How much salary should you ask for ? [foreigner edition]

It can be very difficult to know how much money you should ask for when going to work abroad. After many failures I've decided to write down an estimation technique, and I'll share it with you here.

Every month with your salary you most likely will :

• Pay your taxes
• Pay your rent
• Pay other expenses (food, bills, car …)
• Save the rest

Step 1 : Get some information on the cost of living

Daily expenses can go from a few hundreds per month to thousands. This pretty much depends on your lifestyle and the salary of people living there. As an example, 1 month of my rent in Toronto, Canada = 1 year of my rent in Lyon, France (as a student).

At first I was only looking at rents, the starting price of rent in that area. But then I found a very nice website/database : Cost of Living (expatistan.com).

The minimum you'll need to cover with your after-tax salary are your rent and your expenses to live/survive there.

The website expatistan.com tells us for example that for Paris, rent starts at €1,367

Great ! Also for example, 1 full month in an Airbnb room in Paris starts at €1500.

In the case you don't have data that has both rent and expenses, simply consider your monthly expenses to be equal to 1 month rent. It's often similar. So let's say you'll need €2,500 per month to survive in Paris.

Step 2 :  Play “The Price Is Right” with a tax calculator

Tax systems are very different from one country to another, and there is no miracle number. A first approach can be to Google the average tax percentage people pay in that country, but keep in mind that it will be an average, if you plan on being in the top half you may pay much more.

A more exact solution is to look for an online tax calculator for that specific country. Keep in mind that it might be in a different language than yours.

I like to use the website talent.com, which says :

So a €3,300 per month salary, or €39,600 per year salary should be minimum to pay for housing and food there.

I've been paid a Paris salary in Lyon, I was super-happy, and then a Paris salary in Toronto … I lost all my money waiting for promised adjustments. Since then I see salaries as a number of rents :
€3000 in Paris = 2-3 months rent,
€3000 in Lyon = 5 months rent,
€3000 in Toronto = 0.8 months rent,
(roughly)

Even if you can live with less, thinking that you can live eating only noodles and staying in a hostel or in your car, keep in mind that they can pay you more, and that they should pay you fairly.

Step 3 : The sprinkle on top

Now, so far we talked about surviving there, but I don't think you're moving to another country to barely get by. There are many reasons you can argue for higher than that minimum bar from step 2.

Here are my reasons to ask for more, feel free to have yours, but It's good to know it before the negotiations start :

• I work in IT, high-demand and low offer in some parts of it
• I believe I deliver high-quality code, I'm good at what I do
• I tend to spend extra hours because I'm a perfectionist (which, yeah, might make me late the next morning …)
• I've been coding for more than a decade
• I'm not in an entry-level position
• etc.

Of course, when freshly out of school you cannot ask for a lot of sprinkles, also when working in a field with less demand. But after a few years, once you've demonstrated your worth, acknowledgment of your good work should be as obvious as sprinkles on a doughnut.

Norway as an example

In Stavanger, where I live, rent starts at €900/month (kr 9000). This is for a very basic studio, less than 30 minutes from the center.

The website Cost of Living in Stavanger (expatistan.com) gives us :

Single person estimated monthly costs: kr 21,804

That's a kr 261,648 yearly after-tax income to survive in Stavanger.

The website talent.com tells us that a kr 340,000 salary is a match :

Now, to put that survival bar value into perspective, the website NITO -The Norwegian Society of Engineers and Technologists has a database of IT average salaries. Here is what it says :

To translate :
- On average
- An engineer
- With a Masters
- With 0 years experience (fresh out of studies)
- In Rogaland (region of Stavanger)
- That works in private sector
- Earns kr 542,663 per year : 1,6 x the survival bar we calculated
- kr 648,255 after 3 years : 1,9 x the survival bar
- kr 792,235 after 10 years : 2,3 x the survival bar

This is simply because of the arguments of diplomas and field.

To my French friends :
- On average
- An engineer
- With a Masters
- With 0 years experience (fresh out of studies)
- In Paris
- That works in private sector
- Should ask for €63,360 per year : 1,6 x the survival bar we calculated
- €75,240 after 3 years : 1,9 x the survival bar
- €91,080 after 10 years : 2,3 x the survival bar

I hope this helps to get some perspective.