[manggit]

When I worked at a cleantech startup in the summer of 2010, the culture was less favorable to employees than in the bay area. For example, it seemed that the cultural norm was to give none, or very little equity, thus reducing the upside for any early employee.

In recent years I have interviewed as a Software Engineer and Senior Product Manager at a couple startups in Germany. However, after receiving a couple offers, I found that the costs of living in Germany as an American (US Taxes, Visa, USD -> Euro exchange rate) were not sufficiently covered by the salaries, even on the high end.

For American companies looking to hire talent in Germany, I have heard that it is was less competitive, lower cost per engineer and the talent top notch.

[majewsky]

Yeah, the US making you pay taxes as a citizen while working abroad is pretty cruel. I had a colleague from America who was sitting in our German office for some time, who didn't know about this rule and was utterly shocked when the US told him he'd have to pay some 20k dollars or so in taxes. He flew back to the US within a day or so to avoid any additional taxes.

[Bombthecat]

It is not cruel,

he needed to have earned a shit ton of money (I think right now around 120K? a year for the need to pay taxes in US, if he not a CEO it is quit hard to get that payment even if you are a pro programmer)

[nerthus]

Just out of curiosity, did you take into account, that about half of your gross salary goes into social/health care in germany?

[germanier]

More like 20.5% including pension. Even when you include all portitions that the employer has to cover (which is not relevant when looking at a job offer as those come on top of the stated salary) we only get to about 40.7% which may be much but is still far from "about half".