[arximboldi]

While I would be happy to have higher salaries here, they are not really comparable to the US. Here you have a social system (free education, public health insurance) and work way less (hardly 8 hours a day, 25-30 days vacation as normal, etc.). For European standards salaries here are actually rather decent. With the current rent situation, I hope though they rise to the standards of the more affluent German south.

[briandear]

Let’s say you can make €45k in Berlin. Let’s say you can make €90k in the US.

“Free” education costs roughly €45k per year. In the US, 2-3 weeks of vacation is normal (for tech jobs,) so let’s say in Germany, you get an additional week. Let’s now say that US workers work an extra 200 hours per year.

So “free” education plus an additional week off plus 200 annual hours of less work. Costing €45k per year.

In a work week, let’s say in Germany it’s 38 hours. So that week of extra vacation, plus the 200 extra annual hours, we have 238 extra hours of work. Not counting “free” university that means that extra time off costs you €189 per hour. Let’s say that a typical US state university costs €60k for 4 years. That represents about 315 hours of work (at the €189 per hour rate.) Which means that in just 2 years or less, the salary differential would pay for your university education. After that expense, then, for the rest of your career, you are essentially paying €189 per hour of extra time you get as a bonus for working in Germany.

Taxes are excluded from this calculation, but while they are higher in Germany, you get more “stuff,” so it balances out on the tax side reasonably well. However, something that is relevant is that the cost of consumer goods is higher in Germany, so your disposable income is going to be less than the US.

I am not saying Germany is “bad” — a great place to live, but in pure economic terms, you are definitely worse off by comparison to a similar job in the US.

[yladiz]

Depending on where you are in Germany you can get 30 days off per year, and on the low side is 25 days. Anything lower isn’t worth considering. So it’s not 1 more week, it’s at least 5-6 weeks of vacation per year, double what you might get in the states, on top of which is fully respected (no one would care if you take 1 consecutive month, even if you are a CEO). In the states you have to sometimes fight for your vacation even if it’s in your contract because of the work culture.

I would say you could make, before taxes, $100k per year in San Francisco with solid 2-3 years of experience, whereas in Berlin it’s around €60k average. On top of that if you’re talking about the whole of the US it’s wildly different between Cleveland and San Francisco, so your comparison isn’t really fair. 100k in SF is not great, 100k in Cleveland is. So your math doesn’t really work here, unless you compare directly two cities and also compare taxes.

[cr1895]

>In the US, 2-3 weeks of vacation is normal (for tech jobs,) so let’s say in Germany, you get an additional week

Are you expected to take those 2-3 weeks? Is your time away actually respected? I'm sure for some it is, but I don't believe that to be universal.

>a great place to live, but in pure economic terms, you are definitely worse off by comparison to a similar job in the US.

Economic comparisons like this hardly capture all that accounts for the differences between these two scenarios. Work culture, quality of life, personal fulfillment, etc. This purely monetary estimation can be informative, but, it is only part of the story.

[arximboldi]

25 days of vacation is 5 weeks of vacation, 30 days is 6 (we only count work days.) And by free education I mean from 1 year until university. If you have kids that is a huge difference. Plus sickness, etc, which is expensive over there. Plus, my friends working in the US tell me it is normal to work 50/60 hours there, specially in the companies where you make the big bucks, but maybe you can really work less if you are assertive with your boss and colleagues...?

I still agree that it is financially better to live in the US if you work as senior at Google/Amazon/Facebook scale, because the difference becomes huge. I still prefer Berlin due to live-style issues (50/60 hour work weeks, car life, commutes, no clubbing, overall capitalistic mentality.)

[passiveincomelg]

I complain about low salaries for permanent positions all the time, but you can definitely do better than 45k. A programmer with a few years of experience should be able to get 60-75k without too much trouble.