How do salaries for technologists in the U.S. match up against their counterparts in other countries? While that’s a difficult question to answer—fluctuating currency conversions alone can make comparisons a little messy—a new breakdown by levels.fyi gives us some idea.

Levels.fyi crowdsources its compensation data from technologists. Crowdsourcing isn’t always the most scientific way of gathering accurate data, but the website’s numbers generally align with those presented by other sources. And in this case, its numbers suggest that U.S. technologists are some of the best-paid in the world, at least if we break things down by metro area. Take a look at the chart of median technologist pay in U.S. tech hubs:

Now compare the above technologist salaries to those in cities around the world. As you can see, some cities (Zurich, Tel Aviv) come very close to matching or surpassing U.S. tech hubs, in terms of what technologists earn—but even Washington, D.C., in last place on the U.S. list, manages to surpass all but two international cities:

What can we conclude from this? When it comes to paydays, American technologists (and tech hubs) are in a pretty good position vis-à-vis the rest of the world. According to Dice’s latest Tech Salary Report, the average technologist salary currently stands at $104,566, an increase of 6.9 percent between 2020 and 2021. With the tech unemployment rate currently drifting around 1.7 percent, technologists are in a great position to negotiate with current and prospective employers about everything from compensation to benefits such as flexible schedules. 

Compensation tends to be higher in well-established tech hubs such as New York City and Silicon Valley. But keep in mind that, in many cases, your salary is just as dependent on your skills and experience as your location; if you have the right skill-set (and excellent “soft skills” such as communication and teamwork), chances are good that you can land the salary you feel you deserve, no matter where you live.