Ask HN: Salaries in/around the Netherlands, (Windows) drivers developers?

8 points by Lwerewolf 10 years ago | 4 comments

Hello,

I'm currently developing windows drivers(1) for a company in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. I've been there for 11 months now, 5 months as an intern (as part of my HBO studies), and for the past 5 months I've been there part time (20hr/wk, except for the current month - 40/wk average), working on the same project ever since the start of my internship. Long story short, I'm currently their primary experienced windows drivers dev (they've had minor forays in the past).

I'm at the point where I can begin the final part of my study (the graduation internship), but I'd like to stick with the company for awhile until the conclusion of the (reasonably large) project. My main problem at the moment is that my salary is basically the minimum wage in the country for my age (23), which doesn't seem normal for what I'm doing.

Given my situation(2), can I reasonably expect to negotiate a higher salary (and in what range)? Also, for future reference, how does this field (kernel/low-level development in general) tend to pay around here in general?

Other than that, I like both the project's team and what I'm working on, especially since the project involves a wide range of technologies that must work together (== HUGE potential for learning), and the fact that I'm given relatively large chunks of the project to work on - from research to spec to design to code (almost no micromanagement).

(1) WDM/KDFM both (mainly KMDF, where possible), PCI-e, DMA, custom & some port-miniport models (2) bachelor student - not sure how much weight this carries in the region.

JoachimSchipper 10 years ago |

It's not necessarily a bad idea to work for experience ("HUGE potential for learning"), but minimum wage seems very low. Consider asking around at your HBO what other students and recent graduates earn; as an inferior alternative, intermediair.nl usually has some (very broad and vague) salary data. (IIRC, recent university graduates in computer science can expect 2200-2400 euros per month.)

If you want to continue working here, consider trying to negotiate an agreement that you'll get a significant raise once you have your BSc.

Also, do weigh the benefits of not having a more senior person around (e.g. being allowed to mess with everything yourself) with the downsides of not having a more senior person around (e.g. nobody to learn from, your mistakes won't be corrected as long as you still manage to make the project work somehow.)

Lwerewolf 10 years ago | |

Regarding what others earn - I've already asked the ones that I know, and on average it's 20-30% more (mobile dev & security... advisor, you could say).

About the concern of not having a more senior person around - true. I was (and still am, as a good measure) scared of that bit, what I pretty much did was dig in everything that I could find on the subject before development of my part (and the ones that I'm linked to - not writing a software driver ;) spinned up. That pretty much meant scouring the books (windows internals, Oney's WDM, MS's WDF one, except for the UMDF part), MSDN/linked "whitepapers" (let's say that there are some holes), any sample code that I could find, and most helpfully, NTDEV discussions/linux drivers docs and guides (yes, it is very relevant :)/osdev wiki&forums... and whatever else I've stumbled upon that seemed even remotely connected. As a consequence, I had a slight burnout during my part-time period (school&work) - I'm nowhere near as exhausted now (8/day) as I was during that period (3-4/day) :)

The other defense mechanism against being alone is that documents and code reviews are common in the company, and I'm steadily documenting / teaching others (who have significant linux drivers experience) the concepts of windows drivers, so it's not entirely without scrunity. Perhaps the biggest issue there is converting people from the "windows sucks/linux rules" mindset (well, it's not so bad, but there are some cases in which I feel it approaches that set in stone mentality).

Also, a mindset of "making the thing work somehow" for kernel programming (driver or otherwise) doesn't strike me as proper ;)

JoachimSchipper 10 years ago | | |

That sounds like a good approach; and making complex hardware work at all is not easy, so good job!

As to "making things work somehow" - don't we all suffer through drivers that are the consequence of that? Also, I'm definitely not commenting on some of my own company's kernel-/bare metal code here...

wslh 10 years ago |

Look at sites with salary stats like indeed.com and payscale.com

If I were you I would ask for a rise. My company also does Windows drivers and these skills are scarce. Obviously there is more work on Node.js than developing Windows drivers but the scarcity factor gives you an advantage.