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Ask HN: Leaving Germany – where to find quality of life as experienced engineer?

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191–200 of 269 posts

Re: Ask HN: Leaving Germany – where to find quality of life as experienced engineer?

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that's really hard to compare when looking at taxes is the quality of public services you get. UK has not low taxes by any measure, but certainly lower than eg Germany, at 200k you're looking at effective tax rate of about 35-40% all in. But state schools are a lottery and shut down for 13 weeks a year. Healthcare is good if you can get seen but otherwise it's the private health insurance. Public transport…

In UK, can you please tell me how at 200K pounds, the taxes can come down only to 35-40% especially at 125K or above, the 60% tax trap kicks in. [1] If you can specify any tax saving tips or refer to some consultant, I will be grateful. Really the only way in UK is to put in a large part of your earnings into pension contributions which effectively makes it out of bounds till 55 or 57 from 2028 onwards, which means e…

If you work for yourself you usually create a Ltd. and pay yourself in dividends, not income.

Re: Ask HN: Leaving Germany – where to find quality of life as experienced engineer?

#192

> Our main goal is quality of life for all of us, so it should be a country w/o cold winters, possibly an island close to the equator. Australia, Barbados, Bahamas, Cyprus. Honestly though, you'll be hard pressed to find anywhere as livable as Germany. The US and Canada are less safe with more violence. Both have worse healthcare and education. The US is attractive income-wise but visas tough to get. Canada is extrem…

Violence is the US and Canada is highly concentrated in a limited number of economically disadvantaged areas. It's terrible that some people have to live in those environments, and we should absolutely take steps to improve their situations. But fear of violence is not a rational reason to avoid immigration for affluent people who can afford to live in decent areas. My city has zero murders most years.

Re: Ask HN: Leaving Germany – where to find quality of life as experienced engineer?

#193
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've thought about washington state, but that is more expensive. no state tax ... so maybe that is why real estate costs more.

Oregon has no sales tax

yeah that is one positive

Re: Ask HN: Leaving Germany – where to find quality of life as experienced engineer?

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In Australia if someone hits me and is caught, they’re fucked. Only if you are white. Your life is worthless if you aren't.

Nice narrative, but no. The law applies equally to everyone.

It's not the first time I hear/ read that. Is there some truth in it?

Re: Ask HN: Leaving Germany – where to find quality of life as experienced engineer?

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting suggestion. I've been to Sofia once in 2006. The city did not make a very good impression back then, but I am sure, the situation changed a lot. Hopefully to the better. I will definitely look into it, since we do not exclude eastern Europe from our list. Thanks for the suggestion.

Bulgaria is overall best in Europe, but the language is difficult (Cyrillic) and international English schools are very expensive.

You can learn the Cyrillic alphabet in a day. It's other aspects of the language that are difficult.

Re: Ask HN: Leaving Germany – where to find quality of life as experienced engineer?

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the decision to leave instead of trying to engage and improve things is pretty black and white mentality in itself, isn't it? You've got a point here. Yes, it's giving up. And to be honest, we both gave up. But since we're responsible for our little one, we still try to make the best of it, hence want to restart somewhere else. But I get your point. It's just that we both spent all of our energy over the last 2…

Can you be more specific about what status quo political position you are against? I do not want to render any value judgements. I am just thinking, because I grew up in Southern Europe, I have the opposite opinion to you regarding this. I think Germany is much more open to "skepticism" than you believe. Where I grew up people differentiating from the mainstream view are labeled as idiots and are in a very tiny minor…

I am not the OP however I think he means that there are certain topics which place you in an either "with us" or "against us" group. In many cases, you're either AfD or a Green (kind of). I don't think he is talking about gay people, which clearly in the north Europe have more rights. It has more to do with the public tv telling you how to think.

Out of experience, it's only about the people you meet, however foreigners will be the ones giving you the less politically correct opinions: they'll just share their opinion. But again, it depends on who you meet and in which context you speak about things.

For me this has unfortunately to do with the fact that there is not a healthy debate about things, there is always this fear of being a Nazi or whatever shit they did in the past, which frankly I don't care about.

Re: Ask HN: Leaving Germany – where to find quality of life as experienced engineer?

#198
Interesting. I'm currently in the process of moving back to Germany from Australia. I spent the last 8 years in Sydney and I'm kind of disillusioned about immigrating to another country. You basically just change one set of problems with another set of problems, it's a tradeoff.

One thing to consider when immigrating to another country is that you won't have a social net immediately since you (presumably) don't have family/friends here yet. For Australia you're also required to have private health insurance when you're on a temporary work visa, which you most likely will be if you decide to come here. As a german you're not eligible for medicare but you can get it once you have permanent residency.

To get a work visa in Australia you need to find a sponsor or have a profession that is promoted by the government (e.g. medical doctors). For a sponsor that basically means you need a job with a company before you even get here. I came here on a working holiday visa and found work that way (working holiday visas are limited to people below the age of 30 without dependants).

Don't get me wrong Australia has a lot going for it, beautiful country, nice weather (winter is like ~15 degrees celsius), nice and friendly people, paperwork is super easy compared to Germany, good job opportunities (as a software developer).

However!

Australia is big and far away from everything (people always underestimate this), literally every holiday trip requires a flight to get anywhere. Even within Australia. Flying to Europe requires minimum ~2 days of travel time one way!

Housing is ridiculously expensive, I was on AU$ 130K annually and was not able to afford a house, the required deposit is basically impossible to obtain in a reasonable amount of time. And since it is so big you're not living in a rural area and commute to a larger city (unless you like driving 100+ km one way). What makes matters worse is that most companies seem reluctant to let people work from home 100% of the time, it seems to have settled on something like 50% home and 50% office. Renting right now is brutal, prices have gone up and there is competition like crazy (10km circle around Sydney CBD). Also be prepared to strip naked (metaphorically) to get a rental place, real estate agents want to know everything and need minimum 3 friend references and 2 work references (at least they were asking for that last time roughly a year ago).

Lately food prices have gone up quite a bit, my normal daily groceries bill was around AU$ 15 and is now around AU$ 25.

Re: Ask HN: Leaving Germany – where to find quality of life as experienced engineer?

#200
post #192

> Our main goal is quality of life for all of us, so it should be a country w/o cold winters, possibly an island close to the equator. Australia, Barbados, Bahamas, Cyprus. Honestly though, you'll be hard pressed to find anywhere as livable as Germany. The US and Canada are less safe with more violence. Both have worse healthcare and education. The US is attractive income-wise but visas tough to get. Canada is extrem…

Violence is the US and Canada is highly concentrated in a limited number of economically disadvantaged areas. It's terrible that some people have to live in those environments, and we should absolutely take steps to improve their situations. But fear of violence is not a rational reason to avoid immigration for affluent people who can afford to live in decent areas. My city has zero murders most years.

Lol I grew up in the suburbs of Calgary, itself a midsized and quite affluent city, and there's violence basically anywhere there's public transportation. There were murders in the suburbs. Drug use everywhere.

Look at what's happening this year, basically every city is experiencing a major wave of gang shootings, drug activity, etc...

Europe is much, much safer. Never seen drug addicts shooting up and harassing people on the Paris Metro, it's an everyday occurrence in any major (and some not so major) Canadian city though.

Also it seems to be a concern to OP based on comments.

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