I went from SE to Solutions Architect role. Many big US companies start a "Professional Services" divison where they help other big corps integrating their products.
These roles are, especially now, mostly remote. So it depends, this company wasn't afraid of big numbers and hired me. I get paid 120k Euro per year and 40k in stocks each year.
I have a family and we don't spend more than 3k each month all together. So 120k boils down to around 6.2k each month, plus my wife earns ok as well (teacher).
I know a few CTOs of smaller gompanies who make 120k without stocks.
Lending BTC and swapping between ETH and SUSHI etc. Was lucky with some pre-sales rounds but most gains came from BTC. Sold all my stocks and went all in BTC in April. Paid off rather well.
Software Engineer/Solutions Architect at a fairly large company from SF. They opened up a European office, and now I am getting well above average income for a German based engineer, plus 30 day vacation etc. So sort-of SF pay (not quite) plus German social security and all the best of vacation days.
I worked in StartUps for 10 years and used to high output everyday. Now everyone seems stressed at this company but we have mostly corporations s clients and I am fairly good at my job.
During December, I probably played more games on Stadia than putting hours into work, but I still got 2-3 shoutouts from clients how pleased they were with my job.
I get nice stock options and it‘s the first time in my life I just want to sit out the next few years, do a decent job and wait for my stocks to be granted. This and Bitcoin will set me mostly free in a couple of years so I can say goodbye to fulltime work.
It‘s almost sad to see the mentality from my US colleagues who consntantly cheer and push themselves over nonsense in Slack, but their quality of life depends so much on their employer.
So yeah, being in Europe and finding a US company to work for, 90% remote is probably the dream, because you merge the upsides from the social system without the downside of boring company culture, and you get the pay from the US without all the downside of overworking yourself.
I am 32 and just realized how stressful Sodtware Engineering is in StartUps. I didn‘t realize how much I learned and did before I took a break. Now I want to do a decent job, be a bit loud or annoying in internal meetings so people think I really care, finish my jon in 3 hours and read or learn something on the side the rest of the 5 hours I have to clock in.
I mostly used it last year to get into Crypto and now DeFi, and made 3-times the money I did with my full time job.
This also broke me mentally, because it‘s hard to engage in „real life“ work after that experience.
Incredible stuff which I don't understand nearly 50% of it, but I am learning...