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Brain Drain Within the EU?

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Re: Brain Drain Within the EU?

#91

Post by Camillo »

ciguy wrote: post #18

I'm living in Italy at the moment, and I can watch the brain drain happening in real time. Every single university student I know here is looking to go to the UK or Germany when they graduate, almost without exception. I can't blame them at all, taxes are excessive and bureaucracy is excruciating here. Finding even a temporary job usually requires family connections, so the dumbest people with connections end up as m…

The biggest problem for those emigrating students is neither taxes nor bureaucracy, it's the low salaries offered in Italy.

Re: Brain Drain Within the EU?

#92

Post by plandis »

gerdesj wrote: post #74
ciguy wrote: post #18

I'm living in Italy at the moment, and I can watch the brain drain happening in real time. Every single university student I know here is looking to go to the UK or Germany when they graduate, almost without exception. I can't blame them at all, taxes are excessive and bureaucracy is excruciating here. Finding even a temporary job usually requires family connections, so the dumbest people with connections end up as m…

I'm living in Italy at the moment, and I can watch the brain drain happening in real time. Every single university student I know here is looking to go to the UK or Germany when they graduate, almost without exception. If you allow your gaze to de-focus slightly, you could think of Italy as contributing towards the EU as a whole. If it helps, just down the road from me is a helicopter manufacturer that used to be kno…

I downvotes you because I think it’s incredibly fallacious to discredit the problems people have simply because you can find examples of worse off people in the world (in your example Syria).

Obviously people in a civil war torn country have an extremely poor quality of life that that doesn’t mean that everyone everywhere else does t have very real problems too. Basically, I think you’re presenting a false dichotomy since problems can be improved no matter where or to whom they happen.

Re: Brain Drain Within the EU?

#93

Post by zhdc1 »

village-idiot wrote: post #3

Random thought: the UK has the advantage of speaking English. First, that makes it easier for them to pull in other Europeans, since english is commonly the second language of most other Europeans. Second they can also pull in American and Canadian expats much easier than anyone else in Europe. Germany is more interesting to me. German is not exactly the worlds most common first or second language. So this is more ev…

English is very prevalent in German higher academia and industry.

Re: Brain Drain Within the EU?

#94

Post by zhdc1 »

egeozcan wrote: post #16
village-idiot wrote: post #3

Random thought: the UK has the advantage of speaking English. First, that makes it easier for them to pull in other Europeans, since english is commonly the second language of most other Europeans. Second they can also pull in American and Canadian expats much easier than anyone else in Europe. Germany is more interesting to me. German is not exactly the worlds most common first or second language. So this is more ev…

Contrary to what most people believe, I see that native English speakers can learn German rather easily (with a pretty distinct accent, which I really like :)). Your point stands though, as they usually don't know this before they actually start learning, so they must have other reasons.

Boatloads of native English speaking expats in Germany would love it if this were true.

Re: Brain Drain Within the EU?

#95

Post by zhdc1 »

borroka wrote: post #12
snaky wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They will fix it European way. > Support from the European Union could come handy in helping Italian and Spanish entrepreneurs overcome the gap with more developed parts of Europe, both in terms of funding and networking opportunities. Indeed, as for the former, both nations are among the first beneficiaries, in the last two years, of the funds earmarked by the EU for innovation and technological research in the Hori…

The effect of these ERA (European Research Agency) initiatives is zero. EU likes to throw money at problems without following up; for an enlightening example one can look at the Marie Curie fellowship. Money thrown at researcher for 2 or 3 years of research in EU or outside of EU institutions with zero follow up at the end of the fellowship. As far as I know, the vast majority of MC fellows leave academia and researc…

Are they?

A significant number of the major papers published over the last several years in the field I'm currently in have European co-authors. Having witnessed how EC funding works first hand, I'm willing to go to bat that it's a major reason behind the current renaissance in European university research.

EC grants have regular reporting requirements with metrics and dissemination plans that are used to inform future awards. They also intentionally hold back a large portion of the promised funding to enforce compliance, and hold regular audits.

