Something to readCompensation
The trimodal nature of software engineering salaries in the Netherlands and Europe
An essay on why the same engineering job can pay in three distinct bands
Why it’s worth your time
When two people with the same title earn wildly different amounts, the gap often has more to do with the employer than with either of them. Gergely Orosz, who hired engineers at Uber in Amsterdam, sorts companies into three tiers and describes what each tends to pay, using 2021 figures from the Netherlands. The euro amounts have aged, but the way he sorts employers can help you read pay in other places and fields too.
Work out which pay tier your company is in
The essay · 21 min · Free
Opens their site. We don’t copy it here; we’d rather they get the read.
- Read the essay.
Start with the section on the three tiers of companies, where he describes who each one benchmarks pay against. A later section covers differences besides money: hours, pace and how performance is handled.
- Place your employer in a tier.
Write down who your company seems to compete with for people: local firms in your field, all employers in your area, or companies hiring across a region or the world. Then note what your pay is made of (base, bonus, equity) and compare it with what the essay describes for that tier, as a rough guide.
Good moments for this: when a friend's offer surprises youbefore you ask for a raisewhile weighing a move to a bigger company
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Making it work for you
Every workplace is different. Here’s what to think about before you start, and what might get in the way.
Things to think about
That gap usually reflects where the company has chosen to compete. Seeing it that way can make a raise conversation calmer, because you're discussing the company's choice more than your worth.
What might make this harder
Set the euro figures aside and use the tiers as questions: who does your employer recruit against, and who recruits from it? Colleagues who've moved can hint at whether your field splits the same way.
Questions people ask
What does trimodal salary distribution mean?
Trimodal describes a distribution with three peaks instead of one. Orosz uses it for engineering pay in the Netherlands, which he argues clusters in three groups by employer type: local companies, companies paying against all local employers, and Big Tech and others paying against a regional or global market.
Why do some companies pay so much more for the same job?
In Orosz's account, they benchmark against a bigger market and pay much of the difference in bonus and equity, while expecting more and competing harder for people.
How do I find out what tier my company is in?
Look at who it hires from and loses people to, whether engineers get equity and real bonuses, and how it talks about pay. Asking how the company sets pay against the market is a reasonable question in a review or an offer.
Is the trimodal model still accurate?
Orosz has revisited it in later articles and says hiring managers in other markets recognize it, though the 2021 euro figures are out of date.
What it says, and how it holds up
If you've ever learned what a friend at another company earns for the same title and felt a pang, this essay offers an explanation that isn't about either of you. Writing in 2021 from Amsterdam, where he'd hired engineers at Uber, Gergely Orosz noticed that published salary surveys showed senior pay barely moving while packages at a few employers had climbed fast. His answer was that there's no single market rate, just separate markets that a company chooses to pay against.
He sorts employers into three groups. Local firms, often treating engineering as a cost, pay against nearby competitors and mostly in salary. A second group benchmarks against all local employers, not only direct competitors, and adds bonuses and some equity. The third, Big Tech, fast-growing companies heading for a listing and trading firms, pays against a regional or global market, with large bonuses, and equity that can exceed base pay for senior people. He finds the top tier hard to see from below, and he's candid about its costs: tougher interviews, more pressure, evening calls with other time zones, and a quicker exit for anyone not meeting the bar.
Keep his vantage point in mind. Orosz writes as a hiring manager from the top tier, his figures mix his own salary research, his years hiring at Uber and a couple of public surveys, and he says openly that he's building a pay-data site and writes a newsletter. Five years earlier, the engineer Dan Luu asked whether developer pay was splitting in two. His tentative answer was that the spread was widening but that pay wasn't bimodal, and he said he lacked the data to be sure either way. Orosz's tiers read best as a seasoned practitioner's model rather than a census, and he has since revisited them for other countries.
The tier picture assumes each employer sets its own pay against a market of its choosing. In government, many universities and unionized workplaces, pay tends to follow published scales instead. There, the things worth learning are the scale itself, where you sit on it and how people move up it. This explains how things usually work; it isn't financial, tax or legal advice for your situation.
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Picked by Truest and described in our own words. The original belongs to its creator. Last updated October 9, 2026. We sell a career membership; where that’s relevant above, we say so.