Only way to make comparable money in Europe is by contracting. For some reason full-time employees are massively underpaid compared to US and don't tell me about living cost comparison. Life in London for example is just as expensive if not more than San Francisco/New York. We pay for our national health insurance too and probably comparable to what Americans pay for their private. People can barely afford an average…
This basically. If you become a contractor you can double your yearly pay keeping the same conditions.
It's an opinion so I am not sure what you are hoping for. If you are actually interested in the subject, as in doing more than trolling, perhaps you could find citations of your own and post them here.
I think differences in cost of living and social benefits do not fully explain it, popular as that line of reasoning may be. A few exceptions aside, Europe just doesn't have VC capital. VC capital translates in Dutch as "risk capital". We have neither the capital nor the risk taking. A fitting example of this shortcoming is Blendle. Once called the "iTunes for news", this app would let you read articles across news p…
If this were true, wouldn't we see those US VCs come running to Europe with their capital? Especially now, when they can attend board meetings over zoom.
Even with wider geographic distribution of US startups, there are still a lot of fish in the US VC pond. A deep-pocketed firm could pretty easily differentiate themselves in Europe with aggressiveness and comp.
I do have a cheat code for making money in Europe. Freelance as a SAP consultant. The learning curve may be a few years, and its soul crushingly boring. But once you're qualified and competent at it, you just put on a suit and take your trolley from one large business to the other, whilst charging 200€+ per hour. You don't have to actually implement anything, only advise. It's like the modern COBOL. Every sizable bus…
when I was interviewing a long time, the SAP recruiter's pitch was "if you join, you'll never have to worry about making money anywhere in the world"
spent 5 great years there :) inbox is never empty, but yes I would need to wear a suit again
I'm not super sure it's that. What's stopping companies like Spotify? It's not like they were just trying to address the Swedish market. And note carefully, from Wikipedia: > In April 2016, Ek and Lorentzon wrote an open letter to Swedish politicians demanding action in three areas that they claimed hindered the company's ability to recruit top talent as Spotify grows, including access to flexible housing, better edu…
What is it about stock options that are unique to the US?
Stock options are almost unheard of in Europe. It's changing but very slowly. It's a different landscape too: very few European startups IPO, compared to those in the US, so people aren't as pushy to get stock options when they know well it's just a pie in the sky.
I think differences in cost of living and social benefits do not fully explain it, popular as that line of reasoning may be. A few exceptions aside, Europe just doesn't have VC capital. VC capital translates in Dutch as "risk capital". We have neither the capital nor the risk taking. A fitting example of this shortcoming is Blendle. Once called the "iTunes for news", this app would let you read articles across news p…
If this were true, wouldn't we see those US VCs come running to Europe with their capital? Especially now, when they can attend board meetings over zoom. Even with wider geographic distribution of US startups, there are still a lot of fish in the US VC pond. A deep-pocketed firm could pretty easily differentiate themselves in Europe with aggressiveness and comp.
VC sector in Europe is 15-20 years behind to that in the US. VC in the US want to play on a turf they understand- the local legislation, infrastructure,etc. When some random guy from Latvia shows up, he gets the money but it's pocket change compared to what the guy from Chicago would have gotten.
Also, just because those benefits exist doesn't mean that they're good or worth it. In the UK I often need to access healthcare privately not through the NHS. My projected state pension is a joke even though the National Insurance contributions are significant. I feel like I'm paying a lot and not getting anything in return. Add to that the high cost of living in London and the whole picture looks much worse than the…
Just saying, check what a private health insurance costs in the US vs the UK. Even if the NHS is not the best, it's a big market force which makes it very hard for private insurances to fuck you up in the ass like in the US. At least in my country, having my 4 pax family in a premium private insurance costs me close to 400€/m.
It's impossible to adequately talk about private insurance in the UK: you still have to go to your GP and if the state won't give the service (e.g. MRI scan) fast enough, only and only then the private insurance would step in.. I can't comment on the US insurance but I have a feeling it's quite different.
It all comes down to U.S. tech companies being much more successful, mainly because of the scale of the U.S. market. Any U.S. startup can immediately address a market of $21T (GDP) without any regulatory overhead or language considerations. This causes engineers to be insanely productive in terms of economic productivity. In comparison, Germany, the largest country in the EU, has a GDP of only $3.8T. It's much harder…
They could compete with each other more aggressively for EU talent, essentially extending the US market for s/w engineers to the EU, but the problem is a huge swathe of the best EU s/w engineers already move to the US chasing those x3 wages. We're somewhat better off here in the UK, we have a well developed s/w industry in games, defence, embedded systems and finance. The difference is maybe only 2x instead of 3x. On…
Not sure about being better though - outside London/Finance sector/FG, six-figure is quite rare, isn't it?
It all comes down to U.S. tech companies being much more successful, mainly because of the scale of the U.S. market. Any U.S. startup can immediately address a market of $21T (GDP) without any regulatory overhead or language considerations. This causes engineers to be insanely productive in terms of economic productivity. In comparison, Germany, the largest country in the EU, has a GDP of only $3.8T. It's much harder…
The reason for the US' success definitely does not revolve around the scale of the US market. It revolves around the scale of the US within the global market and the relaxed regulation building and freedoms of the US onto all markets.
The US was the largest scale market back when tech companies were starting in the 80s and 90s. Not any more though. But the momentum is already there.
I think differences in cost of living and social benefits do not fully explain it, popular as that line of reasoning may be. A few exceptions aside, Europe just doesn't have VC capital. VC capital translates in Dutch as "risk capital". We have neither the capital nor the risk taking. A fitting example of this shortcoming is Blendle. Once called the "iTunes for news", this app would let you read articles across news p…
>I think differences in cost of living and social benefits do not fully explain it, popular as that line of reasoning may be. They don't, period. At $45,284 the US has the highest household net disposable income per capita in the OECD ( http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/united-states/ >), where "disposable income" ( http://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=46 >) accounts for healthcare and government b…
Not to mention that most goods cost 20-30% more in Europe. The USA is a significantly wealthier country than even the "rich" Western European ones.