Ask HN: Thinking of moving to Europe from USA

EU citizen currently living in the US here.

Hugely recommended, if only for comparison purposes. From my own experience, English speaking countries are a must. If that's not an option, cities like Barcelona or Berlin should cover your bases for at least a year, but you won't survive for long without speaking Spanish or German. There are more things than work in life, and you'll soon get tired of only dealing with expats or your own nationals.

Please do not fool yourself too early into thinking 'yeah, I'll just learn the thing', unless you have a knack for languages, or you already speak one or two foreign tongues. YMMV though, it is certainly doable if you apply.

Scandinavian countries, Ireland or The Netherlands are your best bet these days, and there is a relatively big IT sector in all of them.

Salaries are not what you expect coming from the US, your $200k rated job is no more than 80k€, but you will certainly require much less. Saving is possible and encouraged.

Edit: grammar

That's a big life decision.

I've lived in Europe my whole life, but I have a lot of friends and relatives in the US. I've also lived in 3 different European countries, and of course I know people from just about all the Western European nations.

There's a lot got you to think about. This is only a small part, off the top of my head:

- If you're American, you pay tax worldwide. Most countries have higher tax than the US, so you just pay their tax. Switzerland is different. I lived there, it's a pain as an American to even get a bank account. And you'll have to file a return. A friend of mine is half American and is an accountant. It's annoying for him as well.

- Languages. Which do you speak? Most Northern European countries have significant numbers of companies where they speak English. That's not to say you can't learn the language, English is a Germanic language, so not a million miles off German, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, etc. Yet you're not going to understand it getting off the plane.

- Social. Are you coming by yourself or are you married? Got kids? It's hard to find documentation for this, but the way one socialises depends a lot on which country you're in, whether you're in the countryside or the city, and whether you have kids or are single. Anecdotally I'd also say some of the Germanic nations have hard-to-penetrate social circles. It's not that they don't like you, they already have their friends and haven't needed to make new ones since college.

- Culture shock. I guess you actually want that. But remember you can drop a guy from New York in LA and they will not have a problem at all. Take a guy from Edinburgh to Rome, and they are now a tourist. The plus side is it takes a two hour flight to see something completely different, with different looking people, weather, history, and so on.

- Visa. This is going to depend a lot of the specific country.

Anyway I'm sure you'll have questions.

I spent a few years living and working in Europe with EU companies or US subsidies there. The one main gotcha that no one thinks about is the tax and retirement savings side of things, both of which you should probably do.

As a US citizen you're obligated to file (and possibly pay) taxes no matter where in the world you work and reside, no exceptions. It's the price of having US citizenship and access to the US embassy. In most cases you probably won't end up paying anything when you declare the tax you paid in your resident country, but that gets complicated with that country having a different tax year than the US (April to April vs calendar year). Get a competent expat attorney and pay for it to be done for you. There's also the FBAR which you might need to become acquainted with.

As for the retirement savings, lots of countries have their own types of retirement accounts that can be invested in as part of your paycheck. The caveat here is how to repatriate the funds when you leave before hitting your 60's. I haven't found a great way to roll those over to an IRA back in the states yet.

I dont know the specifics as i'm not a US citizen, but to my knowledge, i think if you earn a wage in another country outside the US, you will have to pay the local taxes and also tax back to the US Gov as well. Someone please correct me or clarify if i'm wrong.

Having gone through the experience myself it depends what you're aiming at. In my opinion, in the tech space in particular the US is a no brainer for the European to move to:

If you're aiming at your own startup, Europe is downright awful you control the working hours, holidays and social security. Entrepreneurship is terrible because the culture doesn't adapt well to it. Raising cash is like selling a fridge to eskimos. There is a culture of hitting yourself at failure and extremely conservative risk. Your own parents wont support you in a startup.

For a job in tech: In Silicon valley all those things you mentioned are quite easy to come by? Social security, holidays, working hours and even better + a wage which is why the draw is the other way from here.