on various tax discounts you may get. My tax rate is around 33% at the moment if I remember correctly
1999: Intern developer at investment bank, £1500/month
2000: Java Developer at above, £40,000/year
2004: C++ Games Developer in Australia, AU$26,000/year
2006: C++ Games Developer in UK, £27,000/year
2007: C++ Senior Software Engineer in UK, £31,000/year + pension
2011: Java Developer in Netherlands, €44,000/year + pension
2012: C# Unity Developer in Netherlands, €31,800/year
2013: Contract Frontend Developer in NL, €50/hour
2015: Frontend Developer in NL, €50,000/year
2017: Contract Frontend Developer in NL, €75/hour
2018: Contract Frontend Developer in NL, similar to above
Fairly obvious here is that I a) like working in the games industry, b) the pay is much worse in the games industry, and c) that I never ended up staying for long in the games industry...