131–140 of 144 posts
I'm a software engineer that recently moved from California to Dublin, so here's my take on answering the questions (and not the dick measuring contest of US-vs-EU): * Making $1 in the US != making $1 in the EU: There are all sorts of things built into the society here that simply don't exist in the US (or Cali anyway). For example, in Cali I was absolutely required to own a car, which means paying registration and i…
Sounds like munich.
I earn less money, but I work 32 hours a week, have 6 weeks paid vacation, and a 5 minute commute. It's also really hard to "translate" money via exchange rates. Cost of living matters a lot. If food and housing is cheap, then the money goes a lot longer. That's also the sort of goods that the arbitrage pressure of international trade struggles to even out. Maybe if WFH becomes a big international thing, but I don't…
Let's look at it this way, if the top 5% of EU engineers can make literal millions in a few years working in the US, at least some percentage of them will end up in the US.
Then let's consider that money influences what careers people pick. If very high IQ people who are ALSO ambitious see that they can choose between going the MD route, or finance, or SWE, or big law, and all of them are somewhat equally lucrative, some large % of those ambitious high IQ people are going to go into SWE.
In the EU if the only way to big bucks is finance or consulting, and SWE is a normal peasant like life stlye, aren't ambitious high IQ folks going to be more likely to choose finance or consulting instead of SWE?
Isn't it likely the median US programmer, because of incentives, is going to be higher than the median EU programmer? This isn't to say there aren't brilliant EU programmers or that the US on average is smarter than the EU, it's just a combination of brain drain and what smart people end up doing.
I'm a software engineer that recently moved from California to Dublin, so here's my take on answering the questions (and not the dick measuring contest of US-vs-EU): * Making $1 in the US != making $1 in the EU: There are all sorts of things built into the society here that simply don't exist in the US (or Cali anyway). For example, in Cali I was absolutely required to own a car, which means paying registration and i…
You must be having the definition of a laugh: > I had about $25k of student loans to pay off... EU wouldn't even have to think about that. I went to UK university after 2012 meaning the price per year was £9000 so for 3 years that was £27000. Then I did a master degree and the loan cost of that was £10000 so here we have £37000 on education which is over $50000. Literally paying double than what you are paying and I'…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Continental EU (if you still consider UK European) university is often free. Costs pile up in associated requirements (e.g. housing, textbooks, whatever) but you don't have to take out student loans is the point. So GP's point stands. Brexit aside, I think most people think of Western/Northern continental EU when talking about Europe than UK.
not sure if Americans make the difference
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 argument that US companies have a larger addressable market is valid, but it doesn’t seem particularly convincing. Israel’s domestic market is tiny, and most Israeli start-ups go global from day 1. Probably partly because of that, Israel’s tech salaries are generally above those in the UK, being second only to US salaries. I don’t see anything that prevents, say, a French tech company from going global from day o…
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.
Sure but why would they if they can already do that in the US?
In my opinion, part-time work is much more common in the EU. Also, there is a cultural difference. If I can earn what I need to finance my lifestyle with 15 hours per week, why work more? The drive to become rich is a lot less strong in the EU because you can have health insurance and retirement money even when you're not extraordinarily wealthy. Also, living costs are quite low. 2000€ net per month is enough to feed…
Just do the math; let’s take the 2K Euro you are talking about. That’s 24K in 1 year. 240K in 10. 480K in 20. Now, 480K euro is the price of decent house in Western Europe. Let’s say you are able to save 50% of such decent salary, that means you’ll need 40 years to pay the house (I’m keeping it simple for the sake of the example: no inflation, no taxes, etc.)
A lot of the Europeans in this thread will jump on things like health care or other social benefits without realizing that high paid workers in the US are well taken care of in this regard. The truth is the pay is higher in the US and is not particularly close. It's funny trying to see Europeans argue places like London, Zurich, or Amsterdam are "low cost" compared to US cities to try justify the difference
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…
i.e. not very much. Like on £100,000, top 1%, you pay £5,879 in NI
The state pensions is higher than that per year. Plus free health care.
So how you feel you're paying 'a lot' when you can get full treatment for cancer, for free, boggles my mind.
As an American engineer working in Switzerland I see this far too often, people wanting to come here from Germany, Poland, Czech Republic etc as the salaries there are crap, and really cant blame them. Germany for example, highest tax bracket is reached at like 50k and things arent that cheap relatively speaking. If it were me and I lived in any of those countries, I would be starting my own company or moving to a higher paying country immediately and working the majority of my career there, then retire somewhere cheap.