[skohan]

Have you considered moving to the US?

But honestly the pay gap is not due to labour laws, at least not directly. It's because there's a war between the big tech firms to acquire talent which doesn't exist the same way in Europe.

[mewpmewp2]

I have actually seriously considered it, and this international company is one of the reasons why I joined it because of the opportunity to relocate. US also has much better opportunities for entrepreneurship and other things in my opinion. Simply due to scale of English speaking crowd and of course people there are more likely to buy things.

But it would require coming out of my comfort zone so much. I have a girlfriend here, family, friends and much more.

I have calculated that I could "FIRE" in US so much faster compared to where I live. Especially if I did some years of work in USA and then "FIRE"d at some low cost of living country.

But I think I'm not going to do it for now. Luckily the company pays well in my country too, just not as well. But I do have a lot of regrets that I'm not using my potential to the fullest.

Why do you think US has so many big tech firms compared to Europe and other places? And why is there so much war between tech companies specifically in US?

[theshrike79]

> Why do you think US has so many big tech firms compared to Europe and other places? And why is there so much war between tech companies specifically in US?

Less regulation. Facebook would've hit multiple EU privacy laws before it got even medium-sized.

Uber, Doordash and others would've never gotten past EU labor laws. They're having trouble even now.

And yes, the US has a huge concentration of enthusiastic talent willing to do pretty much anything as long as it's "disruptive". Also the US has ridiculous amounts of people wit millions to waste on said disruptive ideas. (Like over-engineered juice presses).

[skohan]

> Why do you think US has so many big tech firms compared to Europe and other places? And why is there so much war between tech companies specifically in US?

Historical/incidental reasons I suppose. I think a lot of it has to do with a lot of the big tech giants, and a lot of VC being centered there (especially around SV specifically) so there is a lot of defensive hiring. When facebook pays a developer $250k per year, it's not only because of the value they're providing facebook, but it's because of the value they could provide a startup which could compete with facebook. By driving up the price of talent, they price startups out of the market.

Startups in Europe have much less access to VC funding, so they are less of a threat.

[908B64B197]

It's no accident.

- World class universities

- Weak/non-existent non-compete

- Better risk tolerance from VC (Can't just park the money in real-estate. Worth it to invest in the Next Big Thing)

- Higher compensation means the best world-wide come work in that ecosystem