The software engineers at the top segment in the Netherland are not working full-time jobs, but are instead pulling €800 per day (or more) via long-term contracts. Assuming you're working 48 weeks per year, this amounts to €192k per year.
Yeah, this strikes me as bizarre because it goes to show that the money to pay these salaries exists but companies would rather hire contractors than employees.
Fine by me, I went solo 4 years ago and never looked back.
It's more difficult in Europe to fire people with a permanent contract. That can make companies more reluctant to hire. As the say of another profession, "I don't pay them to come over, I pey them to go away afterwards".
It's completely true that companies prefer that. It looks better on the balance sheet, or so they and the representatives of their shareholders think. Contract salaries can be put in another column, and they keep telling themselves that they can get rid of this expense whenever they want. Any day now. Right?
Everyone I've known (and I've known dozens of contractors across many companies). In Europe, contracting practices truly are a normalized pathology.
I don't know the US contracting market, and if the pathology is as normalized as in Europe (i.e. if you can reasonably expect to treat it as a full-time job).
