[hal9000xp]

Europe will not win race for ambitious people.

I lived in Sweden for almost one year as an expat (I'm a software engineer). Now, I live in the Netherlands for more than two years.

I can say for sure that Europe is nowhere near Silicon Valley in terms of compensation for ambitious software engineers. Sweden went total nuts with taxes, anything above $6500 per month would be taxed at 55-60% tax rate. It's effectively cap to enforce equality of outcome.

60% tax doesn't mean that ultra-high salaries will be taxed at this rate. It means that ultra-high salaries will not exist in job market in the first place.

The best Swedish startup threatens to leave Sweden because of regulatory and tax burden [1].

The Netherlands recognized importance of highly-skilled expats by introducing tax discounts called "30% ruling". I do respect their efforts to attract talent. That's why I moved from Sweden to the Netherlands in 2016.

However, as non-EU citizen you can work only for publicly registered sponsors [2]. Usually, it's boring well-established companies. So I missed some cool opportunities due to this limitation.

As I learned dutch local job market, I found that almost nobody will pay you 10'000 EUR per month.

Aside from tax and regulatory burden in Europe, there are cultural things like Law of Jante [3]. I can't imagine how society with such mentality can attract highly ambitious people.

Also, talking about money in Europe is kinda taboo. And dutch automatically repeat "money is not everything". It wouldb't annoy me if someone committed to work for open source software. Or being great painter. But when recruiter respond me "money is not everything" when I'm asking "too much", it annoys me a lot.

With that in mind, I decided to abandon idea of living in Europe, getting citizenship, learning dutch language etc. It was tough decision for me but it's time to move on. It's not kind of a society where I want to spend rest of my life. Sorry dutch and swedes, I don't fit here.

So I decided to move to Hong Kong. I've just got very lucrative job offer in Hong Kong (in HFT). The size of compensation is far beyond of what Europe can offer me. Now, I'm almost on par with US (I couldn't get into US because I don't have any degree). Now, I'm just waiting for my HK visa getting approved.

You might troll me saying that, I'm whining. OK, I have answer to that. Just look at my net salary increases:

Russia -> Sweden (2015) +28%

Sweden -> Sweden (2015) +15%

Sweden -> the Netherlands (2016) +63%

the Netherlands -> Hong Kong (2018) +83% (and possible bonus up to 300% of yearly salaries!)

I will work like crazy fanatic and in next six years I will be well over $1M of liquid net worth.

So Europe lost me. Europe is perfect place for people who just want to work from 9 to 5 and put family as their top priority. It's not suited for risk takers.

Links:

https://www.thelocal.se/20160412/spotify-founders-sweden-is-...

https://ind.nl/en/work/Pages/Highly-skilled-migrant.aspx

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante

[jernfrost]

Thanks for the insight. I don't think all societies can be all things to all people, but I don't 100% agree with your final conclusion. Europe has a great safety-net which allows people to take on risks that would be nuts to do elsewhere especially if you have a family.

For the kind of people like you who want to work long hours and reach the stars, I can agree Europe is probably not the place.

But there are many talented people with families who want a work-life balance. For them places like Hong Kong is not going to cut it. My wife has family there that have visited us, and IMHO they have zero work life balance there. It may be good for making money, but not for having a family.

They speak of kids committing suicide because they are so insanely stressed out about their life.

Still I found your perspective very interesting to read. I wish I get to hear sometime in the future how your life in Hong Kong turns out. I have always been very fascinated by the city and hoped to visit it some time in the future.

[mhjas]

While I find your perspective interesting I disagree with some of your conclusions.

> It's effectively cap to enforce equality of outcome.

It isn't so much to enforce equality of outcome as to enforce equality of income. What you are experiencing is to a large extent being on the wrong side of inequality. Just that isn't income inequality, but rather things like wealth, real estate, inheritance and education. Inequalities which people in Sweden largely aren't aware of, or accustomed to. If you had arrived 10 years earlier you would have, at least to a larger extent, been set for life. Other than that I can certainly see your perspective because it is almost impossible for a "salary man" to catch up in Sweden.

[hal9000xp]

"as to enforce equality of income". This is what puts me off of Europe!

I don't mind if group of people voluntarily decide to live in communism and share with each other everything they earn. Like hippies who lived in сommunes.

If high taxes (>33%) are not voluntary then it just means that social democrats are not confident that most successful people in the country will share their ideals.

If European social democracy is so cool, then it should work on purely voluntary basis.

Let's re-frame conversation from arguing to selling. I mean there are lots of top technical talents in India and China. How are you going to convince them to go to Sweden instead of US? It should be pretty damn good reason to decline $300k offer from Silicon Valley and go to Stockholm instead!

P.S. I think selling/pitching society ideals is much more positive and productive than arguing.

[mhjas]

> "as to enforce equality of income". This is what puts me off of Europe!

