[cyberdrunk]

I'm in a fortunate position that I make 5-10x my living expenses (living in EE while either taking six figure US remote jobs or local top-end jobs). So, savings are not an object, and the main problem with quitting is the worry that I won't be able to get as lucrative job next time... Usually, I have to be pretty beaten up mentally to quit and take that risk. Current strategy is to make the job I'm in last one and just go FIRE in a year or two.

[throw_this_one]

Epic. Are you an American that moved there for that reason? Or just a really good/experienced local that can leverage that lifestyle/salary arbitrage?

Might try this sometime soon. I'm pretty well-versed, but which city in EE would you recommend?

[cyberdrunk]

I'm local, born here.

The money (500-600 EUR per day) I get here locally is very much an outlier. I've heard only of a few other people who make that much, and they're all in my area of specialty (big data - meaning Spark, Hadoop etc. - on important projects for huge corps). So I wouldn't really count on someone just off the plane being able to land such a deal. Half of that is not too hard to get though for a techlead or a good senior in a hot field or perhaps even just in Java for a big (=difficult) backend project. Also, importantly, if you work as a contractor, the taxes are just 19%, which is amazing compared to most western countries.

Poland is by far the biggest market in the region (and Warsaw is by far biggest market in Poland, but Krakow, Wroclaw, Gdansk and Poznan are also viable) and I'd recommend moving here if you're eyeing EE. However, the really good deals here are all in contracting (you simultaneously get higher rates AND lower taxes) and I don't know how that works with visas and if it's even doable... Sorry, I just haven't met any non-EU foreigner here on a contract yet.

[throw_this_one]

Dziekuje for the reply!

Sounds pretty legit.

Do those large backend Java projects usually have to do with Big Data? Or fairly vanilla, just with complicated business logic.