Norwegian and or European salary expectations?
Short version: is there a levels.fyi or equivalent for employees in the European Economic Area (EEA)? How do I figure out what an equivalent employee in Norway makes vs one in the US?
Long version: I just found out my partner got the offer for a job that'll force relocation to Norway from the US for a new role. My current role, schedule, and responsibilities will likely work just fine in Norway and I expect that I can keep my job if I pitch it correctly to the executive team. I need to figure out what:
- I should be making
- What potential hires from Norway or the EEA would need to make
I work as the Head of AI running a team of 4 technical (ML Engineers) and non-technical (Data Capture technicians) people in a Series A startup. I am the Engineering Manager, the Team Lead, the Tech Lead, an IC, and periodically do pre-sales and technical customer support/onboarding. My team is all new, basically, having been hired in the last 90 days or less, and I am excited to delegate after finishing their onboarding! Currently, I have 1% equity and make $200,000. My role is remote and requires 20-30% travel. Where I live now is actually more expensive for flying across the US than from Oslo and about the same time factoring layovers, so travel costs will decrease. Due to how meeting schedules work out, no meetings will have to be moved to accommodate me at all. Is advocating for maintaining the same salary correct or should it decrease given the higher worker protections and benefits required by Norwegian employment law? Separately, what would hiring Norwegian employees look like from a comp perspective? I'd really like to keep this job and make a strong case for why it won't be a huge net-negative for the company.
I don't specifically know where to look for salary numbers, but I can say that as a mid-level data scientist (probably roughly equivalent to your ML engineers, no leadership role), I'd expect a yearly salary of 75-100k euros here in Germany, and I'd expect a Norwegian company to offer me a salary on the higher end of that (I'd probably hope for 1 million kroner) due to the higher cost of living there. Obviously as a senior and a team lead you should be making more than that, but I'm afraid I'm not familiar enough with the Norwegian market to weigh in there. I do think it makes sense for your salary to go down a little, but keep in mind that a lot more comes out of your paycheck in Norway than in the US, so even if you don't lower your gross salary your net takehome pay will be lower.
As someone living in the EU employed by a US startup, I think the thing you should worry about more when it comes to selling your company on it is setting up the relevant payroll and legal/tax side of things for a Norwegian employee. Does the company you work for already have a legal entity that can hire you in the EEA? I wouldn't be surprised if they don't as a Series A startup given that you're asking this question, and if they don't paying you is gonna be tricky -- my wife and I are hoping to move to Norway ourselves in a couple years and this is my current employer's biggest hangup easily. If they don't already have other employees in the EEA, look into companies that offer global payroll solutions that support Norway, as something like that is almost definitely going to be necessary to arrange your payroll if your company doesn't already have an EEA presence and people on staff who know how to handle the paperwork involved in hiring people in the EEA.
It may be useful to look at job listings for roles comparable to yours at Norwegian companies. If they list salary ranges in the job listings, that'll be good data for you, and if this doesn't work out, it might be good to already have some feelers in the local job market. A lot (if not most) companies hiring for AI roles like yours will be using English as their working language.
Thank you! That is super helpful!
No. I or, more likely a lawyer, would be setting that up.
Is LinkedIn as prevalent in Norway as it is in the US for tech jobs/roles? Likewise, are there recruiting agencies you or friends have used before- either as a client or as a prospective employee?
Linked-in is prevalent in some sectors, including tech and start-ups. A high proportion of jobs in the Norwegian private sector are never listed anywhere and require networking.
By far the two largest recruitment sites are the government-run Nav.no job listings: https://arbeidsplassen.nav.no/stillinger
And the finn.no job listings (this site also has a close on monopoly for house listings): https://www.finn.no/job/browse.html
Recruiting agencies and headhunting firms are extremely hit and miss due to the network-based nature of recruitment in the country. I'd say that's a huge waste of your time, considering your situation and field.
I emigrated to Norway at the start of this year and kept my software engineer job from the UK and had similar questions around equivalent salary.
I found it pretty hard to match to be honest. As noted below definitely find some ball park figures for salary expectation from job ads but it depends greatly on where you live. I'm rural which did drop salary expectations. Though, it was still higher around 20% higher than the UK, it wasn't as high as Oslo or Bergan where it was more like 40%.
That said, if you're coming from the US I'd be ready for culture shock if you're not well accustomed to Norwegian culture. Salary expectations here are higher on the lower ends and lower on the high ends, plus tax is higher than the US and people are expected to give a lot more to the community in general.
That said I love it here!
Regardless, best of luck with the move!
Edit: Regarding your question about keeping your job. Norway will not let you work in the country as a foreigner unless you work for a Norwegian company.
That means your place of work would need to set up a Norwegian branch for you to officially work at, with Norwegian HR and Norwegian tax. You cannot get paid and still be under employment by the US business if you want to live and work in Norway, and they are very picky!