It is one of the few ways to have an equal society. With to large income inequality the welfare state becomes unsustainable. The poor can't pay for services performed by the rich and ultimately you get a society like the US or worse. Everywhere doesn't have to be the same, no one is forced to live in Sweden. Swedes have very good visa conditions and generally do very well abroad.

> How are you going to convince them to go to Sweden instead of US?

Sweden is a small place. To the extent it needs top talent there is plenty available. People who want to make $300k shouldn't and largely won't move to Sweden anyways. This isn't a competition Sweden can win. Sweden is largely successful because it competes, or have competed, on its own terms. Not by trying to be a worse copy of something else.

Swedish society can, or could, attract people that wants things that are in line with what it is good at and not readily available in other places i.e. its unique selling proposition. Things like education, family and quality of life. There is a foundation to provide those things that has been lost in the last 10 years or so. A lot of people move for opportunities, making money is only one opportunity.

I think it is telling that you are also leaving the Netherlands as a significantly lower tax rate couldn't keep you there either. Note that I am not saying the Sweden is attractive at this point, just that I find it unlikely that taxes are the main problem.

Personally I don't like Hong Kong, but it will certainly be different. Don't miss out on going to Shenzhen.

[hal9000xp]

I acknowledge that Sweden has number of advantages and benevolent government with no corruption. It's certainly one of the top countries in the world in terms of development.

My guess is that Sweden might be popular choice among people who want to pursue PhD or something like that.

I fell in love with Hong Kong first time I visited it as a tourist in 2013.

[madeuptempacct]

I am interested in how you learned to program given that you are saying you have no degree.

It seems most Russian immigrants either come from the 80s phd era or have wealthy patterns and go to a foreign school.

So, you learned on your own?

[hal9000xp]

I was born in Uzbekistan. I lived 22 years in Uzbekistan. My parents had no money but in 1994, my father bought me russian clone of ZX Spectrum:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX_Spectrum

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%BF%D0%B0...

Basically, in 1990s many of us, used what was popular in 1980s in UK.

My father wasn't technical person but I fell in love with ZX Spectrum from day one! So I just learned it all myself.

Schools were terrible, I mostly skip all classes. But ZX Spectrum is very simple machine, so it's possible for 10 year old kid to learn it without external guidance.

Funny fact, I started working in Internet club in Uzbekistan in 2003 for 10 USD per month. In 2004, I discovered wonderland called Knoppix and FreeBSD. Then I learned programming in Bash. After that I learned programming in C because Kernighan and Ritchie books was so thin and at the same time all Unix/Linux was written in C.

More details on how I learned programming:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16508460

[d1zzy]

Wow, that mirrors so much of my computer learning experience. I grew up in Eastern Europe and my parents made a huge effort to buy me a local clone of ZX Spectrum when I was 10 years old after I was exposed to these computers (and computers in general) because of the local computer club for children (all state sponsored, since it was a communist society). It was love at first sight like you said and all I ever wanted to do.

Then learned everything else on my own with whatever sources I could find (resources from the computer club, magazines, books, etc). And took part in programming contents. These were of all levels, there were town level contents, then the winners would move to county level contents then the winners going to national level. I made it to national level for years after having that ZX Spectrum clone at home. By the time I had some kind of computer class in my education path (high school then later on college) I already knew all that they were going to each. At least it made those classes easy :)

[hal9000xp]

I think educational microcomputers should be reintroduced in modern schools, so kids would have easier time to imagine all path from programming language to hardware.

By the way, your username reminds me of great game on ZX Spectrum called Dizzy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dizzy_(series)

I sometimes have urge of nostalgia and play such games on ZX Spectrum emulator :)

[madeuptempacct]

Cool, thanks.

[watwut]

Out of curiosity, what risk in last paragraph have you in mind? What is in stakes and what can you loose?

[hal9000xp]

Are you asking about what I mean by "It was tough decision for me"?

You can read my post dated 2014:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8692961

In short, I was very upset by political situation in Russia and I felt that I must settle in any relatively free country even at great opportunity cost.

But now, I became more confident of my skills and as a result I became more risk tolerant and more ambitious. I decided that in order to be truly happy I should take more risks and completely abandon the idea of stable and predictable life in Europe.

When I leave the Netherlands, all my legal time till citizenship will reset. And I can't truly settle in Hong Kong because housing prices are insanely high and I can't get citizenship there but my bet is that I will become so successful that I will be able to settle anywhere I want as high net worth individual.

[watwut]

> Are you asking about what I mean by "It was tough decision for me"?

No. I was referring to "It's not suited for risk takers". I was curious about where you see risks. What is the danger, what is the valuable thing you might loose by the move. Excluding trade-offs - "legal time till citizenship will reset" is more of trade-off or cost because you know it will happen. It is uncomfortable and obstacle and challenge for sure, I don't want to deprecate the difficulties involved, but it is not what I wanted to ask about.