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Ask HN: Who has moved from the U.S. to Europe?

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Re: Ask HN: Who has moved from the U.S. to Europe?

#301

Post by boffinAudio »

wbsss4412 wrote: post #186
boffinAudio wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. I did love the multicultural aspect of Los Angeles, but it got blown to pieces during 9/11, and once the hatred and the flags came out, it was definitely time to leave .. But for many years I considered LA to be a very fine example of people living together, relatively peaceful. Well, after the RK riots, that is ..

Post 9/11 America was indeed very toxic, but I have to ask how much you have been back since? (Not to say our political culture isn’t still toxic)

Yes, multiple times and my viewpoint remains.

Re: Ask HN: Who has moved from the U.S. to Europe?

#302

Post by wheels »

rootusrootus wrote: post #170
wheels wrote: post #72

I moved to Europe from the Midwest near the beginning of my career (20 years ago). It's very difficult to compare things like housing, social life and salary without knowing where you're coming from and where you're considering going. Countries in Europe have GDPs per capita ranging from under $5,000/year to over $100,000/year. Really one of the few things you can say context-free is: you'll have more vacation in vir…

> Really one of the few things you can say context-free is: you'll have more vacation in virtually any European country. In tech, at least, this probably is no longer true. In my experience most of the bigger companies have been moving to unlimited vacation. I'm pretty sure that someone in upper management did the math and concluded that employees granted unlimited vacation actually end up taking fewer days than if t…

In a lot of European countries, you're required to take most of your vacation, and 6 weeks a year is not uncommon. Taking 6 weeks would be significantly frowned upon in the US.

Also, again, what you're calling "most tech companies" I assume is "a few on the west coast", and while that's a useful perspective, it's difficult to fit into a discussion where the granularity is "the US", where it certainly is not standard.

While I had a lower salary, I explored the world in my 20s by having a moderate amount of disposable income and a lot of free time.

Re: Ask HN: Who has moved from the U.S. to Europe?

#303

Post by gutitout »

boffinAudio wrote: post #154
oaiey wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I come from a normal German city, nothing fancy, and have been overall roughly a year in the US. Boston, Princeton, Philadelphia, NY state. I am wealthy, privileged and was guided safely I can absolutely confirm the sentiment of the OP, not coming from worst to best but coming from mid range to mid range. Europe has the better package. The amount of homeless, the amount of wasted landscape, the amount of beton, the c…

Es ist sehr interessant, nicht wahr, wie banal das Verständnis der meisten Amerikaner für ihre Notlage ist? Sie werden nicht für Demut gezüchtet, während die meisten Europäer heutzutage...

Was sollen die den machen? Wirklich neugierig was der Vorschlag ist.

Re: Ask HN: Who has moved from the U.S. to Europe?

#304

Post by inglor_cz »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #155
inglor_cz wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the OP, but Europeans are fairly tribal and "becoming" an Austrian or Czech isn't the same as becoming an American. An expat who speaks the language and gained citizenship will be known as "someone who has the Austrian/Czech/German" passport. Only the kids who speak without accent will probably be fully embraced as natives. In my case, I am a native Czech who speaks flawless Czech, but some people actually refuse…

It depends from country to country; in Romania, for example, where we used to have many communities of Hungarian, Bulgarians, Czech, Polish, Turks and Tatars, if you are reasonably white (or Mongolian looking) and speak a decent Romanian you are considered to be integrated. If you look very different (Black or Chinese) you are accepted, but not considered a local even if you were born and raised in Romania and speak…

Yes, more multicultural countries work like that. The ancient Austria-Hungary definitely did.

Re: Ask HN: Who has moved from the U.S. to Europe?

#305

Post by nafizh »

boffinAudio wrote: post #4

I've done it, and it was one of the best decisions of my life. WHERE: I'm Australian, moved to LA when I was 18 and lived there for 15 years. Then, I moved from Los Angeles to Germany (Duesseldorf), and then to Vienna, Austria. WHAT SACRIFICE: No more In 'n Out Burger, no more decent Mexican/TexMex food, no more LA food trucks. These are literally the only things I miss about the USA. Literally every other aspect of…

Lets not forget the fact that OP is white. I am not a race baiter, and hate identity politics. But as a non-white person, I would rather live in US than Europe. Forget about the social media takes, and lets talk about ground reality. US (and probably Canada), with all its fault, is one of the few countries on earth, where immigration and immigrants are normal and expected. I can also practice my religion with freedom, unlike most of Europe (UK is one exception with caveats of course) that are hell bent on restricting religious expressions. Lastly, I have to confess, all my takes are also a bit generalized but roughly hits the tone.

