Ask HN: Should I move to California or Germany as a SWE with 2 small kids?

I'm at a crossroads in my life. My wife and I are trying to figure out if we should move back to California or move to Germany to be closer to her parents.

A bit of background: We're in our mid-30s. Both in tech. I'm a software engineer. She's a product manager. I'm American and she's German. We met in SF in 2014 and left together in 2017. We traveled for a while, then moved to Amsterdam where we live now. We have a 1 year old daughter with another on the way in October. We don't plan on having more kids after that. We'd like to leave the Netherlands soon, but haven't decided yet if we should move back to California or move close to her parents in Germany.

There's tons of variables to consider, but the 2 main ones I'm focused on right now is the tradeoff between family support vs career prospects. In short: if we move to Bavaria, my wife's parents would be a huge help with our kids. They're natural and eager grandparents and they're great with our daughter. But, they live in a small village in Bavaria. If we moved to Germany, I assume we'd want to be close to them, so we'd end up in a similarly small village near them.

My family is scattered around CA and NY and, while it'd be nice to be closer to them, I don't think we'd get nearly the same kind of natural support network from them. If we did move to CA though, I assume we'd move closer to either my Dad (down in San Diego) or my Mom (around Sacramento).

On the career side, I'm assuming our career options and pay would be a lot higher in CA. I work as a senior eng at a large tech company and based on levels.fyi, it looks like my SF colleagues make somewhere between 2 and 4 times what I do. I know money isn't everything, but I've experienced the pain and stress that not having enough causes. I see it with all my family members now. Since moving to the Netherlands, I haven't been able to save or invest nearly as much as I could back in CA. Maybe it's the American in me, or a vestige from my childhood, but I feel uneasy not building more wealth. Money smooths everything over - from relationships, to the options you have available, to the time you can buy with it. But, that additional pay would come at the expense of being more on our own raising our kids, which adds another set of stressors and difficulties. Additionally, for the sake of our kids, we think it'd be good for them to have more involved relatives.

Any SWE parents out there who have insights? How hard is it raising kids in CA if you have limited family support? What's your quality of life in CA as a parent? Does cost of living eat up all the additional money I assume we could make? We'd eventually like to buy a house, but the markets seem so crazy that even with the pay raises I wonder if we could swing it.

What about quality of life and career prospects in Germany? Anyone living there have any insights? Since we'd be looking at being closer to my wife's parents, I think we'd need to find remote work, so that would also be a limiting factor. I'm assuming we couldn't build as much individual wealth, but perhaps the services of the state compensate enough for that and I should let go of that obsession?

30000* Germany.

You get like an entire month paid vacation. Companies are incredibly thirsty for talent there and job security is high. The people are very nice and the job pay isn't worse enough to worry about being poor. Most large cities are within a few hours of whatever small town, so you don't have to be in the middle of a field somewhere if that isn't ideal. And for your kids the education system is waaaaaaay better.

More importantly what does your wife really want?

I am a SWE in CA with 5 kids and no family support. We make it work…it’s hard but we have each other. Europe seems very different than US/CA for SWE so there’s likely a trade off there as well. One suggestion is to maybe focus on building up the initial wealth for a few more years while the kids are younger and then reassess. If you’re diligent you could get both. Family support/babysitting is helpful ideally until the oldest is middle school age where they then can start watching the younger ones. We also homeschool and I believe it’s illegal in Germany so that limits some education options.

I am also a parent. I would choose Germany without a doubt, and I have given it a lot of thought (Europe vs US (Seattle) ). Life is hard to predict, and if any of you are ever unlucky (any kind of health problem or accident), the kind of support you will get from the state in Germany, plus the help of your kids' grandparents is going to be invaluable.

Maybe in the best case your life in CA is going to be somewhat easier/better (huge career success, lots of money, all kind of experiences for your kids). But in all the outcomes in the middle, specially the worse ones, Germany is going to be so much better, giving it a huge lead on the average future timeline.

* Paid vacation

* Paid maternity leave for both parents

* High job security (it's hard to fire someone)

* Working health care system which doesn't cost you anything if you get sick

These are big reasons for Germany. And with remote work you don't have to work for small companies in the small Bavarian town you are moving to. You can work for any in Germany or sometimes even in Europe or the US.