I can't speak for the Marie Curie action awards first hand, but defections from academia to industry are prevalent across the board, and are generally a good thing (you want academia to inform industry, and vice versa). There are also a very limited number of open positions from post-doc on up.

Re: Brain Drain Within the EU?

#97

Post by clubm8 »

pageald wrote: post #28
village-idiot wrote: post #3

Random thought: the UK has the advantage of speaking English. First, that makes it easier for them to pull in other Europeans, since english is commonly the second language of most other Europeans. Second they can also pull in American and Canadian expats much easier than anyone else in Europe. Germany is more interesting to me. German is not exactly the worlds most common first or second language. So this is more ev…

Are there a lot of American expat software engineers in the UK? For most people, it would be a steep pay cut to move from the US to anywhere in the EU.

>For most people, it would be a steep pay cut to move from the US to anywhere in the EU.

You get bit at both ends - you had to pay for an American college degree ($$$) and had none of the social services like unemployment benefits/worker protections someone in the EU gets... then when you finally are making a high wage, you're going to get taxed to high heaven to pay for services you had to pay for (like the expensive degree I just mentioned).

Sadly, the best move looks to be to be frugal in the USA then retire early elsewhere.

Re: Brain Drain Within the EU?

#98

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

Xixi wrote: post #84
ciguy wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tax rates on middle income earners (15k to 30k euros annually) are higher in Italy, at least based on my limited research. If you have data to back up your claim that they are higher in Germany I'd love to see it. Either way that's not actually the core of the issue. In Germany, you get decent public transportation, great education and healthcare for your tax money. In Italy these things range from tolerable but inef…

It can be hard to compare actual tax rates as you have to also account for all the payroll taxes. For instance in France for a Software Engineer you would expect about 40~45% payroll taxes [1], and you will still pay income taxes (somewhere between 20% and 40%) on what remains [2]. They go towards different budgets (Social Security and State), so it makes sense that they are collected separately. I don't know how it…

> They go towards different budgets (Social Security and State), so it makes sense that they are collected separately.

Kinda beside the point, but that does not actually make sense. My home budget and car budget are different, but I collect them from the same source. I don't get a different job to pay for my car. Many countries pay for social security out of income taxes, or pay for general budget stuff out of payroll taxes.

I don't know what the real reason behind payroll taxes is. Probably it's mostly historical, as opposed to something you would reimplement if you were doing it from scratch today. But it is most definitely not simply because those taxes go into a different budget.

Re: Brain Drain Within the EU?

#99

Post by mortehu »

olavgg wrote: post #73
dogma1138 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same for us, finance has slightly above average comp packages especially the bonus but in London it’s possible to get to 100K as an engineer outside of it it begins to drop drastically some tech hubs can have high salaries but Manchester for example tops out at around 80K and that’s also pretty hard to get. Outside of the UK you might be lucky to get €50-60K even when working for US firms on average this includes Ger…

CoL? Seriously here in Norway getting over 100K € annually is becoming normal. If you are really talented, then you can even make 150k € annually. Freelancers make over 200k € annually. There is a huge shortage for developers these days, much thanks to "digital transformation" trend.

According to SSB, the 75th percentile for full-time system architects in private industry (the highest paid software developer category) in Norway in 2017 was $103K/year. This is close to the 50th percentile for all software engineers in US in 2017, which was $104K according to BLS. The 50th percentile for system architects in Norway was $87K.

Norway has a higher cost of living due to the 25% VAT, and because the national (non-developer) median salary is so high. Not to mention vehicle and gasoline taxes.

Re: Brain Drain Within the EU?

#100

Post by enraged_camel »

m00dy wrote: post #13

Turkey has now a great exodus ever in its history. Most of the educated Turks are now trying to abandon their beloved country. Recent stats indicate that top 4 countries they are going are UK, Germany, France, Netherlands [1]. If you see any of these precious guys, just say hi to them. They will speak to you. [1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-42433668

The overwhelming majority of Turks living in Germany are second or third-generation. They are descendants of Turkish workers who emigrated to Germany in the 1960s and 1970s to make up for Germany's dire need for laborers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turks_in_Germany#Mainland_Turk...

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