Re: Ask HN: Who has moved from the U.S. to Europe?

#306

Post by CodeGlitch »

talideon wrote: post #79
jokethrowaway wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The wait is really months. Also the quality of the NHS is pretty bad. The NHS being great is the usual state-backed propaganda you can hear in a lot of other European countries to justify spending all that tax money on healthcare. Just from my personal experience: They skipped some safety measures they were supposed to follow during a birth delivery, they dealt terribly with one of my newborns after birth, they recom…

> Also the quality of the NHS is pretty bad. The NHS being great is the usual state backed propaganda you can hear in a lot of other European countries. Not really. The NHS itself and the various NHS trusts have been continuously drained of funding over the past few decades. The NHS runs on a shoestring. If you want things to improve, Tory cuts need to be rolled back.

Is it? Unless I'm reading the following wrong:

https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/nhs-in-a-nutshell/nhs-...

Re: Ask HN: Who has moved from the U.S. to Europe?

#307

Post by karaterobot »

Hamuko wrote: post #169
karaterobot wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm taking about a 50% pay cut on paper (for a Senior Software Engineer position) A friend of mine moved from Seattle to Munich for work as an SSE, and his experience with respect to the pay cut matches yours. He was expecting that, but did not factor in the increase in taxes on top of that. He said he was broke and living off savings for the first time in his adult life, while working 40 hours a week for a major s…

How can you be broke as a senior software engineer? Even if the wages are lower than in the US, they're probably still in the better half of the wage pyramid. (I'm a senior software engineer in Europe, doing alright) Did he have massive student debt or something?

He didn't mention debt. I kinda wanted to be vague, since I'm just recapitulating a breakfast conversation I had nine months ago, and don't know a ton of details. I believe that he had to continue paying U.S. taxes in addition to the higher German taxes.

Re: Ask HN: Who has moved from the U.S. to Europe?

#308

Post by oaiey »

rory wrote: post #295
oaiey wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. It is literal. Tap water is generally healthy in Europe.

Oh. I think it is in most of the US as well? Or at least, I haven't been anywhere in the US where it is unsafe. In some places it tastes kinda bad. I have actually been to a couple of places in (Eastern) Europe where I was told not to drink the tap water.

Absolutely. Both your statements.

Re: Ask HN: Who has moved from the U.S. to Europe?

#309

Post by lm28469 »

harpersealtako wrote: post #194
lm28469 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Living in America is by definition a privileged position Low income Americans have it much worse than low income Europeans on probably every single metric you can come up with.

Really? I was under the impression that even the average person living in a poor European country (e.g. Moldova, Belarus, Kosovo) has a worse quality of life in most ways compared to, for example, someone living in a rural trailer park in Mississippi (an especially poor state) making minimum wage. What are some notable examples?

European Union countries*

For basic things like vacations, parental leaves, access to basic healthcare, &c.

I've seen skidrow in LA and some parts of SF and NY, this is third world country tier, it looked like war times refugees camps

Re: Ask HN: Who has moved from the U.S. to Europe?

#310

Post by notagoodidea »

busterarm wrote: post #189
jzellis wrote: post #15

I'm just outside London, moved here to marry my English wife from Vegas. I work part time doing basic IT for a US law firm due to health issues after heart surgery, and Yankee dollars are worth jack shit here - I'm not making serious tech industry money, but over here it's barely enough to survive on. Housing is always smaller than you'd get in (at least the western) US for the same price, and I'd bet that's true pre…

Indeed, peanut (or other nut) butter is nigh impossible to find across all of Europe.

The Netherlands may want to have a word with you :)

And honestly it is fairly common to find peanut butter in supermarket in most of Western Europe (at least), may not be good but it exists.

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